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.

Mage: The Ascension is a modern-day supernatural roleplaying game created by Stewart Wieck and a team of designers at White Wolf Publishing, first released in 1993 as the third of White Wolf's original World of Darkness game lines, following Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. It went through a second edition in 1995 and a Revised Edition in 2000, largely overseen by Phil Brucato, before Onyx Path Publishing released the 20th Anniversary Edition in 2015, the version most tables run today. Where Vampire is about hunger and Werewolf is about rage, Mage is about belief: player characters are ordinary people who have Awakened to the understanding that reality itself is negotiable, and the game is built entirely around the consequences of acting on that understanding.

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.

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.

Monster of the Week (MOTW) is an urban fantasy-horror tabletop role-playing game developed by Michael Sands. It was first published in 2012, and a revised edition was published by Evil Hat Productions in 2015. The entire theme of the game is heavily inspired by TV shows like Buffy, Supernatural, X-Files, Fringe and many others. The system it directly evolved from is Apocalypse World Description Players in the MOTW system take on the role of monster hunters. Capable of dealing with most creatures that might get in their way. Using skills to solve mysteries, track monsters and eventually defeat them.  System Overview & Key Features Powered by the Apocalypse Engine (2d6) Players roll two six-sided dice (2d6) when performing actions, adding relevant character modifiers to the result. Rolling a 10 or higher is considered a success. 7-9 is a partial success, which will also carry some added consequences. Getting a 6 or lower means failure - you have not succeeded in whatever you attempted and dire consequences are soon to follow. Basic and Playbook Moves Game mechanics are categorized into discrete actions called "Moves." Basic Moves are universally available to all characters and cover common actions such as "Investigate a Mystery," "Kick Some Ass," or "Act Under Pressure." Playbook Moves are exclusive, specialized abilities granted by a character's chosen Playbook, allowing them to manipulate the narrative or game mechanics in unique ways. Finite Luck Points Each character possesses a limited track of Luck points. A player may permanently expend a point of Luck to retroactively alter a dice roll to a 12 (a complete success) or to entirely negate a single instance of sustained damage. Luck is a resource the players have to keep an eye on. Using too much can get you out of trouble, but if you don't have it when you need it most - trouble awaits. Harm and Exploiting Weaknesses Physical trauma is tracked using a short monitor called "Harm." Player characters and adversaries possess low thresholds for sustaining Harm, making direct combat inherently dangerous. To successfully defeat a primary antagonist, players are mechanically required to investigate and utilize the creature's specific weakness, as standard physical attacks are often insufficient to achieve a permanent victory. The Mystery Countdown To structure a gameplay session, the Keeper utilizes a tool called the Countdown. This is a chronological timeline detailing the sequence of events that will occur if the player characters fail to intervene. The Countdown is divided into escalating phases, ending with a catastrophic event. It serves to govern the pacing of the investigation and provide a sense of urgency.

Fear of the Unknown is a zero prep horror mystery game designed for one-shots and inspired by horror movies, from slasher flicks to possession films to conspiracy thrillers Together, one Oracle and one or more other players will collaboratively create the small town setting and populate it with a diverse and contentious cast of characters. Each player creates their protagonist, and then the Oracle creates a horrifying mystery for them to solve. Every game has a real mystery to solve with a real secret to uncover, with zero prep required! Fear of the Unknown introduces the Seeking the Unknown system, which focuses on leading questions that help you create a world, characters, and story with no preparation, and lasting changes to your character with every decision you make and every time you roll the dice. It also has advice for how to make your own Seeking the Unknown game.

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.

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.

It's October 13th, 1999 and the world has ended. Someone, no one is sure who, let something into our world. A kind of infection or corruption that affects both the body and the mind. Animals, people, even mundane objects... all became twisted and unnatural. Some speculate it's a kind of demonic possession, others that it's an alien or even transdimensional biological weapon. In the end, it doesn't matter. The whole world fell apart, twisted from within. The survivors cling to their wretched lives in a fallen world, trying to comprehend the horrors and fend them off for just one more day. The world is in tatters, monsters roam around consuming everything they can, strange occult powers spread among the damned, and even the very air seems tainted. Perhaps the rapture happened and the survivors are being punished because they were found wanting. Perhaps this is some kind of strange terrorist attack from another world. Or maybe it's all nothing more than a cosmic accident, a tragedy of happenstance as something never intended for this world found its way in. Can you survive and fight off the horrors coming from within and without? Description October Twilight is a survival horror/dungeon crawler tabletop roleplaying game for 2 or more players. One player must take the role of the Game Master. This game assumes familiarity with other roleplaying games and so much of the basic flow of roleplaying is not explained. The game is meant to feel like a PS1/PS2 era survival horror game and a post apocalyptic survival game. Food is scarce, ammunition is scarcer, and everything is trying to kill you. In the game, your team has a safe house they come back to between excursions. The safe house lives up to it's name, being safer than exploring the ruins of the fallen world outside your door. But, you burn resources like food and water at the safe house and have to go out to find more. You'll never have enough resources to simply hole up and wait out the end of the world. Touchstones and Inspirations: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, The Walking Dead, Darkest Dungeon, and Evil Dead 2.

The Midnight Accession is a 20-30 minute solo mystery-horror journaling game by E.S. Oakhaven. You play the night scribe on intake shift at a strange archive: log a newly arrived artifact through a four-stage shift (Intake, Investigation, Preservation, Resolution), consult a 12-entry Artifact Oracle, and reach one of three endings.

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.

Pirate Borg is a rules-light, art-heavy tabletop roleplaying game of swashbuckling horror in a dark, supernatural Caribbean, written and illustrated by Luke Stratton under the Limithron label and published by Free League Publishing through its Free League Workshop sublabel. It is based on MÖRK BORG, and it is described as complete and compatible with that game.  The system is based on MÖRK BORG, and it is a sibling to CY_BORG, a Free League Workshop title. Description Players take on pirates, whether cursed sailors, marked captains or fugitives, in a setting called the Dark Caribbean where history, fantasy, horror and rum meet. The Game Master (GM) runs scenes of fighting undead crews, hunting for treasure and sailing between islands, and the book includes a sandbox adventure to start with. The game asks a table for a certain tone. It is grim, loud and rough, and characters are fragile, so a group that wants a balanced fight each session will find it unforgiving. It suits groups that enjoy fast play, heavy atmosphere and a GM comfortable with improvising from tables.

Kids on Bikes is a nostalgic tabletop roleplaying game about ordinary people in a small town facing strange and powerful forces they cannot fully understand, designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski and published by Renegade Game Studios. The first edition was funded on Kickstarter in November 2017, raising $93,471 from 3,069 backers, and published by Hunters Books in partnership with Renegade, which handled sales and marketing, with a release planned for May 2018. A second edition was funded on Kickstarter in 2022, raising $182,049 from 2,793 backers. The game won the 2019 Gold ENNIE Award for Best Family Game, and its Strange Adventures! Volume Two won the same award in 2020. The system is the basis of Teens in Space and Kids on Brooms, with a further game, Kids in Capes, forthcoming. Description Players take on the kids and adults of a small American town, who are brought together by a mystery in the manner of Stranger Things and E.T. The town is built by the table, and players and the Game Master (GM) answer questions about its landmarks and local sports mascot to produce a place with its own rumours and relationships. The game can be set in any decade of the last century or the present day. The game asks a table to build the setting together, and to accept that the characters are ordinary. The kids are not heroes, and even the optional powered character costs the story something. It suits groups who like character drama and shared worldbuilding more than tactics, and the sample module sets the story in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.