Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Get your table playing in minutes, not hours.   GATEWAY RPG is a free, rules-lite d20 system built for zero-prep adventures, sudden one-shots, and seamless intro sessions. Familiar 5E-style mechanics with all the bloat stripped out, so you can run any genre instantly: neon-soaked cyberpunk streets, grit-filled noir alleys, high fantasy, cosmic horror, and everything in between. The Definitive Edition is now the main book. This is the complete, current version of GATEWAY RPG: updated core rules, solo play, a starter bestiary, and homebrew variants, character sheets all combined into one source. New artwork, professional layout, and everything players and GMs need in a single 132 page PDF. Want the history? Every older version of the rulebook, spanning 2017 to 2026, is bundled in the Legacy Zip below for collectors and the curious. Download the complete PDF bundle. AI Disclosure: This Enhanced Edition of Gateway RPG features some AI-generated artwork and layout assistance. The rules were still hand written by me and human proofread/playtested since 2017. As a one-man passion project with $0 budget, and $0 revenue gain from this game, this edition utilizes AI imagery only to provide a visually richer and cohesive experience while keeping the game entirely FREE. The original Classic Edition from 2017, featuring human-created artwork, is included as a bonus in the download files. However, if you are only looking for a gaming experience completely free of AI-generated assets, the standalone Classic Edition can be found exclusively on its own dedicated product page at https://gatewayrpg.itch.io/gateway-rpg-classic-edition. What’s Inside? Definitive Edition (Main Book): The complete game in one volume. Updated rules, solo play engine, starter bestiary, and homebrew variants. Legacy Zipfile (2017-2026): Every prior version of the rulebook, character sheet, supplement preserved as released. For archivists, returning players, and anyone who wants to see how the game evolved. Core Rules: The streamlined engine for players and Game Masters, in both English and Spanish (Reglas en Español). Character Sheets: Multiple Printable and Form Fillable Character Sheets Ready-to-Play Content: Pregenerated characters and one-shot adventure modules spanning multiple genres. Jump straight into the action. Player's Toolkit: Printable and form-fillable character sheets, a one-page quick reference guide, and the d20 Oracle for solo play. Starter Bestiary: 25 adversaries across 11 settings, from High Fantasy to Space Opera to Lovecraftian Horror. Homebrew Variants: Over 20 pages of optional mechanics, including Spark of Heroism (Inspiration), Pushing for Success (partial success), and genre modifiers for Survival and Cosmic Horror. Pocket Character Sheets: Compact sheets designed for portability. Solo Play Quickstart Zine: A portable, zine-style guide for on-the-go solo adventures. NEW: Android Player Companion App Character Builder: Create custom characters or select from 30 curated pre-mades. Pocket Rules: Quickly search core mechanics and references on the fly. Sheet-Integrated Dice: Roll checks directly from your sheet. Solo Engine: Built-in oracle for quick, on-the-go solo adventures. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aistudio.gatewayrpg.app Designer's Note: GATEWAY RPG grew out of a personal passion for tabletop gaming. Back in 2015, I discovered S. John Ross’s classic 1993 game, Risus: The Anything RPG. It was free, modular, ultra-flexible, and simple to pick up, but as I played more TTRPG's like DND5e, I missed the iconic d20 and the drama of critical hits and misses. I created GATEWAY RPG to capture that same beginner-friendly spirit while bringing back the thrill of the twenty-sided die and being able to use it for any setting. Whether you are running quick one-shots, playing standalone adventures, diving into solo sessions, or modularly introducing advanced rules as your group learns, GATEWAY adapts seamlessly to your table. GATEWAY RPG and Aurican's Lair are a Not-For-Profit Tabletop Roleplaying Game publisher.

SHRINES – A Dark Pilgrimage RPG is a classless dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about dangerous pilgrimages through wounded worlds. It combines tactical D6-pool combat, exploration, escalating threats and character growth through Domains with a strong focus on consequence, discovery and gaining knowledge. Description SHRINES – A Dark Pilgrimage RPG is a dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game in which the players take the roles of the Marked, pilgrims bound to mysterious Shrines and sent into regions scarred by ancient wounds, broken beliefs and hostile forces. The game combines tactical combat with exploration and narrative decision-making while keeping bookkeeping deliberately light. Its core system uses pools of six-sided dice, with characters defined without traditional classes. Instead, they develop through their qualities, talents, maneuvers, equipment and Domains - powerful influences that shape abilities, vulnerabilities and interactions with the world. Shrines form the anchors of every pilgrimage. They provide safety, progression and a place to return to, because death is not the end. When a pilgrimage fails, the Marked may return to their bound Shrine, but failure still carries consequences. Lost Essence, Burden and an increasingly dangerous world ensure that reformation never makes defeat meaningless. Exploration is built around regions, locations and Instances rather than long quest lists. Players uncover Lore, discover competing factions and decide how deeply they are willing to involve themselves in conflicts that rarely offer a simple distinction between good and evil. At the same time, Regional Escalation causes the world to react to the actions and failures of the Marked, making prolonged expeditions increasingly dangerous. SHRINES is designed around the idea of fair cruelty: the world is harsh, combat can be deadly and mistakes matter, but danger is meant to be readable and consequences understandable rather than arbitrary. The game can be played with a group or as a solo pilgrimage. Its free introductory series, SHRINES: INITIATION, guides players step by step through the core ideas of the system across four connected episodes, gradually introducing exploration, combat, navigation, escalation and the consequences of failure. It leads directly into FIRST FRAGMENT, the upcoming Quickstart release, which expands SHRINES into a broader playable region with additional rules, characters, locations, monsters and a complete pilgrimage to undertake.

Vagabond // Pulp Fantasy RPG is a d20-based OSR fantasy game designed by Taron "Indestructoboy" Pounds - an ENnie Award-winning designer previously known for third-party D&D 5e class content - and published through his own studio, Land of the Blind. It funded its development on Kickstarter in 2023, with a print run funded via Gamefound in 2024, and fans have taken to calling it "the Pathfinder of the OSR": an attempt to bring modern character-build depth to old-school-inspired dungeon crawling without losing the rulings-over-rules, low-prep philosophy that defines games like Knave, Cairn, and Into the Odd, several of which are explicitly credited as influences. Description Playing Vagabond means playing pulp-flavored fantasy adventurers - the kind of setting where a Goblin Gunslinger might delve a mummy's tomb alongside a Dwarf Witch hunting Excalibur - built specifically to keep GM prep and mental overhead low while still giving players a genuinely deep character-building toolkit. It's explicitly compatible with B/X-derived monsters, classic TSR modules, and Old School Essentials adventures, so existing OSR content drops in with little to no conversion. All rolls are player-facing, meaning players roll rather than the GM rolling against them, and creature stat blocks include a built-in "Action Gambit" describing exactly what a monster does in combat, aiming to strip improvised tactical decisions away from the GM entirely.

HackMaster is a crunchy, old-school fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published by Kenzer & Company, created by Jolly R. Blackburn and David Kenzer. It began as a fictional game, a parody of Dungeons & Dragons played by the characters in Blackburn's comic strip Knights of the Dinner Table, and became a real product when the comic's fictional third edition turned into the published Fourth Edition in 2001. That edition won the 2002 Origins Award for Game of the Year 2001. HackMaster Fifth Edition followed in 2011, bringing a Player's Handbook and Gamemaster's Guide, and the line has since grown to more than forty add-ons and supplements. Kenzer and Company announced a 25th anniversary edition, HackMaster XXV, in March 2026 through a Kickstarter campaign. The Fifth Edition directly evolved from HackMaster Fourth Edition, which is a custom system derived from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). Description Players create characters from a race and a class, as in the older editions of Dungeons & Dragons, in a low-magic world that reads as strongly old-school. The default setting is the Kingdoms of Kalamar. The Game Master (GM) runs combat, exploration and the consequences of both, and the game's rules back up a harder, more simulationist style than the parody that started it. The game asks a table to accept a lot of detail. The rules are described as crunchy, with many optional combat moves and fighting styles and wound-by-wound healing that takes real time. It suits groups who enjoy knowing exactly how a fight works and don't mind reference tables, and it is a poor fit for anyone who wants a quick, rules-light evening.

Fatal Tomb is a brutal, rules‑light pulp sword and sorcery tabletop role‑playing game. Explore forgotten tombs, dark dungeons, ruined kingdoms, monster‑infested wildernesses, and strange worlds beyond the Black Gates. Battle ancient beasts, uncover lost treasures, and survive perilous journeys into the unknown. Designed for both solo and group play, Fatal Tomb emphasises fast character creation, deadly combat, minimal preparation, and simple mechanics that stay out of the way of adventure. All you need to play is a pencil, some paper, and a handful of dice.

Conan 2d20 or "Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of", is a low-magic, high-action, fantasy roleplaying game set millennia ago, in the Hyborian Age. Immersed in an exotic land, strewn with ancient ruins, Stygian jungles and frozen wastes - where the heroes are daring, the treasures fleeting and the horrors Lovecraftian. Magic is shunned (but present nonetheless) and sorcerers are vilified; their dark machinations and obscene rituals have earned them fearful reputations and, often as not, a swift burning at the stake. Description The players can create competent and cunning characters from the start (best done with the online character generator - below) and immerse themselves in the joy of battle, tactical play and clever use of the environment. Teamwork is strongly encourage via archetypal characters, powerful talents and the use of shared Momentum and Doom resources, that can be used to spectacular effect or perilous misadventure.  System Overview & Key Features Momentum and Doom points are shared resources that accumulate during action scenes and battles. They are spent to activate powerful talents and abilities, which allow the characters to perform outrageous feats and spectacular displays - or imperil them just when they thought they were safe. Displays are a methods of intimidation, varying techniques that enable a character to demoralise their foes and strike fear into the hearts of man and beast alike. Win the war before it starts! Wounds and healing mechanics that allow character to shrug off scrapes but still significantly suffer from serious injuries until healed. Skills and talents related to them that cater for most possible situations and allow for daring escapades and mighty battles. Additional links modiphius.net - Official storefront and support page for the 2d20 system catalog https://pulp-lit.com/270.htmlpulp-lit.com - Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian

When the Moon Hangs Low is a gothic action roleplaying game in which the players take on the roles of Hunters; people possessed of strange abilities who find themselves fated to oppose the forces of darkness. Set in Harrowmire, a decaying city teetering on the edge of chaos, it is a game of intrigue, investigation, and combat. Games in When the Moon Hangs Low can cover a range of themes; from hunting vile beasts through collapsing sewers, to investigating gruesome murders, to intrigue and politics in the heart of the city. When the Moon Hangs Low has been inspired by a number of other works. Most heavily it draws inspiration from the computer games Bloodborne by From Software and Darkest Dungeon by Red Hook Studios. It also takes notes from the Dishonoured game series by Arkane Studios, the Bas-Lag Cycle by China Miéville, and the Berserk manga series by Kentaro Miura.

Trophy is a collection of collaborative storytelling games about doomed and desperate treasure-hunters entering a haunted forest that doesn’t want them there. The games explore the physical, mental, and emotional descent of the treasure-hunters as they move deeper and deeper into the forest, encountering ancient ruins, terrible monstrosities, and the greatest horror of all: themselves. Games rooted in Trophy are built around characters willing to push their luck. The character are often desperate, with something driving them to continue against all odds. The system itself encourages risk taking, so if your game isn’t about risks or characters who push themselves, then Trophy might not be the best foundation. Trophy is also about decline. Characters tend to degrade over time, or have some precious resource that they’re gradually losing (or a negative resource that they’re gaining). If your game is about characters becoming more and more powerful, then you might want to try a different system. There are two versions of the game: Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold. Trophy Dark is designed for single session play, while Trophy Gold is designed for longer campaigns.

The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying is a tabletop roleplaying game of journeys, fellowship, and creeping Shadow in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, published by Free League Publishing in collaboration with Sophisticated Games. It is the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (5E) sister line to Free League's own The One Ring, adapting that game's setting and structure to the 5E rules under the Open Game License (OGL), with a core compendium released in 2023 and a boxed Starter Set following in July 2025. It is a supplement rather than a standalone rules text: it does not reproduce the 5E basic rules, so a table needs the D&D rulebooks (or access to them) to play. The game is the successor to Adventures in Middle-earth, Cubicle 7's earlier 5E take on Tolkien's world, and a 5E counterpart to The One Ring, whose original designers were Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi. Description Players take on heroes drawn from six cultures of Eriador, the northwestern stretch of Middle-earth, in the year 2965 of the Third Age, when the Shadow is gathering but the great wars are still decades away.  The Game Master (GM) runs a world built around travel, hospitality, and quiet dread rather than dungeon delving: parties plan routes across rivers and mountain passes, hold councils with the people they meet, and spend downtime between adventures recovering from what the road did to them. The game asks a table to accept a lower-magic, slower-burning Tolkien tone than a standard 5E campaign - characters stop at level 10, evil leaves a lasting mark on a hero's spirit, and winning is as often about enduring a journey as clearing a room.

Ars Magica is a troupe-style tabletop roleplaying game about wizards and their allies in Mythic Europe, a version of medieval Europe around the year 1200 in which folklore and religious belief are literally true. It was created by Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen and first published by Lion Rampant in 1987.  The Fifth Edition, written by David Chart and published by Atlas Games in 2004, won the Origins Award for Best Role Playing Game of 2004 and took Gold for Best Rules at the 2005 ENnie Awards. Atlas Games has since released the Definitive Edition, a revised and expanded version of the Fifth Edition with over 600 pages, new art and a new layout. It was funded on BackerKit in 2024 and shipped to backers in 2026, and it keeps the Fifth Edition rules. The Fifth Edition directly evolved from Ars Magica Fourth Edition (Atlas Games, 1996), which in turn descends from the original 1987 game. Description Players portray magi, powerful wizards of the Order of Hermes, alongside companions, skilled specialists who go out into the world, and grogs, the hired hands and retainers who do the dangerous legwork. Most players run one of each, and the group's real shared character is the covenant, the wizards' home base, often built on a place of power.  A Game Master, called the Storyguide (SG), frames the stories, which can span decades or centuries of in-game time. The game asks a table to think in long arcs. Magi spend most of their time studying and working in a laboratory, and many of the best stories come from what that research costs the covenant and its neighbors. It also asks for a fair amount of reading and bookkeeping: the magic system rewards players who plan spells and lab projects, and a character's progress is measured in seasons rather than adventures.

Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game is a cosmic horror tabletop roleplaying game about investigators in 1920s New England, published by Edge Studio, the roleplaying arm of Asmodee, together with Fantasy Flight Games. The Core Rulebook, a 256-page hardcover, reached stores in November 2024 and includes the full rules, a guide to Arkham, Massachusetts and the surrounding Miskatonic River Valley, a chapter on the Ancient Ones and their servants, and a complete adventure, "Terror at the Tick-Tock Club". A beginner-focused boxed set, Welcome to Promise, was announced for July 2026 and moves the action to a town in 1920s Louisiana. The game shares its setting with Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror line of board, card and dice games, but runs on its own engine, the Dynamic Pool System (DPS). Description Players take on investigators drawn from eight pulp-inspired archetypes, who look into strange events, track down occult clues and face things the human mind isn't built to understand. The Game Master runs scenes of conversation, exploration and, occasionally, violence, with dread building through the investigators' own sanity and health pools rather than through a separate monster roster alone. The game asks for a fiction-first table. Rolls are made in the open, clues aren't locked behind dice, and the GM is expected to say yes to creative ideas rather than send players back to their sheets. It is a game where failure can wreck a character's mind or body, and the rulebook includes advice on setting up a safe table and checking in about sensitive themes beforehand.

Kids on Brooms is a tabletop roleplaying game about young witches and wizards at a magic school, written by Jonathan Gilmour, Doug Levandowski and Spenser Starke, with art by Heather Vaughan, and published by Renegade Game Studios. It was announced in May 2020 as a 100-page full-colour softcover for two to six players aged 12 and up, with a release planned for August 2020, and it is powered by the Kids on Bikes engine. The system directly evolved from Kids on Bikes, the same designers' small-town mystery game. Description Players take on students at a school of magic, where strict instructors, mythical creatures and the school's own secrets make for mystery and danger. The Game Master (GM) and players design the school together, and the book includes rules for wands, potions and other magical items, and for riding brooms. Because the game is built on the Kids on Bikes framework, it is rules-light and narrative-first, and it suits groups who want a story-driven game with a young cast. The game asks a table to invent the school and its history together, and to accept that the characters are students and not experts.

The One Ring is a tabletop roleplaying game of journeys and fellowship in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, designed by Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi. The first edition was published by Cubicle 7 in 2011 and set in Wilderland, the lands around Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain. Cubicle 7 stopped publishing the game in 2019, and Free League Publishing took over the licence in 2020, announcing a second edition that moved the setting to Eriador. It was funded on Kickstarter, with backer shipments beginning in October 2021 and general retail release on 22 March 2022. The second edition won a 2022 Gold ENnie Award for interior art, and its French edition won the 2024 Graal d'or for Best New Edition. The second edition replaces the first edition published by Cubicle 7, and the two share a core approach to travel, hope and shadow. Description Players take on heroes of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, such as Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves and Men of the North, who band together as a company. The Game Master is called the Loremaster (LM), and the second edition is set in Eriador roughly twenty years after Bilbo Baggins disappeared from the Shire. Sauron's shadow is growing again, but the world is still mostly quiet, and the game concentrates on the small, hard-won victories of ordinary heroes rather than saving the world. Play alternates between two rhythms. During the Adventuring phase, the company travels, explores, fights and talks its way through the Wild. In the Fellowship phase between adventures, heroes rest, recover, practise skills and pursue personal undertakings. The game asks a table to accept slow, attritional travel in which the road itself wears the company down, and to play characters whose hope can falter. It suits groups who want Tolkien's tone, not Tolkien's powerful wizards and heroes.

Ironsworn is a low-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of perilous quests in the Ironlands, a Norse-inspired frontier, designed by Shawn Tomkin with illustrations by Joshua Meehan. It was released in 2018 by Tomkin Press, and Modiphius Entertainment also publishes it. The game is built for solo, co-op and guided play, and its rules were designed for refereeless play. The Digital Edition is a free download that includes a rulebook of about 270 pages, a play kit and printable asset cards. It won the 2019 Gold ENNIE for Best Free Game/Product, and Forbes named it a top RPG product of 2022 and a leading fantasy solo RPG. It has been translated into German (System Matters, 2021) and French (500 Nuances de Geek, 2024). The system loosely evolved from Powered by the Apocalypse, and it was followed by the science fiction sequel Ironsworn: Starforged (2022). Description Players take on a lone hero or a small group in the Ironlands, with vows that drive each quest, whether it is protecting a village or hunting a monster. Players assign points to five stats (edge, heart, iron, shadow and wits) and track health, spirit and supply. In guided play a Game Master (GM) moderates, in co-op play players work together without a GM, and in solo play one player controls a lone character. The game asks a table to tell the story as well as roll for it. Results often have mechanical effects, but the players work out the narrative outcome, and oracle tables answer questions and generate story details. One reviewer praised the elegant mechanics but found progression "a little stingy", and another criticised the stock-photo-heavy rulebook. It suits solo players and groups without a GM.