BILGE - A gm-less body horror mapping game
A downloadable Mapping Game
In the turn of the 30th century humanity began to extend their greed among the stars, harvesting what minerals and life they could. In their travels they discovered a previously unnoticed Moon, in perfect orbit around Neptune, perfectly hidden by the planet's orbit.
The moon, almost entirely made of water, contained large underwater volcanoes, creating a perfect soup to create and sustain life However initial rover missions yielded nothing but empty waters and large bone deposits littering the ocean floor. The mystery puzzled scientists for years and many penal volunteer ships that were sent lost contact with earth. That is until the discovery of the leviathan.
What was thought to be a large underwater land mass began to surface. An extremely territorial sea creature the size of America. Every 3 years it was recorded to surface, apparently looking for a mate that never came. Initial scans of the creature revealed what seemed to be the last remaining life of the moon, flourishing in its guts. Parasitic extraterrestrial, crawling through its organs. And even deeper still, the largest deposit of Ambergris known to man, several fleshy caverns of the stuff.
From then, the race was on, each trillionaire of Earth sending barely trained penal volunteers in a ship to retrieve as much as they could, their freedom their reward.
The ships would latch onto the creature, in the small time period in which it surfaced, and the volunteers would mine into the guts of the beast in a race against time, lighting their way with cheap lamps and hacking at the flesh with metal pipes, kitted out with cheap survival suits made of wet rotting fabric and scratched metal helmets.
Failure to return to the ship before the Leviathan’s mating period was up caused it to descend into the impossible depths, the pressure causing the latched ship to crumple leaving the men trapped in the belly of the beast to fend off the larger than life parasites.
That time has come again, the leviathan has surfaced and you have travelled there in search of the gris and your freedom. Maybe this time will be different. 
in bilge you play one of these volunteers, digging and mapping into the body of the beast. fighting off gigantic alien parasites and imbuing yourself with their powers as you cut and slash into sinew and bone.
body horror content warning.
50+ pages!
a gm-less mapping game for 1-4 players.
Purchase
In order to download this Mapping Game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $11 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Bilge 1.7Sep 27, 2023
- Kickstarter Live!Aug 14, 2023
- Kickstarter is Coming!Jul 15, 2023
- Bilge 1.6Jul 01, 2023
- Bilge 1.5May 31, 2023
- Bilge 1.4May 21, 2023
- Bilge 1.3May 20, 2023
Comments
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Will trade an honest review for a Community Copy!
Great game, great concept, lots of fun, but boy is that font bad. Sacrificing quality for the aesthetic, unfortunately. But truly, that's my only complaint. And once you've played enough, you probably won't be reading enough for it to matter too much.
Makes for really interesting maps, with super visceral descriptions! The parasite mechanic is awesome. Here's my playthrough map of it.
not too complicated to get set up, just need some dice and a pack of cards and some grid paper! aaaand a strong stomach, hehehe. the desc says 1-4 players though the book says 2+, and while one player seems totally possible, i don't know how long you'll last unless you get REALLY lucky. here's a tip: if you can defeat a tower, that parasite is gonna do WONDERS for your defense game.
creepy, absolutely awesome vibes. still learning the gameplay (i dont play a lot of ttrpg and realised after the 4th fight that theres a defend mechanic, oops!) but i really enjoyed what i went thru! hope i find the treasure one day ;-;
the graphics are super cool but in some places text can be a nightmare. 1d10 looking like IOIO made me feel crazy a few times, so even if ever i print out my own booklet I'll definitely have the pdf open juust in case.
Anyway i'm glad i bought it! I'll be bringing it around anywhere i can
thank you for the kind words! If you've drawn a map I'd love to see it. Maybe come join the discord and share your adventures into the flesh https://discord.gg/DMaeHesWHH
Just to let you know, all number reading problems have been fixed!
Bilge is a vibes-y whalepunk body horror TTRPG about blood oceans and ambergris. It feels very influenced by Iron Lung, but treads new territory.
The PDF is heckin massive. It's almost 600 mb across 60 pages, with sludgy, low-fi art and a very consistently atmospheric layout. The text is sometimes a little tricky to read, and you can get really inured to all the background red, but the illustrations universally look great---horrifying sights seen imperfectly and at a distance.
Gameplay-wise, Bilge is a survival horror game, but with an emphasis on change and mutation. You have limited HP and stamina, your stats are randomized, and it's fairly easy to die if you commit to the wrong encounter, but also you can take on parasites to boost your stats and capabilities. The more parasites you have, the more likely other parasites are to leave you alone---but if you take too many, you start hemorrhaging HP and eventually turn into a monster.
There are also other factors to manage, like the discomfort of the dungeon around you (which can end the scenario if it goes too high, but otherwise unlocks new areas and makes monsters more hostile,) and combat with monsters. Combat is simple and involves attack and defense checks to grind down a monster's HP, but it can also be easily avoided by taking some damage and running away. Honestly, running away may be the best option most of the time, as it's guaranteed damage, but it's potentially a lot less damage than you'd take from getting tagged by one good attack.
No GM is needed for Bilge, as you draw the game's map with a pack of cards while playing, and monsters have their own simple AIs. However, I did find myself periodically squinting at the rules, trying to figure them out, so having a player who likes reading and deciphering rpgs serve as a sort of GM-adjunct may be worthwhile.
The book is rewarding just to read, and there's a lot of cool biohorror concepts and atmospheric flavor to soak in. The dungeon's areas are particularly good, and all change based on a variety of player-driven factors.
There's also a dang good character sheet, which adds a lot to the immersion.
Overall, if you like retro survival horror and you want a mildly crunchy GMless experience with a lot of variety and replayability, and if you don't mind staring at some pages a few times, you should check this out.
Specifically, if you're a fan of works like Iron Lung and Dead Space and maybe Dai Dark, you should really give this a look.
Minor Issues:
-Page 9, Stomatone, does this give you an extra 30% extension on your Parasite Purity cap? So you could go up to 110%? Or does this do something different? I couldn't quite be certain from the text.
-Page 10, do all members of a moving group spend 1 Fatigue or just the leader? My guess was all, but I wasn't certain.
-Page 11, "Doodle anything you might see if you must", I think this might be a sentence fragment.
-Page 16, listing all of the enemies without pictures before listing all of the enemies with pictures feels a little weird. I'm not sure these two pages are needed. Likewise with the nemasites section.
-Page 28, the "0s" here REALLY look like "05", which made it a bit tricky to figure out what this section meant until I read the "all zeroes" line on the next page.
Hey thank you for the kind words, I'll address all these issues in the next update! Specifically font issues!
Addressed all the issue in the latest update!
I 100% got this for the aesthetic. It is gorgeous! Just amazing. I am only beginning to actually get into how it works and it seems really fun too. Love it!
Thank you! Feel free to share any maps of the LEVIATHAN at my twitter. Same name as here.