Library › Game systems › Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Learn more about the different game systems, discover new and revisit old ones. The library is constantly evolving and growing. With your help, we can expand it even further.

Entries News & updates
Sorted by
The entries are listed based on the amount of Recommend clicks it has.
RuneQuest (2018)
4 players
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

RuneQuest (2018)

High-Fantasy
English
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQG) is a mythic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game set in Greg Stafford's Bronze Age world of Glorantha, published by Chaosium in 2018. It is credited to Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford, Jason Durall, and Steve Perrin, with a long list of contributors from earlier editions. RuneQuest first appeared from Chaosium in 1978 and has passed through several publishers since, including Avalon Hill (third edition, 1984), Mongoose Publishing (2006), and The Design Mechanism (sixth edition, 2012, later continued as Mythras). RQG is the Chaosium-published line that returned to Glorantha, and it is a different game from those later editions. The system directly evolved from the original RuneQuest (1978), whose percentile core was later distilled into Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, the engine behind Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon. Description Players take on adventurers from the clans and tribes of Dragon Pass, from homelands such as Sartar, Prax, the Grazelands, Esrolia, and Tarsh, in a world where gods are neighbors and myths are history.  The Game Master (GM) runs a setting built around cults, clan feuds, and the Hero Wars gathering on the horizon, and characters belong to a family, a homeland, and a religion before they ever pick up a sword. The game asks a table to take that seriously: combat is lethal, shields shatter and limbs get disabled, and there are no luck points to buy a character out of a bad round. In return it offers one of the hobby's most fully realized worlds, where a character's gods, ancestors, and passions shape play as much as their weapon skill.

Read more
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition
1 groups 13 players
Tabletop Roleplaying Games · Dungeons & Dragons

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition

High-Fantasy
English
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of dungeon delving and heroic adventure, designed by Gary Gygax and published by TSR. TSR released a Basic Set in early 1977 to bring the game to a wider public, then published the first part of AD&D later that year as a tighter, more structured game for hobbyist players. The three core hardcovers followed between 1977 and 1979: the Monster Manual (1977), the Player's Handbook (1978) and the Dungeon Master's Guide (1979). Unearthed Arcana (1985) added many new rules. The two lines, Basic and Advanced, were developed separately and often contradicted each other. The system directly evolved from the original Dungeons & Dragons (1974). A second edition, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition, was designed mainly by David "Zeb" Cook and released by TSR in 1989. After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997, its Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (2000) merged the Basic and Advanced lines and dropped "Advanced" from the title. Description Players take on adventurers, usually fighters, clerics, magic-users and thieves, who explore dungeons, wilderness and ruins for treasure and glory. The referee is called the Dungeon Master (DM), and the rules are split into player and referee books so that the DM is needed to run a game. The Dungeon Master's Guide covers running campaigns, combat and magic items, with tables for treasure and random encounters. The game asks a table to accept a lot of tables and a high level of lethality. It is a 1970s rule set, written for referees who adjudicate and improvise, and it is not an easy introduction. Many tables run it today because they want exactly that.

Read more
Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition
Tabletop Roleplaying Games · Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

High-Fantasy
English
Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (D&D 3E) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of dungeon delving and heroic adventure, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2000. It was the first edition the company released entirely itself, and the Player's Handbook went on sale on August 10, 2000, with its debut at Gen Con that month. Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams all contributed to the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual, and each then wrote one of the three books, with Tweet credited with the design of the Player's Handbook. The designers set out to simplify and declutter the whole system. "Advanced" was dropped from the title because the Basic game had been discontinued and the simpler name was more marketable, but it was still called the third edition. The system directly replaced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition (1989). It was revised in 2003 as Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5, a deliberately small update. Description Players take on adventurers built from a race and a class, and the Dungeon Master (DM) runs dungeons, monsters and campaigns. The edition removed many of the old limits: restrictions on class and race combinations, and on level advancement for non-human characters, are gone. Combat expanded to include a grid system that supports tactical play and miniatures. The game asks a table to be comfortable with character building. Skills and feats give players more ways to customize a character than the older edition did, and the options keep growing with each rulebook. Reviewers at the time praised its art and tightly packed rules, and one called it the best combat-oriented roleplaying game available.

Read more