The Grit System

The Grit System Third-Party License

Introduction

The Grit System is the set of rules that powers the sci-fi roleplaying game Stillfleet, the cartoon animal eco-apocalypse game Blister Critters, the low-fantasy historical game Danse Macabre: Medieval Horror Roleplaying, the high-fantasy portal fantasy game The Sometimes Kingdom RPG, and many other games to come.

Get the Grit System One-Page SRD on Itch >

The following license allows you to use the Grit System as well as the world of the flagship Grit System game, Stillfleet, to create your own content.

Via this license, you may use the world of Stillfleet to create new products for the game (third-party content)—including your own ventures, settings, and sourcebooks featuring new rules—or use the Grit System to create whole new games (third-party games).

You may give away or sell the content that you create in this way, and in doing so you will not owe anything to the Stillfleet Studio. We want people to play and have a good time! And the game has grown as a result of ongoing collaboration with our amazing players and GMs.

Content

To take advantage of this license, you need to comply with the following simple legal rules. Basically, you need to let people know that you are building on our work, and you need to avoid straight-up plagiarism.

If you adhere to these terms, you may publish, on a free or commercial basis, content that is built on and/or compatible with Stillfleet and other Grit System games without express permission from the Stillfleet Studio and Wythe Marschall.

You may use the names of characters, organizations, sapient species, planets, hulks, technologies, xenofauna, and other entities that exist in the game world (the setting of the game). In addition, you may freely use, reference, and remix the game rules of Stillfleet (the ideas, not the exact text) as published in the Stillfleet Quickstart Rules (2020, updated 2022) and the Stillfleet Core Rulebook (2022).

You may not use the actual text, artwork, or graphic design elements from these or any of the other publications of the Stillfleet Studio without our explicit, written permission. The one exception is the section titled “Company policies” on pages 214–215 of the 2022 edition of the Stillfleet Core Rulebook, which you may republish in part or in its entirety.

At this time, you may not use the names of characters, locations, and other proper nouns from the forthcoming Grit System game The Sometimes Kingdom RPG by the Stillfleet Studio and Ethan Gould.

Branding

Regardless of its content, your product must legibly feature the Grit System logo, shown below, on its front cover. The minimum size in any dimension is 2 cm. This logo identifies your third-party content as intersecting with the world of Stillfleet and/or compatible with the game’s core mechanics. Click the logo below to access full-size PNG and EPS versions.

Your product cannot, however, use the Stillfleet Studio logo unless you have our explicit, written permission. This logo is reserved for the content that the official game-design team creates. For reference, the Stillfleet Studio logo is:

In addition, you are not allowed to otherwise give the impression that your product is an official Stillfleet Studio product, that you are affiliated with the Stillfleet Studio, or that we are promoting your product unless you have our explicit, written permission. We could very well love your work and help promote it, if you just reach out—but we simply can’t promise this in advance!

Legal

The following text must be legibly somewhere in the publication (it can be small, down to 7-point font), and on the website or storefront where you promote the product:

[Product name] is an independent production by [Author or Publisher] and is not affiliated with the Stillfleet Studio or Wythe Marschall. [Product name] is published under the Grit System Third-Party License.

If you are specifically writing for the game Stillfleet, add one more short sentence to the above:

Stillfleet is copyright Wythe Marschall.

The Stillfleet Studio and Wythe Marschall take no responsibility for any legal claims against your product.

No one is free when others are oppressed

Stillfleet is a game about the evils of capitalism, everyday struggles to define your role in an uncaring system, our uncertainties about the future, the double-edged nature of technological innovation, the difficulty of defining “humanity,” and the cruel infinities and infinitesimals of physics. It can be unrelentingly dark or goofy as hell to play. But at its heart, the game is about working together to try to do something, however futile, to make your society a slightly less terrible place. It’s a game for everyone… except fascists.

Despite our best efforts, we can’t necessarily turn you into socialists through a game. But we can and will disavow and do our best to take down any product that uses our game to promote fascism, racism, islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, or other forms of hate.

Thanks to Vex Chat Blanc for the helpful feedback.