Tabletop Roleplaying Games

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

Traveller 2E is a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game system, that was published in 2016 and updated in 2022, by Mongoose Publishing. It involves the characters adventuring through star systems, engaging in (space) exploration and engaging in battles both on ground and in space. The system it directly evolved from is classic Traveller (1977) Description The characers in Traveller can be humans, robots, aliens or of a genetically engineered species. Each character is distinguished by their occupation - whether they are a civilian, military, a noble, a young cadet or a veteran. Each type comes with their own strengths and weaknesses. To further expand on the sci-fi aspect of the game, some characters are prone to extra-sensory abilities, such as telekinesis, telepathy and others. System Overview & Key Features Lifepath Character Creation When creating their character, players roll to determine their character's background, education, and career history. Characters will acquire skills, allies, enemies and physical injuries. No Classes or Levels Characters do not have traditional classes, and they do not gain experience points to level up. Progression is entirely material and narrative. Characters improve by acquiring better gear, installing cybernetics, buying larger starships, and finding lucrative trade routes. The Trade and Commerce System A massive part of the game involves interstellar economics. The rules provide deep, robust systems for buying speculative cargo on one planet and selling it at a profit on another. Players must factor in fuel costs, jump drive maintenance, and life support while managing their massive starship mortgage. Lethal Combat Gunfights are incredibly dangerous as the characters have very low health pools. These are directly tied to their physical attributes like Endurance, Dexterity, and Strength. A single shot from a laser rifle can instantly incapacitate or kill a character, making armor and cover absolute necessities. Hex Crawling and Subsectors The game provides incredible tools for the Game Master to procedurally generate entire sectors of space. Using a blank hex map and the core rulebook, you can roll up planetary environments, government types, law levels, and starport qualities to create a completely unique sandbox galaxy. Additional links mongoosepublishing.com - Official Mongoose Publishing website travellermap.com - The Traveller Map (An interactive map of the official Third Imperium setting)

Eclipse Phase is a detailed science-fiction exploration of uncertain futures. It investigates the nature of transhumanity as it transforms itself, physically and mentally, into something posthuman. It balances the immense dangers of advanced technologies with a vision of how we can negate these risks and enhance our capabilities to improve and prosper as a species. Description Transhumanity stands on the terminus of evolution and extinction. With the ability to upload our minds and nanofabricate almost anything, death and scarcity were nearly defeated. Then a war against super-intelligent AIs infected with an alien virus wiped out 95% of the population. Earth is a ruined wasteland, overrun by machines. The remnants of transhumanity—bio-engineered humans, uplifted animals, and infolife—expanded throughout the Solar System. The AIs left behind a network of wormhole gates that we now use to explore and occupy distant exoplanets. A new cabal of hypercorps and oligarchs seek to preserve outmoded political and economic systems, while patchwork factions of radical scientists and techno-anarchists experiment with new social models, from each according to their imagination and to each according to their need. /images/general-media/1779972799_ox7h9OdI.jpg Characters switch their bodies—called a morphs—at will. Choose from genetically-modified transhumans, synthetic robotic shells, uplifted animals, or digital infomorphs, optimizing your capabilities for specific missions. Your character’s mind and memories are backed up and can be restored if you die—a built-in system of “save points” and functional immortality. Characters are skill-based, with no classes, so players can customize their team roles and specialize in fields of their choosing. A package-buy system enables quick character creation and customization while also defining elements of your character’s background. Gear and morph tracking is simplified with the use of gear packs and points for each mission. Links eclipsephase.com - Official website eclipsephase.com - Quick-Start Rules discord.gg - Discord server patreon.com - Patreon page

Salvage Union is a RPG set in a Post-Apoc world where MegaCorps rules pockets of civilization and nomads on giant 'Crawlers' comb the wastes for 'salvage'. Players are part of the 'Salvage Union', on one of these roaming Crawlers and deploy out in jury-rigged Mechs to collect salvage and investigate their ruined world. Description Playing Salvage Union means playing a crew of salvager mech pilots living aboard a massive, mobile home base called a Union Crawler, scavenging a corporate-ravaged wasteland for scrap to keep their community alive. Beyond raiders and rival scavengers, threats include monstrous Bio-Titans, alien Meld, and the Corpos who still control most of the world's remaining resources. Much of the game's appeal comes from its two-layered loop: narrative exploration and salvaging runs outside the mech, and tactical, resource-managed mech combat once things go loud, tied together by a deep crafting system that lets pilots build and refit their machines from scavenged parts between missions.

Get your table playing in minutes, not hours.   GATEWAY RPG is a free, modular d20 system designed for zero-prep adventures, sudden one-shots, and seamless intro sessions. Powered by familiar 5E mechanics but stripped of all the bloat, GATEWAY lets you run any genre instantly: from neon-soaked cyberpunk streets to grit-filled noir alleys. What’s Inside? The 42-Page Core Rulebook: A streamlined engine for Players and GMs, available in both English and Spanish (Reglas en Español). The Deluxe Edition: The definitive 102-page PDF compiling the Core Rules, Solo Rules, and Bestiary into one volume. Accessible Formats: All rules are formatted in high-quality, printable PDFs with options for both white and book-textured backgrounds. Ready-to-Play Content: Jump straight into the action with Pre-generated Characters and One-Shot Adventure Modules spanning multiple genres. The Player’s Toolkit: Includes printable and form-fillable Character Sheets, a 1-page Quick Reference sheet, and a dedicated d20 Oracle for Solo Play. Starter Bestiary: A multi-genre supplement featuring 25 adversaries across 11 settings, from High Fantasy and Space Opera to Cthulhu-style Horror. Universal Compatibility: Use the Advanced Play Variant for long campaigns or easily port your characters into D&D, Pathfinder, or Star Wars d20. Homebrew & Variant Rules Supplement: Level up your game with 20+ pages of optional mechanics. Features include "Spark of Heroism" (Inspiration), Pushing for Success (Partial Success), and Genre Modifiers for high-tension Survival or Cosmic Horror play. Pocket-Sized Character Sheets: Compact sheets designed for portability and efficiency. Solo Play Quickstart Zine: A portable, zine-style guide for quick, on-the-go solo adventures.

Mindjammer is a transhumanist space opera tabletop role-playing game designed by Sarah Newton and published by Mindjammer Press, with distribution handled by Modiphius Entertainment. Originally released in 2009 as a campaign setting supplement for Cubicle 7's Starblazer Adventures, it was completely re-engineered and released as a standalone core rulebook in 2014 utilizing the Fate Core system framework. Description The ENnie Award-winning transhuman science-fiction RPG setting returns, in a new edition updated and massively expanded for the Fate Core rules. Mindjammer is an action-packed tabletop roleplaying game about heroic adventurers in the galaxy of the far future, filled with virtual realities, sentient starships, realistic aliens, and mysterious worlds. Using the popular and award-winning Fate Core rules, Mindjammer lets you play hardened mercs, cunning traders, steely-nerved pilots, intrigue-filled spies and culture agents, aliens, divergent hominids, artificial life forms, and even sentient starships. Links mindjammer.com - Official website drivethrurpg.com - DriveThruRPG store

Stars Without Number is a sandbox science fiction tabletop role-playing game designed by Kevin Crawford and published by Sine Nomine Publishing. Originally released in 2010, followed by an extensively expanded and restructured Revised Edition in 2017, the game is a prominent fixture of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement. It is structurally engineered to merge the lightweight tactical framework of early fantasy role-playing systems with exhaustive, modular sci-fi sandbox generation toolkits. Description Stars Without Number takes place in the year 3200, centuries after the tragic collapse of the Second Terran Mandate. The human galaxy was once interconnected by instantaneous jump gates and protected by a core of psychic navigators, until an evolutionary psychic catastrophe known as "The Scream" drove every psychic in existence instantly insane or dead. The sudden collapse of interstellar transit triggered a multi-century dark age of isolation known as the Silence. In the modern setting, fractured sectors of space are finally rediscovering faster-than-light spike drives and exploring a fragmented universe. Players navigate this dangerous frontier as spacers, scavengers, mercenaries, or rogue psychics, operating in a cosmos characterized by corporate espionage, lost pre-collapse technology, and shifting planetary regimes. Links sinenomine-pub.com - Official homepage for Sine Nomine Publishing and Kevin Crawford's developer catalog drivethrurpg.com - Revised Edition (Free Version) on Drive Thru RPG

Setting and Themes of Prosperon Prosperon is a tabletop role-playing game set in a dystopian future where towering megacorporation’s have tightened their hold on society, reducing human existence to data points within an immense, profit-driven machine. In this harsh environment, a resistance force known as the Vanguard emerges, determined to challenge the expanding corporate regime. Depending on the campaign style, players may choose to operate as Vanguard insurgents or take on the role of independent freelancers known as operators navigating the same oppressive world. Vanguard and Player Roles Players who join the Vanguard step into the lives of operatives tasked with undertaking high-risk missions aimed at restoring autonomy and awakening a population numbed by corporate dominance. These operatives rely on advanced technology, tactical expertise, and sheer determination as they work to expose corruption, outmaneuver authoritarian forces, and spark a rebellion capable of reshaping entire cities.  World and Tone Blending cyberpunk and biopunk influences, Prosperon presents a setting defined by genetic augmentation, societal decay, and technological overreach. The game emphasizes narrative depth, strategic decision-making, and immersive storytelling. Its adaptable mechanics are designed to support accessibility and player creativity, allowing groups to tailor the experience to their preferred style of play. Themes of Resistance At its core, Prosperon invites players to explore the struggle between human agency and corporate control. Whether forging alliances, leading uprisings, or navigating the moral complexities of survival, players ultimately determine whether humanity can reclaim its future, or collapse further into engineered servitude. Links drivethrurpg.com - Purchase the game on DriveThruRPG nolimelightproductions.com - Official website itch.io - itch.io page ko-fi.com - Support the creator on ko-fi patreon.com - Patreon page

Inspired by legendary settings such as Firefly, Westworld, Borderlands, Trigun or Cowboy Bebop, Deep Sky Ballad is a space western ttrpg where the characters play the members of a Posse - fortune seekers more or less tightly bound to each other who share their resources and a spaceship in search of purpose or wealth. Description The game mechanics are based on the Blackjack System, a poker cards based system; it's the same rules system Arcana Familia ttrpg use, and give agency to the player to balance the power and accuracy of an action through what can be considered a subgame. /images/general-media/1776361953_pusoqZrn.jpg The peculiar solving mechanics of Deep Sky Ballad, the Blackjack System is essentially reduced to a very rapid game of the homonymous card game; a number of cards are drawn and revealed from a deck of poker cards, which are then increased or discarded based on the attributes and skills of the character, in order to bring the sum of their value between a number established by the difficulty of the challenge and 21. This system has been designed to be quick and simple but still guarantee the player maximum control over the test itself, and to distinguish between the possibility and the control possessed by the character. In addition to the Blackjack System, there are an innovative spaceships combat system and the Hardboiled System. The first is a simple, agile and fast mechanic involving all the players; the Hardboiled System, instead, is a system of abilities possessed by the character determined by the interaction that he possesses with his fellow Posse, in order to create dramatic and cinematic scenes such as those presented by the TV series from which Deep Sky Ballad is inspired. Even the starship itself owned by the Posse can be defined as a separate character, even if driven by all players. With its own sheet that defines its characteristics, it can be modified according to the needs of the group in every aspect. And space battles will prove to be a pleasant way to break the pace of the game, through a combat system between spaceships that is quick and easy, but which allows each character to contribute to its progress, regardless of his job or her abilities. /images/general-media/1776361986_AKZC0xAQ.jpgDeep Sky Ballad Additional links drivethrurpg.com - Quickstarter drivethrurpg.com - Core Book drivethrurpg.com - Solo-play/Masterless expansion gamefound.com - Space Farmer Expansion

Coriolis: The Third Horizon (CTTH) is a science-fiction RPG from Free League Publishing. Published in 2016, it is one of the earliest implementations of the Year Zero Engine. Inspired by the cultures and aesthetics of Arabia and North Africa, it offers a refreshing alternative to the traditional space opera setting. The player characters are the crew of a starship: free traders, explorers, mercenaries, agents, or pilgrims. Bound together by debt, necessity, and ambition. Every job carries them deeper into the Third Horizon, a cluster of thirty-six star systems linked by mysterious Portals left behind by a vanished alien progenitor race. Description The game assumes the PCs are already together as the crew of a starship, though the nature of that crew is entirely up to the players. Characters begin with broad concepts such as Artist, Data Spider, Fugitive, Negotiator, Operative, Pilot, Preacher, Scientist, Ship Worker, Soldier, or Trailblazer. These are concepts and starting points rather than classes: a Soldier might be a legionnaire, a mercenary, a palace guard, or something entirely different.

Einsol's Razor is a tabletop roleplaying game rooted in the belief that your story matters, and that the mechanics should amplify, not restrict, that story. Set in a multiverse where magic and machine merge, the game invites players to explore limitless worlds through characters crafted with true agency and modular design. Whether you're a spell-slinging hacker, a cybernetic exorcist, or something no one's ever imagined before, the system gives you the tools to bring that vision to life.

Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game - retroactively nicknamed Star Wars d6 to distinguish it from later games sharing the same title - is the original licensed Star Wars tabletop RPG, designed by Greg Costikyan and published by West End Games from 1987 until the company lost the license in 1998. It ran on the D6 System, adapted from rules Costikyan and colleagues had built for the 1986 Ghostbusters RPG, and its emphasis on speed and cinematic flair over rules complexity made it a strong match for the trilogy's pace.  The game passed through three main rulebook versions - 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, and 2nd Edition Revised and Expanded - before the license moved to Wizards of the Coast for a d20 version in 2000, and later to Fantasy Flight Games (2012-2020) and then Edge Studio, an Asmodee subsidiary, who currently hold it. It won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules in 1987, and its sourcebooks were considered canonical enough that Timothy Zahn was reportedly handed a box of them as reference material when writing the Thrawn trilogy - Fantasy Flight Games released a deluxe 30th Anniversary reprint of the original rulebook and sourcebook in 2018. Description Playing Star Wars d6 means playing smugglers, rebels, bounty hunters, or Force-sensitive heroes across the classic trilogy era - and, through later sourcebooks, well beyond it - using a system built to move fast and feel cinematic rather than simulate every detail. Skill checks roll a pool of six-sided dice tied to a broad Attribute, like Dexterity or Knowledge, plus any specific skill dice a character has invested in, with one die always a different color: the Wild Die, which can either blow a roll wide open on a 6 or threaten a complication on a 1.  It's a rules-light, pulpy game built to run a session the way the original trilogy actually plays - fast banter, faster blaster fights, and Force powers that feel genuinely special.

The Expanse RPG is based on the exciting new Modern AGE rules-set, and includes many of its features, such as customized character building using Backgrounds and Professions, Drives for character engagement, and an abstract resources system. It also makes use of the Modern AGE approach to action, exploration, and social encounters, complete with stunts and systems for all of them.

The Fifth Season Roleplaying game is designed for you to play out adventures and stories set in the world described in the Broken Earth trilogy of novels by N.K. Jemisin—a world where constant and unstable tectonic and volcanic activity threaten all life; a world whose peoples have learned to adapt in order to survive. It is a world where everyone learns that Father Earth hates his children and is always trying to kill them, where metal rusts and even stone crumbles, and the best you can do is be prepared for the next disaster. In the world of the Broken Earth, community— the comm—is everything, because in community there is support and a chance to persevere.

Modern AGE is a genre-toolkit tabletop roleplaying game covering everything from the Industrial Revolution to the near future, published by Green Ronin Publishing in 2018 and designed by a team credited as Matthew Dawkins, Meghan Fitzgerald, Sian Ingham, Steve Kenson, Alejandro Melchor, Chris Pramas, and Malcolm Sheppard. Rather than shipping with a fixed setting, it hands a table the rules to build gritty two-fisted action, pulp adventure, urban fantasy, or a dystopian near-future campaign from the same core book. The system is built on the Adventure Game Engine (AGE), the same engine Green Ronin uses for Dragon Age, Fantasy AGE, and Blue Rose, built here as a fully classless implementation rather than the class-based approach those other lines use. Description Characters are built from backgrounds and life experience rather than a class list, advancing across 20 levels while a table decides for itself what kind of modern-ish game they're actually playing - a two-fisted pulp game, a grounded action thriller, an urban fantasy campaign with magic running underneath the modern world, or something further out toward science fiction.  The Game Master leans on the same optional Arcane and Psychic Power rules whether they're running secret agents, monster hunters, or conspiracy investigators, turning them on only for the campaigns that need them. It's built to be picked up by a group who already knows roughly what modern-day game they want to run and just needs a flexible, classless chassis to build it on, rather than a game with a setting of its own to sell.

Fully Automated is an open source tabletop roleplaying game set in a solarpunk future. Dive into a wild, hard-science post-scarcity future and go on thrilling adventures across Los Angeles in the 2120s! Description The game is meant to allow players to go on street-level adventures in a solarpunk future. If you’re not familiar, solarpunk is a genre adjacent to cyberpunk, but which largely challenges and inverts most of its dominant themes. It envisions a world in which technology and our societies are brought into harmony with nature. It rejects cynicism about the futility of fighting to challenge power structures. In place of themes of scarcity and selfishness, it imagines abundance shared convivially. And in place of a nihilistic view that life is valueless, it imagines not just that every person is priceless, but that personhood can be granted to far more things than just humans. But while it is growing fast, tools for running solarpunk tabletop games are still too few.

Veilrunner is a Tabletop RPG set centuries in the future, where humanity has expanded across the stars and encountered a variety of alien species and technologies. Players take on the roles of Veilrunners, skilled individuals who navigate the dangerous and mysterious Veil of space, crossdimensional rifts, and engage in thrilling adventures. The system emphasizes fast-paced action, exploration, and a rich fantasy and sciences-fiction setting, allowing players to create unique characters and embark on exciting missions in the vast expanse of the Veilrunner universe. Veilrunner is being developed for play on Foundry VTT.

Explore the galaxy with Starlorne, a D6-based tabletop roleplaying game where you can play in classic sci-fi worlds or create your own. Easy-to-learn D6 system that keeps the focus on story and adventure, not complicated rules. • Players choose a species and a role to define their attributes and skills • Characters are shaped by Burdens and Edges, influencing story and roleplay • Master unique skills such as Astrogation, Xenology and Blasters or mysterious Veil powers like Alter, Sense and Control • Command starships, explore planets, and face the dangers of deep space together