about.html

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<blockquote>The Stillfleet Studio (SFS) makes high-quality tabletop games (roleplaying games, board games, card games) from a broadly Leftist perspective.</blockquote>

<p>In our flagship sci-fi RPG, <em>Stillfleet</em>, players take on the role of voidminers working for the greedy Worshipful Company. SFS founder Wythe Marschall created <em>Stillfleet</em> and the unique Grit System that underpins it to take sci-fi roleplaying into an explicitly political, labor-focused, espionage-friendly, and revolution-inflected direction. The narrative structure of this alien-filled political superfuture RPG encourages players to challenge a naturalized capitalist world(s) order and carefully consider what their characters can actually do to effect change—all while enjoying cosmic fantasy at its weirdest.</p>

<p>In 2024, we are publishing a new Grit System roleplaying game by artist and designer Anthony Grasso. In the hot hot world of <em>Blister Critters</em>, humans have recently gone extinct, leaving their homes and businesses to the cartoon-mutant animals we call Critters. Players form a burrow of Critters, explore the necro-humanscape, and try to survive. Inspired by <em>Ren & Stimpy</em> and Looney Tunes, <em>Blister Critters</em> empowers players to create and explore their own suburban dystopia with simple mechanics and zany abilities. </p>

<p>We are also developing the retro-fantastic <em>Sometimes Kingdom RPG</em>, based on the decades-long worldbuilding of SFS art director Ethan Gouldini, as well as a board game and a quick-play card game set in the <em>Stillfleet</em> universe, both led by SFS banshee (tech wizard) <a href="https://armahillo.dev">Aaron H</a>.</p>

We are pro-union, queer-friendly, anti-fascist, and decolonial. We believe that, in addition to providing hours of fun, games can educate and empower.

<h2>The team</h2>

<p><strong>Wythe Marschall (writer, lead game designer)</strong>is an experienced writer, science communicator, and game designer. He created <em>Stillfleet</em> and the Stillfleet Studio to blend two lifelong obsessions, Leftist politics and TTRPGs. You can reach him on <a href="https://twitter.com/stillfleet">Twitter</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Ethan Gould(ini) (art director, lead artist, game designer)</strong> is 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 <a href="https://www.instagram.com/spectralhouse/">@spectralhouse</a> wherever fine internets are sold.</p>

<p><strong>Sunaree “Kae” Paiwong (lead designer, animator)</strong> is a professional animator who has worked in advertising for over a decade. You can check out her personal photography on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/eeranu5/">Instagram</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Stephen Aubrey (editor, game designer)</strong> is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, dramaturg, lecturer, storyteller, recovering medievalist, and lifelong gamer. You can learn more about him via his <a href="http://stephenaubrey.com/">site</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Aaron H. (banshee, game designer)</strong> is a professional web developer by day, a game designer / DJ / writer / artist, and at other times continues to build out the official Stillfleet app, <a href="https://strings.stillfleet.com">STRINGS</a>. He was the lead author of <a href="/games/stillfleet/ventures/ven002_the-rain-thieves.html">The Rain Thieves</a>. You can learn more about him via his <a href="https://polywork.com/armahillo">Polywork profile</a>.</p>

<h2>Land acknowledgement</h2>

<em>Stillfleet</em> 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.

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