About
The Stillfleet Studio creates high-quality, innovative, replayable story-driven games from a Leftist perspective. We make weird and elegant games that power unique social journeys through time and space. With a focus on roleplaying and player agency, Stillfleet Studio’s games are perfect for those seeking mind-expanding adventures in unforgettable settings.
Our mission
We use the power of stories to inspire change by making high-quality, replayable, story-driven games that are weird, elegant, darkly humorous, and grounded in historical materialism.
Our games
Primarily, we publish revolutionary tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) built on the flexible, player-empowering Grit System, which enables truly unique narrative experiences. Our TTRPGs include Stillfleet by Wythe Marschall (cosmic fantasy at its most curious—as heard on the hit podcast Fun City Ventures), Blister Critters by Anthony Grasso (cartoon eco-horror at its zaniest), Danse Macabre by Christopher Pickett (medieval horror at its most beautifully brutal), and The Sometimes Kingdom RPG by Ethan Gould (portal fantasy at its most magical).
In Stillfleet—a darkly humorous political TTRPG set in the superfuture—players are voidminers working for the greedy Worshipful Company. Explore worlds, interact with aliens, complete dangerous ventures, or lie to the Co.’s directors… It’s the only game featuring Malkovich tunnels, extradimensionals, nanite-addicted techno-sorcerers, pansexual salamanderoids, and simple, scalable, mechanics that encourage players to cannibalize health.
In Blister Critters by Anthony Grasso, you play as an animal who can wield bizarre mutations called Blisters. These strange abilities will help you survive in a vast, cruel suburbia populated by fellow Critters and their feral counterparts, Beasts, as well as even stranger cartoon-beings. Will you explore, thrive, and die as a Critter—or live long enough to see yourself become a Beast?
In Danse Macabre, players are Pilgrims working together to explore—and survive—an Abandoned World where Death is not the end… Those who die are miraculously and terribly revived, each time with new maleficia—mutations of the spirit and the flesh…
In The Sometimes Kingdom RPG, players are Adventurers working for the Questing Network, a raggedy “un-profit” run jointly by the four Seasons (which are now stuck in place). Every! Single! Character! Can cast spells! Use our unique system of spell-forging by selecting words of power: it’s simple, intuitive, and endlessly fun!
In addition, we publish original, addictively fun, wide-audience card games such as the Stillfleet spinoff Robot Hospital by Aaron H. and Yoink Boink by Anthony Grasso. Both of these fast-play games are easy to look at and even easier to learn.
The Stillfleet Studio also publishes the game-design podcast Why We Roll, hosted by Christopher Pickett and Wythe Marschall. This informal, interview-driven, philosophical show is quickly becoming a force in indie RPG media.
We are pro-union, working-class led, queer-friendly, trans-inclusive, anti-fascist, and decolonial. We believe that, in addition to providing hours of fun, games can educate and empower.
The team
Wythe Marschall (founder, game designer)
an experienced writer, science communicator, and game designer. He created Stillfleet and the Stillfleet Studio to blend two lifelong obsessions, Leftist politics and TTRPGs. You can reach him on Twitter.
Ethan Gould(ini) (game designer)
an artist and writer, born and raised in New York. He is chuffed that Stillfleet stokes his passion for creating hot bureaucratic aliens, nonbinary mech astronaut fashion, and moss-covered infrastructure. Find him at @spectralhouse wherever fine internets are sold.
Anthony Grasso (game designer)
an illustrator, game designer, and writer hailing from the great swamp of Florida. You can follow his work on Instagram.
Sunaree “Kae” Paiwong (operations)
a professional animator who has worked in advertising for over a decade. You can check out her personal photography and other work on her website.
Christopher Pickett (game designer)
a multi-disciplinary artist who makes roleplaying games and tattoos in Brooklyn, NY. Their games focus on deep simulation, medieval horror, and labor politics. You can check out their site here.
Our advisors–emeritus
Stephen Aubrey (editor, game designer)
a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, dramaturg, lecturer, storyteller, recovering medievalist, and lifelong gamer. You can learn more about him via his site.
Aaron H. (banshee, game designer)
a professional web developer by day, a game designer / DJ / writer / artist, and at other times continues to build out the official Stillfleet app, STRINGS. He was the lead author of The Rain Thieves, and designer of Robot Hospital. You can learn more about him on his various internet presences.
Land acknowledgement
Stillfleet was created by settlers living on the unceded ancestral lands of the Munsee Lenape, Canarsie, Matinecock, Schaghticoke, Wappinger, Gabrieleño, Ventureño, Fernandeño, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga (Haudenosaunee), and other Indigenous peoples who stewarded Terra long before we arrived. We are uninvited visitors who have benefited from the specific dispossession of these sovereign peoples. (Some of us have also benefited from white privilege and generational wealth.) Processes of Indigenous dispossession began before we, or the capitalist class whom we create art in opposition against, were born, and unfortunately these processes are ongoing. We remain committed to dismantling settler colonialism, and we work in support of the sovereignty of independent Indigenous nations everywhere.