Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of

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.

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.

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.

Online character generator for Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of by Modiphius Entertainment Links conan2d20.github.io - Character generator

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.

Twilight: 2000 is a post-apocalyptic military tabletop roleplaying game of survival after a limited nuclear war, first published by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) in 1984. The original was designed by Frank Chadwick, Dave Nilsen, Loren K. Wiseman and Lester W. Smith. Players usually portray American soldiers stranded in Central Europe after the Twilight War, which began as a Sino-Soviet conflict in 1995. The game received the H.G. Wells Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984 at Origins 1985. The current edition, the fourth, was published by Free League Publishing in 2021 on the Year Zero Engine, and its setting options include Poland and Sweden. The system is the fourth edition of Twilight: 2000, following editions published in 1984, 1990 and 1993, and it replaced the earlier rules with the Year Zero Engine, which also runs Tales from the Loop. Description Players take on the remains of a military unit, cut off from their command and trying to get home across a ruined continent. The Game Master (GM) runs a sandbox in which the group scavenges, trades, fights and tracks supplies, and the original adventure "Escape from Kalisz" and the Free City of Krakow module sent players through Poland. The game asks a table to value survival over glory. Ammunition, fuel and food are limited and combat is dangerous, so a party has to choose its fights. It suits groups who like logistics and grim, grounded stories more than heroic action.