This is a preorder for the crowdfunded MARROWBREAK system and setting gamebook PDF, slated to release in February 2024. Game files will be uploaded and unlocked at launch. See the completed Kickstarter here.

Want to jump straight in? Download the free Marrowbreak quickstart here! Featuring a ready-to-play adventure, a preview version of the full game's systems and mechanics, and four pre-generated characters.

What is Marrowbreak?

So you know those cracks in the world, yeah? And you know how they seethe with vertigo, the faint scent of lavender, and a strange roiling void? And how sometimes the strange roiling voidstuff overflows and floods out into the street and swallows up basements and throws everything in its path down into the Weird reflection of the City below? Yeah, that’s a marrowbreak. Nasty stuff. Leave it too long and the Weird starts thinking you’re part of it, or maybe you start thinking you’re part of the Weird. Hard to say for sure but never a good time either way.

…Oh, but you meant this book? Right, yes. So!

MARROWBREAK is a team-focused dungeon-heisting system and setting book, set in the fractal depths of something that is trying very, very hard to be a city.

What do you mean trying to be a city? What is this place?

The City is the City. It has no other name because there is no other place. Never has been, don’t know what you’re talking about. You sound like one of those adventurers crashing out of World’s End with too-bright eyes, rambling about other places and the sun.

No, of course there isn’t a sun. It’s the City. The sky is blessedly empty of any burning bodies in the sky—none of that moon or stars nonsense either. It’s dark half the day, light the other half, and on it goes. Although might not even see the light, mind, if the City’s in a bad mood. It’ll be all grey and pissing out.

And you said World’s End, what’s World’s End?

A region. There’s seven altogether, or seven and one if you're looking for trouble. You’ll have grown up in one, either learned and internalised its magic and trade or gone looking for the magic of another region—at least, before you went rogue and used the arcane tools of your trade to delve the City depths instead.

Why, who am I?

You’re one of them freelancers, after all. You and your group, you’re the weird folk who band together with people from other regions and go diving into the capital-W Weird for jobs and Marrow. Valuable stuff, Marrow. It’s our currency, power source, and the only way to increase your power—which will explain why you lot have stronger, stranger magic than the average person. But then you need it down there, in the cracks under the City, don’t you?

Makes the City sit up and pay attention, doesn’t it?

Okay, but who can I be?

Wow, coming in with the big questions, huh. I dunno, I can’t decide that for you. If you mean in the game, though, we’ve got 8 main character classes for you to play, corresponding to each of the City’s regions:

• The Mariner - Avatar of the City's river, you wield the Jetsam Maul and a body that is flesh or water as the moment demands.
  
• The Glass - Trader in mirrors and moments, you wield reflections and the many-fold self.
  
• The Magpie - Enforcer of your Family’s will, you wield a great many pockets and mastery of the vertical spaces you call home.
  
• The Surgeon - Keeper of the City's gardens, you wield an iron sharpness and hymns that guide, sever, and sew.
  
• The Administrator - One of the cursed few able to navigate the City's bureaucracy, you wield mundanity, pedantry, and Form 48C-18 Subsection 12.
  
• The Woven - Academic of the Scholar's Web, you wield the threads of fate and connections between all things, snagged tight on the tip of your hook.
  
• The Remembrance - Keeper of a forbidden shrine to a forgotten sun, you wield a truth and a love that burns and burns and burns.
  
• The Graven - Living mausoleum, you wield the voices of the dead inscribed in your skin and a power over the endings that come to us all.

What do I get?

When MARROWBREAK launches this Itch game's files will be replaced with the system and setting book and a high-res download of some of the game's key art. As an additional pre-order bonus we'll be including a free PDF copy of our campaign framework and adventure compilation THE CITY SLUMBERS, which will otherwise be sold separately post-launch.

Meet the Team

Jessica Crimes is a game designer based in Glasgow, Scotland. She specialises in systems design and was the lead developer and producer on Don’t Hurt Bird’s previous three Kickstarter campaigns - two TTRPG collections and a card game - as well as an occasional freelance video game designer. On MARROWBREAK Jess is acting as a designer and taking the lead on production and systems design. Outside of this project, Jess likes getting way too nerdy about coffee and playing excessive amounts of Final Fantasy XIV, and can be found @Jessica_Crimes on twitter.

Athar Fikry is a writer of fun pulpy nonsense, especially of the historical and very weird variety. They live in Cairo, Egypt, with their dog, their menacingly high TBR pile, and their many opinions on old Egyptian musicals. They are the author of a behemoth interactive novel The Dragon and the Djinn, which came out in 2022 from Choice of Games. You can find them studiously not tweeting on twitter and flailing about on tumblr @atharfi. On MARROWBREAK, Ath is acting as a designer and lead writer.

We're super excited to be working with Mads Schubert, whose illustrations are bringing the world and character classes of MARROWBREAK to life. You can find Mads over on their website or @mads_schubert on twitter.

Development funded in part by Creative Scotland's Open Fund.