Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e (2024)

Dragonbane is a classic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published by Free League Publishing in 2023. It is a modern English translation and reimagining of Drakar och Demoner, Scandinavia's first and longest-running TTRPG, originally released in 1982. The game carries over four decades of Swedish gaming heritage into a sleek, accessible package designed around the philosophy of "mirth and mayhem": fast-paced adventures with minimal prep, where danger is real, luck matters, and even a humble merchant can become a legend. Unlike many modern fantasy RPGs, Dragonbane deliberately avoids the power-escalation treadmill of level-based systems. Characters are capable but mortal from session one, and the game works equally well for a single one-shot evening or a sprawling long-term campaign. It was a strong contender for TTRPG of the year on release, praised widely as one of the most accessible entry points into tabletop fantasy roleplaying. Description In Dragonbane, players take on the role of adventurers in the Misty Vale, a hidden mountain valley, ancient and full of ruins from fallen kingdoms, only recently cleared of orc and goblin occupation. The world is shaped by the eternal cosmic struggle between two great powers: the Dragons and the Demons, rival godlike forces whose conflict bleeds into mortal life. Players choose from six playable Kins: Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, the duck-like Mallards, and the feral Wolfkin and one of ten Professions (Fighter, Mage, Hunter, Thief, Artisan, Merchant, Mariner, Scholar, and others), each providing a distinct set of skills and heroic abilities. One player takes the role of the Game Master (GM), who builds the world, voices NPCs, and runs the dangers the adventurers face. The tone balances genuine peril and dark fantasy with moments of levity and absurdity. System Overview & Key Features Roll-Under D20 Skill System Dragonbane uses a clean roll-under mechanic. Every skill has a rating from 1 to 18, and to succeed, the player must roll equal to or below that number on a D20. There is no adding up bonuses or consulting modifiers, a skill of 14 means you need a 14 or lower. This keeps the math fast and intuitive while still creating meaningful differences between a trained and an untrained character. Rolling a Dragon & Rolling a Demon Natural 1s and 20s are not just successes and failures, they're narrative events. Rolling a 1 is "Rolling a Dragon": a critical success that triggers powerful, flavourful special effects. Rolling a 20 is "Rolling a Demon": a critical failure with immediate consequences. This naming convention ties the dice directly into the world's mythology and gives every roll dramatic weight. Push Your Luck If a skill roll fails, the player can choose to Push it, picking up the dice and rolling again. But every die that fails a second time inflicts a Condition. Characters can become Exhausted, Sickly, Dazed, Angry, Scared, or Disheartened, each imposing a specific mechanical penalty. Pushing is rarely free, and the decision of whether to push adds meaningful tension to every uncertain roll.. Willpower Points & Heroic Abilities Each character has a pool of Willpower Points (WP), a resource spent to activate their Profession's Heroic Abilities. A Fighter might spend WP to make a devastating counterattack; a Mage burns it to cast spells. Willpower represents the spark of exceptionalism that separates adventurers from ordinary folk, and managing it carefully is central to play. Card-Based Initiative Combat initiative is determined by drawing from a shuffled deck of initiative tokens. One per character and one per monster group. This creates a genuinely unpredictable turn order every round, keeping both players and GM on their toes and preventing the predictability of fixed initiative lists. Kin & Profession, Not Class & Level Character creation is fast: pick a Kin, pick a Profession, assign starting skills. After play begins, advancement is open: characters grow by spending experience on skills of their choice, unconstrained by class restrictions. This avoids the feeling of "wrong builds" and keeps development tied to what the characters actually do in play. Links freeleaguepublishing.com - Official website freeleaguepublishing.com - Free character sheets and campaign materials forum.frialigan.se - Free League forum

LegendKeeper is a browser-based worldbuilding application and campaign management tool designed for tabletop role-playing games and creative writing. Developed independently by Braden Marshall and the LegendKeeper team, the platform functions as a collaborative digital wiki and interactive map archive. It is engineered specifically to assist Game Masters and authors in organizing lore, structuring narratives, and tracking geographical locations without the mechanical overhead of a virtual tabletop (VTT). Description LegendKeeper operates as a centralized, cloud-based repository for campaign data. Instead of providing digital dice rollers, tactical grids, or character sheets, the software focuses entirely on documentation and worldbuilding. Users construct interconnected wiki pages to detail characters, factions, and histories, which can then be directly linked to customizable, interactive maps. The platform supports granular permission settings, allowing a Game Master to selectively share specific articles or map pins with players while keeping underlying secrets hidden. Key Features Wiki and Rich Text Editor The core of the platform is a comprehensive wiki system. Users can create formatted articles using a rich text editor that includes slash-commands. The editor allows for the rapid insertion of tables, sub-pages, and formatting structures to organize campaign information in a hierarchical format. Interactive Mapping Users can upload high-resolution image files to serve as maps for their fictional worlds, continents, or cities. Game Masters can drop interactive "pins" onto these maps, which hyperlink directly to specific wiki articles. These pins can be categorized with custom tags and filtered, allowing users to isolate specific points of interest on the map. Auto-Linking and @Mentions To facilitate a heavily interconnected database, the software includes link detection and @mention functionality. Typing the '@' symbol followed by the name of an existing page or character automatically generates a hyperlink. Hovering over these links during gameplay provides a quick preview of the associated article without requiring the user to navigate away from their current page. Whiteboards The application includes digital whiteboards that allow users to visually map out relationships, family trees, or organizational structures. Users can place text boxes, page links, and images onto a free-form canvas and connect them with nodes to represent complex narrative webs. Template Management To reduce repetitive data entry, users can create and save custom page templates. A Game Master can design a standard layout for a tavern, a non-player character, or a dungeon, and instantly apply that structure whenever a new wiki page of that category is generated. Granular Privacy Controls Because the tool is designed for collaborative campaigns, it includes robust permission settings. Game Masters can hide specific wiki pages, map pins, or individual blocks of text within an otherwise public article. This allows players to read the known lore of a location while keeping the Game Master's specific session notes completely invisible to them. Additional links legendkeeper.com - Official application portal

Role Playing Public Radio presents a weekly Actual Play podcast of tabletop role playing game sessions. It is run by Ross Payton, a tabletop RPG writer and podcaster.The cast rotates for different games, but our regular players include Caleb Stokes, Aaron Carsten, Tom Church, Maddy Gibbons, and Thaddeus Stoklasa. We play a wide variety of RPGs, including Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Blades in the Dark, Eclipse Phase, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Heart: The City Beneath, and Monster of the Week. We alternate between full campaigns and one shot adventures. Links actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com - Official website podcasts.apple.com - Apple Podcasts feed