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

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

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.

Ouroboros: Age of Drowning is an original tabletop roleplaying game with its own setting and unique narrative-focused dice-pool system. Set in a dystopian world after the Meteor Fall, Ouroboros: Age of Drowning combines mystery, forbidden Alchemy, and surreal horror. The technocratic Clockwork Faction enforces a victorian New Order from its industrious Domed Cities, while rising seas consume the world beyond. As members of a League, you make discoveries in a world where Reality is unstable. Investigate strange phenomena, confront Factions with competing agendas, and encounter Aetherika, spirits, folklore made real, and horrors from the Otherworld. Venture into Dreamscapes, where Surreality blurs the boundary between worlds, and confront the Dark Thoughts within yourself as your Shadow grows. The game uses a dice-pool system designed around Traits, Specializations, and Focuses, giving characters different ways to approach problems rather than reducing them to a handful of broad attributes. Investigation, social maneuvering, survival, combat, occult practices, Dreamscapes, and forbidden Alchemy are all handled through the same core system.

Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying is written by Nils Hintze, built on the folklore research and artwork of Swedish illustrator and author Johan Egerkrans, and published by Free League Publishing in 2020. It runs on an adapted version of Free League's house Year Zero Engine, the same lineage powering Tales from the Loop, Forbidden Lands, and the official ALIEN RPG, but reworked here around investigation and dread rather than survival or combat.  The game earned three ENNIE Awards in 2021 (Best Art and Cover, Best Interior Art, Best Monster/Adversary), and its Mythic Britain & Ireland expansion went on to win Gold for Best Interior Art, Best Setting, and Product of the Year in 2023.

Kult: Divinity Lost is the fourth edition of Kult, a contemporary horror RPG originally created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén and first published in Sweden by Äventyrsspel (later Target Games) in 1991 - a game notorious enough in its day that its Italian release was reportedly banned by the Vatican.  This edition, designed by Robin Liljenberg and Petter Nallo and published by Helmgast in 2018 following a successful Kickstarter, is a ground-up reboot: entirely new rules built on a modified version of the Powered by the Apocalypse engine, and a setting updated from the 1990s to the present day. It won two ENNIE Awards in 2019 and is distributed internationally by Modiphius Entertainment.

Shadow of the Demon Lord is a grim dark-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game set during the last, doomed years before an apocalypse, designed by Robert J. Schwalb and published by his own studio, Schwalb Entertainment, in 2015 following a Kickstarter campaign.  It builds a d20-based system deliberately stripped of the modifier-stacking common to games in its weight class, replacing most situational bonuses and penalties with a single abstracted mechanic. Schwalb later returned to the same core system for a lighter, more traditional-fantasy spinoff, Shadow of the Weird Wizard, released via Kickstarter in 2023. Description Characters begin as ordinary commoners rather than destined heroes, in a world where the Demon Lord's return is already underway and survival - not glory - is the realistic goal of most adventures. The Game Master (GM) runs a setting that leans hard into body horror, corruption, and creeping dread, and the game states its demands plainly.  Characters can and do die, sanity can crack under the weight of what they witness, and doing what's necessary to survive can leave a permanent, mechanical stain on a character's soul. It's built for a table that wants D&D-adjacent fantasy combat without D&D's heroic framing - closer in spirit to grimdark fiction than epic fantasy, with character death treated as a real and fairly common outcome rather than an exception.

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.

Achtung! Cthulhu is a pulpy World War II horror tabletop roleplaying game in which Allied and resistance agents fight a secret war against Nazi occultists and the Cthulhu Mythos. It was created by Chris Birch and published by Modiphius Entertainment, which launched the setting in 2012 as an adventure series for Call of Cthulhu, with versions for other systems announced. The 2d20 edition, with rules designed by Nathan Dowdell, launched on March 9, 2021, as a standalone game with a Player's Guide and a Gamemaster's Guide. The 2d20 edition replaced the earlier versions of Achtung! Cthulhu, which were written for other systems, and uses the same 2d20 system as Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. Description Players take on soldiers, spies and resistance fighters in a war where the real enemy is behind the enemy. Campaigns run from 1939 to a confrontation in Antarctica in 1946, with scenarios in places such as occupied Czechoslovakia and Dunkirk. The Gamemaster (GM) runs the war, the Black Sun cultists and the creatures they command, including undead, Deep Ones and a Shoggoth. The tone leans towards action rather than dread. The supernatural is a threat to be overcome, at least for a while, which sets it apart from the more fatalistic horror of Call of Cthulhu. The game asks for a table that wants a combat-heavy war story with a thin layer of cosmic horror.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse is a gothic-punk tabletop roleplaying game of environmental and spiritual horror, in which players take on Garou, shapeshifting werewolves who fight to protect Gaia from destruction, greed and corruption. It was created by Mark Rein-Hagen and first published by White Wolf in 1992, with a second edition in 1994, a Revised Edition in 2000 and a 20th Anniversary Edition from Onyx Path Publishing. The Fifth Edition, published by Renegade Game Studios and released in August 2023, is a 300-page-plus hardcover for ages 18 and up that uses the 5th edition Storyteller system. It is described as a re-imagining of the game and not a continuation of earlier editions. The system directly evolved from the original Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992), and it is part of the World of Darkness line. Description Players take on werewolves who see themselves as the planet's immune system, hunting the supernatural forces that would bring about the Apocalypse. In the Fifth Edition, a werewolf is seeking radical solutions to an environmental apocalypse and the world's injustices. The Game Master (GM), called the Storyteller, runs a chronicle in the World of Darkness, and the book covers character creation and guiding a troupe. The game asks a table to engage with heavy themes. The book carries a mature content warning for violence, sexual themes and strong language, and first-edition reviewers noted that its mythology can be a lot to take in. It suits groups who want a story of rage, loss and ecological dread more than a tactical monster hunt.

Hunter: The Reckoning is a horror tabletop roleplaying game about ordinary people who discover the supernatural and take up arms against it, set in the World of Darkness. The original was published by White Wolf in November 1999 as the sixth main game of the World of Darkness line. The 5th Edition (H5), published by Renegade Game Studios in 2022, is built on the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th edition ruleset, with Justin Achilli as series creative lead and Tomas Arfert as art director. The core rulebook is a full-colour hardcover that was an ENNIE Award nominee for Best Rules in 2023. A companion Hunter: The Reckoning Dice Set and a Character Journal were announced alongside it. The system directly evolved from Hunter: The Reckoning (1999), and it shares its ruleset with Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition, another entry in the World of Darkness. Description Players take on hunters, humans with jobs, families and debts who have stumbled on the monsters around them. The Storyteller, the game's name for its Game Master (GM), runs a chronicle in which the group tracks down vampires, werewolves, ghosts and other threats while trying to keep their ordinary lives together. In the original, hunters were granted power by mysterious Heralds or Messengers, and they coordinated through an anonymous online forum called Hunter-Net. In H5, hunters are not imbued, and the game focuses on the human side of the work. The game asks a table to hold a particular tone. The Renegade page calls it "a storytelling game of desperate measures", and its themes include righteous fury, paranoia, hope and the cost of keeping a normal life. It suits groups who like dark urban fiction and fragile characters, more than groups that want a power fantasy.

Chronicles of Darkness is an urban horror tabletop roleplaying game and shared rules framework, published by Onyx Path Publishing under the copyright of Paradox Interactive, that powers a family of supernatural games including Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening and Hunter: The Vigil. It began in 2004 as a reboot of White Wolf's World of Darkness, launched with the rulebook The World of Darkness and new Storytelling System rules, and fans called it the "New World of Darkness" until 2015, when Paradox Interactive renamed it Chronicles of Darkness to avoid confusion with the original series. The current core rulebook is the revised edition on the Revised Storytelling System, which folds in the rules updates and some of the setting material from The God-Machine Chronicle. Critics generally saw the updated rules as a big improvement, describing them as fluid and open-ended. The system is a reboot of the original World of Darkness, and it is a separate line from the games Renegade Game Studios now publishes, such as Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition. Description Players take on ordinary people drawn into the supernatural, or the supernatural creatures themselves, in a modern urban setting with no metaplot. The Storyteller, the game's name for its Game Master (GM), runs a chronicle, and the setting details are optional for a campaign. Vampire clans and werewolf tribes were cut down to five each, so the lore is lighter than in the original series. There are eleven game lines in all, including Promethean: The Created, Changeling: The Lost, Geist: The Sin-Eaters, Mummy: The Curse, Demon: The Descent, Beast: The Primordial and Deviant: The Renegades. The game asks a table to take the grounded tone seriously. Opinions on the setting are divided, since some prefer the original series' grander, more fantastical scale and others the reboot's smaller one. It suits groups who like personal horror and mystery and are happy to build a chronicle from the characters' goals.