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:
Last during-campaign update: VTT assets unlocked! / Shout-outs
4 months ago
– Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 02:02:59 PM
Nearly 400 backers. VTT assets unlocked. Can we get to the solo rules!?
No idea! I have a few pages of notes toward solo rules for Danse Macabre that I want to test, either way. This is now more of a question of whether the rules are printed in the Guide to the Abandoned World or offered otherwise in 2026.
Having discussed that, let me add a brief behind-the-scenes reflectionas we wrap another campaign: there are a ton of indie RPGs these days. Our sincere thanks to everyone who has backed this campaign and supported our vision of high-quality, human-made, replayable games that invite players to reimagine real social worlds.
Either way, this one is—
Now, to bask in the glow of a couple of final shout-outs…
Big ups to Mechritter
Our friends Laurie O’Connel and Kayla Dice over at Twelve Pins Press have just launched a campaign for Mausritter Month called Mechritter. You may recognize those names, as they played Danse Macabre with Chris and me last weekend!
Twelve Pins' games are always smart and fun, and this sticker-driven mice + mecha experience looks no different. So good: "Mech pieces always break before the mouse inside does." Check it out.
Shout-out to Hallowed
I've been chatting with indie artist Kyle Stück about his latest fantasy-horror comic, Hallowed. The international team behind this one is hoping to fund it, and the concept is pretty cool: there are pilgrims, templars, witches, etc., all imagined as beast-people. Blurb:
Hallowed is a good old-fashioned horror story set in a mysterious and haunted forest. Think Kingdom of Heaven meets Brian Jacques’ Redwall series plunged into the weird and fantastical work of Robert E. Howard’s horror. The overall premise? A desperate band of deserters find themselves lost in a mysterious forest, hunted not only by their sins and the religious zealots pursuing them… but the very woods themselves.
That's all for now?
Naw, there will be more Danse Macabre. But we will have to move into a focus on production soon, especially after running many games at PAX Unplugged. So expect fewer updates later this fall/winter.
Rough timeline (estimate)
Soon – Figure out Late Pledges; note, prices will go up a bit, so if you're planning on backing and have the means, please back now, don't wait!
End of 2025 – Send out PDFs of the Rulebook and Guide (hopeful we can hit this goal—no guarantee, but I think we're moving well)
End of February 2026 – Send out all PDFs (realistic); send all files to print (realistic); update backers re shipping costs (realistic); move to developing new, short content for Danse Macabre to help Pilgrims and Chroniclers jump into the game (variable)
Late spring 2026 – Start shipping rewards (hopeful, depends on tariffs and other logistical nonsense)
By summer 2026 – Bring Danse Macabre to stores and run more games in person! (hopeful)
How's that sound? Let us know if you have any questions, want to join or start an ongoing game, or have ideas for future rules or settings. Otherwise, we'll be heads-down as we build out Abandoned Constantinople 🏰
Thank you, and good night!
Final 48 hours! / Shout-out: 100 Strangers / Delving into Unsunken
4 months ago
– Tue, Nov 04, 2025 at 09:18:07 AM
Final 48 (well, 46ish?)
Quick thoughts. We are so. Very. Close to unlocking the VTT Asset Bundle with Borough Bound. Can we get there today? Who knows!?
Shouting-out Adam Station’s 100 Strangers
I'm a big fan of Station's work, which works well with Stillfleet. His new project is…
100 Strangers is a collection of unique misfits, outcasts, weirdos and normies for your sci-fi misadventures. In this fully illustrated zine, you'll find no dashing pilots, rugged resistance fighters, or space wizards.
Instead you'll meet a motley assortment of the folks generally left out of many sci-fi universes, such as a washed-up pharmacist, a kitbashed salesperson, a fugitive beauty contestant, and 97 others.
Each character is memorably illustrated by Roque Romero, and is sure to add a dash of the wild and strange to your games.
Content preview: un peu about the Paris campaign and setting book
Further production thoughts: Chris is still tweaking rules in the Rulebook, thanks to extensive playtesting; mostly, Chris and Ethan are on art. Tony is laying out the Rulebook. Kae is of course holding down our core marketing tasks (social media, video, cat pics). And I am starting layout on the Guide while continuing to write the Paris book, Unsunken.
It's all thoroughly outlined and roughly half written, although the actual writing goes much more quickly once we have outlined and playtested sections of the whole.
With that, here are some “dungeons”—underground areas dull of danger—I'm currently fleshing out (pun intended) for Unsunken:
The Royal Vault – What is the chief engineer for the young, mad king plotting deep below the prison cells that make up the basement of the Palais de la Cité? Who is this Secret Magister…? What is "La Tarasque?"
The Roman Baths and Sewers – People say that when a sinkhole swallowed the ancient Roman baths, they became connected to subterranean rivers and a vast dark lake… But these are just rumors, right? Surely, there isn't a "draconic" noblewoman living down there?
The Quarry – Beneath the Left Bank, shafts and halls for mining limestone—some pre-Roman, some brand new—link natural cavities, the peasants’ great mushroom farm, and the Viking-haunted (!?) Pit Bizarre…
The Temple Cellarium – In the northeast of the Right Bank, the lower levels of the great fortress of the New Templars connect to gypsum mines. What vile practices are the hyper-zealous New Templars hiding?
That's all for now! More tomorrow!
Final days! / Shout-out: The Sickest Noon-Day Witch / A guide to the Guide
4 months ago
– Mon, Nov 03, 2025 at 12:54:59 PM
2.5 days left to get Macabre
Real talk, the game will be available via Late Pledges after the campaign ends, but: a) it will cost more, and b) backing later won't help us spread the word nearly as much as backing now.
To that end, major thanks to everyone who has backed. And please help our tiny company keep going by getting the word out to the history/horror fans in your life.
To that end, reminder: we are running a Pilgrim art raffle! Shout us out online (here are some shareable graphics), let us know you did, and you'll get a chance to have your character illustrated by artist and designer Anthony Grasso (Blister Critters, Mad Borg).
Also: we heard from the community and adjusted the stretch goals! We're now unlocking the VTT bundle with Borough Bound at 25K and solo rules by Wythe at 28K. Can we reach these goals? What do you think?
One other reminder: we have been very fortunate to run some amazing Danse Macabre actual play with friends, new and old, including—most recently—three brilliant game designers we're fans of.
This one is a wilderness crawl through the Armenian Highlands that involves some great character development, tracking, chasing, ruins-exploration, giant zombies, wine-tasting… all of the things you'd expect from a medieval adventure!
Shouting-out Under the Shadow of the Noon-Day Witch
We want to keep the shout-outs a-flowing, because we love indie TTRPGs, full stop, and we have made some great connections in this tiny industry since launching Stillfleet a few years back.
Currently, our friend John McGuire over at Ham & Egg Publishing is running a campaign to fund a new witchy adventure for Sickest Witch. This is an absolutely brutal, unapologetically pro-witch game built on a Borg chassis but doing its own body-horrific thing: for one, your witch uses stolen body parts for magic. It's like an A24 horror movie about a witch who just wants to help the peasants…
Here is the pitch:
Under the Shadow of the Noon-Day Witch: A Dark Folk Horror Adventure for Sickest Witch RPG
A standalone tale of political intrigue, fire and brimstone, and the brutal machinery of medieval torture
Under the Shadow of the Noon-Day Witchcomes from Ham & Eggs Publishing, the creators of the 321RPG system. It’s the newest third-party adventure for Sickest Witch RPG. Run using the Severed System, this standalone tale brims with political intrigue, fire and brimstone, and the brutal machinery of medieval torture, all driven by Purity Rose in their crusade to cleanse the world of witches.
At its core is the Severed System. Witches harvest body parts to cast spells, growing stronger piece by piece. Magic flows through a shared pool called the Cauldron, forcing your Coven to debate every desperate choice.
Content preview: a quick guide to Guide to the Abandoned World
To close things out, a quick update: the Danse Macabre Rulebook is being laid out. I am about to start layout on Guide to the Abandoned World, which now has a draft introduction about how to bring any given region into the Abandoned setting of the game.
The meat of the book, of course, are our eight chapters by the Stillfleet Studio team and guest writers. The campaign page lists these, but I wanted to share a little bit more about them. (Every chapter features a region map, by the way!)
Mamluk Egypt by Albert Bassili – Rules for mummies! Secrets buried deep beneath the sands! Includes factions, plot hooks, and encounters.
Venezia: The Serene Republic by Ethan Gouldini – Fight against a proto-capitalist, demoniac-weaponizing Venetian Empire of shipping and commerce! Includes factions, relics, plot hooks, 6 full encounters, and a complete quest. Plus illustrations by Ethan Gouldini!
Provence by Christopher Pickett – The palace of the anti-pope! (Yes—there was a real, historical anti-pope!) This was the original setting of the game, back when Chris started writing it!
Abandoned Albion: Southern England by Leonardo Andrade – Bohemians, Appellants, and New Brythons vie to control the fate of the nation! Includes factions, plot hooks, and encounters.
Lithuania: The Land of Journey’s End by Konstantine Paradias – The indigenous faith of the Druwi is threatened by the militant Teutonic Order in the last pagan culture in medieval Europe! Includes factions, plot hooks, new maleficia, and NPCs.
Sukhothai by Sunaree Paiwong – Explore multiple beautiful and demoniac-haunted wat (Buddhist temples) on the outskirts of one of the great capitals of the Thai-speaking world in 1390! Includes plot hooks, relics, and 6 full encounters.
Muromachi Japan by Wythe Marschall – Take on work for the shōgun or one of his rivals as a yōkai hunter (monster hunter, ghost hunter) or wakō (pirate, privateer, sea-citizen)! Includes 2 new classes, new useful items, relics, plot hooks, and 6 full encounters.
The Land Out There: The Far Northwest Coast of Turtle Island (the Pacific Northwest) by Michael J. Cohen – Explore the ways that the Didene/Tahltan nation deals with the Abandonment! Includes 8 new maleficia and a new way of using maleficia (animal aspects), new useful items, and 2 full encounters. Plus illustrations by Michael J. Cohen!
That's it for now. As we enter crunch time, expect more quick updates. Please let us know if anyone has questions.
Brilliant spoopy AP / Shout-out: The CryptID Show! / On mutations
4 months ago
– Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 10:16:30 AM
ICYMI, we have *a lot* of great Danse Macabre actual play to share
Really, these have been such fun AP sessions. They show off different elements of the game and its different tones, from horrifically wacky (for the most part) to brutally serious. Here is the list to date:
We have one more streaming episode coming up—on Sunday, 11/2, at 12 noon EDT—with game designers Laurie O'Connel, Kayla Dice, and Daniel Kwan. We really look forward to seeing how these brilliant storytellers handle a quest that sends them out to the unprotected high grasslands of Eastern Anatolia…
As ever, that game will be streamed to Twitch and YouTube.
We would be remiss not to note the end of the campaign for a new game called The CryptID Show published by our friends over at Plus One Exp. This one sounds arch-spoopy (apparently a new word that means spooky + goofy—i.e., the actual tone of most Halloween-themed art). Do yourself a favor and check out the intro:
Goooooood morning and merry Mothman hunting, you wild, wonderful, Chupacabra-crazed weirdos! Welcome to The CryptID Show—the paranormal power hour where your local cryptid encounters take center stage! Think you saw a selkie sitting on your sofa? Call in now and squeal like a squonk about your freakiest encounters with the unknown. Learn how to tell your trows from your trolls and how to stop them trawling through your trash bins!
The CryptID Showis a storytelling game for two or more players about constructing and deconstructing cryptid sightings. Working together, the Host and Caller will attempt to explain the unexplainable, aided only by a deck of playing cards and their own imagination. Together, you’ll sculpt bite-sized stories of the bizarrely sweet, the hauntingly esoteric, and the just plain weird, all in the form of a live call-in show.
Content preview: on maleficia (i.e., corruptions, mutations, mutant powers…)
The game features 100 maleficia, each with 3 levels, for 300 total mutation powers. By way of teaser, here are quick summaries of 4 maleficia, plus some cool art by Christopher Pickett:
Abdominal mouth – Your stomach is split open horizontally, forming a massive mouth that constantly drools and gibbers, allowing you to make a powerful new attack…
Caustic vomit – You can voluntarily projectile vomit extremely caustic stomach acid which can corrode metal and burn flesh, inflicting normal damage plus burn damage…
Electrokinesis – Your skin is scarred with branching fractal patterns, resembling lightning. You can manipulate natural electricity in and around your body, inflicting damage plus stun…
Marsupial pouch – A slit in your lower stomach opens into an internal pouch made of flesh, increasing your carrying capacity (your max inventory)…
And here is someone with Janus faces! Having Janus faces gives you a bonus to INS checks against being ambushed.
If you have any questions about the character raffle, hit me up in the comments, a DM, or (preferably) by email: co [at] stillfleet [dot] com.
Pilgrim-illustration Raffle! / Shout-out: Great Mayhem
5 months ago
– Fri, Oct 24, 2025 at 08:54:57 AM
Get your Pilgrim illustrated!
Newsflash: we are launching a raffle to win a free player-character illustration by Danse Macabre's graphic designer—the infinitely creative Anthony Grasso AKA Odd Gob Grasso AKA Tonio Kabonio, creator of Blister Critters and one half of the Mad Borg team!
Details:
Share the graphic below on a social media channel, a relevant Subreddit, or a Discord server (not ours, anything reasonable counts)
Take a screenshot
Send it to us at co [at] stillfleet [dot] com
After the campaign, we'll pick a random winner (I'm probably going to write out names onto strips of paper, put them in a bag, and pull one)
Tony and I will contact you about what you want him to draw
Enter as many times as you want! If a ton of folks enter, I'll try to get Tony to draw a couple of Pilgriims (no guarantee)
Here's the graphic:
Want to complete this challenge on hard mode? We have plenty of other graphics to share! These just need to be accompanied by post copy that features the Kickstarter project URL or our wee vanity version, stillfleet.com/danse.
We've been impressed and slightly overwhelmed by the number of old-school-inspired (in whatever way) dark fantasy RPG projects that are funding this Spooky Season.
One OSR game I personally have not played but seen around for a while is Dragonbane—the one with the cool sapient ducks. A small crew of creators in Italy reached out to talk about their upcoming, arch-old-school-sounding Dragonbane campaign, The Taking of Great Mayhem by Revel Tales. Here is a sneak peek:
The fortress of Great Mayhem has fallen to a goblin assault.
Great Mayhem, the ancient dwarven stronghold, is the last bastion in the north. The mountains, already snow-capped by the onset of a bitter winter, are guarded by this grim and remote fortress: a strategic point that cannot be lost, especially now that winter is at the gates. The paths are becoming impassable with snow, and if you do not act swiftly, you will not be able to reclaim the stronghold from the goblins until next summer, when it may already be too late.
THE TAKING OF GREAT MAYHEM is a third-party supplement for the Dragonbane TTRPG. It is an adventure for 3–5 players set in a winter-bound dwarven fortress, where survival and hard combat intertwine with the memories of the bastion’s epic ancestors.
Reminder: 10/26 stream with players from Fun City!
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday… 6:30 PM EDT. Live on Twitch. Don't miss it! We've got a great story planned, and we cannot wait to see what sorta twisted Pilgrims our players—Bijan, Jenn, and Mike—come up with.
