THE DIRGECALL DRIFT

A ship’s graveyard hangs in the dark, drifting on a tide no one can explain. At its heart sits the Black Beacon, broadcasting the last words of everyone who died out here. Orders. Work songs. Prayers. Pleas. It isn’t preserving them. It’s using them as bait.

The signal never stops. It speaks in the voices of the lost, and sometimes it calls you by name. A patron offering the score of a lifetime. An ally begging for rescue. Someone you buried, asking why you left.

 Your crew came for salvage. That was the mistake.

The Dirgecall Drift is a standalone adventure setting that drops a party into a floating field of wrecks and gives them a simple job: get in, strip what's valuable, get out before the Drift decides you're staying. The catch is the beacon, the things it builds out of dead voices, and a salvage clock that tightens every time you push your luck.

• A complete adventure site you can drop into any sci-fi or void-sailing 5e campaign, or run as a one-shot
• The Salvage Clock: a tension mechanic that turns greed into danger and rewards a clean, fast job
• Landmark wrecks keyed to full-color ship maps, each with its own history, hazards, and reasons to linger too long
• The mystery of the Black Beacon and what happens when the party finally reaches it
• Three original monsters built from the beacon's signal: Signal Wraiths, Chorus Drones, and the Scrap Skitter Swarm
• Encounter and Dirgecall broadcast tables to seed dread between the setpieces
• Guidance for reskinning the Drift for a fantasy table, so the book works even outside of space
• Art by Dean Spencer, Kirstin Nokes, Storn Cook and Jacob Blackmon

Check out these starship wreck maps from Jacob Blackmon

Two goals, two unlocks for every backer.

$1,000 — Kickstarter Exclusive Cover. We unlock a second, Kickstarter-only cover by series artist Jacob Blackmon. Every backer gets the exclusive-cover edition, and this cover will never be sold on DriveThruRPG.

$1,500 — DarkSpace Conversion. The book gains a bonus appendix for running the Drift with DarkSpace, the sci-fi hack of Shadowdark. You get all three monsters converted to DarkSpace plus notes for running the Salvage Clock and the wrecks rules-light. It’s free for every backer.

The Dirgecall Drift is written by Ross Watson, one of the most experienced science-fiction RPG designers working today.

As Senior RPG Developer at Fantasy Flight Games, Ross oversaw the entire Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying line across four games: Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, and Black Crusade. He went on to design Warhammer 40,000: Wrath & Glory, the current 40K tabletop RPG.

His wider credits include lead developer on Savage Worlds: Rifts, the Accursed campaign setting, work on Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, and consulting on Shadowrun 5th Edition.

Ross also co-hosts Lorebeards 40K, a Warhammer 40,000 lore show on YouTube and Twitch, where he digs into the factions, history, and big questions of the setting.

Fainting Goat Games is an indie tabletop publisher with a deep catalog of 5e adventures, original games, and sci-fi settings. The Dirgecall Drift is our first collaboration with Ross Watson.