Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Released in 2014 by Chaosium, Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition is the latest version of the cult-classic cosmic eldritch horror role-playing system originally launched in 1981. The story is based off of the  literary works of H.P. Lovecraft and lovecraftian works. Instead of setting the players up as heroes, the characters are regular investigators who are exploring cults, forbidden knowledge and various eldritch-cosmic entitites and threats. Description Occupations in the game for the characters include academics, reporters, and private investigators. The gameplay loop revolves around uncovering information, analyzing clues, and evading dangers. As the supernatural elements in the game are considered more powerful than the investigators, they have are not expected to actually confront most of the threats head on. Instead they usually have to resort to avoiding or escaping any situation that may arise. Combat is lethal and usually leads to characters getting permanently killed or pushed to insanity (which eventually is the same).  System Overview & Key Features Percentile Framework (d100) Every action is resolved by rolling two ten-sided (d10) dice to get a result from 1 to 100. If you roll is equal to or under your skill rating, the action is deemed a success. This approach simplifies the mechanical process of the game, as there are no complex tables to keep track of and compare to decypher whether it is a success or failure. Pushed Rolls If a character fails a skill check, they may attempt to "push" the roll, allowing for a second attempt. This requires the player to come up with a new, more desperate approach to performing the task. If this subsequent pushed roll also fails, the Keeper describes a severe and immediate negative consequence. Sanity and Madness A core mechanic of the system is the tracking of mental stability. Investigators lose points from their Sanity gauge when exposed to anomalous creatures or disturbing truths. Drops in Sanity result in the character experiencing temporary or permanent forms of madness, which can manifest as new phobias, delusions, or a temporary loss of player agency over the character. Bonus and Penalty Dice To account for situational advantages or disadvantages, the game employs a system of bonus and penalty dice. If a character possesses a distinct advantage when performing a task, an extra d10 is rolled and taking the higher result. A disadvantage means rolling an extra d10 and taking the lower result. Combat Lethality Physical altercations are inherently dangerous by design. Investigators possess limited hit points, and the damage output of both conventional firearms and anomalous entities is high. Recovery mechanics are slow, simulating realistic healing times. This structural lethality serves to discourage combat and incentivize stealth and investigation. Expendable Luck Players can spend points from their character's Luck pool to retroactively lower a dice roll. The points are subtracted on a one-to-one basis until the dice result qualifies as a success. This ensures that the Luck pool is a limited resource which should be used and utilized in the most critical situations. Additional links chaosium.com - Official publisher website and digital storefront drivethrurpg.com - Digital repository for official scenarios and sourcebooks

Vampire: The Masquerade (5th Edition) is published by Renegade Games Studios and was released in 2018. It is a TTRPG-scene classic for vampire-themed games. Set in an alternative, but modern, world, called "World of Darkness". The players will step into the shoes of recently turned vampires, now thrust into the dark underworld of the vampire society. It is a storytelling game focusing on personal and political horror. Description The players, now part of "The Masquerade" have to keep their new identity a secret from the human population, while at the same time engaging with various vampire clans and factions. Managing the new reality, both in terms of new societal norms and requirements, and their vampiric hunger, will set the players on a different "adventure" altogether. System Overview & Key Features Storyteller System (d10 Dice Pool) The system utilizes the Storyteller engine, which uses pools of ten-sided dice (d10). To resolve actions, the player adds the character's Attribute and Skill scores together to determine the total number of dice rolled. Any die showing a 6 or higher counts as a success. Rolling multiple 10s yields a critical success. Disciplines Player characters have access to supernatural abilities known as Disciplines. These include categorized powers such as enhanced physical speed, cognitive manipulation, and physical mutation. Activating these abilities frequently requires a "Rouse Check," a dice roll that carries a probability of increasing the character's Hunger level. Touchstones and Humanity Characters possess a Humanity rating that measures their ethical degradation. To maintain this rating, characters link themselves to "Touchstones," which are specific human non-player characters representing the vampire's surviving mortal values. If a Touchstone is damaged or killed, the player character risks a permanent reduction to their Humanity score. Blood Potency A statistic called Blood Potency dictates the strength of a vampire's abilities. Higher Blood Potency provides numerical advantages to Discipline rolls and healing rates. However, it also imposes dietary restrictions; characters with high Blood Potency cannot reduce their Hunger by consuming animal blood or preserved human blood, requiring them to feed directly from live humans. Additional links renegadegamestudios.com - Official Renegade Game Studios website worldofdarkness.com - Official World of Darkness portal

Blades in the Dark is a heist-themed tabletop roleplaying game system about a crew of daring misfits  on the streets of an industrial fantasy city. Published by Evil Hat Productions in 2017 and designed by John Harper, it introduced the highly influential Forged in the Dark rules engine. BitD revolutionized the heist genre in tabletop gaming by pushing players straight into the act, eliminating the "planning phase". The system it loosely evolved from is Apocalypse World Description In Blades in the Dark, players are part of a criminal organization in Doskvol, a grim Victorian era city. The city is protected by a wall of lightning, to keep any threat on the outside. Players create their characters as either smugglers, thieves, assassins or cultists and explore the criminal underworld, perform dangerous heists, manage gang warfare and grow their criminal organization. The game focuses heavily on narrative momentum and failing forward. Characters are competent but flawed, constantly accumulating stress, trauma, and heat from the law as their gang rises to power. System Overview & Key Features Action Roll (d6 Dice Pool) The core mechanic uses a pool of six-sided dice(d6) based on a character's action rating. The highest die result will determine the outcome of the action. 6 is considered a full success, 4-5 is a partial success with a consequence, and 1-3 is a failure. Rolling multiple full successes is considered a critical success. Position and Effect Before every roll, the Game Master explicitly states the character's Position (Controlled, Risky, or Desperate) and Effect (Limited, Standard, or Great). This transparently communicates the exact stakes and potential fallout of the action before the dice hit the table. Stress and Resistance Characters have a Stress track. Players can spend Stress to give themselves for extra dice when rolling. They can also use it to assist an ally, or fuel their special abilities. Players can also spend Stress when facing any situation or consequence the GM throws at them, this makes the characters very skilled, but forces them to consider when to spend it. The Flashback Mechanic Instead of spending hours planning a heist, the crew simply chooses a target, picks a detail, and jumps right into the action. Later, they can use Stress, to envoke a flashback moment, where they explain how they had already planned for such a situation, or had "solved" it beforehand. Progress Clocks The game uses circular progress tracks called Clocks to visually represent approaching danger or the progress of a complex task. A clock might represent the alert level of the city watch, the structural integrity of a safe vault, or the patience of a rival gang leader. The Crew as a Character The criminal organization the players run has its own character sheet. The organization gains experience, levels up, claims territory, and unlocks special abilities, ensuring that the gang's rise to power is just as mechanically significant as the characters' Additional links evilhat.com - Official Evil Hat Productions website bladesinthedark.com - Official System Reference Document and rules database

Traveller 2E is a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game system, that was published in 2016 and updated in 2022, by Mongoose Publishing. It involves the characters adventuring through star systems, engaging in (space) exploration and engaging in battles both on ground and in space. The system it directly evolved from is classic Traveller (1977) Description The characers in Traveller can be humans, robots, aliens or of a genetically engineered species. Each character is distinguished by their occupation - whether they are a civilian, military, a noble, a young cadet or a veteran. Each type comes with their own strengths and weaknesses. To further expand on the sci-fi aspect of the game, some characters are prone to extra-sensory abilities, such as telekinesis, telepathy and others. System Overview & Key Features Lifepath Character Creation When creating their character, players roll to determine their character's background, education, and career history. Characters will acquire skills, allies, enemies and physical injuries. No Classes or Levels Characters do not have traditional classes, and they do not gain experience points to level up. Progression is entirely material and narrative. Characters improve by acquiring better gear, installing cybernetics, buying larger starships, and finding lucrative trade routes. The Trade and Commerce System A massive part of the game involves interstellar economics. The rules provide deep, robust systems for buying speculative cargo on one planet and selling it at a profit on another. Players must factor in fuel costs, jump drive maintenance, and life support while managing their massive starship mortgage. Lethal Combat Gunfights are incredibly dangerous as the characters have very low health pools. These are directly tied to their physical attributes like Endurance, Dexterity, and Strength. A single shot from a laser rifle can instantly incapacitate or kill a character, making armor and cover absolute necessities. Hex Crawling and Subsectors The game provides incredible tools for the Game Master to procedurally generate entire sectors of space. Using a blank hex map and the core rulebook, you can roll up planetary environments, government types, law levels, and starport qualities to create a completely unique sandbox galaxy. Additional links mongoosepublishing.com - Official Mongoose Publishing website travellermap.com - The Traveller Map (An interactive map of the official Third Imperium setting)

The Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival or OSR is a play style movement in tabletop role-playing games which draws inspiration from the earliest days of tabletop RPGs in the 1970s, especially Dungeons & Dragons. Prominent standalone rule systems produced within this movement include Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, and Labyrinth Lord. Description The OSR movement first developed in the early 2000s, primarily in discussion on internet forums. OSR games encourage a tonal fidelity to early editions of Dungeons & Dragons—less emphasis on predefined endings, and a greater emphasis on player choice determining the fate of characters. OSR Games provide play where wrong decisions can easily become lethal for characters and do not guarantee satisfying endings to character arcs. Characters live and die by player choice as opposed to the story's needs System Overview & Key Features Rulings Over Rules Rather than providing comprehensive mechanics for all potential scenarios, OSR systems rely on the Game Master to adjudicate outcomes based on the players' stated actions. This approach is intended to expedite gameplay and encourage lateral thinking over rule memorization. High Lethality Player characters possess low survivability, particularly at early levels. Game mechanics often dictate that a single error or unfavorable dice roll can result in immediate character death. This design element encourages players to avoid direct combat and approach the game world with caution. Player Skill over Character Skill Game resolution depends heavily on the player's descriptive input rather than the character's numerical statistics. For example, instead of rolling a die to detect a hidden object, a player must explicitly state that their character is searching a specific area or manipulating a particular mechanism. Gold as Experience Character advancement in many OSR games is directly tied to the acquisition of treasure rather than the defeat of enemies. Characters gain experience points primarily by extracting valuables from dangerous locations and returning them to a safe environment. This heavily incentivizes acquiring loot while avoiding unnecessary combat. Resource Management Game mechanics require the strict tracking of consumable items such as rations, light sources, ammunition, and carrying capacity (encumbrance). Depleting essential resources in a hazardous environment poses a significant mechanical penalty, making inventory management a central component of gameplay. Reaction Rolls and Morale Non-player characters and creatures do not default to immediate hostility. Game Masters utilize randomized reaction tables to determine the initial disposition of encountered entities, which can range from hostile to friendly. Additionally, adversaries are subject to Morale checks during combat, dictating whether they continue fighting or attempt to flee when at a disadvantage. Additional links drivethrurpg.com - DriveThruRPG (Major hub for OSR PDFs and print on demand books) basicfantasy.org - Basic Fantasy RPG (A completely free, open source OSR system)

Savage Worlds is a tabletop roleplaying game designed by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. Originally released in 2003 and updated, as the Adventure Edition in 2018. Its a universal system for running games in almost any genre from weird west and high fantasy to deep space sci-fi. The game is specifically engineered to handle cinematic pulp action and massive battles without slowing down the narrative. The system it directly evolved from is Deadlands (1996) Description Savage Worlds has everything you need to play narrative or miniature-based games, with quick, simple, yet comprehensive rules for everything from combat to Dramatic Tasks, Chases, and Interludes. The emphasis is on less bookkeeping for the Game Master so she can quickly and easily create worlds and adventures for any setting and focus on the players and their actions to keep the action and story rocketing along. System Overview & Key Features Step Dice Mechanic Instead of fixed numeric modifiers, character attributes and skills are rated by die types, ranging from a four sided die (d4) to a twelve sided die (d12). To succeed at a task, a player rolls their skill die and tries to hit a standard target number, which is almost always a 4. The Wild Die Player characters and major non player characters get to roll an extra six sided die called the Wild Die whenever they make a trait test. They roll this alongside their standard skill die and take the higher of the two results, significantly increasing their baseline competence. Acing (Exploding Dice) If any die rolls its maximum possible value, such as rolling an 8 on an eight sided die, the die "aces". The player gets to roll that die again and add the new value to the total. This can chain multiple times, allowing for massive, cinematic successes against all odds. Initiative with Playing Cards Instead of rolling dice for turn order, combat initiative is tracked using a standard deck of playing cards with the Jokers left in. This makes tracking turn order incredibly fast and visually clear. Drawing a Joker grants that character a powerful bonus to all their rolls for that round. Additional links peginc.com - Official Pinnacle Entertainment Group website savagepedia.wiki - Savage Worlds Wiki (Extensive fan curated rules and setting resource)

Forged in the Dark is a tabletop roleplaying game framework and System Reference Document created by John Harper. Released in 2017, it is the underlying engine that powers Blades in the Dark and has since been used by independent designers to build countless other games, such as Scum and Villainy and Band of Blades. It excels at telling stories about capable but flawed groups of people pulling off daring missions against overwhelming odds. The system it directly evolved from is Blades in the Dark Description Instead of being a single game, Forged in the Dark is an open license toolkit. Players form a crew, whether they are space smugglers, military mercenaries, or rebel outcasts, and undertake dangerous missions known as Scores. The system is heavily narrative and focuses on failing forward, meaning a bad dice roll never stalls the story, but instead introduces a new complication. It completely eliminates tedious planning phases by throwing players directly into the action. System Overview & Key Features The d6 Dice Pool To resolve a risky action, a player rolls a pool of six sided dice based on their action rating. The highest single die determines the result. A six is a full success, a four or five is a partial success with a consequence, and a one to three is a bad outcome. Position and Effect Before the dice hit the table, the Game Master establishes the Position (Controlled, Risky, or Desperate) and the Effect (Limited, Standard, or Great). This ensures everyone understands exactly what is at stake and how much impact the action will have. Progress Clocks The game tracks complex threats and long term projects using circular clocks divided into segments. A stealth mission might have a clock for the guards going on high alert, filling up bit by bit as the players roll partial successes or failures. Stress and Resistance Characters have a Stress track that they can spend to push themselves for extra dice or to assist an ally. More importantly, players can spend Stress to resist any consequence the Game Master introduces, allowing characters to survive deadly situations by sheer willpower. Flashbacks Players do not need to spend hours planning a heist or mission. When they encounter an obstacle, they can simply spend Stress to declare a flashback, narrating how their character anticipated the problem and set up a solution in the past. Phases of Play The game flows through specific phases. Free Play is where characters gather information and choose a target. The Score is the actual mission. Finally, Downtime allows the crew to recover from injuries, reduce their heat, and work on personal projects before the cycle begins again. Additional links bladesinthedark.com - Official System Reference Document and rules database evilhat.com - Official Evil Hat Productions website

Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game (DCC RPG or simply DCC) is a role-playing game published by Goodman Games in 2012. The game is famous for its chaotic magic, bizarre dice, and its distinct artwork. DCC RPG is a fast-paced, open-feeling rules set allowing for epic game experiences without unnecessary tethers. It uses modern game-play while paying homage to the origins of role-playing and the fun that it inspired. The system it directly evolved from is Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000) Description You’re no hero. You’re an adventurer: a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen-slayer, a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets. You seek gold and glory, winning it with sword and spell, caked in the blood and filth of the weak, the dark, the demons, and the vanquished. There are treasures to be won deep underneath, and you shall have them. System Overview & Key Features The Level Zero Funnel Instead of carefully crafting a single hero, each player generates three or four completely random level zero peasants. You run this mob through a deadly introductory dungeon. The few survivors who manage to escape earn their first class level and become your actual player characters. The Dice Chain The game uses a set of unusual dice alongside the standard setup. These include a d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. Instead of applying static mathematical penalties or bonuses, the Game Master might simply tell you to roll the next die up or down on the chain. Mighty Deeds of Arms Warriors and Dwarves do not have rigid skill trees or complex combat feats. Before any attack, they can declare a heroic maneuver, like blinding an enemy or sweeping their legs. They roll a Deed Die alongside their attack, and if the die rolls high enough, the maneuver succeeds dynamically. Roll to Cast Magic Magic is incredibly powerful but highly unpredictable. Wizards and Clerics must roll a spell check every time they cast. A high roll creates a massive, reality altering effect, while a low roll causes the spell to fail and potentially slip from the caster's mind for the rest of the day. Additional links goodmangames.com - Official Goodman Games website purplesorcerer.com - Purple Sorcerer Games (free tools and character generators) Community Resources - Resources for new DCC players Events Page - This is the place to find out all of the games the Road Crew will be running

Delta Green is a standalone tabletop roleplaying game of modern conspiracy and cosmic horror. Originally a supplement for Call of Cthulhu, the current standalone edition was published by Arc Dream Publishing in 2016. Players take on the roles of federal agents or contractors working for a secret, illegal organization dedicated to containing supernatural threats and covering up the existence of the Cthulhu Mythos to protect the United States. The system it directly evolved from is Call of Cthulhu Description In Delta Green, the horror is not just about monsters; it is about the toll that a life of secrecy and violence takes on the human soul. Agents juggle their high stakes investigations with their crumbling personal lives. They must navigate a world of bureaucratic red tape, government conspiracies, and sanity shattering entities while ensuring that no one, not even their own families, ever finds out the truth. The game is famous for its bleak tone and focus on the cost of the "Great Work." System Overview & Key Features d100 Percentile System The game uses a familiar percentile dice engine. Skills are rated from 01 to 99. To succeed, you must roll equal to or under your skill rating. If the tens and ones digits match (a double) and the roll is a success, it is a critical success; if it is a failure, it is a critical failure. Bonds and Domestic Ruin Agents have Bonds representing their relationships with loved ones or colleagues. When an agent suffers Sanity loss, they can choose to project that trauma onto a Bond to reduce the loss. This mechanically represents the agent coming home and taking their trauma out on their family, slowly destroying their personal life to stay functional in the field. Sanity and Adaptation The game tracks three types of Sanity loss: Violence, Helplessness, and the Unnatural. If an agent experiences enough Violence or Helplessness without breaking, they can become "adapted," making them more resilient to those triggers but less capable of maintaining human empathy and Bonds. Lethality Rating Instead of rolling many dice for heavy weapons like assault rifles or explosives, Delta Green uses a Lethality percentage. If the player rolls under this rating, the target is instantly killed. If they roll over it, the weapon deals a fixed, significant amount of damage instead. The Home Phase Between missions (Operas), players play through a "Home" scene. They must choose how to spend their limited time: fulfilling responsibilities to maintain Bonds, seeking therapy to recover Sanity, or practicing skills. Choosing one often means neglecting the others, leading to a downward spiral of isolation. Special Training and Agencies Character creation is deeply rooted in real world professions. Whether you are a CIA Case Officer, an FBI Special Agent, or a CDC Epidemiologist, your profession dictates your starting skills and the federal resources you can leverage during an investigation. Additional links deltagreen.com - Official Delta Green website arcdream.com - Official Arc Dream Publishing website

Draw Steel is a tactical heroic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game designed by Matt Colville and the team at MCDM Productions. It is built to provide a modern, cinematic alternative to traditional d20 fantasy games. It focuses on high action, tactical depth, and ensuring that every player character feels like a legendary hero from the very first level. The system it is a spiritual successor to is Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Description In Draw Steel, players take on the roles of Heroes. Unlike other systems, the characters are heroes from the start. The characters are already capable of taking on the world and whatever threats may arise. The system encourages a highly tactical approach to combat encounters, promoting teamwork and clever use of abilities to control and affect any battlefield they might find themselves at. System Overview & Key Features The 2d10 Core Mechanic The game abandons the d20 focus and instead offers two ten-sided dice (2d10) instead. This creates a better mathematical average and becomes more predictable and reliable. No To Hit Rolls Draw Steel eliminates the traditional roll to hit. Instead, heroes automatically hit their targets with their primary abilities, but they roll to determine how much Power or impact the effect has. This keeps the game focused on making meaningful tactical choices rather than wasting turns on a miss. Heroic Resources Each class manages a unique resource, such as Focus or Valor, which builds up during a fight. These resources are spent to activate powerful Signature Moves and Heroic Abilities, ensuring that combat has a rising sense of drama and escalation as the heroes grow more powerful the longer a battle lasts. Tactical Movement and Forced Position Combat is designed for a grid. Many abilities do more than just deal damage; they allow players to slide, push, or pull enemies and allies across the battlefield. Positioning is vital, and the environment is intended to be a weapon that heroes can use to their advantage. Tiered Success Action resolution often uses three tiers of success. A low roll might provide a success with a cost, a middle roll is a standard success, and a high roll is a spectacular success that might trigger bonus effects or additional damage. This ensures that every roll contributes something to the ongoing narrative. Additional links mcdmproductions.com - Official MCDM Productions website mcdm.gg - MCDM community and developer portal

Basic Roleplaying is the venerable "D100" engine that has powered Chaosium’s greatest hits for over four decades. Originally appearing as a slim booklet in 1980, it was most recently revitalized as the Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine in 2023. In 2026, it stands as one of the industry's most important open-source platforms, released under the ORC License, allowing independent creators to build and sell their own games using its legendary, time-tested mechanics. Description BRP is a "genre-neutral" toolkit that discards character levels and rigid classes in favor of a pure skill-based system. Whether you are playing a Bronze Age warrior, a 1920s detective, or a futuristic mech pilot, the core experience remains the same: your character is defined by what they can do. Because it uses percentages (e.g., "I have a 65% chance to climb this wall"), it is widely considered the most intuitive and "transparent" RPG system for new players to understand at a glance. System Overview & Key Features The Universal D100 Engine Every action is resolved by rolling two ten-sided (d10) dice to get a result from 1 to 100. If you roll is equal to or under your skill rating, the action is deemed a success. This approach simplifies the mechanical process of the game, as there are no complex tables to keep track of and compare to decypher whether it is a success or failure. Organic Character Growth There is no "Experience Points" system in the traditional sense. Instead, when you succeed in using a skill, you mark a "Skill Check" on your character sheet. At certain stops in the game/story, the player rolls to see if the character improves in those skills, meaning your character evolves based specifically on the actions they performed (and succeeded at) during the game. Modular Rule Design The Universal Game Engine is designed with variations and systems to choose from. GMs can choose whether they prefer to just use "Hit Points" or add a more detailed wound system with "Hit Locations" for more realistic tactical consequences. Systems for Magic, Sorcery, Mutations, or Superpowers (depending on the setting) can be added, instead of being baked in the core mechanics, ensuring the mechanics always fit the theme of the game. Deadly and Tactical Combat BRP combat is grounded and dangerous. Unlike high-fantasy games where adventurers have a vast health pool, a single strike of a sword or bullet in BRP can be fatal. This encourages players to think creatively and use mechanics and terrain to their advantage. Talking their way out of situations is often seen as more reasonable (and survivable), than just treating every conflict as a forced combat situation. The ORC License Revolution By introducing to the Open RPG Creative (ORC) license, BRP started a wave of third-party "Powered by BRP". This has expanded the system into new genres like Cyberpunk, Wuxia, and Cozy Fantasy, all supported by a single, unified ruleset and system, compatible with most themes. Compatibility with "The Big Three" Because the core mechanics have remained the same since the beginning, a monster or spell from a 1980s supplement is almost always compatible with the modern 2026 engine. This gives GMs access to one of the largest libraries of pre-written adventures in tabletop gaming, spanning Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon. Additional links chaosium.com/brp : Official BRP Universal Game Engine portal basicroleplaying.org : The primary community hub and "BRP Central" forums

Nimble is a fast, tactical (and 5e compatible), TTRPG. Your game nights are too precious to waste with slow or fiddly rules! Slay the slog using the best elements from the greatest RPGs around. Nimble empowers players and GMs with more interesting choices, less waiting around, and have more fun playing epic stories Description Nimble RPG is designed to prioritize speed, tactical decision-making, and reduced administrative tracking for both players and Game Masters. The system condenses character sheets and streamlines the action economy to prevent long waiting periods between player turns. Its primary design philosophy centers on accelerating combat encounters without sacrificing strategic depth, utilizing highly lethal weapon mechanics and dynamic monster behaviors. The game is offered both as a complete standalone system and as a modular "rules hack" booklet that can be integrated directly into an ongoing Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign. System Overview & Key Features Fast Combat Don’t waste your time rolling to see if you can deal damage, just roll your damage dice! You deal that much damage. Attacks miss on a 1, but rolling the maximum is an EXPLODING Critical Hit! Exploding critical hits Roll the die again and add it to the total. There is no limit to how many times this damage can stack, except your luck! Instant Initiative Get RIGHT into combat with Improved Initiative rules that get players immediately into combat in a way that serves the story without breaking up the flow. Quick to prep Nimble is quick to prep and easy to run. You've got enough going on while GMing—Mechanics are all designed to be easy to manage and track at the table. You can be ready to run an adventure in as little as 5 minutes! And there's no need to for new players to read though endless pages of rules, teach new players as you play. Easy to balance Easy Encounter Creation. No matter the size of your party—whether you play in a cozy group with just 1 or 2 heroes, or a huge group of 8 or more—Encounters are easy and intuitive to build and balance for just the right level of challenge you like. Craft massive scale combat encounters, down to legendary solo encounters. Strategic Weapon System A subtly DEEP weapon system that rewards thoughtful play. No more, “I guess I’ll pick the bigger one...” Every weapon is balanced to have interesting strengths & weaknesses in combat. Additional links nimblerpg.com - Official website and rules repository

Ishanekon: World Shapers is the (probably) biggest free Indie TTRPG with over 2,500 character options. It has been mainly developed by Jan Luyken, aka Blaze Reason, with the aim of creating a game that can compete (if not surpass) the current biggest games on the market while remaining affordable for anyone. With its easily adaptable rules and wide range of options, from beginner-friendly to highly complex, it is designed to satisfy the needs of almost any story and play style. Description From epic fantasy and sci-fi to mundane humans facing everything from common threats to cosmic horror, Ishanekons: World Shapers’ modular design lets you easily adjust the rules to help you experience your stories. This game is designed with the idea that you bring the flavor, and the mechanics help you bring it to life. The 10 Archetypes with over 200 Sub-Archetypes, 1000+ Abilities, 600+ Talents, 300+ items and upgrades, and more allow you to build anything from a simple cat to a city-destroying kaiju. Role and complexity filters let you find what you need quickly while helping you avoid those features that might be too overwhelming for your liking. System Overview & Key Features Combat d20, Skill d10 The core of combat is built around d20 attack and defense rolls with modifiers that try to beat the enemy's Evasion and DR Power, respectively. Skills, on the other hand, are rolled with d10s, creating somewhat of a dice-based separation between combat and non-combat. Cinematic Actions While IWS has a solid tactical core that will satisfy most war gamers, it also comes with so-called “Cinematic Actions”. These allow narrative-driven actions, independent of what the rules say your character can do, balancing the rule of cool so that role players have a rules-light way to interact with the action, bringing the best of both worlds. Flexible Character Customization This system allows you to mix and match all sorts of Archetypes, features, and Abilities. It encourages such behavior and does not introduce any blocks, such as stat requirements. All sorts of interesting mechanical and flavor combinations open up once you start experimenting. This is also true for items. An extensive upgrade and crafting system exists that can turn any old blade into whatever you want. Carefully Balanced The system's core math has been calculated to ensure that every character option is viable. Breaking the game is not trivial, and you will feel strong, no matter if you are a martial, caster, or something in between. Every weapon and armor type can be wielded to great effect, and each Stat has its uses. “Optimal play” should never get in the way of what fits your character narratively. Regular Patches As a digital product, IWS can be easily expanded. Monthly patches bring new content, buff weak options, and nerf broken combos to help this game evolve and become the best it can be. New digital tools are also added and expanded, such as online character sheets and an encounter calculator. Build Your Own Creatures The website comes with more than 100 creatures, each of which has Level 0 to 15 versions, but creature templates and an online creature builder help you as the GM to create whatever monstrosities you want to throw at your players. All those 2,500 options can also be used for whatever you cook up. Additional links world-shapers.com - Official website world-shapers./resources/adventures - Free adventures Super short rules - Get started with Ishanekon fast