Menagerie Press, a solo indie publisher founded by William Murakami-Brundage, is the July 2026 RPG Publisher Spotlight winner. The studio is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for the Shadowfinder Game Master’s Guide, a supplement designed to blend classic d20 systems with modern dark fantasy rules.
Drawing on four decades of tabletop experience, including ten years of running open-table organised play, Murakami-Brundage focuses on creating modular tools for running games. This spotlight covers the development of Shadowfinder, which translates classic Pathfinder 1E and D&D 3.5E content into the rules of Shadowdark, alongside the designer’s thoughts on indie collaboration, zine culture, and recent licensing shifts.
Who are Menagerie Press? For readers who might be finding your books for the first time through the Fanatical bundle or DriveThruRPG, how would you describe the studio’s core philosophy?
Menagerie Press is just me, and occasionally a friend or two. It’s one guy. My design ethos is “I make things I want to see at my table.” That’s how I decide what to create. While running one of my games, I spot an opportunity or gap and say “I wish I had….[fill in the blank]” so I make it.
You’ve mentioned playing RPGs since you were “knee-high to a goblin.” What was the very first tabletop game that hooked you, and how did you eventually transition from a player to a designer with over fifty products under your belt?
I was hooked from 1st grade, really. Or before. When my mom and dad would have Friday date night, she’d hire one of her friend’s daughters as our babysitter. We’re talking my older sister and I, so I’m about 5 years old. This was very early 1980s. Our babysitter got tired of chasing us around, and decided to sit down and play this new game, D&D, with us. It was literally life-changing. It was Red Box Basic D&D. Everything about it swept me away. My sister and brother-in-law now run Rune & Board, a phenomenal game store (Beaverton, Oregon), and I’m an RPG publisher.
Part 2 of that question: I was the forever GM from middle school on. My friends couldn’t be bothered to learn to DM, so I ran games in Basic D&D, AD&D, and Runequest. That continued until I was an adult, when I ran Earthdawn, Pathfinder 1, and D&D 3.5E. My creative designs come from 40+ years of actual play experience.
You previously ran Organised Play games for nearly a decade. How did that massive amount of time at the table, running games for so many different real-life groups, shape the way you design adventures today?
Organized Play was a huge part of my push for modular design. With Organized Play via Pathfinder Society or Adventurers League, you can’t predict who you’ll have at your table session to session. Tables are often public sign-up, no reserved seating. It taught me that I couldn’t allow a single PC, player, character, or plot hook to drive my entire campaign. There must be multiple paths to progress, but progress also needs to be defined by the players in that specific session. I’m guessing I’ve probably run open table games now for 10+ years, including Organized Play, and I’ve probably played with at least 500 different players across all my tables. Maybe more, I don’t really have a way to track the # of people I’ve GM’d for.
Let’s talk about Shadowfinder. It is described as a hybrid of 3.5e/Pathfinder 1E mechanics reworked for Shadowdark. What was the spark that made you realise these two distinct eras of gaming could be smashed together so beautifully?
I have a lot of players I regularly play with from my Pathfinder 1 days, and I had a thought one day, “It would be nice to run this shelf of Pathfinder modules I’ve collected, but with a simpler rule set.” And thus, Shadowfinder was born. They’re both rooted in fantasy d20 origins, with Shadowdark being more akin to Basic D&D w/ 5E influences. The foundation of Shadowfinder is “All the Pathfinder flavor, but streamlined.” It’s made to be more accessible, and uses random character generation (3d6 for stats, random backgrounds and starting gear, etc.) Pathfinder 1, especially past level 5, becomes a game of finesse, rewarding extreme rules mastery. Shadowfinder removes the plethora of rules and optimal builds, but retains iconic classes, spells, and tries to keep all the Pathfinder 1 thematic elements.
Converting all six massive PF 1E Bestiaries into nearly 1,800 Shadowdark stat blocks sounds like a colossal task. What was the hardest part of translating that decade of high-fantasy content into Shadowdark’s leaner, deadlier framework?
Making the Shadowfinder Bestiary was a bit Sisyphusian. I regularly posted updates, and they were like “Bestiary 3: 41/289.” The Shadowfinder Bestiary includes every Pathfinder 1 Bestiary creature, every Shadowdark core rules creature, and approx. 30-40 Pathfinder 1 NPC stat blocks from the NPC Codex (so a GM has humanoids on hand like the ogre-slayer, gambler, or cavern druid). I had to develop really early on a kind of mental framework, a “this means that, X equals Y, keep A not B” rubric. For example, Shadowfinder’s stats rarely get above +4, with only a few creatures going above +6 for a stat. Meanwhile, in Pathfinder 1, stats frequently cruise into the +10 or higher category. And I couldn’t just do a straight conversion, it was more a kind of curve: yes, a humanoid with STR 18 in Pathfinder 1 may have a STR +4 in Shadowdark, but a construct with STR 30 may only be STR +5, because of the flattened math. And that didn’t hold true across physical vs. mental stats. Very few Pathfinder 1 creatures have INT 30 or CHA 25, but there are quite a few monsters with STR 30+ or CON 30+. So it wasn’t straightforward. It required an analysis for each creature to understand the Pathfinder 1 intent.
Your current Kickstarter is for the Shadowfinder GM Guide. Without giving away any spoilers for GMs wanting to surprise their players, what can backers expect to find inside this specific book?
The GM Guide is a foundational book that has tons of magic items, random encounter tables, random adventure elements, traps, poisons, diseases, all the Pathfinder 1 standards a GM needs to run almost any Pathfinder 1 adventure. It’s made so a GM can swap in the Shadowfinder equivalent of almost any Pathfinder 1 adventure element. But it also leans on the Pathfinder 1 extra content, like fame/infamy, alternate spellcasting like spell slots (Vancian casting) or spell points (mana), monster templates (so you can make fiendish giant frogs or an umbral ogre), and more. I just finished writing the optional rules sections on Wounds and Vigor (in case a GM wants a flat HP, very high lethality game like you’d find in Runequest or Warhammer) and Words of Power, for when an adventurer learns a single-use, potent magical word (in style, think of the Dragonborn’s Thu’um shouts in Skyrim, or the incantation Ash Williams recites from the demonic book in Army of Darkness).
You’ve mentioned that the recent OGL history influenced your decision to step away from it for Shadowfinder, which sadly meant sunsetting Westlands, your 2D6 fantasy heartbreaker. How has navigating that shifting legal landscape changed your perspective on independent publishing?
I felt betrayed when the OGL fiasco hit the news. I think we all owe a big thank you to Lin Codega for breaking that news. The effects of the OGL problem are still rippling down, even now. I know several creators who abandoned projects or were forced back to the drawing board. It’s put a chill over RPG design ever since. I know that WOTC released their D&D 5E SRD into Creative Commons, but we haven’t seen a D&D 3E Creative Commons rules set. I don’t have much hope that WOTC will ever make good on their promise to release a Creative Commons 3E SRD.
Your new adventure, Night-Stitcher, draws from the Brothers Grimm and old fey stories, with a distinct Dolmenwood vibe. What draws you to that specific style of dark, folklore-infused fantasy?
My friend John Watson is running Dolmendark (which is, as you can imagine, Dolmenwood in Shadowdark). I love mash-ups, I love mixing things together, fusion cuisine style. I was already working on Night-Stitcher, so I asked John for suggestions for Dolmenwood substitutions. I’ve heard feedback from GMs that they love Night-Stitcher, so his feedback was very on point.
You’ve launched some gorgeous special edition custom A5 zines for Night-Stitcher, citing Gabor Lux’s Fomalhaut series as a major visual inspiration. Why do you think the old-school zine format has captured the imagination of modern tabletop players so strongly?
I think Fomalhaut is a world of its own. I love Gabor Lux’s work and zines. I didn’t want to be a Fomalhaut hack, and wanted to find my own design style for the zines. I know that Arcane Library released the Cursed Scrolls #1-6, which are also incredibly popular and worth reading. Just kind of going off the cuff, the zine format reminds me of the early DIY 1990s punk zine culture, and also the earliest TSR modules you’d buy for $6.99 at the local game store, like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Functionally, zines are good because they’re ephemeral. If a module or zine costs you $14, you can run it, mark it up, pass it to a friend. You’re not out 50 bucks, it’s the cost of a foot-long sandwich and soda. It gets wrinkled and worn, because it’s like a paperback you grab off the shelf near the checkout line: meant to be used.
You’ve openly put out a call for collaborators, particularly creators who want to help convert best-selling Pathfinder 1E adventures to Shadowfinder. What does an ideal collaboration look like to you, and what kind of projects are you itching to tackle next?
I’m big on collaborating. I love mixing things around and seeing what comes brewing up. An ideal collaboration can look like a few different things: it could be another creator with a great product, like Stephen Grodzicki’s Tales of Argosa (previously Low-Fantasy Gaming). I converted almost two dozen Argosa adventures to Shadowdark because I love the Argosa writing and play style. In that case, Steve already had everything written, I just had to convert things over. Owen KC Stephens and I are working on converting Rogue Genius Games’s Pathfinder 1 adventures to Shadowfinder, so keep an eye out for that in the very near future. We’re starting with The Black Skull Laughs, an Ed Greenwood adventure we’re converting to Shadowfinder. Attila Nagy is doing some amazing art for it.
Aside from the GM Guide, do you have any secret projects currently in the pipeline or new roleplaying games you are experimenting with that readers should keep an eye out for this year?
I don’t usually talk about secret projects. As Cain said in the Sandman comics: “I keep telling you: It’s the mystery that endures. Not the explanation. A good mystery can last forever.”
Thank you, William!
William Murakami-Brundage continues to expand the project with upcoming collaborative conversions alongside industry veterans, focusing on bringing classic high-fantasy story modules to a faster, deadlier style of play. The current campaign provides the remaining tools needed for game masters to adapt older d20 resources directly into these retro-styled rules.
Quick Links
- Support the Shadowfinder Game Master’s Guide on Kickstarter.
- Explore the full catalogue at the Menagerie Press DriveThruRPG Store.
- Visit the Oregon tabletop outlet Rune & Board.
- Read industry reporting at Lin Codega’s Journalistic Portfolio.
- View the illustrations of artist Attila Nagy on Facebook.
- Check out Pickpocket Press’s Adventure Anthology for Shadowdark.
