The Decay: Survival Horror Roleplaying

Free Quickstart

Welcome to the world of The Decay, where horrors lurk in festering corners. Whether you are being hunted by monstrous predators, trapped in a malevolent location, or dealing with deadly phenomenon, you have one true goal: survive. Your pop culture knowledge isn't going to save you here. This game is swarming with original nightmares who play by their own rules. It will take everything you have, but if you're smart and lucky, you might just live to see another sunrise.

The Game

Easy to play. Difficult to survive.

The Decay uses an easy to learn system that is geared towards telling harrowing tales. Survivors have three Faculties: Stamina, Nerves, and Clarity, which governs their odds of success. Each Faculty has a die ranging from d4 to d10. Whenever you need to make a test you roll that die and try to beat the Decay Level, a shifting difficulty scale that the Guide uses to control the intensity of the horror.

Here's the mean part: whether you succeed or fail, the die always drops down one size. So that d8 you trounced that roll with is now a d6, and next time it'll be a d4. If that sounds like a death spiral, that's because it is. But by leaning into your Saving Grace and Fatal Flaw, you can try to reset your Faculties, gain re-rolls, or push forward despite your injuries.

Failed rolls and Messy Successes will see you gaining Ruin, as well as triggering Decay Events, spikes of surprise horror that will keep even the Guide on their toes. 

As easy to run as it is to play

Running The Decay feels fast and fluid, allowing the Guide to get into a flow state and let the horror ooze forth. The Horrors in The Decay require no clunky stat blocks or paragraphs of rules text to keep in mind. Instead they operate within the basic framework of the game, with consequences stemming from the fiction and the die rolls.

The Decay Level is a simple yet elegant tool that allows you to control the pacing and intensity of the terror. Based on the actual stages of decay: Fresh, Bloat, Active Decay, Advanced Decay, and Skeletonization. There is a visceral reaction at the table when you announce "The Decay Level rises!" and turn up the heat. You'll know it's time when the situation is escalating. Did the Survivors split up? Did they decide to delve into the darkened basement? Have they found themselves surrounded by a pack of snarling things that look like wolves made of bees? Since the players always have the option to take on Ruin for a Crucial Moment, they always have a chance of success, even if it is a slim one.

Decay Events come in 5 varieties: Grim Discoveries, Setbacks, Cruel Twists, Lurking Danger, and Immediate Danger. The Guide rolls for events whenever a player rolls a messy success or a failure. But the trick is that the Immediate Danger option can only be rolled when a player outright fails a roll, which typically doesn't happen until the've been worn down for a bit. The Horrors each come with their own tables for Decay Events, but you are encouraged to inject your own if it suits the narrative.

One-shots and Campaigns

The Decay is perfect for tense one shots, but is great for longer campaigns as well. The full game will have rules for character growth, for good or for ill. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, or at the very least stranger. Your character gets better by overcoming the strain and trauma of the sitations they have survived. The worse you go through, the more resilient you come out on the other side of it.

Factions, like the Court of Mammon, and overarching threats, like the Lords of Rot, help to flesh out your campaign beyond a series of monster of the week scenarios.

Afflictions

Afflictions are the optional rules modules that you can mix and match to tweak the game to exactly the nightmare you want to run. There are a few examples in the quick start (have you downloaded that yet?), but the full book will have a veritable swarm of them at your disposal.

Terror Across Time

There are three time periods supported in The Decay: 

• Modern Day (2020s): It's the world around you right now, rife with horrors both human and inhuman.
• Pre-modern (1720s): Grab your oil lantern and load that musket. There are things lurking in the darkness of the woods.
• Grim Future (2320s): Earth has been subsumed by rot, and humanity has fled to the stars. Unfortunately we live in an ever-decaying universe.

Horrors

When the "monster" isn't a monster

The mechanically light touch to the Horrors makes it easier to explore horrors that don't fit into the standard monster category. Mutative radio signals. Cursed video tapes. An ominous black door that is always on the edge of your perception. All as intuitive to run as your classic slasher villain. If you've ever had a weirdo idea that you wanted to bring to the table, but felt like you were forcing a round narrative peg in a square mechanical hole, The Decay has you covered. Don't worry though, you can still unleash your favorite creature feature just as easily. 

Skip the Classics

Vampires, werewolves, zombies. We know them well, and may even love them, but they don't earn a spot in this book. You don't need to be told how they work, but you can use the Decay rules to run classic monsters just fine. Instead we want to fill this book with strange and unsettling things that neither you nor your players have seen before. Who needs a pack of zombies when you have a tree with human flesh for bark that feasts upon the human spirit?

What are the Horrors?

Horrors in The Decay are a symptom of a universal rot. They can take any form, but they are always unnatural in some awful way. Some of them run their course and fade away, some of them are actually defeated, but the longer they stick around the more powerful and corrosive they get. When a Horror is new they are mobile and ravenous, but their power is limited. As they age they begin to warp their surroundings, and eventually create pocket domains like tumors on the flesh of the world. Survivors might find escaping a horror actually means finding a way out of a nightmare dimension. Horrors can even achieve a putrid apotheosis that elevates them to the status of a Lord of Rot, at which point they birth their own unholy spawn that enact their will on a cosmic scale, driving the world towards its slow apocalypse.

The Book

The book is going to be a 6x9 inch hardcover book, roughly 300 pages in length. Artwork will be done by the incredible Enoch Duncan, whose dark, unsettling style perfectly brings The Decay to life.

Choose between two cover options: the standard hardcover with artwork by Enoch Duncan, and the Corrupted Edition hardcover by me, Matthew Nevers. The Corrupted Edition cover will be a limited single print run and each copy will be numbered and signed. The contents of the book are identical to the standard edition.

Some of the features you will find in the finished book:

• 30+ Original Horrors to unleash upon your players, as well as guidelines to make your own with copious roll tables.
• Scenarios that you can run right out of the book complete with their own Horrors.
• An expanded chapter of Afflictions, modular optional rules for customizing your game.
• Expanded Guide advice and philosophy.
• Rules for campaign play, including factions and antagonists to flesh out your games.
• So many tables dripping with ichor and mold. Everything from horror abilities to character building questions, scavenged items and grim happenings.

And of course absolutely everything in this book is human made. No AI. Not now. Not ever. Gen AI is for entitled losers who want to play at being creatives while robbing the world and eroding the human spirit to do it. I don't even care if that costs me pledges.

Beyond the Core Book

The Decay is no one-off project that will be abandoned as I move on to the next project. This is the beginning of a supported line of game books and products that will extend into the years ahead. Some books that are already planned as future The Decay releases:

• Scrivener's Society Campaign Setting: The Scriveners are a group of people who have dedicated themselves to witnessing, cataloging, and in some cases fighting back The Decay. They are poorly funded, barely trained, and fewer in number every day. What keeps them pursuing the strange and terrifying? Each member of the Scriveners has lost something to The Decay. Some want to make sure it doesn't happen to others. Some hope to get back what was taken from them. Some are looking for revenge.
• Coffin Nails: A series of investigative scenarios, each starting with a strange corpse showing up in the city morgue.
• Seasons of Fear: A quartet of scenarios that evoke horrors unique to the seasons, rather than any actual holidays.
• Lords of Rot: Campaign frames built around godlike beings that drive the Decay.

3rd Party License

Part of sharing this game with the world is letting the world truly play with it. The Decay already has a pretty generous license for creating your own compatible material, which can be found in the Fresh Decay quickstart, along with some branding logos to slap on your Mired in Decay projects.

Every October we host the Beyond Horror TTRPG Jam on itch. It's a fun opportunity to brainstorm with other designers and get a fresh new horror item done in time for the only holiday that matters: Halloween. This year is, of course, themed around The Decay, but all horror ttrpg entries are welcomed.

So enter the Beyond Decay Horror TTRPG Jam and join the fright.

And while you're at it, come join the Coffee All Night Discord server.

Testimonials

Decay Media

Watch the disgusting actual play one shot we did with the Happy Jacks RPG crew as they try to escape a filth devouring thing that wears an kindly old woman's face. Also available as a podcast.

Listen to my interview with Craig over at Tabletop Talk, as we dicuss The Decay, horror movies, and my journey of tabletop design.

A fun conversation I had with Dave at Grimwood Games. I get into all the nitty gritty about The Decay here.

Pledge Levels

*Shipping for all physical rewards will be charged after the campaign. 

Estimated Shipping - based on current rates, I will do my best to get everyone the lowest shipping rates available.
US: $10 - $15 USD
Canada: $23 - $30 USD
Rest of the World: $29 - $35 USD
Unfortunately we are unable to ship to the following countries: Afghanistan, Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Israel, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Niue, Russian Federation, Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen

*Digital mockups used for physical reward images. Final product may look different.

$20 - Digital Decay: Get The Decay in PDF.

$50 - The Decay Hardcover: Get The Decay in hardcover print and in PDF.

$70 - Signed "Corrupted Edition" Hardcover: Get a signed copy of The Decay with the limited edition Corrupted alternate cover. There will only be one printing with this cover.

$75 - Table of Terror: Get The Decay Hardcover, PDF, a set of 5 Acrylic X-cards, a set of 5 reference bookmarks, and the Decay Level Tracker oversized d6. An $85 value.

$100 - Deluxe Table of Terror: Get a signed copy of The Decay Corrupted Edition Hardcover, PDF, a set of 5 Acrylic X-cards, a set of 5 reference bookmarks, the Decay Level Tracker oversized d6, and a set of 6 art cards. A $115 value.

$200 - The Decay Retailer: Get 6 copies of The Decay at 33% of MSRP to stock on your store shelves. Customers receive PDF with purchase at your store. If you would like to discuss different quantities, contact us at coffeeallnightgames@gmail.com.

$5 - Reference Bookmarks (set of 5): Art on one side, and handy rules reference on the other side.
$10 - Art Card Set: 6 postcard sized art cards with info on the back. Great for showing your players what's coming for them.
$10 - Decay Level Tracker d6: 30mm wooden die with the Decay logo on the 1 position. Big enough to set out where everyone can see it, so everyone knows how real things have gotten.
$20 - Acrylic X-cards (set of 5): Useful for invoking safety tools and resting your drink.
$250 - Game Run for You by the Designer (limited to 6 backers): I will personally run a 4 hour one-shot game for you and up to 4 of your friends (or enemies) with a unique scenario not included in the book. Online only. Session must be scheduled by the end of 2028, and work for all parties.

Stretch Goals

$15,000 - Project Funded: We did it! We get to make the thing! Good job!

$17,500 - More Art: We get to throw more money at Enoch to fill more pages with unspeakable imagery.

$20,000 - Mass Grave (digital zine): I have collected a horde of horror writers to come together to contribute their own Horrors for a unique digital zine. All backers will receive Mass Grave in PDF at no additional cost after it is unlocked.
Our special guest contributors:

• Jack Panic (any/all), DNGN CLUB: Jack has published some of the most exciting and stylish horror games in recent years with The Gas Station, How's My Driving?, and It Will Kill. Jack will not only contribute a Horror to the zine; he will also be doing the cover art.
• Quinn Murphy (he/him), Thoughtcrime Games: Quinn has written for Wizards of the Coast and Paizo. However he publishes his own wicked horror games, Community Radio and the upcoming It Feeds on Fear and It Wants Blood.
• Alex Rinehart (he/him), Idlewild Games: Best known for his radical Cyberrats trilogy, Alex has also delved into the realm of cosmic horror with Gratitude: a Horror Game.
• YN Roe (she/her): Newcomer to the scene, and full of horrid ideas. We are very excited to bring YN Roe's work to the wider world.
• Will Red (he/him): Will has been helping play test The Decay since the beginning, and there are few people with as much experience with it as him.
• VItheSixth (He/him): VI is no stranger to the horror genre, and we are happy to have him creeping into our number 6 slot.

$22,000 - 2 More Contributors for Mass Grave: We get to throw two more bodies onto the pile.

• Jex Thomas (they/them), Last Pine Press: Author of the incredible Bump in the Dark. Jex has a knack for blending small town folk horror with social commentary.
• Michael Walton: An author and another of the first play testers for The Decay. This game might not have gotten this far without his enthusiasm and support.

$24,000 - More Art: The final bloody pieces fall into place.

$26,000 - Mass Grave (physical zine), and 2 More Contributors: We add 2 more contributors to the zine and bring it to print! All backers at a physical level will recieve the extra printed zine at no additional cost after it is unlocked.

• Carlos Salazar (they/them): The designer of the upcoming horror game, Puppet Run, and community leader working with Power Word Unity and Rol Latina. 
• René-Pier Deshaies (he/him), Fari RPG: RP is the creator of Breathless, which directly inspired The Decay. We are beyond thrilled to have him join us on this project. His newest work, Boundless, is launching on Backerkit next year.

$28,000 - The Final Body in the Mass Grave: Our list of contributors comes to a close

• John Harper (he/they), One Seven Design: The creator of Blades in the Dark, Lady Blackbird, and Agon. We are excited/terrified to see what John drags in from the Deathlands.

$30,000 - Decaying Alone Solo Mode: We will add a solo play mode, loaded with prompts and mechanics to creep yourself out. Who better to use your deepest, darkest fears against you than you?

Timeline

We plan to deliver in Q4 of 2027. It's a long lead time, but we want to make sure that this is the very best book it can be before it is shipped out to your bloody hands. PDFs will be sent ahead of physical rewards, but not by much.

The Team

Matthew Nevers (he/him): Designer/Writer/Layout. The Decay has been my baby over the past two years. Designing, play testing, iterating, and then testing again. Some of my previous horror ttrpg works include the successfully Kickstarted The Winter Door and Nope!.

Mari (she/her): Editor. A wonderful person and stalwart librarian. Mari has edited all of my works in the past, and I'm excited to drop a whole new pile of headaches on her lap so she can turn a decent book into a great one.

Enoch Duncan (he/him): Artist. From the moment I saw one of Enoch's pieces I could see what The Decay looked like in my head. His style is dark and unsettling with a touch of dreamlike atmosphere. There was no question that he was the only artist for this book.