System: Cards.
Influence: News coverage of solitary confinement in the United States of America.
Requirements: Works best with a table and chair for the Warden’s office, and three or more chairs to help facilitate different scenes. Uses a deck of cards mapped to charts for participation and final sentencing.
Part mortal. Part myth. All justice.
As a Living Law, you were created to right the wrongs and restore that which the Wildstorm took from your people before it strikes again. Vigilance is a Late Bronze Age mythic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game that explores legends of loss, humanity, and justice both in a home community and in the wider fallen world ripe with Chaos.
System: Dice pools.
Space Station Omega is a science-fiction tabletop roleplaying game of political dramatic action among the stars.
In this game you play pivotal characters who live on and work with each other aboard a space station. The station is strategically located at a focal point in time – post- or pre-war, and space – in the thick of the most critical decisions fought among the most powerful political factions who are invested in the future of the galaxy. Everyone is still figuring out where they belong and what they are really fighting for while mysterious events unfold to challenge daily life. Nothing is the same anymore.
In Space Station Omega, you discuss and map your part of the galaxy, your station (fixed or mobile, singular or dispersed), and then create your personnel built on supporting roles, conflicting values and beliefs, and opposing factions before jumping into the midst of a charged situation.
If you enjoy TV shows such as Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Battlestar Galactica, and The Expanse, then strap in and get ready for intense dramatic galactic roleplaying.
Space Station Omega is a tabletop roleplaying game for 3-5 players that takes about 3-4 hours to play. The game uses Cortex Prime as a starting point and shares an origin with games such as Smallville, Leverage, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and Firefly. As you play and follow the fiction of the story, you look for when your character’s decisions lead to interesting situations that would call for a roll of the dice with three or more traits along with one of the following Basic Actions: Command, Craft, Deal, Fight, Help, Search, or Study.
A DEATH! It begins with the scent of murder. A broken life, connected by sharp fractured edges to you, dear Seeker through pain and loss. The taste of blood, soot, and sweat heavy in the damp cold night as you push past what others might call fear, or dread. You step down into the dingy dark crypt under the cathedral, snapping a twig, alerting the dark thing gnawing on a bone in the corner of your presence. You steel your nerves and withdraw the small worn vellum book from an inner pocket. Opening it to the marked page and positioning it in the crack of moonlight, you read hastily. The words roll from tongue and soul and it, the slavering Agent of the Night moves closer and chatters staccato grunts with short sharp bloodied teeth. The chattering transforms into a whisper with each syllable read aloud. The secrets of its Master—the knowledge needed to complete the quest manifest through the maw of our mentor’s cursed child and murderer. And now we know its bane. The Master will come for us, and when it does, we will be ready.
NightMirror is a Gothic horror tabletop roleplaying game. It’s inspired by mid-1700 to mid-1900 fiction, which combines horror with romanticism and deals with both the unexplainable as well as new discoveries with science, religion, and industry. It is also directly inspired by the television show, Penny Dreadful.
NightMirror’s mechanics are inspired by Meguey Baker’s amazing Psi*Run game (from Night Sky Games, http://www.nightskygames.com) about amnesiacs with powers, Runners, who are pursued by mysterious Chasers. You play to find out who they are, who you are, and what happens next. However, instead of dice, a tarot deck is used to help shape the stories for the Seekers.
Every one-shot short story session or two or more sessions campaign novel of NightMirror begins with the death of someone meaningful. This is a death that draws the characters, whom you play called Seekers, together for a common purpose. All Seekers are extraordinary people who are discontent with their place in life and have burning questions that often exceed accepted social conventions, including into the private affairs of each other, esoteric topics, traumatic experiences, and the occult. Seekers are torn between the Night and the Light. In each case, this existence has created connections with the supernatural through abilities and desires. Inevitably, these desires draw the attention of others–agents of the Night or Light—Chasers, who pursue the Seekers to whatever ends that may be.
Gameplay includes shared storytelling over one or more sessions with riskier decisions determined through drawing tarot cards, placing the cards one by one into categories called Fortunes, and interpreting their results in ways evocative of the gothic horror genre and the shared tonal game space with the group.
It’s your job, as Seekers to find the Night or Light you are searching for and decide what to do with it once you’ve got it.
Along the way, the Seekers leave a Trail of information as they travel from location to location, and the Chasers pursue this trail relentlessly.
Will the Seekers learn the truth? Will the Night or Light destroy them?
Play to find out as you search for humanity and salvation through a world of monsters and madness!
Gothic Horror refers to a style of writing that is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and very high emotion. These emotions can include fear and suspense. This style of fiction began in the mid 1700s with a story titled, The Castle of Otranto (in 1764), by Horace Walpole. This story was about a doomed family and is filled with death, desire, and intrigue. This story is considered to be the first of the Gothic fiction tales, since it encompassed many of the characteristics of the genre. The term Gothic actually originated as a term belittling the architecture and art of the period, which was dark, decaying, and dismal.
NightMirror is a tabletop roleplaying game for 3-5 players that takes about 3-4 hours to play. The game uses light rules, narration, and a standard deck of tarot cards. As you play and follow the fiction of the story, you look for when your character is risking something which could change their fortune during the game. When this happens the Host will ask the player to draw 3-5 cards, one at a time, and collaborate on the results. At times this may reveal something about the seeker or bring them closer to a direct conflict with the darkness within.
In NightMirror, players are seekers, people who are driven to look beyond normal conventions for answers to life and more. This leads them to experience the supernatural and supertechnology like that found in the stories of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Jewel of Seven Stars, or more recently from the Showtime television series, Penny Dreadful.
NightMirror is set in a pre-20th century world where science and nature, industry and faith are mixed and in conflict between the old and the new world thinking. The supernatural maintains a strong presence while the microscope and telecommunications are being invented. This is a world of shadowy imaginings on top of the anxiety of an uncertain future threated by the industrial revolution, nationalistic military powers, and social upheaval like never before. In NightMirror, ghosts and artificial persons are explored by willful persons willing to defy the limits of society for their answers.
The Higher Powers that manipulate events and people are known as the Night & Light. They have agendas and servants who work to execute the plans which are usually in opposition with each side, and they both prefer to have the seekers among their ranks as agents of Night or Light in the world.
NightMirror can be played as a one-shot, but is strongest when played through several sessions, as players reveal more about their seekers, the way of the Night and Light, and the beautiful eerie world that they inhabit.
Sometimes when seekers go too far or risk too much they become corrupted by the Night which hungers for seekers to join in union. When this happens it’s never certain that a seeker can or will be saved, but if it happens it’s usually through the work of redemption by one or more seekers.
Legends of Mythos is a heroic fantasy roleplaying game of quick and easy action and adventure creation.
System: Cascade Stat System
Inspiration: Action and adventure books, films, and television shows.
Status: Legends of Mythos is NOT in playtest.
Gone is a roleplaying game about how people deal with the sudden loss of members within their community.
System: Dominoes.
Inspiration: The Leftovers television show.
Status: Gone is a finished pay what you want game, located here at DrivethruRPG.com.
The End is a live action roleplaying game (LARP) about a congress of dinosaurs meeting to decide the fate of their world.
System: NA.
Inspiration: House of Cards television show.
Status: The End is on hold.
Dogs of the Military is a FREE fantasy roleplaying game based on the manga and anime of Fullmental Alchemist.
System: Dogs in the Vineyard
Inspiration: Fullmetal Alchemist.
Status: Dogs of the Military is NOT in playtest.
You’ve experienced something you can’t explain. Something that changed you. Something that others want to know more about, hide from the public and use for gain in the world. What are you going to do about it before they find you?
Dark Well is a tabletop roleplaying game about exploring the unknown through the relationships of life, power, and truth through fringe science and conspiracies. You play Dwellers who pursue these relationships through each other’s lives and your vision that connects you to the crisis that started it all.
Together, your group works from a set of interconnected ideas and conspiracies in the world to build your characters, factions, secrets, and more through a Conspiramap. You play to find out using a set of tokens drawn from the Well and compared to a chart to interpret what you do next, and ultimately what conspiracy your Dwellers must confront.
Dark Well creates fiction like that of X-Files, Millennium, Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, and Dark, making it fun for lovers of conspiracy fiction and fringe science alike.
System: Tokens.
They say the World is vast and uncertain, modern and ancient from dusk to dawn. The World is connected by travelers, like you moving in and out of distant Civilizations: strange hollow lands that speak to you and remind you of where you came from—why you’re with them, fellow Vagrants, you companions of the Road, and in this World. Each day brings new Hopes, Needs, and Fears—some you share, some you steal, perhaps one day you’ll know when it’s time to leave the Road behind you for Blood & Violence.
A rare kind of people, called Vagrants, move between Civilizations along the Road searching for new Stories to learn and share throughout the World, with Hopes, Needs, and Fears as their companions. Eventually, Vagrants settle down as a Civilian, become a Legend, or wander forever as a Reaver along the Road.
Vagrants come from all walks of life and any Civilization. They are people who, for whatever reason, have decided to leave their old life behind to travel along the Road. Many take on alter egos. Few use or share their real identities. Some ply old or pick up new trades. All Vagrants share Stories with those they meet for good or ill results, changing lives and reshaping the world.
In magical realism stories, the world is still grounded in the real world as we might know it, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world with the lines between fantasy and reality blurred. This includes talking objects, dead or spirit characters, telepathy, robotic caretakers, moving landscapes, and so much more as normal aspects. As a result, the magic of the stories are left unexplained.
Also, stories in this style do not necessarily follow a typical arc of beginning, middle and end, and some magical realism stories are used to critique society, especially in parts of the world that were colonized or oppressed and exploited by outsiders.
This refers to the journey stories of Vagrants’ experiences along the Road and visiting with different civilizations. Part of the game involves mapping the World on notecards and using this map to help define the goals and way that they’ll proceed.
Blood & Violence is meant to be played in an episodic format with Vagrants entering and exiting as the story or players need. The Vagrants are travelers in search of stories to learn and to share with others, and along the way the Vagrants influence the lives of those they meet. Some Vagrants decide to settle down in a community giving up their traveler ways, or become a Reaver and roam the Road forever, or possibly become Legends of the World.