A fantasy adventure tabletop RPG, inspired by D&D 5e classes and monsters, but built with modern, narrative rules that strive for fluid gameplay, creative freedom, and a cinematic feel.
Grimwild is a streamlined, character-driven, cinematic fantasy RPG. The goal with Grimwild is simple. Take D&D-inspired heroic fantasy, with its 12 classes and super tropey monsters, and match it up with a super fast, cinematic narrative rules system.
The game is finished, and we've built a strong community around it! Now we're about to print the hardcovers—along with the module zines, dice, and cards—and want to make sure anyone who wants a copy can get one. This is your chance to grab a physical edition of Grimwild. We only offer these through our Backerkit campaigns—there won’t be a retail release for the hardcover.
If you're new to Grimwild, you can dive in for free—just download the complete game (minus the Extras chapter) in the Grimwild: Free Edition!
You can learn more about the game and its supplements below. If you're already familiar, here's the key detail: everything is ready with the manufacturer. The game’s been fully playtested, polished, and edited. As soon as this campaign wraps, we head straight to print—so copies will be arriving at your door by August 2025.
Specs: B5, 180 pages, hardcover. Matte cover, clothbound spine, foil and debossed spine, thick uncoated internal pages for a classic, and smyth-sewn binding for a high-quality feel.
What's so good about Grimwild?
The rules are concerned with the dramatic over the realistic, and minimizing detailed tracking.
The game is very low-prep for the GM. The fiction maps to the rules simply, on-the-fly.
Designed to run in your own setting (or a published one), or use our pointcrawl exploration system and collaborative worldbuilding to create emergent storylines.
Characters earn bonus dice for pursuing self-set goals, pushing the story in the direction they want.
The GM is given a clear GM framework of principles and moves to run the game by.
Get strong player buy-in with the adventuring party creation system and creative freedom for the players.
The rules create fluid action and gets rid of the mechanical slog that bogs down D&D.
And all of this with GREAT ART from artist Per Janke, creating a consistent vision throughout the book.
So who is Grimwild for?
D&D 3.5E, 5E and Pathfinder players will appreciate the low-GM prep, easy-to-learn mechanics, and the focus on character goals and letting players push the story.
OSR/NSR players will enjoy the straightforward resolution system, sandbox-friendly gameplay, and ease of adapting modules from other systems. Lots of rollable tables help as well.
Narrative game players will like the fiction-first resolution system, with a focus on player agency, and narrative currency that fuels drama.
Key Features
Grimwild has a lot going on inside, but here's an overview of big-picture stuff. We'll talk about mechanics later.
All 12 classes from D&D: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorceror, Warlock, Wizard. With familiar abilities, re-imagined for a narrative rules system.
New Take on 100 Classic Monsters: We detail and give advice on creating encounters that make the monsters a part of the story, not just meatbags of hit points to chew through.
Story Kits: No preparation required scenarios that create evolving situations, not railroaded plots. These are more kits for your creativity than they are storylines, filled with evocative prompts and timers that create developing situations for you to tell your own stories, not ours.
Homebrew-friendly system: Built on our open licensed (CC-BY) ruleset, Moxie. The game text itself is all licensed CC-BY forever. It's designed to be cinematic, narrative, and most importantly modular. This makes changing rules to your liking simple and the open license allows people to make modules, adventures, monsters, and even entirely new games with its mechanics.
Gameplay Overview
The easiest way to get a clear understanding of the Grimwild mechanics is to download the preview. It has the entire rule system in it. But here are some highlights that show off unique aspects of the system:
Base system: Roll d6 dice pools and keep the highest die to determine how well things went. The GM adds d8s called thorns to represent difficulty. When they come up as a 7 or 8, it cuts your results down a notch. A critical always beats thorns, though, so the PCs can always gain the upper hand.
Freeform Magic: Cast magic on the fly—the spell names, god domains, or details of a song give you limitations and permissions on what you can cast. Just say what you want to happen, then use the simple magic rules to cast the spell. No long spell lists, no memorizing, no opening the book to reference it.
PC Bonds: Form bonds with the other PCs, like playful camaraderie, solid rivalry, or tense mistrust. When your bonds change through play, update them giving the other PC a bonus die called spark!
Add Story Details: You can declare details to add into the story, about your character's gear, backstory, the elements around you in a scene, the behaviors of NPCs, and more. Particularly impactful details require you to spend spark, points you earn from facing adversity and getting up to trouble.
Vex: When you get hit with fear, confusion, or other emotional turmoil, you keep control over your PC's actions. A simple system of choosing fight, flight, freeze, or freakout turns previously boring moments of losing control into a chance for you to play up the struggle they go through the way you want.
In the Extras chapter (which the Free Edition doesn't have!), you gain 30 more pages that feature:
Artificer: Play as a master of invention, both magic and mundane. Complete with magitechnobabble d66 tables and various gadgets.
Psion: Play as a master of the mind, manifesting powers from biodynamics, clairsentience, metacreation, psychokinesis, telepathy, and transposition.
Fantasy Flavors rules tweaks: Different rules settings to help you adjust Grimwild from its base Heroic Fantasy difficult towards Grimdark, Low Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, High Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, and Cozy Fantasy.
Solo Play: Guidelines for solo play, which works wonderfully in Grimwild by default, and the solo party mode where you take on the role of the main PC as well as three secondary characters to form an entire adventuring party! Complete with its own character sheet to track each of the secondary party members, who have lightened mechanics to make it easy.
Enemy Tactics: Positive and negative traits, example moves, motivations, and worst case scenario tables for all combat roles to help create diverse combats on the fly.
Arcana: A total of 66 magic items, each illustrated.
Random Potion Generator: A fully illustrated (36 potions!) random d66 table for generating magic potions.
Fiction Pillars: A quick-prep method focused on setting up fiction blocks to build your sessions around.
Character Options: 20 Group building questions to help during session zero and 5 d66 tables to give your characters distinctive features.
Thieves Cant: A complete symbol guide for thieves cant, including their meanings so you can bring this written rogue code into your games.
Designer Notes: Six articles I wrote with my own (J.D. Maxwell) thoughts and advice on various aspects of the game. They are: The Rules as a Net, Starting a Campaign, The Role of the Dice, Vigilance & Perception Checks (explaining why we don't need them!), Story and Why It Matters, and Buying Into Quarrels.
The key to exploration is discovery, and the surprise and joy it can bring. Our pointcrawl system focuses in on wandering along paths and finding new points, then laying them out spatially but non-precisely, allowing connections between points with paths in interesting ways. As you explore, you are prompted with different dangers, sites, and settlements— these are opportunities to collaboratively brainstorm what you might find, then work it into your map. There are also barriers, curiosities, and faction cards as well!
The Exploration Deck transfers the information from the Grimwild book into cards, the perfect randomizer for such exploration. It's fast and physical, and feels like exploration. The deck includes additional prompts not in the book. After you pull a card that's already been pulled, you re-insert them into the deck and shuffle. When they come up again, it triggers events to occur in those previously explored regions, keeping the sandbox dynamic and interesting.
These dice are engraved and hand-painted, with the colors mapping to the roll results in the system. The colors make the roll results instantly readable for everyone, making each roll an event that pulls you in even more.
Gaelenvale is a countryside valley, home to the sleepy town of Gaelen. It's a place for new adventurers to start making a name for themselves. They can explore the local area as they please, and seek opportunities for adventure and mischief. GMs will find a compact sandbox geared for player exploration, filled with narrative hooks for them to pursue. It's the perfect way to start your Grimwild campaign and to learn the ropes of playing (and running) Grimwild.
Specs: 32 page zine. Full color illustrations.
Inside:
Open sandbox: Gaelenvale is a compact sandbox. Open for your players to choose their own path, but easy for a GM to manage.
The town of Gaelen: It's districts, important buildings, major NPCs, and internal conflicts. It's a place your players can shape the future of and will learn to call home.
Sandbox locations: 10+ sandbox locations, from old forts to watermills, with quest hooks and conflicts to solve.
Cosy feel: A countryside setting that's perfect for chill game nights and introducing players to Grimwild.
North of Gaelenvale, lies the Nevermore. A ruin mentioned only in whispers, the site was once majestic sanctum to an avatar of undeath. For centuries, it has offered little more than strange lights and faint screams, but something has awakened within the Nevermore. Sinister forces long forgotten now seek what lies within. Can they be stopped? Nevermore presents a dark scenario that will test characters resolve and cunning. GMs will find an unsettling necromantic sanctum filled with horrors that push players characters, from terrifying creatures to more insidious threats.
Specs: 32 page zine. Full color illustrations.
Inside:
The Nevermore: The detailed ruins of a creepy sanctum stocked with creative undead creatures.
A rival party: The agents of a cult are set on finding what lies within the Nevermore, and are powerful antagonists to give your players a run for their money.
Open scenario: Players can explore the Nevermore however they like, the Nevermore is a mini-sandbox!
Ever-present danger: Nevermore ensure tense game nights, and provides an optional continuation of Gaelenvale that ramps up the tension.
The timeline towards completion and delivery of rewards looks like this:
May 2025: Printing begins on the full print run.
June-July 2025: Shipment arrives at our fulfillment center.
July-August 2025: Books arrive at your door.
The print run is completely ready to get started. We've got it set up—the manufacturer is just waiting on the final order total to get started.
PDFs for this campaign are fulfilled by DrivethruRPG.
The Team
We're a small group, but we all wear a bunch of fun hats.
J.D. Maxwell, Designer of Grimwild. J.D. is a freelance layout designer from Portland, Oregon. He's bummed around tabletop and board game design communities for a decade and is now putting those skills to good use. He makes a mean pizza and is always covered in cat hair.
Per Janke, Artist for Grimwild, Nevermore, and Gaelenvale. Per is a Berlin based freelance Illustrator and Concept Artist who makes an above average espresso and has a passion for books, history and TTRPGs. He’s always on the hunt for weird settings and lore to visualize. (Insta)
Luke Saunders, Designer of Nevermore and Gaelenvale. Luke is a game designer, writer, and layout artist based in the U.K. He’s the lead creator at Murkdice (another indie RPG publisher). He likes to contemplate game design while doing a sea swim, and lives out of a rucksack.
