announcements

Nostos Now On Kickstarter

The world ended. Let's find a way home.

Erica Bridges

Apr 15, 2026 — 3 min read

Nostos, now on Kickstarter until May 2nd.

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"Bold, imaginative, and reflective, Erica Bridges' Nostos imagines a world both packed to the gills with magic and yet somehow profoundly familiar." Jay Dragon, Seven-Part Pact

What is Nostos?

Nostos is a surreal fantasy TTRPG about trying to return to a home that’s gone forever.

Combining the fantastical imagined cities of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities with the epics and iconography of the ancient Mediterranean, Nostos casts players as the would-be saviors of their universe, who fought and bled to keep their world alive. They failed, and now they’re all that’s left of the World That Was, stranded on a sea of proto-universes waiting to be born.

Standing there, battered and broken, but still alive, each asks themself the same question: The world ended... What now?

The cover of "Nostos: a game about sailing home and saying goodbye". A young woman stands on the deck of an ancient Greek trireme, gazing at a glowing but otherwise mundane key held in her hand, with three strange and wondrous islands in the distance.

You’ll follow the journey of these survivors across the turbulent Sea of Irreality, a roiling mass composed of the raw metaphysical substance of the universe. You’ll venture forth into the unknown in search of a way back home, a way to bring back the place you fought so hard to save. Along the way, your heroes will stop at Islands: patches of stable reality floating on the Sea, any one of which could be the model for whatever universe might come next.

Featuring the art of Elena M. Benítez, Flora Kirk, Rosario Méndez, Kaysha Siemens, and more!

"Erica Bridges is an excellent writer and designer, and Nostos has both of those talents on full display. Its balance of flavor and flexibility is truly impressive, and its player-facing mechanics will help you become a better storyteller without even realizing it. It's a game I personally can't wait to bring to the table." Tyler Crumrine, Possible Worlds Games

What's Inside

Nostos is an original TTRPG system for 1 GM and 2-5 players, brought to you in this ~200-page hardcover edition. Here's some of what you'll find inside:

A detailed guide to creating the universe that was destroyed, including a prologue to flesh out who the PCs were in the World That Was. Nostos' campaign creation toolkit allows players to create any sort of world they might imagine, from the fantastical to the mundane. One campaign might star the heroes of an epic fantasy, while another might focus on ordinary people caught up in cosmic events.
Designing your campaign's Ship and Pilot, remnants from the World That Was that accompany you on your journey home.
Rules for how PCs interact with Aspects, the bespoke laws of reality on each Island, whether that's embracing them, resisting them with Self, or sidestepping them entirely by creating temporary Aspects of your own.
Conflicts, narrative story-sets that reveal each character's emotional struggles and drive them towards finding closure.
9 ready-to-play Islands, with in-depth descriptions of their inhabitants, locales, and natures, plus guidelines for designing your own Islands.
Extensive advice for GMs on how to run a campaign of Nostos, including how to bring your story to its final conclusion.

"Dyspatur" by Elena M. *Benítez*. An audience with the God of Neppos, Isle of the Dead.

About the Author

Erica Bridges is a Chicago-based TTRPG designer and writer with a Ph.D. in Classical Studies. You can find her games on https://honeycupgames.itch.io/.