13th Age Second Edition (2025)

Novissa Spola is a tabletop tactical RPG being developed for VR, mixed reality, and PC. Inspired by classic tactical RPGs and the physical experience of playing around a tabletop, Novissa Spola combines strategic turn-based combat, character building, exploration, and a fantasy campaign designed to be played solo or with friends. The game is currently in development, but a playable demo is already available. The demo gives you a chance to experience the tabletop-style gameplay and tactical combat that form the foundation of Novissa Spola. Visit the official website www.honestcabbage.com to play the demo, view the trailer, and stay up to date on development. Development is ongoing, with the full game planned to expand the campaign, characters, world, combat systems, and cooperative experience.

7th Sea is a swashbuckling fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of piracy, duels and intrigue in the world of Théah, created by Jennifer Wick and John Wick, with Kevin Wilson co-writing, and published by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) in April 1999. It won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game of 1999, presented in 2000, and was fairly well received. The game originally used a d10 roll-and-keep system, in which players roll a pool of ten-sided dice (d10) and keep only some of them. It also inspired a collectible card game that was discontinued in 2005. In 2004 AEG moved the line to the d20 System and renamed it Swashbuckling Adventures, a change many fans of the original rules disliked. Later books supported both systems. The first edition later went out of print, and volunteer writers have since released e-books and adventures for it. Chaosium acquired 7th Sea and its rights in 2019. The second edition of the game was released in 2016 as 7th Sea Second Edition, a new system from John Wick Presents. Description Players take on heroes in Théah, a fantasy version of 17th-century Europe whose nations are exaggerated versions of real kingdoms. The setting draws on 1600s European literature, with sorcery playing a major role and a dominant religion that resembles gnostic Christianity, complete with a parallel to the Spanish Inquisition. The Game Master (GM) runs adventures of sea voyages, court intrigue and sword fights. The game asks a table to embrace the swashbuckling genre and the era's romance, and to tolerate a 1990s rulebook that is now out of print. Anyone picking it up should check which system a given book is written for, since AEG published for both the original roll-and-keep rules and the d20 System.

Talislanta is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game created by Stephan Michael Sechi, first published by Bard Games in 1987. It draws its inspiration from Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels and the travelogue spirit of the Arabian Nights rather than from Tolkien. It built its identity around a single blunt promise printed right on the box: "no elves". No dwarves, no halflings, no standard-issue fantasy races at all - just dozens of original cultures found nowhere else in the genre.  The game has passed through five editions and nearly as many publishers, including a stint at Wizards of the Coast in the early '90s, and creator Stephan Michael Sechi now makes the entire back catalogue - every edition, every supplement - available for free through the official Talislanta Library. Description Playing Talislanta starts with a choice. Instead of creating a character from separate race, class, and skill lists, players pick one of well over a hundred archetypes. Things like the Cymrilan Rogue Magician, the Jaka Beastmaster, or the Mandalan Mystic Warrior - each one a fully realised character tied to a specific culture. Complete with attributes, skills, gear, and a place in the world already worked out. A little light customisation (a point moved here, a skill added there) and the character is ready to play.  What makes the game distinct isn't its mechanics, which are deliberately light, but the scale of its setting: the continent of Talislanta is home to more than a hundred distinct peoples, and the rulebooks spend far more pages on culture, custom, and worldview than on combat math. It rewards players who want to explore a genuinely alien fantasy world over chasing mechanical optimisation. System Overview & Key Features Archetype-Based Character Creation Character creation isn't a build process, it's a selection process. Every archetype in the book arrives fully statted, dressed, and equipped, tied to a named culture and a defined role in Talislantan society. Archetypes are deliberately unbalanced against one another, since staying true to the setting mattered more to Sechi than parity between character options. The Unified Action Table Skill checks, combat rolls, and magic all resolve on a single d20 chart. Attacking works exactly like any other skill roll: add a skill rating, compare to a target number. There's no separate combat subsystem to memorise, which keeps the rules themselves down to a few dozen pages even in the densest editions. Modes and Orders Magic runs on two interlocking pieces: Modes (twelve broad effect categories like Attack, Heal, or Illusion) and Orders (culturally rooted schools of magic, from Cartomancy to Elemental Magic). A magician's Order shapes how a Mode behaves and looks when cast, so the same underlying effect plays out completely differently in different hands - which lets a short list of Modes support a near-endless variety of actual spells. A World Built Without Tolkien Every culture in Talislanta was designed to avoid genre default: no elves, no generic barbarians, no standard dragons. In their place are peoples like the Thralls (identical clone-warriors distinguishable only by tattoo), the sky-sailing Phantasians, and the shapeshifting Sindarans. The setting material - not the rules - is where most of the page count and most of the game's reputation live. Links talislanta.com - Official Talislanta website talislanta.com/talislanta-library - Free official PDFs of every edition and supplement ever published

Critical Hit is a Dungeons and Dragons real play podcast featuring Game master Rodrigo leading his players Stephen Schleicher, Brian Bergdall, Matthew Peterson, Rob Rasmussen, Adriana Ferguson, Samantha Nelson, and others on their adventures.  It began as a discussion of 4th edition dungeons and dragons on the major spoilers podcast and developed into a home brewed campaign,  Links majorspoilers.substack.com - Official website youtube.com - Youtube playlist spotify.com - Spotify feed podcasts.apple.com - Apple Podcasts feed criticalhitpodcast.fandom.com - Critical Hit Podcast Wiki patreon.com - Patreon page

Eclipse Phase is a detailed science-fiction exploration of uncertain futures. It investigates the nature of transhumanity as it transforms itself, physically and mentally, into something posthuman. It balances the immense dangers of advanced technologies with a vision of how we can negate these risks and enhance our capabilities to improve and prosper as a species. Description Transhumanity stands on the terminus of evolution and extinction. With the ability to upload our minds and nanofabricate almost anything, death and scarcity were nearly defeated. Then a war against super-intelligent AIs infected with an alien virus wiped out 95% of the population. Earth is a ruined wasteland, overrun by machines. The remnants of transhumanity—bio-engineered humans, uplifted animals, and infolife—expanded throughout the Solar System. The AIs left behind a network of wormhole gates that we now use to explore and occupy distant exoplanets. A new cabal of hypercorps and oligarchs seek to preserve outmoded political and economic systems, while patchwork factions of radical scientists and techno-anarchists experiment with new social models, from each according to their imagination and to each according to their need. /images/general-media/1779972799_ox7h9OdI.jpg Characters switch their bodies—called a morphs—at will. Choose from genetically-modified transhumans, synthetic robotic shells, uplifted animals, or digital infomorphs, optimizing your capabilities for specific missions. Your character’s mind and memories are backed up and can be restored if you die—a built-in system of “save points” and functional immortality. Characters are skill-based, with no classes, so players can customize their team roles and specialize in fields of their choosing. A package-buy system enables quick character creation and customization while also defining elements of your character’s background. Gear and morph tracking is simplified with the use of gear packs and points for each mission. Links eclipsephase.com - Official website eclipsephase.com - Quick-Start Rules discord.gg - Discord server patreon.com - Patreon page

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. More popular systems developed under the OSR system subculture are Shadowdark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Mörk Borg, Dolmenwood, Mothership, Perils & Princesses, Basic Fantasy 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