We are excited to announce a Zinequest 3 ambush in the form of a zine about nanotech AKA the Blood… 

SUBTLE FLUID will combine all of the rules on the blooder class, the nanofluidics advanced powers, and nanotech items along with new art, lore, and world-building details. In addition, we’ll be doubling the nanofluidics powers, greatly expanding the options for the blood class. Plus, for the first time, we’re offering a print option through DriveThruRPG.

Check out the SUBTLE FLUID campaign on Kickstarter! 

Note, we are also opening up content direction from backers: we hope to offer a few mini-ventures drenched in self-assembling mayhem… And we’re excited to be able to offer a nanotechnology theme song from Music d20! I mean, how often do whole strata of technological evolution get theme songs? Not often enough!

Thanks to everyone who has played the game and helped us develop it from homebrew idea/rambling science fiction into a visualized world. (Now with new logo!) We truly appreciate you.

Reloading this page will generate a new, random, playable 1st-level character. Note, this is a working draft: if you see something wacky, please feel free to reach out on Discord and let us know.

Pepper elf Razi level 1

Rankstillfleeter minima nonfactor, subclass leerling −A prime

You are a creepy loner from Guildship 539. You were trained as a Co. pathfinder. Your job is to use your knowledge of exoplanets and specialist military training to complete the venture as contracted, and to protect the venture’s acting factor, banshee, witness, and other voidminers in that order of importance. Secretly, you stole the identity of someone else on-Spin. The Directorate may or may not know about this. Identity theft is punishable by spacing (death).

LanguagesSpin and Elf Machina

ScoresCOM d12
MOV d10
REA d8+1
WIL d4
CHA d8
HEA 22 [maxCOM+maxMOV]
GRT 13 [maxREA+maxWIL]
DR 0 [no armor]

Powers

Species

• Black crustallone skyn (permanent) – You have damage reduction (DR) 3 from non-force weapons, but you make everyone slightly afraid all the time (−1 to relevant CHA rolls).


• Environmental resistance (permanent) – You don’t have to breathe air, and you can withstand the wild temperature and pressure swings of the vacuum. You cannot survive strong acid, lava, astral hydrogen plasma, etc., any more than any other species.


• Rationally designed (permanent) – You gain a permanent bonus of +1 REA. [already included]

Class

• Track (standard/day) – You work to either follow the trail of a single entity, or locate any single entity of interest, sans clues. An entity can be a specific person or a non-specific location. Burn 3 GRT for an easy target (clues exist, and the thing you are trying to track is not hiding from you), 5 for a difficult target (clues don’t exist, or the target is hiding from you), and 7 for a near-impossible one (clues don’t exist, and the target is hiding from you). Roll a REA check; if you succeed, you succeed. If not, you can burn more GRT and try again tomorrow. N.B., track is the physical equivalent of the pir’s augury: You can track down anything within reason, planetside. Hulkside, you can use this power, but only if some minimal clue exists; also, GRT costs are doubled (6 for a non-hiding target; 10 for a hiding one).


• Artery-opening strike (free) – Burn 2X GRT: your next successful attack causes bleed X.


• Perfect shot (free) – Your called shot deals an additional amount of damage equal to your level, and you can make two called-shot attacks per round, although you still must pay the grit cost for each. At 10th level, you can make three called shots in the same round, paying for each. Note, you can make a backstab a called shot (see below), but you may still only make one backstab, when you have surprise, after two rounds (one round to aim, one to attack).


• Tame (standard/day) – You work to either tame an alien creature or to find and then tame one. If you’re already near an alien beast (not an intelligent being), you can burn 2 GRT as a standard power to calm it so that at least it won’t eat you. You may then burn 8 additional GRT and spend the rest of the day working with it, in several hour-long stretches, to make it your loyal pet. If you are not already near a beast, you can burn 2 GRT and spend 3d4 hours searching to find a beast to tame. Taming it requires an additional 8 GRT and another hour of hard work. This power works planetside and hulkside, but hulkside “beasts” are often so dangerous that this power has little effect other than to momentarily distract them. (GM’s discretion—the point is, you can’t have a pet xenoglade.)

Gear

Weapons

• Trident (1 clank) – d4 damage. 1 gl.

Armor

• Defensive smoke trebuchet matrix (3 clank) – No DR, but +1 to dodge checks. Can be added to an exosuit. 100 gl.

Other

• Oddment – Ancient smartphone that explodes in your hand after 5 uses (d6 damage). Adds +1 to code-related checks when used. If not used for checks, works indefinitely. Comes with a bunch of puzzle games that make no sense to you at first.

Voidguilders (gl) remaining: 20

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Stillfleet is a grimdark, politically charged tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) set in space, far into the ruinous future. Spaceships are just dungeons, hanging in the dark…

Check out the SUBTLE FLUID campaign on Kickstarter! 

Support the development of this game on Patreon >

Check out the official Quickstart Rules, including eight pregenerated characters! >

Buy Wayfarers, the rules for designing characters, on Itch! 6 classes, 12 species, 3 background rules, weapons, armor—mayhem!

We’re currently working on modules, starter ventures, and Roll20 integration. Sign up to be notified when we release new content >

Join our community, chat with game designers, and learn about open playtests by joining our Discord server >

Listen to actual gameplay on the amazing RPG podcast Fun City >

More resources

☉Check out the random 1st-level character generator below!

☉If you are making your own Stillfleet character, here is a spreadsheet-based character sheet >

☉And here is a draft PDF character sheet >

☉This post explains more about the game >

Stillfleet is a tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) about exploring ruined spacecraft—“hulks”—as well as habitable earth-like planets long-ago colonized by terrans but then cut off from contact with the greater galaxy for decades or centuries—“rocks.”

Thus Stillfleet is really two different games, one hulkside—a series of grimdark explorations of advanced technical structures, hanging in the void—and the other rockside—a political game about managing a company distributed across space.

Players take the roles of various explorers working as part of the Worshipful Company of Stillfleeters, more often known simply as “the Company,” abbreviated the Co. Theoretically, the players are working together… In practice, this is not always the case.

The term “stillfleet” comes from the fact that many planets were once colonized by humans, and that most of these planets (or all of them?) are orbited even today by massive, “dead” ships. However advanced, these ships never work as originally designed.

Their tachyon drives are unpowered, their dimension mills broken. To reach them, fleeters use not other ships but the timespace gates called stiffworks.