Two+ Game Nights of Weird Fantasy Guaranteed
Live on Kickstarter February 1st
The Rustwater Quickstart delivers a extraordinary setting, an adventure, and 6 pre-gen PCs in a 40-page, 8.5 x 11 saddle-stitched magazine format.
The game system is a riff on The Black Sword Hack, which owes its DNA to The Black Hack. It's a rules-lite, roll under system. The major difference is that Rustwater uses skills, not characteristics. The games are still compatible.
The system is in service to the setting. Rustwater falls into the niche of “high weirdness.” It has elements of post-apocalypse, horror, and traditional fantasy. We drew on elements of mythpunk and magipunk, layering it all in a collage of seafaring culture. The rules and system establish high stakes and risks.
Characters will die. Magic is twisty and unpredictable.
You’ll play characters who are professionals connected to aspects of the setting, including:
• Harbingers, whose phenomenal memory allows them to act as living documents in an age without the written word.
• Tinker Witches, eccentric mechanics who have mastered the language of machines, allowing humanity to barter with the machines which once rebelled against them.
• Tovenaar, potent sorcerers who bear the Stigma of the Others to turn the Other's magic against them.
• Relic Hounds, scroungers who brave the hulks and ruins to find riches and tools of the Relic Age.
Please consider following and backing our project. Our hopes are that after this successful KS project, we can fund the release of the full Rustwater Core book in late '26 or early '26.
The Story of Rustwater
