Library › Game systems › Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Learn more about the different game systems, discover new and revisit old ones. The library is constantly evolving and growing. With your help, we can expand it even further.

Entries News & updates
Sorted by
The entries are listed based on the amount of Recommend clicks it has.
RuneQuest (2018)
3 players
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

RuneQuest (2018)

High-Fantasy
English
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQG) is a mythic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game set in Greg Stafford's Bronze Age world of Glorantha, published by Chaosium in 2018. It is credited to Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford, Jason Durall, and Steve Perrin, with a long list of contributors from earlier editions. RuneQuest first appeared from Chaosium in 1978 and has passed through several publishers since, including Avalon Hill (third edition, 1984), Mongoose Publishing (2006), and The Design Mechanism (sixth edition, 2012, later continued as Mythras). RQG is the Chaosium-published line that returned to Glorantha, and it is a different game from those later editions. The system directly evolved from the original RuneQuest (1978), whose percentile core was later distilled into Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, the engine behind Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon. Description Players take on adventurers from the clans and tribes of Dragon Pass, from homelands such as Sartar, Prax, the Grazelands, Esrolia, and Tarsh, in a world where gods are neighbors and myths are history.  The Game Master (GM) runs a setting built around cults, clan feuds, and the Hero Wars gathering on the horizon, and characters belong to a family, a homeland, and a religion before they ever pick up a sword. The game asks a table to take that seriously: combat is lethal, shields shatter and limbs get disabled, and there are no luck points to buy a character out of a bad round. In return it offers one of the hobby's most fully realized worlds, where a character's gods, ancestors, and passions shape play as much as their weapon skill.

Read more
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition
1 groups 15 players
Tabletop Roleplaying Games · Dungeons & Dragons

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition

High-Fantasy
English
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of dungeon delving and heroic adventure, designed by Gary Gygax and published by TSR. TSR released a Basic Set in early 1977 to bring the game to a wider public, then published the first part of AD&D later that year as a tighter, more structured game for hobbyist players. The three core hardcovers followed between 1977 and 1979: the Monster Manual (1977), the Player's Handbook (1978) and the Dungeon Master's Guide (1979). Unearthed Arcana (1985) added many new rules. The two lines, Basic and Advanced, were developed separately and often contradicted each other. The system directly evolved from the original Dungeons & Dragons (1974). A second edition, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition, was designed mainly by David "Zeb" Cook and released by TSR in 1989. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997, its Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000) merged the Basic and Advanced lines and dropped "Advanced" from the title. Description Players take on adventurers, usually fighters, clerics, magic-users and thieves, who explore dungeons, wilderness and ruins for treasure and glory. The referee is called the Dungeon Master (DM), and the rules are split into player and referee books so that the DM is needed to run a game. The Dungeon Master's Guide covers running campaigns, combat and magic items, with tables for treasure and random encounters. The game asks a table to accept a lot of tables and a high level of lethality. It is a 1970s rule set, written for referees who adjudicate and improvise, and it is not an easy introduction. Many tables run it today because they want exactly that.

Read more
Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition
Tabletop Roleplaying Games · Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

High-Fantasy
English
Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (D&D 3E) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of dungeon delving and heroic adventure, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. It was the first edition the company released entirely itself, and the Player's Handbook went on sale on August 10, 2000, with its debut at Gen Con that month. Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams all contributed to the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual, and each then wrote one of the three books, with Tweet credited with the design of the Player's Handbook. The designers set out to simplify and declutter the whole system. "Advanced" was dropped from the title because the Basic game had been discontinued and the simpler name was more marketable, but it was still called the third edition. The system directly replaced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition (1989). It was revised in 2003 as Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5, a deliberately small update. Description Players take on adventurers built from a race and a class, and the Dungeon Master (DM) runs dungeons, monsters and campaigns. The edition removed many of the old limits: restrictions on class and race combinations, and on level advancement for non-human characters, are gone. Combat expanded to include a grid system that supports tactical play and miniatures. The game asks a table to be comfortable with character building. Skills and feats give players more ways to customize a character than the older edition did, and the options keep growing with each rulebook. Reviewers at the time praised its art and tightly packed rules, and one called it the best combat-oriented roleplaying game available.

Read more
The One Ring Second Edition
17 players
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

The One Ring Second Edition

English
French
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.

Read more
Ironsworn
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Ironsworn

English
Rules-light
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.

Read more