Explore the mysteries of a world beyond death. History, mutant madness, and old-school combat meet at the end of humanity.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Quick reminder: surveys are out! Closing soon
3 days ago
– Fri, Mar 06, 2026 at 07:50:21 AM
Happy Friday! I have sent out BackerKit surveys. Let me know if you can't find a survey-related email, after checking your spam folder.
We are now on track to send you PDFs of all books next week. But to finish the Danse Macabre Rulebook—where you're credited—we need to close out the surveys at the end of this weekend. Please let me know if you need more time or have any questions. (It's super short, I promise!)
FYI, I am closing down Late Pledges on Kickstarter today. Please send your friends who missed the campaign to the BackerKit store instead :)
We'll have more updates soon as we send final-final-actual-final files off to print. We are still fiddling with silver foil and bronze foil layers on the covers of the Danse Macabre Rulebook (perfectbound) and Danse Macabre Rulebook Deluxe. TL;DR, everything is going well with design, but there are a lot of details to check with setting up fancy covers/interior covers.
Expect more next week!
BackerKit surveys on their way
6 days ago
– Tue, Mar 03, 2026 at 07:15:54 AM
Surveys, and then digital rewards
Thank you for your patience. Moving pledge management over to BackerKit, everything proceeded smoothly. Expect surveys in your inboxes soon.
Re names in the credits, many thanks to everyone who responded to the previous post. We have noted your preferred credits names. Apologies for asking twice, but you'll also see this question in the BackerKit survey. (I didn't know how long it would take to get set up the survey and get approved, hence asking the first time. My bad!)
Because we want to get our thank-yous in the Danse Macabre Rulebook, we are hoping to close the survey within a week. Note, if we don't hear from you, we'll use your Kickstarter name. Shipping will be charged after we print and get a better sense of costs.
FYI, we're also ending Late Pledges on Kickstarter to shift everything to BackerKit. This shouldn't affect any existing pledges, just new (late) ones, which can still happen via the BackerKit store.
Next week, we should be able to send you PDFs of most or all of the books—and then the Danse can truly begin!
Question for you
14 days ago
– Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 12:35:06 PM
Survey delay—but no delay to PDFs!
Dear backers, after a back-and-forth with Kickstarter, I have confirmed that there is no way to use their tools to send you a survey without also charging for shipping. We aren't shipping physical rewards until the summer.
In the meantime, we have one urgent question for you:
What name would you like to appear in the credits?
Please respond to this update with a comment if you want us to credit something other than your Kickstarter name. (Or DM me if you want to chat privately, but keeping the answers in one place will speed up the process for us.)
If you do not respond to this question, we will use your name as listed in the Kickstarter system.
If you prefer not to be credited, simply write "Anonymous."
Apologies for the lack of nicely styled survey and pre-order shop at this time, but we'll get there. First, though, we want to finalize PDFs and get them to you, hence asking to confirm credits.
Thank you so much for your support!
Update: surveys are coming soon, then PDFs
22 days ago
– Sun, Feb 15, 2026 at 03:38:08 PM
The Danse Macabre Rulebook is nearly done and out to backers
Dear backers, we are So. Far. Along. We spent the winter woodshedding—researching, writing, editing, laying out, illustrating, designing, mapmaking, and proofing.
At this point, the Danse Macabre Rulebook (DMRB) is done pending final backer names in the credits.
You can see videos of the initial printed proofs of the DMRB and Guide on YouTube and Instagram. The paper quality and printing are excellent, 10/10. We are adjusting the binding to be more reader-friendly, and then these books are ready for the mass print run.
Below are just a few preview spreads from the DMRB. We expect to send the full PDF to backers within a couple of weeks.
(In the spreads below: writing by Chris Pickett, map by Chris Pickett, art by Ethan Gould and Chris Pickett, design and layout by Tony Grasso, editing by Wythe Marschall and Jedd Cole.)
Guide to the Abandoned World is *also* nearly done and out to backers
Likewise, we are done with the Guide—eight settings and the Solo Rules—and we will send that to backers soon, too. This book has likewise been physically proofed, and we are very happy with the print quality. Expect a PDF within a couple of weeks.
Here are just a couple of preview spreads from two different chapters, Provence and the Pacific Northwest.
(In the spreads below: writing by Chris Pickett and Michael J. Cohen, art by Chris Pickett and Michael J. Cohen, layout by Wythe Marschall, design by Tony Grasso, editing by Wythe Marschall and Jedd Cole. Maps in the Guide by Sunaree Paiwong. Thanks to Alex McGuigan for help with some of the history.)
Unsunken and Reliquary are written and laid out
Both the fantastical item zine, Reliquary (which will be useful to GMs and players of Borg games, OSR games, and D&D-style games as well as Danse Macabre), and the Paris mega-dungeon, Unsunken, are written and laid out. Expect PDFs within a month.
Update re words: Wythe Marschall has edited both, and two extremely smart French speakers, Laura Goudet and Jean-Baptiste Goudet, have read through Unsunken. Jedd Cole is proofing Unsunken now.
Update re art: Tony Grasso has laid these books out and designed them. Michael J. Cohen has designed maps of Paris Abandonnée for Unsunken. Sunaree Paiwong has created relic- and architecture-art for both books. And Christopher Pickett and Ethan Gould are creating illustrations for both books now.
You can tell that bringing this game to life has been a massive team effort. Many thanks to everyone who has played the game with us (shout out to our Discord server, PAXU 2025, PAGE 2026, and Running GAGG 2026!) and of course the team.
Unsunken by the numbers
1 new narrative structure for the game—the Pilgrims can choose to work as spies for hire rather than religious penitents
8 new factions—breaking up the powerful kingdom into a powderkeg of post-apocalyptic tensions
3 new basic rules for underground exploration
2 new classes—the routier (mercenary, sell-sword) and souterrain (underground dweller, survivalist), both offering thematic powers with unique mechanics
20 new encounters inspired by French folklore—including memorable demoniacs reges (intelligent undead)
30 new relics from medieval history
4 strange "dungeons"—regions of the Lutetian Vault beneath Paris (the vast old mines and new secret tunnels)
4 cross-cutting underground quests to play through in any order
100+ named NPCs with relationships to each other and to the factions vying for control of France
12 plothooks in the city above
90 locations above to explore
50 locations below to survive ("rooms in a dungeon")
1 epic setting for your next medieval horror campaign
Expect surveys shortly
All to say—expect backer surveys shortly (as per the headline above). The main question to answer quickly is, how do you want to be credited in the DMRB? Shipping addresses can be updated later, as we're not shipping physical rewards until the summer.
Any questions? See a typo in a PDF (once we send those out)? Enjoying the game so far? Want to share a fun idea or blurb the game? Email Wythe at co [at] stillfleet [dot] com.
Production update: dansing toward print
3 months ago
– Mon, Dec 15, 2025 at 02:34:19 PM
A fairly thorough update
Happy winter in the Northern Hemisphere! As I write from South Philadelphia, snow is on the ground, a black cat is enjoying a staring contest with a cathedral, and the world feels palpably apocalyptic. The mood is right for an update about a post-apocalyptic game featuring quite a few cathedrals.
Thanks to everyone for your patience. The whole team has been grinding (perhaps a turn of phrase that would have resonated with medieval blacksmiths) to bring you Danse Macabre quickly. Here is where we stand…
The Danse Macabre Rulebook
The book has been written, edited, and laid out. The page count, all-in, is 220. Most illustrations are done, with a few left to go. We will start proofing in layout later this week. It’s looking amazing, and it's definitely the most orange TTRPG I’ve seen.
Here are some draft spreads—thanks to the game's graphic designer, Anthony Grasso:
A spread of rules featuring art by Ethan Gould
An in-progress chapter header
Some goods you can barter for or purchase
Rules for playing a burgher, with art by Chris Pickett
One of the fun things about creating TTRPG books is that you always end up with odd gaps—half-columns of empty space that need something, some miniature graphic or text feature. We are now in the process of choosing which gaps to fill, and how, and which to leave as white space, visual breath.
If you have a second, please reach out to creator Chris Pickett (at-timespace.place on most social media) and say congrats. It takes a truly monumental amount of work to write a rulebook of over 200 pages, make it consistent, and draw a third of the art including the covers.
Guide to the Abandoned World—now including Solo Rules
The multi-author book has been written, edited, and laid out. There are fewer illustrations in this one than the magisterial Rulebook, but there are quite a few maps of different regions in 1390, all of which have been created by Sunaree (Kae) or myself but not yet prettied-up. (Medieval Lithuania was the most involved to reconstruct.)
To be made pretty by the art team
The Solo Rules have been written and lightly playtested. We’ll keep playtesting the big pilgrimage map we created (Cilicia) while we work on the rest of the book, since the Solo Rules appear last.
Eventually, we need more playtestable pilgrimage maps, but we don’t have room to print them in the Guide, anyway. This is a good problem for 2026—and for the community. Tell us what places you want to explore on your solo pilgrimages!
Unsunken: Paris Below
As of today, I’ve written the first four chapters (all of Paris Above) as well as the ninth chapter (the encounters). The “dungeon” chapters, five through eight, and the quest chapter, ten, are heavily outlined, with plenty of writing in some spots and not so much writing in others.
I've tried to mix in weird, dark-fantasy flourishes with the historical tidbits. For example, there are so, so many abbeys, priories, and monasteries! What if a few prominent monastic personages were also spies for various factions? What if one of them was a mad alchemist with a secret tunnel into the sewers?
As I write out the rooms of the dungeons (all of which are mines or sewers, not the oubliettes of chateaux—which were tiny in comparison to the mines), a French friend is reading the book and will hopefully point out any issues with my, ahem, not so bien français.
If anyone else wants to help fact check my non-fantastic claims about France in 1390, email co [at] stillfleet [dot] com.
The VTT bundle with Borough Bound
The team over at Borough Bound—Will, James, and Amber—worked very fast to help us select a set of town maps that worked with DM’s primary historical milieu, Constantinople.
Amber then went in and adjusted the maps to look more spooky, more medieval, and—you know it—more orange. The whole town—a walled one near Constantinople, another possible home base for Pilgrims—looks perfect.
We’ll share the results with our patrons and backers, but first we want to get more art finished and make map tokens for you (demoniacs, Pilgrims, NPCs, relics). Until then, please do check out Borough Bound’s fine work.
Everything else
—will come to life after the above. The OST is coming together, with most tracks in. Chris has their outline for the Reliquary. We owe one raffle winner a Pilgrim drawing by Tony Grasso. And of course we’ll make sure the faux-copper Tusi couple pin (the symbol of the game) looks and feels sufficiently quintessent.
But first, we have to finish the main books and get you the PDFs!
Late Pledges
Know someone who seemed interested in Danse Macabre but missed the campaign? It’s not too late! Late Pledges are open on Kickstarter, and they work the same as ordinary pledges, just with a small price increase (to reward backers with a never-to-be-had-again discount).
If someone is curious to learn more about the game before pledging, they can check out one of our not one, not two, but five exegetic actual-play episodes of DM plus a podcast series—featuring the talents of:
