2020

NOT THE END

A TTRPG about the hero's journey

Create your Hero by writing traits on an hive of hexagons, then put them into play in every test. No dice: draw up to four tokens from a bag – each positive token is a success, each negative token a complication – so outcomes usually mix both, steering the story and your Hero’s growth in unexpected directions.
 

Partner
Fumble GDR, MS Edizioni

Collaborators
Pietro Bastas, Claudio Serena

My Role
Author, Art Director, Layout Artist

I'M FOND ON THIS GAME BECAUSE...

It’s the project that marked my real debut in publishing – and it landed with a force I honestly didn’t expect. It was widely welcomed in Italy, won Best RPG of the Year at Lucca Comics & Games 2020, and later – despite a messy honesly problematic publishing journey – made its way internationally and earned six ENNIE nominations. It’s one of those games that keeps proving it has legs, no matter what.

To this day, it’s still the title most people tie my name to: for many, I’m “the guy who wrote Not the End.” A legacy I want to honor, and I also want to leave behind my shoulders. Yep, that push-and-pull is Not the End in a nutshell: success and complications always walked hand in hand.

Even the way it came to life felt like one of its campaign: intense, full of breakthroughs and hard moments that shaped me as a designer and as a person. In a very real sense, creating it was a transformation story, just like the ones the game is built to tell.

The game came out during COVID, as the first Kickstarter by Fumble GDR – an editorial venture I was part of back then, together with Claudio Serena – and it became a major Italian success right in the middle of what felt like a renaissance for indie TTRPGs here. I still remember the countless online sessions during lockdown, played in the purest spirit of the game: the story will get complicated, but – no matter what – this is not the end.

And then there’s the detail that still makes me smile: the Lucca award ceremony happened remotely – the only one in Lucca’s history – and I still felt an incredible wave of warmth from people celebrating with me over a conference call. The trophy arrived by courier, broken. We fixed it with a hot glue gun. It’s almost too perfect: every hero has scars, and somehow Not the End has always carried its own, proudly.

Some Good Bits About the Game

These notes aren’t exhaustive or complete—they’re just a few aspects I’m particularly happy with, and I felt like sharing.

THE HIVE

Your character is described by a grid of hexagons meant to be filled with tags. From the very beginning, you can describe your character with the exact language that fits them – no stats required, no forced categories.  

Those words live in a shared space, therfore their placement means something: you can see what matters most, what sits at the core, what stays on the edges, and how different traits, bonds, and flaws relate to each other. 

TOKENS

When you face a test, you load a bag with tokens: one positive token for each trait you bring into play, and a number of negative tokens based on the difficulty. Then you draw 1 to 4 tokens at random.  

Each positive token pushes the story in the direction you want. Each negative token gives the Narrator permission to introduce complications. There are no numbers to crunch and nothing to “interpret” — the focus isn’t how likely you are to succeed, but what you’re willing to let happen in order to succeed.  

Outcomes are often layered, because the positive and negative tokens you draw don’t cancel each other out. It’s fast, narrative-driven, and every draw matters.

GROWTH

In Not the End, you don’t level up by accumulating XP. Your character changes whenever you decide they’re facing a Crucial Test – something so important it’s bound to leave a mark.

There’s no limit to how many times this can happen, but there’s a catch: you must call it before you know the outcome. Declare the test Crucial, face it, narrate what happens, and only then either create a new trait or reshape an existing one.

When you grow is up to you. How you grow depends on what the story puts you through. That’s the core loop: you change the story, and the story changes you – so your honeycomb of hexagons always stays an honest snapshot of who your character is at that exact moment.

NOT THE END

In Not the End, you don’t die because of a single unfortunate roll. Your hero’s ending is in your hands – and it’s never just an ending: it’s the start of something else.

When your hero’s arc comes to a close (yes, even through death), the story shifts in a meaningful way: you get to decide how.

Also, every other hero – if they wants – gets to change one of their traits, carrying something of you forward.

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©Claudio Pustorino 2026