A NEW EXPERIENCE FROM THE MASTERS OF HORROR AT MCG, MADE FOR THE GAME YOU'RE PLAYING RIGHT NOW!
The Darkest Woods

The Darkest Woods

A mega-adventure of primal horrors, mythic witches, and our deepest, most ancient fears that will push characters to their limits and force them to confront truths about themselves, forever changing them. Compatible with all campaigns and RPG systems!
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DO NOT LOSE YOURSELF WITHIN THE WOODS' DARKENING DEPTHS. The Woods watch you as you wander, lost among the trees. The Woods don't care. Do not mistake the forest’s quietude for mercy. Nor its shadowed depths as denser versions of these pleasant shallows. For to venture deeper is to become lost within the ancient chambers of the forest’s dark heart, where twisted and sinister things dwell. The Woods see you isolated, lonely, and in terrible danger. The Woods don't care. Beware the mythic witches, horrific monsters, hateful spirits, cannibalistic cultists, and other dangers that have always called these Darkest Woods home. These Backwoods and its truly twisted inhabitants will test the mettle of any who find themself lost within its dusk-dark, twisted paths. The Woods are ancient (eternal?) and vast (infinite?). You are small and brief. Hardly worth noting—to the Woods. Do not imagine the woods will show you mercy. The Woods don’t care. Stretch goals: Unlocked: $120K Bookmarks. $165K The Woods Get Deeper. Unlocked: $195K Deluxe Upgrades. Locked: $225K The Broken Tarot deck: an incomplete set of tarot cards from the Rider-Waite set, with many of them damaged or written on. These will be important finds for your players. We’ll produce a physical version of The Broken Tarot. It will be added to the rewards of everyone backing at the Temple of the Moon and The Dark Lodge pledge levels. It will also be available as an add-on.

The Darkest Woods is a mega-adventure that takes you into a unique realm of horror. It’s made for the game you’re playing right now, to be integrated into your campaign regardless of the setting or game system. And it's uniquely optimized for a rich, powerful experience that's immersive for the players and easy on the GM.

The Darkest Woods will chill and frighten your players not just through terrifying creatures and challenging situations (though there are plenty of those!) but also by tapping into a deep, primal fear of the wilderness. Along the way, their characters will have experiences that make them deeper, richer, and more powerfully bonded as a party. 

Whether you game face-to-face or online, The Darkest Woods makes the GM's job easy with its unique GM-friendly product design, while providing an amazingly immersive experience for the players through an astounding amount of art, maps, and handouts to share with them—all just a click away.

See how it works with this example from The Darkest House. In the book, you access resources for a room via a QR code or shortlink. In the app, you simply click a link. Try it—scan the code or click this image. This is the link for the Sitting Room from The Darkest House.

The Darkest Woods
is a standalone companion to The Darkest House, the highly praised horror campaign supplement released by Monte Cook Games in 2021. If you’ve never experienced The Darkest House, there are several pledge levels that include it along with The Darkest Woods—a fantastic deal on two incredible horror experiences. (You do not need The Darkest House to use The Darkest Woods.)
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Header: An Exclusive Edition—Only Through This Campaign!

Will you creep even deeper into the dusk-dark twisted paths of the Darkest Woods? Do you crave more secrets? More dangers? The Darkest Road is a distinct portion of the Darkest Woods, with its own areas, its own horrors, and its own mysteries to uncover. This section of the woods might seem at first to offer solace—even a path toward freedom—to those wandering lost in forest. But it has its own unique challenges and terrors.

The standard edition, which will be available for general sale in the future, is a complete package with everything you need for a descent into this unique horror experience—but it doesn't include this additional content. The Darkest Woods Expanded Edition includes everything in the standard edition, plus the Darkest Road. This exclusive edition offers substantially more horror, fully integrated into the rest of The Darkest Woods. Backing this campaign is the only way to get it!

An image of The Darkest Woods expanded edition in book and app formats


That’s not all. If you back for The Darkest Woods Expanded Edition, you also get these additional bonuses:

  • Monte Cook's secret tour of the Darkest Woods: In the style of a director's commentary track, Monte takes you on a video tour of the woods covering his favorite areas. He delves into their genesis and inspiration, gives you insights into the lore behind them, and talks about how he's used them in his own games.
  • The Darkest Woods digital art book: The Darkest Woods contains dozens and dozens of illustrations, all as mysterious as they are frightening. The Art of The Darkest Woods presents all of them—including illustrations from The Darkest Road—in beautiful detail. Annotations by Monte and Art Director Bear Weiter accompany many of the illustrations, and several also include details or alternate versions calling out their secrets and hidden features.

The Darkest Woods will give your players an experience they’ll never forget. The Darkest Woods Expanded Edition gives you even more—and it's only available only through this campaign. Don’t miss out!

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Header: Amazingly Immersive and Astonishingly Easy
The Darkest Woods is uniquely designed for easy GMing—and for an immersive player experience. Every area has a map with tags for the GM, and an untagged version to show the players. All of the art—and there’s loads of it, depicting every location and creature encountered—is made to show the players. There are generous quantities of handouts, and even dozens of sound files! And it’s all easily downloadable, so you can share it with the players quickly and without hassle.

We’re making The Darkest Woods in two formats: a conventional RPG book; and a digital equivalent in the form of a unique app optimized for online use. Both include everything you need to play—you don’t need the book to use the app, or the app to use the book. (We’re making the app for Mac and PC; the reward includes both versions.)

All of this is equally true for the The Darkest Woods Expanded Edition. It's just like the standard edition, but with more content (and, for the book, potentially additional deluxe features unlocked as stretch goals).

The hardcover: Two-page spreads eliminate page-flipping. Hundreds of illustrations and maps—all made to show the players. Scores of handouts and even sound files! Shortlinks and QR codes to download all the resources. Perfect for in-person play. The hefty hardcover makes GMing a face-to-face game easy. Each room is presented as a two-page spread, eliminating page-flipping. A shortlink and QR code for each room lets you quickly download and share player-facing maps, illustrations of what the PCs see, handouts, and even sound files. You can use the book for virtual play—in fact, it's great for that, too—but sharing resources will involve a few more clicks. The app: Everything for an encounter on a single screen. Click the map for details. Download art, maps, and handouts with a single click. Copy secret text with a click to paste it and send  it to a player by DM. Optimized for virtual play. This unique format, pioneered in The Darkest House, is unlike any other RPG product. It makes online play fast-paced and easy on the GM, and provides an incredibly immersive experience for the players. It’s fully compatible with all virtual tabletops, as well as videoconferencing, Discord or Slack play, or any other platform gamers commonly use for online TTRPG games. You can use the app for face-to-face play—in fact, it's great for that, too—but the GM will need a computer with internet access.

Subhead: The Easiest Online GMing Experience
The Darkest Woods app is a digital product created from the ground up for running and playing online—and built to take maximum advantage of that mode of play. Think of it like an RPG book that’s been completely reimagined for the online environment, with pages formatted for your screen, easily sharable resources, no page-flipping, intuitive navigation, and additional features that not only make online gaming easier—they take advantage of its unique nature to deliver a better RPG experience. Your players may find the Darkest Woods a daunting challenge, but you’ll find it amazingly easy to GM.

The Darkest Woods app works with your preferred online TTRPG platform. You can run it on Zoom or Discord, or a virtual tabletop like Roll20 or Astral, or however you normally run online games. Only the GM needs a copy of The Darkest Woods, just like only the GM needs a copy of a conventional adventure book. The GM needs a desktop or laptop computer (Windows or Mac OS—your purchase includes both versions) to use The Darkest Woods. Here's a brief look at The Darkest House, which pioneered this unique format:


Subhead: The Deluxe Expanded Edition Book

The Darkest Woods book is a hefty hardcover, an amazing production that makes it astonishingly easy to GM this mega-adventure. The thoughtful layout puts info where the GM needs it, with an absolute minimum of page-flipping. And all the handouts, art, player maps, sound files, and other sharable resources for an encounter area are easily downloaded via a shortlink and QR code. The Darkest Road will expand it with another entire region of the Woods. We hope to further upgrade this exclusive book’s production through stretch goals!

You can download an excerpt of The Darkest House (the precursor to The Darkest Woods) to take a look at the thoughtful and innovative format that makes it so immersive and easy.

Download a Sneak Peek of The Darkest House

At the end of a  dark, paneled hallway, a strange creature crawls from a painting on the wall.


Both Formats Give You Everything You Need:

  • All the highly detailed encounter areas in the Darkest Woods—some of which are an elaborate challenge to find, and all are difficult to survive. 
  • Hundreds of journal entries, notes, maps, and other props, handouts, and audio files (dozens of them!) to enhance the narrative plus GM maps, illustrations, and diagrams, all designed to be easily downloaded, copied or otherwise shared with the players. 
  • GM's secrets and lore about the different sections of the woods, the terrifying witches that preside over each section, and all the creatures, ghosts, and other mortals trapped that can be encountered therein. 
  • Conversion information for characters and other information the players need to explore (and perhaps escape) the Darkest Woods. 
  • Character sheets, GM and player reference sheets, and other components to streamline play.

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Header: Made for the CAmpaign You're Running Right Now

The Darkest Woods is not a place—not a specific place, that is. Rather, it is the harsh, uncaring soul of the wilderness, and it can be encountered wherever the wilds go untamed. Like the relentless tendrils of an invasive vine, the Darkest Woods pushes its way into our world—your world; any world—in the depths of any patch of wilderness shunned, or undiscovered, by civilization. If there are woods you can get lost in, those woods might lead you into the Darkest Woods.

The Darkest Woods includes enough content for many, many sessions of play. It’s a mega-adventure, of a sort, but not a dungeon to be explored and looted; once the PCs find themselves in the Darkest Woods their goal will be survival and escape. That’s not to say there are no treasures to be found—just that this is first and foremost a true horror experience.



Subhead: Make Your Game Even Better

You can play The Darkest Woods as its own campaign, creating characters just to run this massive adventure. But you’ll get the most out of it when you slip it into your current campaign. Why? Because the horrors of the woods will draw upon characters' memories and personal fears. They’ll play with the PCs’ notions of morality, family, friendship, love, and truth. They’ll exploit the party’s history, personalities, and shared bonds. The true horrors in the woods aren’t measured in hit points, but in the threat they extend to everything the PCs hold dear.

In facing and surviving these challenges, your characters will emerge from the woods with greater insight into their world, their companions, and most of all themselves. The Darkest Woods was really built to be added to your existing campaign—and by deepening your PCs, it will make that campaign even better!



Subhead: Play With Characters From Any Game
The House System easily converts characters from the game rules you’re currently using (it takes about five minutes), and then lets you return to your normal character sheets when your PCs emerge from the woods. The House System is a sort of RPG Rosetta Stone, allowing easy translation from any game system—and even letting you bring characters from different games together.

Your regular, ongoing game will be better after you’ve experienced the Darkest Woods. PCs emerge more deeply developed. Parties emerge more cohesively, with stronger bonds. Alternatively, characters from different games and different systems can chance upon each other and become a group onto themselves in these woods.

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Header: Dark Secrets to be Uncovered

The Woods watch you as you wander, lost among the trees.
The Woods don't care.

The Woods see you isolated, lonely, and in terrible danger.
The Woods don't care.

The Woods are ancient (eternal?) and vast (infinite?).
You are small and brief. Hardly worth noting—to the Woods.



Can your characters escape the Darkest Woods before they are consumed by them? To do so, they'll need to discover and master ancient, primal secrets and perhaps even fundamental truths... about themselves.

Mythic witches, horrific monsters, hateful spirits, cannibalistic cultists, and other dangers have always called the Darkest Woods home. But even the cruelty of the woods in winter, of a burning forest filled with charred ghosts, of a region haunted by things churned up in a flood, or of the truly twisted inhabitants of the Backwoods will test the mettle of any who find themself lost within the Woods' dusk-dark, twisted paths.

These are not random encounters, though. The Woods has its secrets, and characters who discover and piece together those secrets will find themselves ever closer to understanding the nature of this dire entity—and how to escape it. Scores of handouts and audio files contain clues the PCs will weave together to reveal these secrets.

And the PCs are not on entirely on their own. Most beings they'll encounter are malevolent and dangerous, and the Woods itself is uncaring at best. But there are also mysterious folk who can be helpful, even friendly. Their aid or reward is given form in tokens the PCs can find or gain if they help or befriend the right beings—tokens they can expend to their benefit, if used wisely. Beware, though, as some inhabitants see them as a mark of an enemy and attack the bearers on sight.

The many handouts and sound files are provided as downloads from both the book and the app. But imagine the look on your players' faces as you hand them actual props and handouts of the items they discover in the Darkest Woods! The Handouts Set includes physical versions of all the handouts. The Token Set is a set of custom wooden tokens representing mystical symbols of luck given by the mysterious people of the woods.


The witches are not stereotypical fairy-tale figures. These primal beings are avatars of the Woods, and each oversees a region within. Each region has its own thematic and spiritual essence, and the witches represent that essence and enforce its tenets with severity and dread power. These witches are not wart-nosed women with black hats and brooms, but unique entities (male and female and otherwise) the players will quickly learn to fear—but will eventually discover are at least part of the secret to finally escaping the Darkest Woods.

The Darkest Road (the additional region of the Woods included in the exclusive The Darkest House Expanded Edition), like other areas of the Woods, is home to its own witch that brings its particular brand of terror to that section.

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Header: A Standalone Companion to The Darkest House

The Darkest Woods is built on the model of The Darkest House, a highly successful horror delve we released in app format in 2021, followed by the book in 2022. Whereas The Darkest Woods is a mega-adventure you’ll likely play through over the course of many successive sessions, The Darkest House is more like a campaign sub-plot; the PCs may have several encounters with it spread out over the course of your campaign’s other events.

The Darkest House hates you; it is a spiteful entity that insinuates itself in infinite worlds, literally stealing places from them to expand its dark, malignant chambers. If you like what you’ve seen here about The Darkest Woods, and might enjoy a haunted-house-like setting, you’ll probably love The Darkest House. We’re offering several pledge levels that include it, in app format, book format, or both. The Dark Lodge pledge level in particular, offers a fantastic deal on both The Darkest Woods and The Darkest House.

An image of The Darkest House in book and app format
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Header: Pledge Levels

Header: Just the Standard Edition of the Darkest Woods:


Header: The EXCLUSIVE Expanded Edition available Only Through This Campaign. Just the Darkest Woods.


Header: The EXCLUSIVE Expanded Edition available Only Through This Campaign. With the Darkest House.


The Mushroom Glen: $205. Exclusive product, a great discount, and free shipping for brick-and-mortar retailers. Click through for details!
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Header: Add-Ons
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Header: Timeline
January 2025 (as soon as we close the pledge manager): existing books, supplements, and add-ons. Fall 2025: The Darkest Woods book and app, most new add-ons. Winter 2025: Any remaining add-ons.


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Header: The Amazing Team Behind The Darkest Woods. Monte Cook Games has been publishing highly praised, award-winning, innovative RPGs since 2012, including lines such as the Cypher System, Numenera, Invisible Sun, No Thank You, Evil!, Ptolus, Stealing Stories for the Devil, and titles that support any TTRPG, such as The Weird and The Darkest House. We pride ourselves in works that are imaginative, fun, easy to play and GM, and beautiful—and crowdfunding campaigns that, for well over a decade now, have consistently delivered big and on time. Monte Cook (he/they) is well known for his work on D&D (particularly as the co-designer of 3rd Edition) and titles such as HeroClix, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Ptolus, Planescape, Arcana Evolved, Numenera, and Invisible Sun. Over a career spanning 35 years, Monte has won just about every gaming industry award, including a great many ENnies and Origins Awards, and is an inductee into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design's Hall of Fame. Our team also includes renowned and award-winning game designers Bruce R. Cordell (he/him), Sean K. Reynolds (he/him), and Shanna Germain (she/her). Our Art Director Bear Weiter (he/him) and Graphic Designer Javier Beltrán (he/him) make our products so attractive and easy to use. Teri Litorco (she/her), Managing Editor, wrangles the words and projects, with help from Associate Editor Dominique Dickey (they/them). Tammie Ryan (she/her), Jennifer Walls (she/her), Kate Evans (she/her), Olivia Ryan (she/her), and Charles Ryan (he/him) interact with our fans and customers and keep the business rolling along smoothly. Our team is small, but we deliver big!
Join the incredible communicty of Cypher System gamers on the Cypher Unlimited Discord.

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Header: Fulfillment & Shipping
Subhead: Digital Rewards and Add-ons

Your digital rewards (PDFs) will be delivered using BackerKit’s Digital Distribution feature. When a digital reward is ready for you, you will receive a message via BackerKit with a link to download your digital reward. We will also deliver digital rewards through our online store and on DriveThruRPG, since many backers prefer to maintain their libraries of PDFs on one of those platforms. (You can use any or all of these platforms to download your PDFs; the files will be identical.)

Subhead: Physical Rewards and Add-ons
Your physical rewards and add-ons will be delivered through our online store, the MCG Shop. When a physical reward is ready for you, you will receive a message sent through BackerKit with a link that will take you to the MCG Shop to pay for shipping and redeem your reward for free.

We offer a variety of domestic and international shipping methods from which you can choose. As of this writing, basic domestic shipping is $9 per shipment, but we do not control future postal rates, so that cost is subject to change. International shipping is calculated by destination and shipment weight.

For detailed information on shipping and our fulfillment process, visit our Crowdfunding Reward Fulfillment page.

This project is customs friendly. No extra custom charges! Rewards bound for the UK, EU, US, AUS, and NZ will be delivered duty free or duty paid.
Subhead: Our Fulfillment Centers, Taxes, and Duties

We operate our own warehouse in the U.S. and work with trusted global fulfillment partners in Europe and Australia. We do everything in our power to get your rewards into your hands as quickly, reliably, and affordably as possible.

United States: Your rewards will be fulfilled by our shipping center in the United States.

Canada: Your rewards will be fulfilled by our shipping center in the United States. You will be responsible for import duties, taxes, and brokerage fees (if applicable). Please note that our books are printed in Canada, and thus they are not subject to import duties; however, they are subject to GST. Items not manufactured in Canada, such as dice and decks of cards, are subject to import duties and GST.

South America, the South Pacific, and Asia: Your rewards will ship from our shipping center in the United States. You will be responsible for import duties, taxes, and brokerage fees (if applicable).

The EU and UK: Your rewards will be filled by our shipping center in England and will ship DDP (Deliver Duty Paid). UK and EU backers will not pay import duties, but will pay VAT where applicable.

Australia and New Zealand: Your rewards will be filled by our shipping center in Australia. Backers in Australia and New Zealand will not pay import duties and taxes.

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