A Compilation of Free Tabletop Role Playing Games (RPG)

This is a collection of free role playing games (RPG) that are our personal favourites.  Hopefully, this can help curb your RPG addiction during these tough times without burning a hole in your pocket.  I mean, who doesn’t like a free RPG?!

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  • 6×6 Tales: 6×6 Tales is inspired by Barbarian Prince, 100 World Story, and PocketMod.
 
 
 
  • Aleph RPG: This is a complete Role-Playing Game system, released under Creative Commons license and thus freely usable for any purpose. Aleph RPG includes everything you will ever need to set up your fantasy campaign, all in a single manual.
 
  • Ambrosia: A gathering of souls” consists of a set of quick-start rules and an introductory scenario for Ambrosia that is meant to be played by a game-master and three to four players using pre-generated characters. Only the quick-start rules included in this book are required to run this scenario.
  • Anglers from Planet X: Inside the pages of this carefully crafted document you will find everything you need so that your Teenagers can go fishing in freshwater, saltwater, alienwater, or the school fish tank!
  • Astrenor: Discover Astrenor, a medieval fantasy universe that is both funny and mysterious, where appearances are often deceiving.
  • Augmented Reality: Enhance your games of the dark future, with the easy to use Augmented Reality cyberpunk city kit. Inside, you’ll find over 50 tables designed to assist gamesmasters who need to improvise futuristic city details, or who have found that they are unprepared for where their players are heading.
  • Basic Fantasy RPG: The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game is a rules-light game system modeled on the classic RPG rules of the early 1980’s.
  • Birthright of Khar-Ulan: With the release of Overlight on the very near horizon, we thought we’d take this opportunity to give you an exclusive preview of the Overlight setting and provide you with an adventure that can act as a prelude to the introductory adventure in the Overlight Rulebook.
  • Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands: Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands is a fast-paced, action-adventure roleplaying game in which the players take on the role of Bounty Hunters, banding together to hunt down bad guys for reputation and reward.
  • Brutal: Big Bad Ball Busting Bloody Battles – BRUTAL is far from just a name. It’s an ethos that David has carried throughout this gorey, wicked and belligerent fantasy roleplaying game. If performing acts of violence without hesitation to NPCs or PCs is your desire, then Brutal will satiate your thirst in several dimensions.
  • Cascade Failure: Cascade Failure is a post-apocalypse future RPG. Set in the aftermath of a devastating war that collapsed the interstellar economy, Cascade Failure is a survival RPG that casts the characters out into a dangerous and hostile universe.
  • Castles and Crusades Players Handbook & Fiction (Bundle): Contains the Houseless Gods & Other Tales, Castles and Crusades Players Handbook 7th Printing
  • Crystal Heart: In the world of Crystal Heart, people’s hearts are literally made of stone. Agents of the mysterious organization Syn scour the world in search of Crystals, powerful relics of a bygone age. 
  • Cyberblues City: This is a near-future, action-adventure roleplaying game. Fast-playing and often funny, it offers a lighter take on the cyberpunk genre, both in terms of system and tone
  • D100 Dungeon V1 & V2: Each quest is a trip to the dungeon, where you will have a specific goal. Whether you win or fail the quest, your character is constantly developing and looting better equipment and more gold.
  • Dark Fantasy Places: Dark Fantasy Placesis a collection of tables and short essays to inspire the creation of fantastic places: villages, ruins, forests, etc .
  • Deadlands Marshal’s Handbook and Deadlands Player’s Guide 
  • Degenesis: The game is categorized by the designers as “Primal Punk”, a description detailing a world in which humanity struggles for survival in a world filled with perils both alien and humane.
  • Dominion Rules: Dominion Rules is a simple yet comprehensive rules system for historical and fantasy roleplaying. Based entirely on the 12-sided die, DR features elegant game-play and fresh approaches to familiar concepts such as combat, magic and religion.
  • Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition:
  • Dungeon Saga: Rise of the Shadow King – In this book, you are the hero and the decisions you make will dictate how the story unfolds.
  • Eclipse Phase: A Time of Eclipse ePub & Print – A Time of Eclipse is an ePub/Mobi file and print book containing roughly the first 111 pages of the Eclipse Phase first edition core rulebook: essentially, all of the setting material from the core!
  • Elite Dangerous: The Worst Intentions – The main purpose of this free 50 page sampler The Worst Intentions for the Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game, is to allow players to sample the ruleset and universe of this exciting new RPG from Spidermind Games and get a feeling for how it works.
  • Fate RPG: Fate Core is a flexible system that can support whatever worlds you dream up. Have you always wanted to play a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western with tentacle monsters? Swords and sorcery in space? Wish there was a game based on your favorite series of books, film, or television, but it never happened? Fate Core is your answer.
  • Fear: FEAR RPG was born out of frustration with these types of roleplaying games, and has been designed from scratch to be realistic yet flexible. The rules can be adapted to any fantasy world you care to use.
  • Flyersbook: Pirate Party -This is a one-page ruleset for quick roleplaying gamesYou want to play a pirate game, but you have no adventure at hand? You only have 2 hours so you don’t want to spend half the time learning rules and creating characters?
  • Gateway: GATEWAY RPG Tabletop System is a Free, rules-lite, easy to learn, fast-paced, and universal d20 Roleplaying Game framework that is perfect for introducing new players to the hobby of tabletop role-playing games. 
  • Godbound: Godbound is a game of divine heroes in a broken world, men and women who have seized the tools that have slipped from an absent God’s hands.
  • Golden Age: Golden Age RPG is a fully fledged roleplaying game with an original system designed for both speed of play and ease of use. Partake in your own adventures with your friends within the setting of the Continent, and enjoy all manner of stories.
  • Gulliver’s Trading Company: Gulliver’s Trading Company, as the name suggests, is set in the world of Gulliver’s Travels. The game system is derived from FATE/FUDGE.
  • GURPS: With GURPS, you can be anyone you want – an elf hero fighting for the forces of good, a shadowy femme fatale on a deep-cover mission, a futuristic swashbuckler carving up foes with a force sword in his hand and a beautiful woman by his side . . . or literally anything else!
  • Heroes Against Darkness: Heroes Against Darkness is a d20-based fantasy RPG system that combines modern mechanics with the simplicity of early RPG editions.
  • Heroes of Feonora: Heroes of Feonora is an RPG Board Game designed for players of all ages. It begins in a bustling village alive with activities set in a colorful world of humor and mystery.  The inhabitants of this world have unique backgrounds and personalities.
  • Honey Heist: This is a surprisingly successful one-page RPG. Here is the plot:

    1) You have a complex plan that requires precise timing.

    2) You are a GODDAMN BEAR.

    That’s largely it. It’s easy to run and easy to play, and there’s a D8 table for hats if you want to be a bear that wears a hat, and who doesn’t want that? 
  • Icar: Icar is a free science fiction tabletop RPG where you zip between the stars, battle killer Droids and subvert a benevolent Imperium
 
  • Invasion of Tuber Dudes: Join forces with the bandit king that is kidnapping babies to save the world, or bring him to the stern justice of the Sisters of Clemency.
 
  • Ironsworn: In the Ironsworn tabletop roleplaying game, you are a hero sworn to undertake perilous quests in the dark fantasy setting of the Ironlands. You will explore untracked wilds, fight desperate battles, forge bonds with isolated communities, and reveal the secrets of this harsh land.
  • Kaigaku: Kaigaku brings dramatic samurai action back to your tabletop!
  • Krendel: A modular, universal table top role-playing game system that provides a toolbox to customize your game to any world you can imagine.
  • Lady Blackbird : Lady Blackbird is on the run from an arranged marriage to Count Carlowe. She hired a smuggler skyship, The Owl, to take her from her palace on the Imperial world of Ilysium to the far reaches of the Remnants, so she could be with her once secret lover, the pirate king Uriah Flint.
  • Lawmen & Outlaw: The game uses a variant of the Fudge roleplaying system, designed to be easy to learn and fast in play.
  • Legend: Legend is a fast-paced and finely balanced roleplaying game system, designed to offer tabletop gaming groups rules for playing the games that they’ve always wanted to play. Based on the successful and popular rules available under the Open Gaming License, Legend rebuilds and advances those rules to allow for testing, balance, and broad storytelling opportunities for unique and enjoyable characters and game worlds.
  • Magic and Steel: An innovative RPG mixing “old” and “new” rpg styles.
  • Movie Night: An all-ages storytelling roleplaying game inspired by the movies of the 80’s and shows such as Stranger Things.
  • Nucleus: Nucleus is a Free class-less Role play system, which forms a suitable rule base for any game world or genre. 
  • Prose Descriptive Qualities System Core System: The Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) System has been designed for evocative simplicity, speed, and flexibility in play. Three levels of resolution, suitable for any type of situation. 
  • Pugmire Core Rulebook Phone PDF: Dogs have inherited the world, building the kingdom of Pugmire untold centuries after the Ages of Man are over.
  • Red Ash World Engine: Red Ash is a generic rules set for a role playing game “RPG” and strategy game (in the future) that I have been working on for some time. My goals for this system is to design a complete rules set that can be used in any genre, but for now will focus on a fantasy setting.
  • Red Rock: This is a post-apocalyptic game about survivors exploring their memories as they try to rebuild society.
  • Risus RPG: For some, Risus is a handy “emergency” RPG for spur-of-the-moment one-shots and rapid character creation. For others, it’s a reliable campaign system supporting years of play. For others still, it’s a strange little pamphlet with stick figures. No matter what you think it is, there’s no wrong way to play.
  • Saga & Six-Guns: Sagas & Six-Guns is a Savage Worlds Adventure Edition setting and rulebook about a mythical and uninhabited frontier settled by Scandinavian cultures.
  • Saving People/ Hunting Things: You’re a monster hunter, whether by birth or by chance. Maybe you were brought up in the lifestyle, or maybe you fell into it when someone you cared about got eaten by a monster. 
  • Sea of Stars: Peace is relative. Conflict is constant. Your course will be choppy in this Sea of Stars.
  • Simplicity: Simplicity is a fantasy roleplaying game that allows you and your friends to create fictional adventures in a fantasy world. 
  • Stars without Numbers (Revised Edition): This is an old-school-inspired game of sci-fi adventure, one built from the ground up to encourage sandbox play and simplify a GM’s job in providing it. Familiar mechanics are employed to forge new worlds and explore new possibilities, guidelines built on long experience used to help a group venture in wholly new directions. 
  • The Artifact: The Earth can’t sustain us anymore. Over fifty six years ago The Artifact was discovered, an artificial planetoid that is now the only hope for our refugees.
  • The Blade and The Will: The Blade & the Will is a fantasy role-playing game where the participants take on the roles of, often as not, violent maniacs on adventures in distant worlds and ages. It is an old school skill based system built with The 20 Explodes Engine.
  • The Cursed RPG: The Cursed RPG is a low powered urban fantasy game. Magic isn’t real, there are no vampires or werewolves, and here not be monsters. Well, that is what the mass majority want to believe at least. 
  • The Fantasy Trip: Melee – A classic game of fantasy combat. Create characters in just a few minutes – then send them into the arena. Winners become stronger and faster for the next battle. Losers die.
  • The Happiest Apocalypse on Earth: The Happiest Apocalypse on Earth is set in a fictional theme park called Mouse Park. Its special blend of satire and horror takes collaborative storytelling to the brink, where players can take on the role of guests or staff in a theme park that barely masks a terrible horror lurking beneath.
  • The Window: The Window is a transparent portal into the imagination, a roleplaying system designed with the simple belief that roleplaying is about story and character and not about dice and dick waving.
  • Tiny D10: Tiny d10: Fantasy Core is a simple tabletop roleplaying game designed for use by one game master and two-to-six players. It requires just a single ten-sided die (d10), and some pencils & paper. In return, it will provide endless hours of dazzling heroics and tremendous dangers in epic lands of fantasy. 
  • Top Secret / New World Order: You are an agent of ICON: The International Covert Operatives Network. You have been recruited from your former life, trained in the ways of tradecraft, and sent into the field to handle the missions that other agencies cannot, or will not handle.
  • Vector! Attack of the Metapirates – This is a multi part supplement for use in any tabletop roleplaying game. Rules contained within should be useable in most systems with little alteration, but may take some adjustment depending on setting or rule set.
  • White Lies: Based on Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox, White Lies brings all the simple elegance of WhiteBox out of the dungeon and into the realm of espionage and paramilitary action and adventure! 
  • World of Gaiana: World of Gaianar – Third Edition, is a multi-genre, free-to-use, free-to-play role-playing that combines elements of fantasy, horror, and steam punk. 
 
  • Wyrd: Magik has cursed you with demonic possession. The only escape from possession is death. But your demon will not let you go quietly. You must seek your release from the Horrors that infest this world, the same Horrors you once fought to destroy.
 
  • X6: x6 is a universal system for pen-and-paper roleplaying games. This core edition presents the basic game mechanics comprising the x6 system, along with a basic selection of character abilities and equipment that would suit a contemporary game setting.
  • YAGS: YAGS is another game system. It is a set of moderately complex tabletop RPG rules designed around the concept of cinematic realism, allowing gritty adventures where the life of a hero is a dangerous one.

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