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Ishanekon: World Shapers is the (probably) biggest free Indie TTRPG with over 2,500 character options. It has been mainly developed by Jan Luyken, aka Blaze Reason, with the aim of creating a game that can compete (if not surpass) the current biggest games on the market while remaining affordable for anyone. With its easily adaptable rules and wide range of options, from beginner-friendly to highly complex, it is designed to satisfy the needs of almost any story and play style. Description From epic fantasy and sci-fi to mundane humans facing everything from common threats to cosmic horror, Ishanekons: World Shapers’ modular design lets you easily adjust the rules to help you experience your stories. This game is designed with the idea that you bring the flavor, and the mechanics help you bring it to life. The 10 Archetypes with over 200 Sub-Archetypes, 1000+ Abilities, 600+ Talents, 300+ items and upgrades, and more allow you to build anything from a simple cat to a city-destroying kaiju. Role and complexity filters let you find what you need quickly while helping you avoid those features that might be too overwhelming for your liking.

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

Basic Roleplaying is the venerable "D100" engine that has powered Chaosium’s greatest hits for over four decades. Originally appearing as a slim booklet in 1980, it was most recently revitalized as the Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine in 2023. In 2026, it stands as one of the industry's most important open-source platforms, released under the ORC License, allowing independent creators to build and sell their own games using its legendary, time-tested mechanics. Description BRP is a "genre-neutral" toolkit that discards character levels and rigid classes in favor of a pure skill-based system. Whether you are playing a Bronze Age warrior, a 1920s detective, or a futuristic mech pilot, the core experience remains the same: your character is defined by what they can do. Because it uses percentages (e.g., "I have a 65% chance to climb this wall"), it is widely considered the most intuitive and "transparent" RPG system for new players to understand at a glance. System Overview & Key Features The Universal D100 Engine Every action is resolved by rolling two ten-sided (d10) dice to get a result from 1 to 100. If you roll is equal to or under your skill rating, the action is deemed a success. This approach simplifies the mechanical process of the game, as there are no complex tables to keep track of and compare to decypher whether it is a success or failure. Organic Character Growth There is no "Experience Points" system in the traditional sense. Instead, when you succeed in using a skill, you mark a "Skill Check" on your character sheet. At certain stops in the game/story, the player rolls to see if the character improves in those skills, meaning your character evolves based specifically on the actions they performed (and succeeded at) during the game. Modular Rule Design The Universal Game Engine is designed with variations and systems to choose from. GMs can choose whether they prefer to just use "Hit Points" or add a more detailed wound system with "Hit Locations" for more realistic tactical consequences. Systems for Magic, Sorcery, Mutations, or Superpowers (depending on the setting) can be added, instead of being baked in the core mechanics, ensuring the mechanics always fit the theme of the game. Deadly and Tactical Combat BRP combat is grounded and dangerous. Unlike high-fantasy games where adventurers have a vast health pool, a single strike of a sword or bullet in BRP can be fatal. This encourages players to think creatively and use mechanics and terrain to their advantage. Talking their way out of situations is often seen as more reasonable (and survivable), than just treating every conflict as a forced combat situation. The ORC License Revolution By introducing to the Open RPG Creative (ORC) license, BRP started a wave of third-party "Powered by BRP". This has expanded the system into new genres like Cyberpunk, Wuxia, and Cozy Fantasy, all supported by a single, unified ruleset and system, compatible with most themes. Compatibility with "The Big Three" Because the core mechanics have remained the same since the beginning, a monster or spell from a 1980s supplement is almost always compatible with the modern 2026 engine. This gives GMs access to one of the largest libraries of pre-written adventures in tabletop gaming, spanning Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, and Pendragon. Additional links chaosium.com/brp : Official BRP Universal Game Engine portal basicroleplaying.org : The primary community hub and "BRP Central" forums

Savage Worlds is a tabletop roleplaying game designed by Shane Lacy Hensley and published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. Originally released in 2003 and updated, as the Adventure Edition in 2018. Its a universal system for running games in almost any genre from weird west and high fantasy to deep space sci-fi. The game is specifically engineered to handle cinematic pulp action and massive battles without slowing down the narrative. The system it directly evolved from is Deadlands (1996) Description Savage Worlds has everything you need to play narrative or miniature-based games, with quick, simple, yet comprehensive rules for everything from combat to Dramatic Tasks, Chases, and Interludes. The emphasis is on less bookkeeping for the Game Master so she can quickly and easily create worlds and adventures for any setting and focus on the players and their actions to keep the action and story rocketing along.

Talislanta is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game created by Stephan Michael Sechi, first published by Bard Games in 1987. It draws its inspiration from Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels and the travelogue spirit of the Arabian Nights rather than from Tolkien. It built its identity around a single blunt promise printed right on the box: "no elves". No dwarves, no halflings, no standard-issue fantasy races at all - just dozens of original cultures found nowhere else in the genre.  The game has passed through five editions and nearly as many publishers, including a stint at Wizards of the Coast in the early '90s, and creator Stephan Michael Sechi now makes the entire back catalogue - every edition, every supplement - available for free through the official Talislanta Library. Description Playing Talislanta starts with a choice. Instead of creating a character from separate race, class, and skill lists, players pick one of well over a hundred archetypes. Things like the Cymrilan Rogue Magician, the Jaka Beastmaster, or the Mandalan Mystic Warrior - each one a fully realised character tied to a specific culture. Complete with attributes, skills, gear, and a place in the world already worked out. A little light customisation (a point moved here, a skill added there) and the character is ready to play.  What makes the game distinct isn't its mechanics, which are deliberately light, but the scale of its setting: the continent of Talislanta is home to more than a hundred distinct peoples, and the rulebooks spend far more pages on culture, custom, and worldview than on combat math. It rewards players who want to explore a genuinely alien fantasy world over chasing mechanical optimisation. System Overview & Key Features Archetype-Based Character Creation Character creation isn't a build process, it's a selection process. Every archetype in the book arrives fully statted, dressed, and equipped, tied to a named culture and a defined role in Talislantan society. Archetypes are deliberately unbalanced against one another, since staying true to the setting mattered more to Sechi than parity between character options. The Unified Action Table Skill checks, combat rolls, and magic all resolve on a single d20 chart. Attacking works exactly like any other skill roll: add a skill rating, compare to a target number. There's no separate combat subsystem to memorise, which keeps the rules themselves down to a few dozen pages even in the densest editions. Modes and Orders Magic runs on two interlocking pieces: Modes (twelve broad effect categories like Attack, Heal, or Illusion) and Orders (culturally rooted schools of magic, from Cartomancy to Elemental Magic). A magician's Order shapes how a Mode behaves and looks when cast, so the same underlying effect plays out completely differently in different hands - which lets a short list of Modes support a near-endless variety of actual spells. A World Built Without Tolkien Every culture in Talislanta was designed to avoid genre default: no elves, no generic barbarians, no standard dragons. In their place are peoples like the Thralls (identical clone-warriors distinguishable only by tattoo), the sky-sailing Phantasians, and the shapeshifting Sindarans. The setting material - not the rules - is where most of the page count and most of the game's reputation live. Links talislanta.com - Official Talislanta website talislanta.com/talislanta-library - Free official PDFs of every edition and supplement ever published

An assortment of online tools for TTRPG'ers. • online dice roller. • online character generator. • online NPC generator. • online loot generator. • online encounter generator. • online grid paper printer.