Stillfleet Press Kit

Stillfleet’s Core Rulebook is out now after a successful Kickstarter campaign!

Stillfleet is a genre-vaporizing work of science fiction built on an original system that is quick and easy to learn while providing lots of gameplay depth. It is set in a far future—seriously, the Earth at this point has two (super)continents instead of the seven we’re used to—that is grim yet vibrant, zany, and politically charged at the same time.

After years of product development and playtesting by a dedicated community of patrons, the Kickstarter (KS) campaign to fund the production of its Core Rulebook spanned the month of August and netted $43,855 from 666 backers, smashing through various stretch goals. In addition, the campaign raised another $5,615 from 157 backers on BackerKit. The Core Rulebook + accompanying setting and venture book The Rain Thieves came out as PDFs December 25th, a real gift to the TTRPG community. 

As the Core Rulebook comes out, it is already supported by two official ventures—The Rain Thieves, The Sleeper In The Sky—a frequently updated web app for character creation and random game content generation, and a free Quickstart PDF (also available in Brazilian Portuguese). Several mini-ventures (one to two sessions’ worth) funded by KS stretch goals are published or on the way as well. The indie TTRPG scene has a surplus of games without supporting materials to back them up, but Stillfleet isn’t one of them. The team is committed to providing a lot of material for the players. There is even a professional soundtrack with tracks by several artists.

Fact sheet

• Developers: Stillfleet
• Kickstarter Launch: August 1, 2022
• Platform: Tabletop Role-Playing Game
• The Core Rulebook is 352 pages long, has over 100 color illustrations, and was professionally designed and laid out (with icons, etc.)
  • Price: $25 Digital, $50 Print
• The Rain Thieves is 100 pages long, and fully illustrated, and professionally designed.
  • Price: $19 Digital, $30 Print
• Available here (we provide review copies of the PDF upon request!): 
  • https://stillfleet.itch.io/stillfleet-core-rulebook
  • https://stillfleet.itch.io/the-rain-thieves
  • https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/421102/The-Stillfleet-Core-Rulebook--CRB001
  • https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/421103/The-Rain-Thieves--VEN002

Stillfleet’s CRB in a nutshell

• An original rules system that takes only minutes to learn and naturally facilitates the emergence of memorable story moments.
  • Your base scores—combat, movement, reason, will, and charm—are different sizes of dice, from a d4 to a d12. You roll them against someone else, or to beat 6.
  • Your main resource is grit, which you can burn to boost specific rolls or use specific powers. Many such powers just work, no roll required, giving players a lot of sway over the narrative.
• 10 classes of Co. voidminers (PCs) and 22 playable sapient species. More to come in another two books planned for 2023.
• Hundreds of powers including nanotech "blooder" powers and deeply Weird hell science powers.
• An entire chapter full of strange archaetech (weapons, cooking utensils, nanotech body modifications…).
• Settings on major and minor planetary provinces as well as the floating hulks of dead spaceships.
• 20 full encounters with dangerous aliens.

Blurbs and praise

We have a Google Sheet just for this.

High res pictures for coverage

Here!

Stillfleet actual play and podcasts appearances

Part of Stilfleet’s playtesting process came from a year-long series on the popular actual play podcast Fun City. Two more episodes expanding on the series—called Float City—have been commissioned as the KS campaign’s final stretch goal, as it is a well-loved piece of AP content and responsible for bringing many players to the fold. Here are quotes by cast members:

• “Stillfleet strikes a perfect balance that eludes the vast majority of TTRPGS: the system is quick and easy to pickup, but the setting possesses a thoughtfulness and depth—at the first edition!—that rivals any other game, even those which have been around for decades. It’s a super-future spacefaring game on its surface, but it succeeds at helping tell stories of political intrigue, cloak and dagger mystery, large-scale geopolitical conflict, cyberpunk noir, and intimate interpersonal drama. If there is a bottom to the depth stories it can help tell, I have not seen it!” —Mike Rugnetta, Fun City GM and former Idea Channel host.
• “Stillfleet is a triumph that imagines the far far future and the socio-political inter-workings of staying alive. Makes you think about the way you eat, breathe, and bring about change in your provincial space town, on Spindle, and across the universe. It was so easy to learn, too. … I had the pleasure of creating Merkis Imeldar, a beloved 3-boot-wearing Jalasti banshee, for a podcast mini series called Float City. In the span of 20-ish episodes, we saw him navigate what seemed like a routine voidmining mission to damning the man (and the man above that and above that). Plus, he fell in love! This wouldn’t be possible without a rich set of character classes, legit COOL powers, and the hush hush world of The Co.” — Jenn de la Vega, Fun City player and food influencer.

In addition, the following podcasts have featured Stillfleet:

• Making a Monster (interview)
• One Shot Test Kitchen (actual play)
• One Shot Test Kitchen (interview)
• Pod of Blunders (interview)
• Wobblies & Wizards (2022 interview) | (2023 interview)

Other praise:

"Stillfleet has precisely the sort of sci-fi tone that I like, in that it's so soft you could spread it on toast. It's chock-full of Interesting Weird. There are several kinds of magic sword, the rulebook looks like a prog-rock album cover, and very little presented in the fiction is explainable or explained."

—Grant Howitt, co-designer of Spire and Heart: The City Beneath.

Stillfleet’s core team is

• Wythe Marschall (writer, lead game designer) is a game designer, anthropologist, and science communicator—you may know him as the writer of Crash Course: History of Science—who spends a lot of time “thinking about the future of living things on our dying planet through the lens of work and organizations.” You can reach him on Twitter.
• Ethan Gould(ini) (lead artist, game designer) makes art—drawing, illustration, writing, puppetry, video, and costume design—for clients in a broad range of fields. You can reach him on Instagram.
• Sunaree “Kae” Paiwong (designer, layout) is a professional animator who has worked in advertising for over a decade. You can check out her personal photography on Instagram.
• Stephen Aubrey (editor, game designer) is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, dramaturg, lecturer, storyteller, recovering medievalist, and lifelong gamer. You can learn more about him via his website.
• Aaron H. (banshee, game designer) is a professional developer and DJ. He made the official Stillfleet app, STRINGS. You can learn more about him via his website.

Former team member: 

• Erich Lazar (designer, layout) is a graphic designer with experience in print, branding,  digital design, and publishing. You can check out his work on his website.