Fear of the Unknown

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 (2010) 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. Additional links evilhat.com - Official Evil Hat Productions website genericgames.co.nz - Official home of Michael Sands and the original game files

Nimble is a fast, tactical (and 5e compatible), TTRPG. Your game nights are too precious to waste with slow or fiddly rules! Slay the slog using the best elements from the greatest RPGs around. Nimble empowers players and GMs with more interesting choices, less waiting around, and have more fun playing epic stories Description Nimble RPG is designed to prioritize speed, tactical decision-making, and reduced administrative tracking for both players and Game Masters. The system condenses character sheets and streamlines the action economy to prevent long waiting periods between player turns. Its primary design philosophy centers on accelerating combat encounters without sacrificing strategic depth, utilizing highly lethal weapon mechanics and dynamic monster behaviors. The game is offered both as a complete standalone system and as a modular "rules hack" booklet that can be integrated directly into an ongoing Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign. System Overview & Key Features Fast Combat Don’t waste your time rolling to see if you can deal damage, just roll your damage dice! You deal that much damage. Attacks miss on a 1, but rolling the maximum is an EXPLODING Critical Hit! Exploding critical hits Roll the die again and add it to the total. There is no limit to how many times this damage can stack, except your luck! Instant Initiative Get RIGHT into combat with Improved Initiative rules that get players immediately into combat in a way that serves the story without breaking up the flow. Quick to prep Nimble is quick to prep and easy to run. You've got enough going on while GMing—Mechanics are all designed to be easy to manage and track at the table. You can be ready to run an adventure in as little as 5 minutes! And there's no need to for new players to read though endless pages of rules, teach new players as you play. Easy to balance Easy Encounter Creation. No matter the size of your party—whether you play in a cozy group with just 1 or 2 heroes, or a huge group of 8 or more—Encounters are easy and intuitive to build and balance for just the right level of challenge you like. Craft massive scale combat encounters, down to legendary solo encounters. Strategic Weapon System A subtly DEEP weapon system that rewards thoughtful play. No more, “I guess I’ll pick the bigger one...” Every weapon is balanced to have interesting strengths & weaknesses in combat. Additional links nimblerpg.com - Official website and rules repository

Mothership is an action-packed mixture of sci-fi and horror themes, combined into a streamlined gaming system about surviving in the cold, deadly vacuum of space while everything around you is trying to kill you. All at the same time as you are fighting (or fleeing from) alien creatures who aren't there to make any new friends. Chaos. It was published by Tuesday Knight Games and released in 2024.  It is a survival horror system designed for one-shots and campaigns, inspired by classics like Alien, Event Horizon, and Pandorum. Famous for its streamlined ruleset and award-winning graphic design that prioritizes ease of use at the table. The game, at the same time simplistic and streamlined in design, will challenge the characters at all times, allowing the game to focus on the storytelling and less on having complicated rules. The system it is inspired by is Old School Renaissance Description In Mothership, players take on the roles of blue collar workers in space, such as Teamsters, Scientists, Androids, and Marines. You are not powerful or heroic soldiers; you are vulnerable humans trapped in high pressure environments with alien monsters, failing life support systems and the crushing weight of corporate greed. The game is designed to be fast-paced and unforgiving, where the primary goal is not to win, but often enough - to survive. System Overview & Key Features d100 Percentile Resolution In the core of the game system is the d100 percentile system. Roll two d10 dice and get a number from 00 to 99. Success means rolling a lower result than your character's appropriate stat or skill for the task. Rolling a double, like 11, 22, or 33, is considered a critical success if it succeeds or a critical failure if it fails. Rolling low is the target for survival. Stress and Panic As characters encounter horrors or suffer trauma, they accumulate Stress. When a character experiences a terrifying event or rolls a critical failure they must make a Panic Check. The more Stress they have, the more likely they are to suffer a catastrophic mental breakdown, ranging from a heart attack to a violent psychotic break. The Save System Instead of a long list of saving throws, characters have four primary Saves: Sanity, Fear, Body, and Armor. These are used to resist different types of potential trauma. Fear saves are rolled to keep your cool under pressure, while Sanity saves represent your ability to process alien truths without losing your mind (think lovecraftian horrors). Class Based Skills The game features four distinct classes. Marines are obviously combat focused, Teamsters are pilots and laborers, Scientists are experts in medicine and biology, and Androids are cold calculating, yet efficient machines. Each class has it's unique starting stats and specific triggers for when they gain or lose Stress, which is based on their personality. Lethal Combat and Healing Combat is extremely dangerous and often a last resort. Weapons are likely to deal potentially excessive damage when compared to a character's total healthpool. Healing will be slow and require resources that are hard to come by in the middle of the constant crisis, making every injury feel like a significant threat to the character's chances of making it out alive. Deadly Ship-to-Ship Combat The game includes a streamlined system for starship encounters. Ships have their own stats and modules that are likely to be damaged during a fight. Players must work together to manage various roles and stations, like Engineering or Piloting, to keep the ship's hull from breaching while under fire or fleeing from cosmic anomalies. Additional links tuesdayknightgames.com - Official Tuesday Knight Games website mothershiprpg.com - Official Mothership portal and digital resources

FreeVTT is a browser-based virtual tabletop (VTT) application designed to facilitate the play of tabletop role-playing games. Positioned as an accessible alternative to subscription-based platforms, FreeVTT operates entirely free of charge and requires no user registration. The platform is built with a focus on user privacy and local data management, utilizing the user's device for storage rather than centralized cloud servers. It provides a suite of essential digital tabletop utilities, including map rendering, token manipulation, and combat tracking, without implementing premium feature tiers. Description FreeVTT functions as a digital tabletop environment intended for both remote and in-person game sessions. In contrast to many prominent VTT platforms that mandate account creation and rely on external servers to host campaigns, FreeVTT functions entirely within the local cache of the user's web browser. This architectural choice ensures that no user data is collected or transmitted, enabling immediate gameplay without a login process. Furthermore, the application integrates open-license rule systems directly into its interface, providing accessible compendiums for the 2014 and 2024 editions of Dungeons & Dragons 5e, alongside Pathfinder Second Edition. System Overview & Key Features Local Storage Architecture The platform is engineered on a strict "privacy-first" framework. All campaign data—including imported maps, custom tokens, and character statistics—is saved locally to the user's specific device. This design eliminates the necessity for cloud storage, user accounts, or persistent internet connections to access previously prepared game materials. Map and Grid Management Game Masters possess the ability to upload custom image files to serve as digital battleground maps. The application includes integrated tools to overlay and align customizable grids onto these images, facilitating precise distance measurement and token movement during tactical combat encounters. Dynamic Lighting FreeVTT incorporates dynamic lighting capabilities, a feature frequently restricted to paid premium tiers on competing virtual tabletops. This mechanic allows Game Masters to establish line-of-sight restrictions and simulate realistic environmental lighting based on token positioning and physical barriers on the map. Integrated Combat Tracking The software provides built-in utilities for the management of combat sequences. This includes a digital dice roller, an automated initiative tracker to govern turn order, and individual token overlays that allow users to monitor essential character statistics such as Hit Points (HP) and Armor Class (AC) in real time. Open License Compendiums To expedite game preparation, FreeVTT natively integrates System Reference Document (SRD) content for prominent role-playing systems. Users can directly reference rules, bestiaries, and items from the Dungeons & Dragons 5e Creative Commons SRDs (both 2014 and 2024 iterations), as well as content published under the Pathfinder 2E Open RPG Creative (ORC) License. Campaign Export and Import Because the application strictly utilizes local browser storage, campaigns do not automatically synchronize across multiple devices. To address this, FreeVTT includes robust export and import functions. Users can package their entire campaign database into a single downloadable file, which can then be manually transferred and uploaded to a different device or web browser. Additional links freevtt.com - Official application portal

Dead Letters is a podcast about tabletop role playing games. Sam, Misha, and Walid are game designers and academics committed to doing the readings. Rulebooks, adventures, blogposts, articles, and everything in between. Tune in for your weekly dose of RPG discourse every Thursday! If you’re interested in being a part of the conversation, Dead Letters holds a book club every bi-monthly at boshi's place in NYC. Visit boshis.place and join the discord for updates on the next meeting. Links spotify.com - Spotify feed

Scarlet Heroes is an old-school tabletop role-playing game designed by Kevin Crawford and published by Sine Nomine Publishing in 2014. Built on the chassis of early fantasy role-playing games, it is explicitly engineered to support "duet" play (one Game Master and one player) or completely un-GMed solo play. The system functions both as a standalone game and as a mechanical conversion overlay, allowing a single player character to survive and conquer classic modules written for a full party of four to six adventurers without any structural modifications to the adventure itself. Description The default setting for Scarlet Heroes is the Red Tide, a dark, sword-and-sorcery fantasy world where the remnants of humanity have fled to an isolated archipelago known as the Sunset Isles to escape a world-devouring crimson mist. In this setting, players choose from traditional fantasy heritages and step into classic archetypes: the Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Magic-User. However, the true focus of the ruleset is its revolutionary math-rebalancing engine. Traditional early-edition fantasy games are notoriously lethal for solo characters due to the "action economy" favoring groups of monsters. Scarlet Heroes alters how standard numbers are interpreted, transforming a single baseline character into a legendary epic hero who can cleave through hordes of lesser foes while preserving the danger of boss monsters. Links sine-nomine-publishing.myshopify.com - Official website drivethrurpg.com - Drive Thru RPG shop page