Congratulations backers, and thank you, for bringing The Darkest Woods into the world! You have funded this campaign with astonishing speed. The Darkest Woods, in book and app form—and in standard and expanded editions—is now going to be made. Prepare yourself for a journey into terrifying places!

This is just the start—the day is young, and the campaign still in its infancy. We can’t wait to start expanding the Woods, watch as it grows and takes root, and breathe even more life into the horrors within.

The enthusiasm of your response, though, has bowled us over a bit, and the opening hours of a campaign are always chaotic. We’ll share the first stretch goal as soon as we have a moment to breathe. In the meantime, thank you so much for an incredible launch!

—Team MCG

What fast-paced day it’s been—and it’s far from over! The Darkest Woods funded earlier today, and, as promised in our first update, we’re (perhaps foolishly) excited to push deeper into the woods to find stretch goals!

Let’s start with some bookmarks. But not just any old bookmarks. Bear with me here; this is a bit tricky to explain—but that’s because The Darkest Woods is such a unique product.

The Darkest Woods app is built to provide everything you need on a single screen, so that as you GM online you never have to flip back and forth between displays. The interactive environment lets us put content into accordions, on tabs, in pop-ups, or in other formats that make it handy when you need it, but keeps it out of your way when you don’t. And we can fit an almost infinite amount of content on a single screen.

We replicate a lot of that in the book through its unique layout, which is highly mindful of the GM’s needs and the way you use the encounters at the table. But for some elements—like an NPC who could potentially appear in many locations—it’s not practical, or a good use of the book’s space, to reprint material over and over. So, just like with a conventional RPG book, we’ll detail the item in one location. But now the GM has to flip pages and keep track of info from multiple parts of the book.

That’s where these bookmarks come in. Each one will have information about a recurring element of the Woods. Once the PCs are looking for Annie, for example, the GM would use the Annie bookmark to mark the page corresponding to her location, and if Annie shows up in that area, voila, the GM has her info right there. In some cases, you might be able to track info about the item or character right on the bookmark.

We want to add not one, but at least four of these bookmarks to The Darkest Woods. In the standard edition, these will be perforated on a single sheet, bound into the back of the book. In the expanded edition, they’ll be die-cut and perhaps a bit more deluxe in design. We’ll unlock these bookmarks at $120,000. Either way, if you’re getting the print book, you’ll get all four of these bookmarks.

Every crowdfunding campaign lives or dies by the enthusiasm its backers bring to it. If you’re excited about The Darkest Woods, sharing that excitement is the best way—the only way—to help us reach stretch goals.

At the current pace, we’ll need about 200 new backers to reach this goal. You can get us there by spreading the word. Just click these Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram posts to share them. The more people you help us reach, the faster we'll get to this stretch goal—and the many more we hope to unlock through this campaign!

We can’t wait to add the bookmarks to The Darkest Woods—and to start unlocking the many additional stretch goals we’re looking forward to!

Thanks for your support!
—Team MCG

Thank you, backers, for unlocking the set of four reference bookmarks for the print version of The Darkest Woods (standard and expanded editions)! We think this addition will make the books even easier to use at the game table!

Now that the Darkest Woods has been brought into our world, it’s doing what such things always strive to do: grow. Like a thorny vine, the Woods spreads its tendrils outward, seeking nourishment. It’s probably unwise for us to encourage it—to help it further sink its roots into our world—but that is, nonetheless, what we’re going to do.

Let’s help the Woods grow.

At $165,000 we’ll expand The Darkest Woods by several areas. The Darkest Road (the region of the Woods that’s exclusive to the expanded edition) will also get bigger, adding at least one additional area. This will make the standard edition at least as big as The Darkest House (which, in book form, comes in at a whopping 296 pages!), with the expanded edition being significantly bigger. Because the content is the same whether you use the app or the book, this expansion affects both.

This will not be the end. The Woods will likely grow again—it’s what woods do, when not checked by human hubris. It will add new features. It will become even more frightening. It will gain new ways to challenge those who find themselves lost within—and, for those who emerge, ways to strengthen their bonds, backstories, ideals, loves, and enmities.

All of this with your help, of course. Please spread the word on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, reddit, EN World, RPG.net—anywhere you and other gamers discuss RPGs. Let’s unlock these new areas, watch the Woods grow, and move on to even more stretch goals to make your reward bigger and better!

Here are some places you can find our social media messages to share, and connect to the MCG community:

Thanks for your support!
—Team MCG