The 7th Order and Ritual Deck are dark mystery games built on the critically acclaimed and award-winning Carved From Brindlewood system. Each game deals with the battles between light & dark, good & evil, light & shadow, and on the unlikely heroes caught in between.

In The 7th Order by Brian Miranda, you play as members of Knightly Security. A mundane security company that patrols stripmalls, banks, and maybe a special event or two. You also happen to have inherited the responsibility to stop the apocalypse.

In Ritual Deck by J Evan Parks, you play as students at Battle City Prep on your way to becoming elite card duelists. Suddenly you find another spirit inside of you granting you knowledge, power, and a warning. The ancient King of Games is returning. He’s killing students at your school, and only you can defeat him.

Do you have what it takes to stand against the horsemen?
Is your Ritual Deck strong enough to stand against the King of Games?
Play to find out!

Both are games are text complete, edited, and are currently in art & layout. Each book will be 7x10 inches flexibound books between 120-160 pages. If we fund within the 1st 24 hours, each book & both decks of cards will have gilded edge finish added.

You studied hard, built your deck, and earned your spot at Battle City Prep. Now, IT'S TIME TO DUEL! Take on the role of teenage card duelists at your city's elite dueling academy learning from established champions, making friends, playing in tournaments... maybe even going to prom?

It’s all like you dreamed, until the day that an amnesiac spirit latches onto your soul. They warn you that the game is actually a ritual being used to bring an ancient kingdom back to Earth, ruled by the evil King of Games.

Play the game to find out about the Ancient Kingdom & your spirit's role there, who the evil King of Games is, and why people keep dying at your school?!?!

The Zine Club Edition of Ritual Deck is also an 2026 Ennie Award winning title as part of the ZC Year 2 Anthology!

It was supposed to be a simple job. After shitty retail and food service jobs, being a security guard was supposed to be a walk in the park—stand around, make sure nobody acts like a fool, and call the cops if someone does start some shit. Simple and easy.

But then? The End of the World. A mysterious person called the Saint shows up and tells you that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are descending to bring about the End of All Things. The worst part: It's your job to stop them.

The 7th Order explores what happens when it's time for Kingdom Come but only you and your coworkers at Knightly Security can stop it. Play the game to find out how you got caught up in this, what happened to previous Knightly Orders, and to answer the question "Is the world worth saving?"

For folks getting any of the featured pledges, or backing both games, you get two extra mysteries along with other crossover content. 

While there are 12 options for pledges they fall into four categories and can be selected based on if you want either or both games.

We have also structured the addons to make it easy to go all in on one game or the other while still grabbing items from the other title.

We have a number of great things planned.
Here are a few to wet your whistle!
See the Achievements 

Both games are built on the critically acclaimed TTRPG system that debuted with Brindlewood Bay. The system has grown tremendously over the last 5 years with a dedicated fan base and 3rd party creative community.

Carved from Brindlewood (CFB) mystery TTRPGs are famous for:

Created by Jason Cordova, Carved From Brindlewood games are an evolution of the mechanics, playstyle & sensibilities of Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) by Vincent & Meguey Baker. The games use a 2D6 system with Success, Failure & Mixed Success to drive the core mechanics of the game. 

The 7th Order & Ritual Deck both build on these amazing systems and extend them in their own unique ways.

Character creation follows the model of Brindlewood Bay with the selection of unique "Moves", in this case inspired by characters like St Valentine, St Thomas, Kierkegaard, Mary Magdalene, and Judas to help define what your character can do.

At the end of the game your characters decide if they want to save the world, or if the apocalypse may be the best course of action. This distinctive endgame mechanic brings The 7th Order to a dramatic, player-driven conclusion.

On Religion: You don't need religious knowledge or to be religious to enjoy The 7th Order. The game is an exploration of apocalyptic themes and what happens when ordinary humans get caught in the middle of powerful force.

Follows the model of The Between and other "Playbook" based CFB games. Characters are defined by archetypes established on their Shadow Sheet. This invites you to explore the story and history of your character around that anchor persona.

On Dueling: Duels in Ritual Deck are a fast-paced creative challenge that the players will be faced with throughout a session. They'll begin with an NPC or player challenging another to to a duel. They start by summoning their Ritual to attack, at which point that character will ad-hoc create the Ritual their Duelist will play in response, utilizing the Aspects and Power Words they've been gathering in their Deck. It brings the feel of deck-building mechanics to the dice-based, clue-gathering/question-answering system in CFB.

Ritual Deck also uses a new mechanic called Wounds. These build on the existing narrative Conditions that are common to CFB & PBTA games but take them up a notch. They're more difficult to remove, and they memorialize negative experiences that have made the Duelist closer to their Shadow. A Duelist with more Wounds is spikier, harder to get along with. This introduces additional dramatic stakes when trying to connect with your fellow Duelists

The final major mechanical difference in Ritual Deck is a system called Echoes from the Past. These Echoes represent memories the Shadows recover during especially dramatic moments in the story. They take the form of a simple narrative prompt. These prompts not only help flesh out the character of the Shadow in contrast to the Light (your Teen self), but also provide an opportunity learn what the Ancient City was like, and what lead to it's eventual destruction. Each Echo answered also brings the Big Bad closer to completing their plans of world domination or destruction.

September 30th Now You've Zine It w/Evan & the Graftbound Crew
October 11th Procedures At Play Evan talks does a deep dive into dueling
2 Part Actual Play of The 7th Order w/Brian Miranda
2 Part Actual Play of Ritual Deck on One Shot Podcast

Brian Miranda (he/him) - Creator & Lead

Robbi Burns - (they/them) - Art Director & Illustrator
Wes Franks (they/them) - Developmental Editor

Heather Romanowski (she/her) - Line & Copyeditor

Johnny Isorena (he/him) - Layout Production & Graphic Design

Jo Vasinda (he/they) - Music

J Evan Parks (he/him) - Creator & Lead
Andrew Beauman (he/they) - Art Director

The Press Betwixt - Art Team
Chaotic Jamogchian (he/they) - Editor
merritt k (she/her) - Writing Contributor
Dylan Roth (he/him) - Writing Contributor
Hawk Williams (they/them) - Writing Contributor
Lore Arnold (they/them) - Writing Contributor
J Strautman (they/them) - Music

Tony Vasinda (he/him) - Product Design & Publishing
Johnny Isorena (he/him) - Marketing Asset Design
Richard Ruane (he/him) - Logistics
Will Chesney - Site Integration and Communications
Mike Martens - (he/him) - Project Management

Plus One Exp has a robust retail program currently working with almost 200 Friendly Local Game Stores around the globe. In order to avoid locking up your funds, and to avoid platform fees, we encourage retailers to sign up for our retail partnership program by emailing [email protected] and pledging $1 to follow along. 

You will receive all benefits stretch goals unlocked or included in the campaign for your wholesale purchases.

With the manuscript & editing complete, these games should be heading to print quickly after this campaign ends. As long as these games reach their goal, digital fulfillment will happen in November, and prints should arrive in the US in January for fulfillment. 

Shipping will be charged in fulfillment once we’re ready to send books out. 

Given the shifting state of global tariffs and fees we have shifted as much as possible to regionalized fulfillment. We will do our best to eliminate and reduce fees where possible, but we can’t guarantee that there won’t be additional taxes based on your country's policies.