Who We Are

Magpie Games is a game development and production company devoted to creating interesting, innovative, boundary-pushing, and most of all high-quality games across a wide variety of genres and styles. The majority of Magpie’s productions are tabletop roleplaying games, ranging from games designed to recreate disaster movies, to games designed to tell the stories of baby dragons on adventures, to gritty games about supernatural criminals and power brokers.

Our company was founded in early 2011 by Mark Truman and Marissa Kelly, and since then has brought on Brendan Conway as a co-owner, and Derrick Kapchinsky and Sarah Richardson as critical team members. They have worked with countless other professionals, freelancers, and creators in the games industry, and look forward to working with still more, especially aspiring game designers looking to get into the industry for the first time.

Since its inception, Magpie Games has released almost all of our games on Kickstarter, including Urban Shadows, Epyllion: A Dragon Epic, Masks: A New Generation, and Bluebeard’s Bride. We have produced bimonthly content for the digital Fate Codex; a series of supplements for Dungeon World; multiple ashcans of brand new and exciting games; and more. We are continually looking to expand our repertoire and extend into new spaces with bold new designs.

We’re always grateful to all our fans and supporters for helping us make all these publications possible. Thanks for your support!

Why We Make Games

Magpie Games is devoted to supporting diverse content from diverse creators, especially women and people of color. We want to bring new and different voices into the games industry whenever we can, and for all our games, we work to make them both inclusive and boundary-pushing, ensuring that players will experience something they wouldn’t find anywhere else. From a game about uniquely feminine horror to a game about the drug trade in Mexico to a game about teenage girls in the 1970’s, we are interested in games that have a strong sense of time, place, and people, in hopes of expanding the overall spectrum of games available to players and gamerunners today.

We are all gamers at Magpie Games, and we love to play the kinds of games we create. At the heart of our drive to make games is the desire to make the kind of game we’d like to play. Every single one of our games represents a kind of story that one or more of us is deeply interested in. What’s more, every single one of our games represents our own unique take on that kind of story. We are driven to make these distinct, unique, and focused games because they’re the kind of game that we want to see more and more and more of, and we’re excited to work with anyone who has a similar drive.

Production Timeline

2011

• Magpie Games founded by Mark Diaz Truman and Marissa Kelly.
• The Play’s The Thing

2012

• Our Last Best Hope
• We Are Dust
• By No Means Vulgar

2013

• Our Last Best Hope Expansion

2014

• Brendan Conway brought on.
• Urban Shadows

2015

• Cartel: Ashcan Edition
• The Last Days of Anglekite
• The Fate Codex Anthology Volume 1

2016

• Derrick Kapchinsky and Sarah Richardson join the team.
• Epyllion: A Dragon Epic
• Masks: A New Generation
• The Cold Ruins of Lastlife
• The Green Law of Varkith
• The Fate Codex Anthology Volume 2
• Undying
• Velvet Glove: Notebook Edition

2017

• Urban Shadows: Dark Streets
• Pasión de las Pasiones Ashcan Edition
• The Ward: Acute Care Edition
• Halcyon City Herald Collection
• Bluebeard’s Bride

2018

• Dragonica Encyclopedia
• Secrets of A.E.G.I.S.
• Masks: Unbound
• Bluebeard’s Bride: The Book of Lore
• Bluebeard’s Bride: The Book of Mirrors
• Bluebeard’s Bride: The Book of Rooms
• Cartel
• Velvet Glove

The Nest

Marissa Kelly               Mark Diaz Truman           Sarah Richardson           Brendan Conway            Derrick Kapchinsky

 Co-founder                 Co-founder                 Director of Marketing           Co-owner              Director of Operations