The Indie RPG Awards

Triniton is a tabletop roleplaying game that is 100% Beginner friendly, contains an EPIC guide to find new players and is FUN, also as a standalone adventure!

You are the last hope before the Voider wakes up and devours everything.

You will embark on an amazing adventure to try and save Arbes and it's inhabitants. This is an excellent adventure for beginners with tons of guides (like how to find people to play with) or those who wants a challenge (with morally difficult quests).

Trinton is cooperative rpg game with narrative d6 rules included, but playable with any rules. It has card-minigames and a prequel novel set in a persistent fantasy campaign which will change and grow as you play the game.

Will you succeed or will the universe fall into darkness?

Bounty hunters track down outlaws hiding in trader towns on worlds at the fringe of the galaxy. Starships explore unknown worlds, going where nobody has gone before. Great generational arks seek somewhere to call home. Detectives investigate a murder on a trail which will take them from Mars to Jupiter's moons. Agents infiltrate a criminal organization, going undercover to take down a galactic crime boss. A group of smugglers locates a new hyperdrive system to increase the speed of their freighter.

Play a brave starship captain, a reckless smuggler, a hardy marine, or a daredevil pilot. Are you a cunning bounty hunter, a clever engineer, or a charismatic trader? Over sixty science fiction careers await you!

FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH O.L.D. THE HEROIC FANTASY ROLEPLAYING GAME!

This roleplaying game allows you to create and run adventures in any sci-fi setting!

• A range of alien species, and over 60 careers which allow you to generate any far-future character with a fun, intuitive life-path system.
• A wide array of science fiction equipment, including weapons, armor, drugs, cybernetics, vehicles, and more. Wield anything from a laser sword to a sonic pistol; use a gravbelt or a handheld scanner; wear a kevlar vest or a powered suit of armor.
• An array of optional psionic disciplines and powers, allowing you to play anything from a commercial telepath to a noble star knight.
• Full rules for running the game, including fast but tactical combat, environments, and extended scientific, medical and engineering tasks.
• Starship combat rules, both using detailed hex-based miniatures and abstract theatre of the mind.
• Rules for creating ship crews from which to form specialized Away Teams for specific missions.
• Astronomical information, space travel, and information on starship crews and operations.
• Extensive guidelines for building a far-future game setting, with detailed rules for creating star systems, planets, civilizations, races, careers, monsters, and more, along with discussion on genre, theme, and technology.

Whether you're aboard a starship exploring new worlds, a bounty hunter tracking down outlaws on the fringes of civilisation, an agent infiltrating an intergalactic criminal organization, an intrepid hunter of exotic alien species, fighting a galactic civil war, or just a trader trying to make your way in an uncaring universe, N.E.W. has you covered!

Blades in the Dark is a tabletop role-playing game about a crew of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and, above all, riches to be had -- if you're bold enough to seize them.

You and your fledgling crew must thrive amidst the threats of rival gangs, powerful noble families, vengeful ghosts, the Bluecoats of the city watch, and the siren song of your scoundrel's own vices. Will you rise to power in the criminal underworld? What are you willing to do to get to the top?

In this stand-alone game, you'll find:

• Rules to create your scoundrel using the following character archetypes: the Cutter, the Hound, the Leech, the Lurk, the Slide, the Spider, or the Whisper.
• Rules to create your crew, built from types like Assassins, Bravos, a Cult, Hawkers, Shadows, or Smugglers.
• A robust core mechanic which puts the fiction first--the strength of a character's position (desperate, risky, or controlled) matters just as much as the character's ability scores.
• A lightning-fast mechanic for planning criminal operations to cut through the usual slog of planning at the game table.
• Rules for alchemical experiments, gadget tinkering, and weird occult powers--including rules for playing Ghosts and other strange beings.
• A setting guide to the haunted city of Doskvol, with all the maps, factions, NPCs, schemes, and opportunities you need to run an exciting sandbox game.

GAME INFORMATION
Number of players: 3-6
Age of players: 13+
Length: 2-6 hours
Type of Game: Roleplaying Game
Page Count: 336

The Throne stands empty.
Heaven has fallen, and the Words of Creation thunder from new throats.
Undestined, unfettered, unchosen, you are Godbound, and your will is writ with fire.

Godbound is a game of divine heroes in a broken world, men and women who have seized the tools that have slipped from an absent God's hands. Bound by seeming chance to the Words of Creation, these new-forged titans face a world ravaged by the mad ambitions of men and the cruel legacy of human folly. Their foes are many: the jealous parasite gods that suck at the wounds of the world, the furious Angelic Host that once held Heaven against the armies of men, and the endless legions of sorcerers, god-monsters, mortal tyrants, and eldritch relicts that scourge the shattered realms. The Godbound stand against these horrors, determined to forge a better world from the fragments of the old. Still, not all these newborn divinities have a hero's soul, and some nurture red dreams of glory and unfettered rule. Will you be a merciful god to your people, or will you make them dread your holy name?

Godbound does more than simply give you the tools to create these wielders of the Words. Within these pages, a GM will find the guidelines they need to challenge the mightiest of heroes and mark tremendous deeds on the face of their world. Inside this book, you'll find...

• Everything you need to take a Godbound hero from their first uncertain awakening to the pinnacle of divine supremacy, with mighty Words of Creation, divine gifts, and enormous works of celestial Dominion.
• Fearsome god-monsters and terrifying foes to tax even a pantheon of Godbound. More than that, you'll find specific instructions and advice for matching martial challenges with situations and groups.
• Sine Nomine-style system-neutral tools for building demigod-worthy adventures and Former Empire ruins. Create noble courts, lost shards of Heaven, hidden ruins, and dire perils for your heroes to overcome. Play a different game? Lift these tools out and use them with your system of choice!
• A system-neutral Dominion and faction mechanic that lets heroic deeds have mechanically-supported effects on the campaign world. Your hero wants to build a fortress in her native village, or ward an allied nation from the scourge of a Host-spawned disease? These rules show you how to do so, and how to make it count in play. Need to find out what happens when the pantheon's holy nation declares war on an insidious empire of evil? The rules here will give you an answer you can use.
• Old-school inspired play mechanics derived from the Scarlet Heroes game system that are easy to pick up and let you loot decades of material for foes and challenges for the players. Just grab a classic arch-enemy, run it through the conversion notes in the bestiary chapter, and you've got your next campaign nemesis.

Low Fantasy Gaming is a tabletop RPG built for sword & sorcery adventures in low magic worlds.

LFG is a mix of old school and modern game design, based on aspects of the 1d20 Open Game Licence. LFG is rules lite, with fast, gritty combat and dark & dangerous magic.

Looking at the world through a feminist lens reveals absurd, tragic, and fascinating situations.

Written by feminists from eleven different countries, #Feminism offers bite-sized takes on contemporary feminist issues. Each of the 34 nano-games in this collection requires between three and five participants, simple (if any) props, and up to an hour of play time.

The games range from silly to serious, including scenarios about selfies and rom-coms as well as reproductive rights and domestic violence. And of course, enjoyment has no ideological boundaries-- there are games here for participants new to feminism as well as those experienced in making gender arguments on the internet.

Singularity is a transhuman dating show larp. You play the Host, the Star, and three Contestants on a dating show game set in the transhuman future. During each session of the game, you play through one episode of the dating show.

"Singularity is The Upgrade meets Undertale: a performative game show about the fragility of relationships made fascinating by its very queer, posthuman contestants. Quick and easy to set up and play, this game will nevertheless have your players in stitches, in tears, and in contemplation." - Professor Evan Torner, Co-Editor of Analog Game Studies

"Singularity's contestants are diverse and cleverly written, built from fresh metaphors that'll immediately remind you of people you know." - Jackson Tegu, Designer of Kaleidoscope and Monsterhearts: Second Skins

"Caitlynn Belle, Josh Jordan and their talented collaborators are in top form, raising the stakes on romance, competition, and what it means to be a conscious being." - Emily Care Boss, Designer of Breaking the Ice, Shooting the Moon, and other romance games

Goblin Quest is a tabletop roleplaying game about slapstick violence, fatal ineptitude, and the greatest adventure of your life.. Play five goblins each (in sequence, not parallel) and watch them meet hilarious ends while failing to achieve the most basic tasks. Will they survive the dangerous world of the Great Battle Camp and avoid the attentions of brutal orcs, murderous bugbears, mean-spirited hobgoblins and scary wizards? Probably not. But you'll have fun finding out!

The 120-page book is packed with full-colour art from "Calamity" Jon Morris, Iguanamouth and Tim Wilkinson Lewis, and has loads of ideas for great adventures from the leading lights of the game design world such as James Wallis, Ken Hite, Rob Heinsoo, Naomi Alderman, Merritt Kopas, and more.

One thousand years ago, the gods and titans slew one another in a great battle for the heavens. In their destruction, their blood rained from the heavens, permeating the earth, and drenching the soil. Centuries passed. From this blood arose powerful beings, capable of unearthly feats. Some were born of god's blood, noble and perfect. Others were born from titans blood, twisted and malevolent. A third was born an abomination of the two -- half god, half titan: the bloodless gorgons.

But the Storm is coming. The time of ascendancy is at hand. The kingdom can have but one ruler -- the King of Storms. Which child of heaven shall take his or her place upon the throne?

And who will be consumed by the Storm?

Praxis is a series of story roleplaying games that thrusts characters into dramatic situations and is based on the principles of the Protocol game system. Each game uses the same set of rules, with vastly different parameters, start-points, roles, plot twists, and finales. Praxis does not play like a traditional roleplaying game. It does not require a gamemaster. There is no script. No endpoint. No cumbersome or extraneous mechanics detracting from the story. An entire epic can be played in under four hours.

War Birds is an anthology of games about women in World War II. These larp and freeform style games focus on the ways that war creates opportunities for women that are at once terrible in their circumstance and beautiful in their capacity to transform lives on the margins.

Designed by an international team of women writers, War Birds presents fun-to-play, easy-to-run games that let you explore exciting stories you might not have heard before:

• Home front factory workers embroiled in racial strife
• Female aviators finding sisterhood and freedom in the skies
• Women finding queer expression and community in a WAC motor pool
• Three generations of Jewish partisans holding on to tradition under fire
• A family in occupied Denmark struggling with resistance and control
• A Japanese-American family under relocation orders determine what to keep and what to leave behind

A collection of games written by Moyra Turkington, Ann Eriksen, Kira Magrann, Shoshana Kessock and a bonus game by Wendy Gorman, these games have been put together as an anthology with an interest in creating a multiplicity of perspectives about women in conflict. The games sometimes overlap, reinforce and contradict each other. They provide a broader investigation into the contribution of women in the war effort and they ask hard questions about history and how we interpret and remember it.

Each game is fully complete and playable without any of the other games in the anthology. You can play just one, or you can play them together for a rich play experience where these astounding stories provide contrast and strength in context to one another. These games are designed to give you everything you need to know to run or play them -- with no research required.

Welcome to StarCluster 4 with Zero Stage, an introductory game for StarCluster 4. You play agents of the Unifactoid Peripatetic Headline Intelligencer news agency, agents with a thirst for news and a disregard for personal safety. You cover all of Jeshen Space, a ten sun system empire belonging to the Jeshen - and their allies, the Humans.

Your characters are Human or Jeshen. You know what Humans are, and Jeshen are very humanoid indeed - tailed, hairless, hermaphroditic, semi-aquatic humanoids. They run Jeshen Space, and own the choicest Real Estate. Of course, they were here first, and they took in Humanity as refugees, and beggars should not be choosers.

At any rate, Humanity has convinced the Jeshen that they co-evolved with their servitor apecies - uplifted animals, robots, and bioroids - and they could not live without them. So, though it disgusts the Jeshen, Humans have their slaves, and Jeshen Space is crawling with secrets and conflicts!

The Progenitors - the Eldar - are gone. They were much like Humans, but they had no tails, nor nictitating membranes. They are gone, and their old servitors are looking for them. So we search for them, on every planet, but find only ruins.

Noirlandia is a collaborative roleplaying game for 3-4 players about principled investigators in a corrupt city. It utilizes Questlandia's mechanics with a few new twists.

Key features of the game:

• 9 quickstart mysteries for jumpstarting your game
• No GM
• Solve a mystery by pinning leads to an actual corkboard
• Single session
• Collaborative storytelling
• Player-generated setting
• Historic, modern, or fantastic world-building
• Friendly to new & experienced roleplayers

You are a predator: a vampire who stalks human prey in the night, feasting on their blood.

Blood is life. It's eating, drinking, breathing, and fucking, all wrapped up in one little, crimson drop. Your thirst for blood is blinding and drinking it -- that's ecstasy. Feeding from prey isn't just sucking on a juice box; it's going to a fine restaurant.

You will go to any length to feed. The craving to do so is ever-present. Even when you swallow your fill of blood, the devil whispers in your ear, tempting you to drink more. Go hungry and the beast takes over. The beast is the relentless beating in your lifeless heart; it craves excess, cruelty, and destruction. When the beast wins, you lose your free will and devolve into a mindless monster. Your humanity -- your connection to what it means to be human -- is the only thing that holds the beast at bay, and it is a flickering flame in the windswept darkness. Between feast and famine, restraint and recklessness, a predator's unlife offers more than an eternal, blood-junkie existence. Immortality is the reward that awaits a predator who can balance on the knife edge.

Predators are the apex: the union of man's scheming ingenuity and beast's instinctive ferocity. Though man and lesser creatures are sheep to the wolf, the wolf is among a pack of wolves. And in this pack, the most cunning and ruthless is the alpha. All predators envy that power and prestige. They nip at each other nightly, fighting over the scraps. Each hopes to one night rule the pack. Thus, from the greatest predator to the least, all are embroiled in a ceaseless conflict of intrigue and bloodshed.

This is what it means to be a predator. This is Undying.

THIS FIGHT IS PERSONAL.

Headspace is a Cyberpunk roleplaying game about hyper-competent operatives fighting personal battles against the Corporations controlling the world. These unlikely heroes regret the direct hand they had in making the world the dystopian place it is, so now they're going to try and change the world. Alone, they wouldn't stand a chance. But with Headspace, an advanced technology to share consciousness, together the Operators can make a difference. But will their Headspace be able to manage the Stress of sharing skills, memories, and regrets?

Armed with Headspace technology, no Operator is ever alone. The Headspace makes everyone in it greater than themselves, able to use each other's skills with seamless efficiency. So long as one as one Operator can do something, they all can. p

Inside this book you will find:

• 6 unique Operators, each masters of their field: the Handler, the Infiltrator, the Ronin, the Runner, the Tech, and the Whitecoat.
• Immersive Operator creation rules linking all the characters directly to each other and to why the world is the way it is.
• Game play that focuses on five emotions: Rage, Grief, Fear, Need, and Ego. Explore how they influence play in a rules system that moves the fiction forward through emotional complications.
• Clear guidance for the Game Master on how to run the game and portray the Corporations fighting for control in this dark future.
• Headspace is inspired by the rules-light framework of Apocalypse World, The Sprawl, Monsterhearts, and Dungeon World.

Take the fight to the corporations. Change your world.

4-6 Players
2-4 Hours/Session

The two samurai stared at each other.
Once they were friends. Brothers. But time has come for honor to be regained, and vengeance to be unleashed.
Footing adjusted. Grips tightened. Eyes narrowed.
A single moment and it was over.

Keywords: Narrative, Two-Player, Multiple Genres, Cards, No Character Sheet

Different times call for different games

Have you ever wondered...
...how the children from Narnia coped back in the real world?
...what it's like to voyage into a black hole?
...how dystopias are created, and destroyed?
...what you would sacrifice to protect your family?
...what heroes talk about on the eve of a life-altering battle?
...how to defend your village, when your heroes are away?
...who protects your home when you're not looking?

Seven Wonders has the answers!

Seven Wonders is a collection of stand-alone story games from UK-based games designers, which focus on characterisation and inter-character drama, and use improvisational techniques to tell innovative, compelling tales.

The Black Hack is a super-streamlined roleplaying game that uses the Original 1970s Fantasy Roleplaying Game as a base, and could well be the most straightforward modern OSR compatible clone available. If speed of play and character creation, compatibility, and simple - yet elegant rules are what you yearn for. Look no further!

The Black Hack is a fast playing game and the rules can be picked up in minutes. The full rules fit in a single 20 page A5 book!

Here's a few quotes from the playtesting sessions of the game:
Mick Reddick - "Black Hack... Played this in beta and can honestly say this is as much fun as you can have with a retro clone! Simple, Streamlined and Superb."
Tony Tucker - "The Black Hack is so simple and flexible I can run it off the top of my head. Think up some weird monsters, give them some hit dice and go crazy!"
Daniel Sell, Undercroft 'zine - "David black designs with spunk. Sharp and funny, full of the old spirit."
Chris McDowall, Into the Odd - "Blackhack is three-chord D&D. It hand picks the best parts of the game's forty year history and distills it down to its firey, addictive spirit. Everything discarded is soon forgotten."

The Nightmares Underneath is an old school role-playing game with a strong horror theme, set in a fantasy Middle East where dungeons are invading nightmares intent on the destruction of civilization.

In the Kingdoms of Dreams, all is right with the world--except for one thing. Even though the Law has triumphed over the powers of Chaos, banishing idolatry and superstition in favour of science and reason, humanity is still threatened by a dangerous, otherworldly force. The Realm of Nightmares invades the physical world, sending incursions in the form of dungeon to undermine and destroy society.

The Nightmares Underneath conforms to the following common assumptions of other old school games: six attributes, 3d6 in order, class and level, xp for treasure, spells are memorized, and there is a simple system of rolling under your attribute scores for saves and skill tests.

Some aspects of the game are less common:

• Initiative is rolled again each round, but only by the players--monsters always use the same initiative scores.
• There are 5 alignments, instead of the usual 3 or 9, and they affect the way a character interacts with magic and social institutions.
• Instead of hit points, this game uses a Disposition score, which you roll for each day of adventuring. Once your character runs out of Disposition, instead of dying, successive damage reduces your attributes, and may cause you to be crippled, maimed, or knocked unconscious before being killed. The special attacks of monsters may also reduce your attribute scores instead of causing normal damage.

A World of Wuxia

Enter a land of broken hearts and shattered bones, haunted by the legacy of the Demon Emperor. Find adventure and explore a wuxia-infused world of rival sects, blood-stained sabers, ancient manuals, and legendary kung fu masters.

Born high or low, you are a martial hero who can channel internal energy into your weapon--be it a sword, fist, or flywhisk-- with dazzling power. Bound across earth, treetop, air and water as you battle your foes. Learn secret kung fu techniques, how to strike at vital pressure points, perform powerful forbidden rituals or brew foul poisons. Face down roaming swordsmen, animal demons, evil officials, and the great masters of the age as your kung fu grows more profound.

About Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate

Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate is a game of gravity-defying martial artists inspired by wuxia film and drama series. It comes with its own detailed martial arts fantasy setting inspired by Song Dynasty China but can be used in any Ancient Chinese or Wuxia campaign. Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate uses the Network System and includes a full selection of martial sects. Over 180 Kung Fu Techniques are provided along with guidelines and tips for helping your game table to develop its own individual Kung Fu techniques and wuxia flavor.

The Beast is an unsettling erotic game of imagining you are having sex with the Beast -- an alien and inhuman creature -- and writing a diary describing your erotic encounters, your fears and your anxieties.

This is a solo game to play over the course of 21 days. Every day you draw a card with an event or a question that will stimulate associations and invite you to visit unusual and perverse regions of your imagination, and then you write your thoughts and reactions to it in your diary.

From the comic book and radio stories of the A.E.G.I.S. Tales universe comes an RPG of thrilling adventure!

A past that was not our own. A dangerous future. Airship Daedalus brings all the heroic action of the classic pulps to your dining room table!

Chart a course for two-fisted excitement as a pilot, explorer, soldier, scientist, pirate, entertainer, occultist... and MORE!

Discover lost cities, befriend exotic natives, encounter ancient horrors and thwart the machinations of secret societies bent on world domination!

Includes:

• complete setting based on the Airship Daedalus and A.E.G.I.S. Tales comics and radio serials
• simple, cinematic XPG system from Arrowflight, Santa's Soldiers, RADZ, Shriek X, Mean Streets, and Red Dwarf - The Roleplaying Game
• over 20 pulp adventure character archetypes
• gazetteer of lost cities and civilizations
• magic and psychic powers
• bestiary of wild creatures and legendary horrors
• and MUCH MORE!

"So you fancy yourself a hero? Well, it's a dangerous thing to set off into the wild places of the world, into the realm of legend. Dragons and monsters and worse await you. But if you've both blade and heart as strong as steel, then perhaps you might become a legend yourself - if you're willing to set off on The Hero's Journey."

The Hero's Journey Fantasy Roleplaying™ is a complete tabletop roleplaying game based on and compatible with Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox™. It provides fourteen classes, a complete bestiary, rules for adventuring, with optional rules to help you tailor your gaming experience and tell the legendary stories that you've always imagined. All you need is this book, a few dice, and a stout heart.

Inside these pages you've find a information from previous supplements in the White Box line of products published by Barrel Rider Games that have been compiled, updated, streamlined and integrated with the material found in Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox™ to create a complete roleplaying game. This information has been packaged in a clean, visually appealing design to create a game with the options of fantasy gaming from the 1980s and 1990s while holding to the simplicity and flexibility of the early days of the hobby.

Cryptomancer is a tabletop role-playing game made for hackers, by hackers. It features an original fantasy setting and gameplay informed by diverse security disciplines: information security, physical security, intelligence analysis, clandestine tradecraft, and risk management. Players assume the role of characters on the run from a shadowy organization that rules the world through mass surveillance, propaganda, and political coercion.

• Explore a rich fantasy setting connected by the Shardscape, the magical equivalent of the Internet
• Attack and defend fantasy networks built upon real networking and cryptography principles
• Build up your safehouse and manage covert cells of spies, scouts, political agitators, and assassins
• Customize your character with dozens of talents and spells emphasizing stealth, deception, and creative problem-solving

Kill all the orcs, hack all the things!

Atlantis nears its fall.

An empire founded on a dream tears itself apart. Slaves make one last bid for freedom. The precursors of the human race rail against extinction.

You came from this world. Fated to witness the end of the age of miracles, you have the power to make one final difference. You will love and hate for the fate of a world you will not live to see.

Your future lies in the cards. Endings, catastrophe, triumph. Death, the Tower, the Chariot.

What wrongs will you right?
Whom will you save?
What will be your legacy?
Where will you stand in the face of the coming wave?

A game of theosophical myth, outsider art, and the dreams of youth by Howard David Ingham (Promethean: the Created, Vampire: the Requiem and Changeling: the Lost).

Note that this game contains nudity and discussion of adult themes, and is not for minors. Those who are offended by discussion of slavery, prejudice and similar, or those for whom such discussion recalls trauma should approach Chariot with caution.

To whom it may concern,

Quill is a solo roleplaying game with a twist. Instead of hacking goblins and looting caves, you are writing letters. Rather than having attributes like strength or dexterity, characters in Quill use Penmanship, Language and Heart.

In a game of Quill you will write real letters, with the aim to craft the best, most beautiful missive possible in order to get a favourable response. You will use words from the Ink Pot to inspire your letter - but be warned, should you roll badly you could end up writing a bad letter.

If you're looking to kill some time, Quill is a perfect roleplaying distraction and something completely different from anything else out there.

Due to the lovely response to the game online, Quill is now a living document. New scenarios will be added on a fairly regular basis.

Someone stole my kid brother's bike...

Someone sabotaged the pep rally...

Someone destroyed the Homecoming queen's reputation...

The world is full of mysteries. It's up to your group of intrepid teen sleuths to solve them. In Bubblegumshoe, players step into the shoes of high-schoolers solving mysteries in a modern American small town. Discover clues, solve problems, and throw down with enemies in this streamlined RPG based on the GUMSHOE system.

In this stand-alone game, you'll find:

• Rules to create your Sleuth's web of relationships and make the most of GUMSHOE's resource-management
• A simple setting system designed for large scale town creation all the way down to scene locations, plus extensive information on Drewsbury, a ready-to-go setting
• A variety of short mystery starters, including a full introductory mystery: Hey! That's My Bike!
• Extensive support to help GMs create their own mysteries using pre-established characters and settings
• Rules for social Throwdowns as well as physical altercations to reflect the drama of high school noir
• A slimmed-down list of investigative abilities vs GUMSHOE's default to make for faster decision making

Bubblegumshoe. The secrets will out.

Dig this, brothers and sisters--URBAN KNIGHTS is a "rules lite" roleplaying game set in an action-packed world inspired by 1970s cop and detective television shows: a stripped-down, minimalist RPG designed to capture the gonzo action and bad one-liners of a very distinctive genre. The game's intuitive mechanics are as simple as the pleasures of the genre itself, engineered to facilitate over-the-top action with a minimum of muss and fuss. All you need to play are these rules, a handful of six-sided dice, some poker chips or other counters, and a few friends (a classic funk playlist is probably a good idea, too).

Ready to take back the streets? Groovy, baby...groovy!

Masks: A New Generation is a superhero roleplaying game in which a team of young heroes fights villains, saves lives, and tries to figure out who they are. And kick some butt along the way. After all, what's the point of being a hero if you can't fight for the things you believe in?

The Sprawl: Mission-based cyberpunk, powered by the Apocalypse

Glide through the most secure corporate computer networks. Crack the ICE that stands between you and that big score.

Drop your cyberlinked autoshotgun to the floor empty. Flick chrome blades from your fingers. Dive into the midst of that corporate response team to secure your team's exit.

Turn up your synth-leather jacket against the rain. Watch the back-alley entrance of the club for your target. Tail the armoured limo through the neon-bathed streets.

Cut power to the alarms. Drop over the wall into the compound. Slip past the auto-sentries. Locate and secure the prototype. Escape under the eyes of the rotor-drones.

Whatever your story, you are the extended assets of vast multinational corporations, operating in the criminal underground, and performing the tasks that those multinationals can't do... or can't be seen to do. You are deniable, professional and disposable.

The Sprawl is a game of mission-based action in a gritty neon-and-chrome Cyberpunk future for an MC and 2-4 players.

• Create your own Sprawl at the nexus of bleeding-edge technology and fragile humanity
• Play hardbitten professionals caught between ruthless corporate interests
• Win sometimes, lose sometimes and be double-crossed a lot

There are a thousand stories in The Sprawl. What's yours?

Starguild is Space Opera Noir, where futuristic weapons and faster than light travel meet heartbreak, decadence and betrayal. Be brave naval officers or devious smugglers. Match wits and passion in high society or creep through ganglands in derelict cities. Explore dangerous jungles on the frontier worlds or engage as high tech mercenaries on future battlefields. But it all has a price.

The game setting has been influenced by the high action space opera of Star Wars, by the competing diplomatic regimes of Babylon 5, by the grittiness of Firefly frontier worlds and by the underlying horror of the Cthulhu mythos for those who wish to draw in genuinely inimical aliens. It isn't exactly like any of those, but the fingerprints are there, and it is easy to run adventures which are drawn from any of those settings within the world of Starguild.

All this is underlaid with the essential noir setting details -- cynical, ambitious, cruel; with dark undertones of emotional blackmail, sex and betrayal. Conflicting agendas and fragile trust. Secret deals and complex intrigues. The good guys do not always win. The good guys do not always live. The good guys are not always good guys.

To support this atmosphere, the game treats social conflict - the ability to alter someones emotions and thinking - just as importantly as the more traditional kinds of conflict of fist and gun. There are many ways that adventurers can achieve their objectives, including manipulating their friends and allies should the need arise. But beware - lest your head be turned by seduction, poisoned by distrust, swindled out of something important or taunted into an irrational act!

Belly of the Beast is a tabletop roleplaying game that focuses on grim scavengers living in the vast innards of the Great Devourer, salvaging and scraping through the swallowed ruins of a bygone age.

The game uses the Ethos Engine (Vow of Honor, Hunt the Wicked), but has been rebuilt to model the incredibly difficult and terrifying lives of scavengers in the belly of the Beast.

Characters are driven by their Instincts, and improve their skills after successfully completing more and more valuable pulls -- scavenging missions. They have to work together with their company, try to barter off their salvaged goods, and survive amid caustic acid, bloodthirsty reavers, and hungry cannibals.

Experience a kaleidoscopic city of dreamlike wonder

There are stories of journeys that give us a sense of wonder and magic, stories that take us through worlds of imagination and sensual evocation. Meridian is a storytelling game that will enable you and your friends to create your own such accounts. It gives you an ever-shifting map and cast of characters, but you make each journey unique.

Meridian is a game based on different player roles and colorful prompts. It comes as a boxed set that includes:

3 sets of Journeyer cards (Defiance, Obsession, Devotion)
1 set of Guide cards
3 Touch cards
5 sets of Companion cards
54 cadences in 3 sets: Quirky Creatures, Fleeting Moments, and Dread&Doubt
17 Locales in 3 sets: Capricious Festival, Bumpy Rides, and Dark Reflections 1 rulebook

Sam can see the future. Dylan can see many possible futures. Tomorrow, they go on a date. Their relationship lasts 183 days.

When the two of them intersect, can their relationship end in anything but tragedy, or is there more than one way life can turn out?

In the Fastaval award-winning game 183 Days, you and a partner will play out the relationship between Sam and Dylan, the only two clairvoyants in the world. It is a game about the tension between love and fear, and destiny and free will.

A game for 2 people that lasts 2 hours. No prep required, just open, read the first card, and start!

League And Fathom casts the players as the captain and crew of a ship, already sailing across perilous, monster-infested seas to a destination chosen by her captain.

The game has no set numbers, dice, or other such mechanisms, though players may end up creating and using such devices as they play. It has no sole GM. Instead, League and Fathom codifies and parcels out the responsibility for resolving tasks among the players, aligning their roles with their responsibilities. It's this division of authority and narration that is the design, and is is why League and Fathom is billed as a "troupe-style" game.

Maelstrom Dreamers is a slow, exprimental game -- a simple role playing game for two players, revolving around your dreams.

It requires many sessions to be completed, but these sessions can be of a short duration -- it can even be played as filler while you wait for other players, or at the end of the session of another game.
It is a game for two players who are prepared to face a game with a peculiar rhythm and willing to respect its rules without taking shortcuts.
It demands patience so that its story arc can reach its natural ending.
It is a game about the apocalypse and the world that came after, and about Dreamers, those who answered the peculiar call of the Maelstrom.

Maelstrom Dreamers is a game to be played using two books, the Dreamer Book and the Maelstrom Book.
The two players will take the roles of the Dreamer -- which resembles the role of a traditional player of an RPG -- and of the Maelstrom -- which is similar to a GM.

GM-less and rules light story game about students at a boarding school. Follow them through several years of schooling, and see them change, learn and grow until they finally graduate.

Recommended for four to five players, but playable also at three and six players. Expect to spend at least six hours for a short game, more than that for a longer, the game can be split into multiple sessions.

A fast-paced roleplaying game of competing agents struggling to fulfill their own personal agendas in a hostile, bureaucratic nightmare futuristic fantasy universe.

CRUSH the REBELLION is a structured storytelling game with an emphasis on competitive world-building.

The actions of the players all contribute towards a shared history together, set in the fictional game universe. However, Crush the Rebellion is also a strategic, competitive game between the players. There are winners and losers to this game.

The universe of Crush the Rebellion is grim, dark, and hateful. It is a futuristic fantasy setting, full of both awe-inspiring technological prowess and ancient mysticism.

A central dogmatic figure known only as The Emperor rules over the whole of Humanity. The Human Empire spans across an untold number of galaxies. The true size of The Human Empire is difficult to even comprehend, supported by the most byzantine, Kafka-esque bureaucracy of all existence. It rules through fear and intimidation, using unlimited resources to oppress the unruly masses of civilization who dare challenge The Emperor's infinite wisdom.

The Emperor uses an elite cadre of specialized agents (the players) to lead missions against His enemies, crushing any rebellion. Unfortunately for The Emperor, these agents are highly ambitious and treacherous, subverting and abusing their Emperor-given powers to further their secret objectives.

Track down the galaxy's most wanted as a gunslinging Bounty Hunter in this space opera tabletop roleplaying game

You are a Bounty Hunter, sworn to hunt the wicked, keep the peace, and prevent the ire and retribution of your people's master.

Three sentient species live under the terrifying rule of the Archon - an incomprehensibly powerful organism capable of consuming stars. All civilizations that have expanded beyond their system must face the Great Filter's crucible and be judged. Only three have been deemed fit to avoid extinction.

As a Hunter, you've been entrusted with meting retribution upon the corrupt and the vile. Keep your guns loaded, your blades sharp, and your insight keen, or else risk the Archon's calamitous judgment upon us all.

Hunt the Wicked is a tabletop roleplaying game focusing on Bounty Hunters: peacekeepers, gunslingers, saviors, and assassins, the heroes and mercenaries that go after the bad guys. They're here to save the galaxy, and make a profit while doing it.

Inspired by Blade Runner, Saga, Cowboy Bebop, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Guardians of the Galaxy, Steve Perry's Matador series, and a whole heap of Westerns.

Of course he knew the Empire was built on airy, at times vulgar, symbolism. He was, after all, an educated man. He knew how to interpret the Laws of the Elders. Could equally well listen to the speech of the stars as kiss one of his concubines below. He believed neither in ghosts, nor in symbols as anything other than representations.

Still, a part of him; one might say the child, believed firmly in the virtues:

1. Fidelity to the large and the small family. Even when the decisions of the concubines or the Emperor seemed enigmatic.
2. Friendliness and good will towards strangers.
3. Ritualized blasphemy by the altars along the roads, at night.
4. That you will reap as you sow.

Now he was standing by one of the altars, on the road to the Imperial City. The sunset painted the sky in shades of gold, pink, violet and orange. But not red, that color had been forbidden by the Emperor.

Soon the star-song would begin.

The altar was a scrawny, ancient spike of stone. The little roof that was supposed to protect the sacrificial gifts; fire, incense, beautiful stones, blood, flowers and perfume, against wind and weather would probably break down completely in a few hundred years.

He left a small, twelve-sided die for the enjoyment of the altar-eaters. Said a silent prayer to The Guardian of the Road that the ghosts he didn't believe in would leave him alone this night.

On the long way home.

--

Shrine Master is about building those wayside shrines. It uses the Soft System.

Unimaginable wealth buried ages ago; works of art thought long lost; new works bringing glory to House and Cog; a new tavern because, really, that one down the street just isn't what it used to be.

In The Dig: A Roleplaying Game, Dwarves band together to reshape the underworld. Players tell grand stories of subterranean adventure and craft in a light, GM-less, storytelling RPG set in the Homes, the vast and sprawling dwarven civilization featured in the novel HOMES. Games are played over five rounds. Players take turns narrating the action and drawing the Venture to its finale!

Features:

You can't quite remember what happened. Your memories are in fragments, out of sync or missing. But there is one thing you know for sure; it was beyond this world. Something took - abducted - you. Whisked you away from the mundanities of day to day life. And now, some government agents want to have a word.

Ultranormal Encounters is a game of otherworldly experiences and confused memories. You'll jump between playing an abductee - confused, scared, or euphoric - and one of the agents trying to question them and uncover the truth behind what happened. As abductees call on each other to corroborate their stories and the investigation moves from subject to subject, the story of what happens will twist and turns, leaving the investigators with a final enigma to solve. And sometimes, what happened is not nearly as important as what may happen next...

To play, you'll need two to four friends, a standard deck of cards with the jokers removed, some note paper, and a few hours free. Ultranormal Encounters comes with 5 different playsets, ranging from college students on a camping trip to 19th century sailors found drifting in an abandoned sailing ship, as well as guidance on making your own. With an innovative card-based game setup mechanic, each playset can create dozens of different scenarios!

Atlas is a collaborative world-building game wherin players create a world by making a map together and recording important details. Play is all about the delightful sensation you get when you're bouncing ideas back and forth, riffing off of each other's thoughts, and becoming increasingly fascinated/horrified/delighted by what you are producing together. By the end of play you'll have a deep and interesting world you can come back to later, either for future games, a creative writing endeavor, or the simple pleasure of oohing and aahing over your collective creativity.

Blade and Brush is a haiku driven story telling game!

In a mystical land of questing warriors and wandering monks, Blade and Brush sets a small group of plucky adventurers on an epic journey.

Along the way, you will encounter dilemmas in the form of haiku.

With some creative poetry of your own, soon you will be solving problems, helping people, and getting into trouble as you collaborate and compete to weave the most entertaining story.

3-8 players ~ ages 8 and up ~ 30-45 minutes to play.

A tabletop role-playing game of swindlers and street fighters, of love, hate and community -- in the last days of imperial Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro at the end of the 19th century: a city of slums and palaces, street gangs and tycoons, magic charms and outlawed martial arts. Cunning, bohemian and streetwise, the malandro walks its streets without fear - because there's always a way out.

Malandros is based on the award-winning DramaSystem rules engine. It's a game of personal struggles and interpersonal dramas.

You play characters in a tight-knit community caught up in tumultuous times: gang leaders, captains of industry, fishermen, martial artists, swindlers and more. You all know each other - you're family, friends, rivals or enemies, all living in the same part of town. You all want something from each other. Maybe it's respect, maybe it's love. Maybe it's fear, or something else.

Will you get what you want? That's what we're here to find out.

You play as yourself suddenly granted incredible and unstable abilities. Your powers, weapons, and flaws change every few turns, forcing you to constantly adapt.

You'll be fighting in your hometown, defending your school from monsters, and saving your world from utter destruction. Once you master your powers and your cards, then you will Be the Hero!

Features

• Designed from the ground up for quick, satisfying play sessions (2-3 hours).
• The Rules and Setting make an easy, comfortable introduction to new players.
• Cards switch out every few turns, constantly providing new combinations of powers, weapons and flaws.
• Players start out strong, no need for leveling or grinding. All the cool weapons and powers are at your disposal from the beginning!

Something to Hide is a story game of investigating a murder, where everyone is a suspect. Only one of you is the murderer, but no-one is truly innocent. Everyone has something to hide.

THE SKELETONS is meditative structured freeform game for 1-6 players. You'll need a few hours and a private space.

Years fly by like dead leaves. Everything is darkness. Everything is silence. You stand vigilant before the sarcophagus without thought or breath-such is your compulsion. You do not remember your name and still you watch. The flesh has fallen off your bones and still you watch.

And then one day there is light and motion and you weigh your bearded axe and raise your shield, lusting for the fray, eager to measure your skill against these tomb-robbing children so full of blood. You'll never be alive again, but in this moment-in the chaos between violation and destruction-you truly live, and you remember what you once were, and you taste the sun.

The Skeletons flips the script on the classic dungeon crawl-- here you play not the intruders, but the guardians, cursed to spend all of eternity defending a tomb. As time passes, both the tomb and its guardians will change. Ferocious battles are fought and won, and the skeletons slowly remember who and what they once were. Melancholy, introspective and spanning epochs, The Skeletons is unlike anything you've ever played.

What's Included?

This game includes an 11 page PDF that includes the rules for the basic game as well as a variant setting by Sara Williamson. An additional 7 page PDF includes the character sheets, each loaded with unique, interconnecting questions whose answers will be revealed in play.

Melancholy Kaiju is a role-playing game where you and some friends make up stories about cute giant monsters living ordinary lives and being kind of sad.

It has six sample kaiju (The Amazing Colossal Office Lady, Beatzilla, Hole Punch Man, King Emo, MUKO, and Parfaitrah), rules an optional tables for making your own kaiju, rules for playing the game, and a table of ideas for scenes.

To play you'll need a pack of playing cards, pencils and paper, and a few friends.

The year is SC 0245.

Humanity has spread through the Milky way, using interstellar transit gate technology to colonize the galaxy. Mobile frames are the hard-working, hard-fighting combat- and labor mecha they've brought with them.

You are romantic ace mobile frame pilots, caught up in an undeclared war for the future of the Bantral system.

Fight with your friends. Ally with your rivals. Fall in love with your enemies.

MOBILE FRAME ZERO: FIREBRANDS is a casual roleplaying game by D. Vincent Baker, set in Joshua A.C. Newman's MOBILE FRAME ZERO universe. You don't need to be familiar with MF0: RAPID ATTACK or MF0: INTERCEPT ORBIT to play.

To play, you'll need 3-5 players, a printout of this playbook for each, and a handful of coins.

Contrapposto is a storytelling game about planning an art heist, designed to be played discreetly in an actual art museum.

3-5 players take on the roles of a team of amateur thieves hired to obtain a work of art. All players work together to identify which piece of art they're after and plan how to steal it while balancing the team's odd assortment of skills & hangups.

In about an hour and a half, the team will case the joint, plan their caper & try to convince each other that this will work.

And if the group can tolerate each other long enough to complete their scheme, it just might!

Contrapposto is part improv comedy and part exercise in teamwork, with a healthy respect for art & museums thrown in. Don't worry: no actual laws should be broken while playing! It's largely a fun way to visit an art museum with a group of friends.

Elektra, the warrior-princess of Argos, now stands before the throne, sword in hand.

On the throne sits Hades, the lord of death. Hades is immortal, but the mortal form he wears can be killed, temporarily banishing him to the underworld.

On Hades' right hand stands the undead shell of Elektra's father, Agamemnon, who was slain by her mother for many crimes. He is animated by Hades' power and his breath sounds ragged through his Death Mask.

What happens next is up to you.

Imagine a story of ancient warriors charged with recapturing an escaped demon or a band of modern day college detective solving crimes between classes. Maybe even a tale of rebellion in a steampunk version of 1890s France.

ScreenPlay is a co-operative storytelling game where players take on the role of Writers crafting the first draft of a script, novel, comic book series or whatever you can imagine. Working alongside your Director, you will build something truly original, exciting and engaging with only a few minutes prep time at the table. Build new characters on the fly and develop the plot as you play.

From the ENnie Award winning designer of Killshot: The Director's Cut, prepare to play the story you've always wanted to tell.

Designer: Todd Crapper
System: ScreenPlay
Page Count: 92
Features: Complete rules, including character creation; blank character sheet, scene notes, table of contents, bookmarks, hyperlinks

Dragonia faces a threat we dragons have all but forgotten. Inside each of us are seeds of Darkness waiting to take root in doubt, anger, and sorrow. You and your fellow dragons--although small now--must protect Dragonia from the growing Darkness...and learn what it means to be a true friend. -- Tass the Gigantic, Councilmember

Epyllion is a tabletop role playing game about young drakes who investigate rumors, solve problems, and discover the truth of a growing evil in Dragonia. While you play, you and your friends tell awesome stories, explore what it means to be a drake of Dragonia, and discover the value of friendship through magical, whimsical, and heartfelt adventures.

This easy-to-learn adventure game helps you tell the stories of a brave clutch of young dragons through a supportive yet simple system that promotes active listening, creativity, and cooperative play.

Laser Kittens is a storytelling game for 3-5 players. In this game you and your friends will take on the role of a litter of tiny kittens being fostered at the Knoll Street School for Wayward Kittens -- a big house where orphaned kittens learn to grow up to be awesome cats before they get adopted by their forever home! You'll learn important kitty lessons like how to lay in the sun, how to catch bugs, and most importantly, how to control your laser. Every cat has a laser, and every laser is different. Your laser gives you special powers, like duplicating objects or controlling other animals. If you're not careful, your laser might go off without warning and cause some chaos!

There is no designated GM in this game. Instead, all the players share GM duties by bidding to be "Class Captain" for a scene. As Class Captain, you can decide what your fellow players are up against in each scene. And whenever you like, you can let someone else take over as Class Captain and try out their ideas.

Support is a tabletop roleplaying game about boobs and the countless ways they affect our lives. Two to five players develop characters, play scenes in those characters' lives that involve their boobs, and describe how those characters can receive emotional support in both difficult and joyful moments. This game is meant to explore boobs outside of the sexual context in which the media typically portrays them, while examining the implications of living in a world that is obsessed with viewing them in this context.

This is a rules-light tabletop roleplaying game that throws players into a high tech farce. It's set in near-future San Francisco where something has gone horribly / hilariously wrong.

There's this werewolf, a vampire and a ghost who share a house... but this is no joke. As it turns out, death is not the end for everybody, though it usually puts an end to your social life. Somewhere between being human and being a monster you'll find the characters in this game: people who cannot return to the family they knew but aren't ready to embrace the thing they have become. They say that blood is thicker than water, but when your own blood turns against you, you have to find a new kind of family, one who will accept you for what you are.

Blood & Water is an original storygame about supernatural housemates getting on with their unlives and walking the tightrope between the mortal life they can't let go of and the supernatural one they dare not embrace. A simple dice mechanic enforces your reliance on your housemates to help you out, but also makes you vulnerable to their screw-ups. Create your own monstrous mythologies and explore what they mean in the modern world.

Includes all the rules & guidance needed for making your own supernatural archetypes and playing out their lives in a modern urban setting, how to tell stories surrounding them, tips & techniques for richer, deeper play and two suggested reskins of the basic game for playing alien observers or superheroes.

Love in the Time of Khvareneh is a story game for four or five players. Each player controls one character in a web of intrigue, with motivations, desires and secrets that will force them to forge and break alliances of love, power and magic. Chances are that some will meet a tragic end, while others find happiness, or the illusion of it--but this is up to the players to decide and explore during play.

Based on the Archipelago III game engine, Love in the Time of Khvareneh is an endlessly replayable, mythic one-shot of sex and ambition.

Masks of the Mummy Kings is a sword-and-sorcery adventure game about would-be grave-robbers, hiding their identities behind masks as they plunder the Ziggurat Tomb of Nabû-Nâzir, the Zodiac Emperor of ancient Babylon. Whether seeking treasures temporal or sorcerous, this band of rogues must work together even while pursuing their own individual aims.

Players start out with two Masks, governing their abilities to overcome obstacles presented by the GM as they adventure through the tomb. As the rogues defeat enemies, solve puzzles and evade traps eldritch and mundane, they may very well find new and more powerful Masks to wear, enhancing their own power - but at what cost?

Game Features

• For a GM and 2-4 players
• One-shot friendly, takes 1-3 hours to play
• Prep-agnostic - the GM can prepare a map, creatures and treasure beforehand, run it all on the fly, or a mix of both
• Uses a token-based action economy to allow narrative flexibility without sacrificing palpable rewards based on player decision making
• Requires tokens (such as poker chips) and a vessel (such a sturdy bowl) to use as the Well of Treasures
• Game provides 12 Masks which can be combined into 36 different ability sets, enhancing replayability and exploration of the system: Ox, Monkey, Scarab, Outlaw, Thief, Scoundrel, Cursed, Faceless, Mummy, Soldier, Mystic and Assassin.

YOU are a Royal - half-magic, half-human. You're one of the court cards from the tarot deck - the impetuous Princess of Wands, the calculating Knight of Pentacles, the empire-building Queen of Wands, and so on. You use magic like a brick through the window of the world.

THEY are the Arcane - Death, The Hanged Man, The Devil, The Lovers, The Star. They are reality-bending monsters that wear human skin like a suit.

TONIGHT, before dawn, you are going to corner one of them and take their power for your own in a heist the likes of which the worlds have never seen. The city is going to burn. It's going to be beautiful.

ROYAL BLOOD is a rules-light heist roleplaying game for three or more players and a gamesmaster.To play, you'll need a deck of tarot cards and a handful of coins. Download it here. As with all my games, if you can't afford to buy it, drop me an email explaining why and I'll give it to you for free. Or send me a copy of you a game you've written and we'll do a swap.

Written by Grant Howitt. Design and art by Banana Chan. Commissioned by Glen E Ivey as part of Merritt Kopas' 2015 surgery fundraiser.

Schema is a light engine for tabletop roleplaying. It is the natural descendant of Danger Cards and of the original system from Shamblington, incorporating the strongest components of both.

If you expect your game to have moments where there's plenty going on, where there are three different things going on to worry about and two different awesome things the character could be doing, and you don't feel like sitting there for ten minutes making a roll for each single thing... That's the ideal moment to be using Schema, because it is better at handling that than any other system.

If you'd like to see characters needing to pick in the heat of the moment between bringing down the house or feeling sure they're going to come out in one piece... and if "Are you more okay with collateral damage on this one, or more okay with getting knocked off the roof and the bad guy getting away?" strikes you as a fun thing to happen in a roll, then you should use Schema.

If you want to characters to feel like they're patiently slogging it out when they're keeping their heads down, and throwing it all to the wind when they really care about what there is to gain, you want Schema.

In Schema, actions are resolved by the Guide determining the basic goals, setting out one or more dangers (things which might go wrong) and naming some possible augments (things that might go very right).

The player then states if they are acting Boldly or Cautiously, and rolls four dice (these dice can be Fudge dice or regular six-siders, as desired). Some of the resulting dice will likely be rerolled according to whether the character is bold or cautious, and the results are then spent to cancel dangers and buy augments, improving on the results. Depending on the traits a character has, they may be able to spend dice in additional ways.

All of this is by default accomplished with a deck of cards containing traits, dangers, and augments. The free PDF of the rules contains a full copy of this deck you can print and play, as well as "control sheets" for those who would rather use traditional character sheets and a tracking sheet for stakes in the middle of the table.

Schema is subtitled as an engine rather than as a game because it is expected that Guides will want to add to and refine it for their own use; for this purpose, the Guide may want to consider the Mechanisms document. found among my other products.

Spaces of the Unknown is a fantasy tabletop RPG, designed for play-by-post gaming on the internet.

This is a dead simple, light, fantasy role-playing game designed to be played on the internet using the most awesome human invention: the written word.

Number of players: At least 2, one GM and one or more players with characters Setup: An online forum, shared email thread, or shared Google doc Dice: Standard gaming dice, including d20s, d10s, d8s, d6s, and d4s. Recommended for online rolling: brockjones.com/dieroller/dice.htm RPG inspiration: Early Dungeons & Dragons and Searchers of the Unknown

The players will explore abandoned and overrun ruins, and reclaim them for civilization.

Don't need a new system? The game includes 6 lairs stocked with monsters, ready for old-school play.

What makes it different than other RPGs?

• The GM rolls all dice during play.
• All PCs are fighters (with some ability to cast magic)
• Spells are typically cast by reading a spell scroll
• There's no gold and no gold economy
• When a PC's Hit Points are reduced to 0 or less, the PC is not killed or knocked out; he or she is sidelined. A sidelined PC is still conscious and can grant bonuses to other PCs, but cannot attack for the rest of the fight.
• The party levels up as a group, not PCs individually.

The Name of God is a little cynical trip into a bizarre hole, filled with homeless people, weird omens, dangerous situations, and ritual chanting. No, seriously, you will have to intone the words, or you will never find your true self again!

The Name of God is a nanogame. All its rules fit into less than four playing cards, with the rest of the deck offering thought provoking character archetypes and inspiring art.Kicked into existence thanks to the lure of the GameChef2013, it has been inspired by the great ideas of Epidiah Ravachol, but then took a bizarre twist of its own.

The Name of God is freely inspired to such works as Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, American Gods and Anansi Boys. And The Prodigy's song Narayan which more or less means "The Name of God". And also to my undying love for Unknown Armies.
Designed for 3-4 participants.
Zero Prep.
GM-less.
Lasts about 3 hours.
Surrounding people will direct worried glances in your direction.

This game is a deck of about 30 cards with no additional materials needed to play.

The Witch King's horde knows only one purpose; to seek out and conquer new civilizations, forever expanding their dread lord's dominion over this doomed world.

In this collaborative world building game, players work together to imagine new fantasy civilizations, then conquer them in the name of The Witch King.

• 3-5 players
• 1.5-2 hours
• No prep required

Short Film is a "little game about making little movies." It is a no-prep four-player game that takes less than an hour to play.

This game contains a rules document, an inspirational flyer, and an introductory video. The rules document teaches each player how to play in their distinct role. The roles are Soundtrack player, Locations player, Casting player, and Star player. The inspirational flyer gives you fifty (50) fake movie titles to use for your short film. The introductory video explains the turn order and answers some frequently asked questions. Between these three documents, you have all the instructions you need in order to play.

Other Requirements for the Game
The game is strictly four-player.
One player either needs a smart phone/computer OR needs to be a musician.
One player either needs a smart phone/computer OR needs to be an artist.
The other two players don't need any special supplies.

Lovecraftesque is the GMless storytelling game of brooding cosmic horror you've been waiting for. You tell the story of a lone Witness at the mercy of strange and terrifying events. The game helps you create a slow-building mystery, culminating in a climactic scene of horror.

• You create your own monsters and mystery that feel like something out of Lovecraft's notebook.
• All the players contribute clues to surprise and creep each other out.
• The rules ensure that the story flows seamlessly, as if an invisible GM were guiding it.
• There won't be any Mi-Go or Deep Ones--you'll get a completely fresh take on the genre.

LOVECRAFTESQUE IS A GAME FOR 2-5 PEOPLE AND TAKES 3-4 HOURS TO PLAY.

A modern-day game of drugs, money and magic in the American southwest.

There are borders everyone sees: the looming fence with its sporadic observation platforms, the tags claiming this block or that in the name of a local gang or drug cartel, and the wrought-iron fences surrounding gated communities.

There are borders that are real only in our minds, like the imaginary lines that divide country from country, or one race from another.

But in this little southwestern town, another border reveals itself to those gifted with the power to see it: the veil between the worlds. Even today, the old ways of magic are still taught; spells, curses, visions and transformations are still practiced, and opposing clans are locked in a daily battle that no policia would ever understand.

OTHER BORDERS is a tabletop roleplaying game based on DramaSystem by Robin D. Laws, and influenced by D. Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World engine. This Standalone Edition contains all you need to play (except 2 standard dice).

The room flickers in front of you for an instant like a PMP losing reception. You hear the hammer snap back on a cheap poly and you can almost smell the ozone as the bullet glides out of the chamber. The window flies apart in shatterproof shards the size of disembodied limbs. Your neurochip feeds you the trajectory of the unequivocal sentence of death speeding your way as your eyes swivel in their machined sockets. Juice crashes through your veins. You've only got a split second to make a move. What do you do?

The Veil is a collaborative storytelling game Powered by the Apocalypse designed to tell cyberpunk stories of your own making. Use world building tools to come up with unique settings that look and feel like the cyberpunk you and your friends have always wanted. Put questions that drive your characters at the heart of heists, mysteries, and conspiracies. Break a near future world and then try to put it back together. Play to find out what happens.

You're not young anymore. Now, young children buy baseball cards of you. You've come far; once a rookie, now you're going to be in the hall of fame. One of the greatest still playing a game steeped in a history you've always loved. Getting paid to live out your dreams has always felt like a privilege, not a job.

For what has seemed like countless years you've given everything you had to the game. Game after game, you put on your glove and pitched your heart out. Always believing that win or lose, putting everything you've got into something is what really matters.

And now, standing on what sometimes feels like the loneliest place in the world, you're at a pivotal crossroads in your life. Maybe the most important decisions you'll ever make will be made here and now, during this baseball game, on the pitching mound of Yankee Stadium.

It's time to lift that tired old arm of yours one more time in order to really give this game, maybe your last game, everything you have left.

In this roleplaying game you and some friends are going to work semi-cooperatively to get an all-star ball player through the most difficult, and maybe the most defining day of their life.

--

Young at Heart does not concern itself with simulating the game of baseball. Instead, it focuses on getting into the headspace of the pitcher and what they are going through on the mound in order to keep throwing that ball, and throwing it well. What do they think about? How does it feel? Where does their inner strength come from? How does the act of committing to playing a game their whole life affect the rest of their life?

As you experience the inner struggles of this individual, know that you'll also be carving out a future for them as well as creating their past memories. Collaboratively, you'll be defining the moments of a person who has given their life to a game they've played ever since they first put on a glove and began to play catch. All in order to see where they end up after one of the hardest days of their lives.

An anthology of analog games (tabletop role playing games and live action role playing games) written by queer people about queer experiences.

What's Inside

• A fantastic essay on disability and queerness by Brie Sheldon
• "Out", by Tobi Aboud, a narrative, scene-based game where players deal with their sexuality in terms of other life events
• "Becoming Ourselves" by Willow Palecek, a two-person game about transitioning and cisgendered allies. It's also unique in that it encourages cis players to play a transgendered protagonist character, and trans players to take the role of the cis ally.
• Julia Ellingboe's phenomenal essay on beauty standards
• "Glitter Pits" by Kat Jones , a card-based game about actively challenging and changing western beauty standards
• "Comfort and Warmth" by Adam McConnaughey, in which queer youth and vampires go camping together. Sometimes they're the same people.
• "The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still On My Lips" by Taylor LaBresh. A game about magical artifacts and queer romance in the Reconstruction Era.
• Scout Munroe's brilliant essay on the nonbinary experience
• "Mx. Universe" by Stephanie Bryant and Tobias Strauss. A LARP about gender presentation, beauty, and nonstandard fashion. Also has some elements of ball culture.

Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night Of This Cold Winter is a downtime activity, or mini-game, with a focus on helping an ill-fated frontier village survive a terrible winter season. Participants collect and manage supplies in an effort to keep the village folk alive despite the bleak, frightful conditions. It is designed to work inside of your regular fantasy role playing system and campaign with a slight separation of mechanics. As the game manager you become the village elder; tasked with setting the dour mood, keeping players on track, offering advice or strategy, and taking stock of the available supplies. Player characters become the adventurers; collecting and managing supplies while ensuring each villager receives what is needed most. The ultimate goal of Cold Winter is to keep the highest possible count of village folk alive as spring finally peeks from under the blanket of snow.

Frank and Meg are close but their relationship is in trouble. The sky is gray, and you are distressed is a 2-player freeform game that uses randomized secrets and semi-scripted questions to have a serious conversation about honesty and identity.