The long-awaited new sci-fi TTRPG as heard on Fun City: unique, flexible rules + an unforgettable game universe!
If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, you're not too late! You can still order the professionally designed and illustrated, ~340-page hardback book.
You can also pick up our second official venture (playable scenario), The Rain Thieves. This is politically charged eco-horror at its finest!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Mini-venture drop / production update (on track!)
over 1 year ago
– Sun, Nov 06, 2022 at 11:26:50 PM
TL;DR: we're on track!
Dear backers, happy fall, and thank you for your patience. Today, we're sharing two items: the next official Stillfleet mini-venture (MV)—which our patrons saw early—and a production update. In short, the team has been very hard at work on the books, which have both been laid out and are being copyedited.
[Note, all of the art in this post may look a bit crunchy due to Kickstarter's compression. Don't worry: it looks great in the PDFs and when printed!]
A work-in-progress spread from the Stillfleet Core Rulebook
"The Nocturnal Lights"
We are proud to share our third mini-venture with you. Written by our editor, Stephen Aubrey, and inspired by everyone's favorite 1990s show about paranormal investigations, "The Nocturnal Lights" sends the voidminers to a remote rock to check out rumors of a mysterious visitation… This MV could not be more different from the first two, and we are here for it.
And remember: you unlocked three more mini-ventures after this one! They're in development now. We'll share the next mini-venture after the books are sent off to the printer. Please let us know what you think if you run these stories with your friends.
The first 3 Stillfleet mini-ventures
CRB and TRT previews
Second, production update: Kae and Erich have laid out every page of the Stillfleet Core Rulebook and The Rain Thieves and added most art and all major graphic-design elements.
We are now polishing everything—tweaking map legends, fixing typos, inserting final versions of tables, nestling a few last callouts into the text, etc. Ethan is banging out the final images (we should really do an art-focused post). Wythe and Stephen are fine-tooth-comb copyediting (again). And Aaron is fixing up our random character generator so that it matches the final rules (more to come on that).
Fun fact—we even have final page counts: 352 for the Core Rulebook and 98 for The Rain Thieves. Both books are packed with art, random tables, optional rules, archaetech, and full encounter blocks (25 in the CRB and 10 in TRT).
Overall, we remain excited to send out digital versions of the books before the new year, and to ship physical books (fingers crossed) in late winter/early spring. More logistical updates to come as we finalize the books.
The official kanban board, ever-fluttering with to-dos
Sample spreads and pages
Here are just a few work-in-progress spreads from the CRB and pages from The Rain Thieves to whet your appetite. Enjoy!
Reminder, BackerKit is closing soon
With the finalization of the books comes the end of the pre-orders. We are closing BackerKit in a little over a week, so please complete your surveys if you haven't already.
The BackerKit store is live, and surveys are headed your way!
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Sep 22, 2022 at 07:45:20 AM
AT LAST, the time of trembling is nigh—
Our BackerKit store is open for business. If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, this is your chance to grab a copy of the Stillfleet Core Rulebook along with the new full-length venture and setting sourcebook, The Rain Thieves.
If you already pledged on Kickstarter, you don't need the store, because you’ll receive a survey soon (tonight) confirming fulfillment details and allowing you to pick up additional add-ons, if desired. Note, if you're a backer who has never filled out a survey on BackerKit before, see the summary of the process below.
Up-Spin and down-, the same muffled echoes glance off of humble mycelial squaring-walls in the Canteen and exquisite tassel-doors woven of real Calay plankgrass in the Archive, said alike in the dozen-dozen languages of biologicals and the thousand-thousand bespoke code-idioms of informatics: “The Ochre Brokers are here! The Ochre Brokers are here!”
We are also happy to partner with porcelain artist Mart Vaarpuu and artist and teacher Eva Liisa Sepp to offer a prototype handmade porcelain dice set, specifically for Stillfleet. Handmade porcelain is an absolute pleasure to roll, and you can get this first, limited run of porcelain dice (d6, d8, d10, and d12) through BackerKit.
You can also pick up our second T-shirt, which was designed by Sunaree Paiwong using art by Ethan Gould according to the direction of our brilliant patrons. The theme is something like, "vaporwave Lucky Charms ad for psyonicks-enhancing drugs," which feels… on-brand.
TL;DR: we added additional add-ons, if you enjoy that sort of thing!
Overall, we can’t thank you enough for your support. We're very busy now, finishing up both books. Major specific shout-out to Jedd Cole and Jesse King for playtest-GMing The Rain Thieves, to Jedd for some excellent edits to that book, to our amazing GM-mods on Discord, to Leonardo Andrade for getting us some of our firstcoverageinthepress, to Richard Cross for ongoing marketing help, to the Fun City crew for their tireless support, and to Making a Monster, One Shot Test Kitchen, and Wobblies & Wizards (forthcoming) for the pod appearances.
As crimson is the color of the Basilikon (the unhidden face of the Directorate) and moss is the color of the public Archive, ochre is the color of the tiny Guild of Right Perambulatory Brokers. These so-called “pledge-takers”—who, the rumormongers swear, dwell in the Orange Fortress deep in the Escheresque—solicit once per TSol-year from the inhabitants of Spindle all manner of requests for rare arts and wonders from across those myriad islands of life in the void that are known to but not otherwise engaged by the Co., carefully taking account of exactly what quanta of voidguilders have been exchanged for which treasures…
The BackerKit survey process
Soon, you’ll receive an email from us with a special link to your BackerKit survey.
You don’t need to create a BackerKit account to fill out your survey. When you receive the email with the survey, click the survey link to respond. Answer the questions about your reward preferences, provide shipping information, and purchase add-on items if you like. 95% of you don’t have access to this survey link yet (we completed the 5% "smoke test" last night), but it will be available soon via email!
After you respond to your survey, you can go back later and change your responses at any time before we close the surveys and get our final counts. We're aiming to do that in early November.
If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://stillfleet-core-rulebook.backerkit.com.
If you used your Facebook credentials to log in to your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey is sent to the email address you use for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you prefer to use, please contact support at https://stillfleet-core-rulebook.backerkit.com/faq.
During the same trip to Spindle, the Brokers solicit confirmations of “fulfillment” from the scattered rare-arts-and-wonders marchands of the hundred-hundred minor market worlds—and their confirmations arrive by tachyon before the solicitations are completed. It is a dreadful-confusing choreography of exchange…
BackerKit is in the works
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Sep 02, 2022 at 10:46:11 PM
Quick update: now that the campaign is over, we're setting up add-ons and then final reward surveys via BackerKit. BackerKit will allow those of you who ordered pins and T-shirts to specify which options you want (designs/sizes). You can also add art prints. We'll finalize all of the designs before surveys go out, so you'll have a better sense of what you're choosing.
Based on what BackerKit advises, we should send our survey out in two weeks. We're aiming for September 14-ish. You'll be notified by email, and you can always DM me with questions. Surveys will close by early or mid-November, when we lock in the print orders. Updates to come as we move forward.
Overall, this campaign has been a learning process, and we're grateful for your patience and support. In the future, we'll finalize add-ons earlier to clarify those choices for backers, and we'll charge shipping later, via BackerKit, to allow for more options and hopefully lower costs.
For now, we sincerely thank everyone who backed the Core Rulebook. We'll keep you in the loop as it comes together, both in PDF and hardbound form, alongside The Rain Thieves and sundry merch.
Final day / all stretch goals DECLASSIFIED
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 12:55:06 AM
Wild ride! Earlier today, we reached our final stretch goal—two brand-new episodes of Fun City's superfuture, Stillfleet-powered series, Float City! Thanks so much to everyone who's backed us, suggested a gunch-themed T-shirt idea, played the game, listened to Float City, and/or supported indie TTRPGs in general. Much respect.
As we enter the final day of the campaign, we cannot wait to send you high-quality, idea-packed, art-stuffed books as soon as we can. Updates to come, throughout the design, printing, and shipping process.
