RPGs by Genre

If you are reading this, chances are you asked a question like “what kind of games are there that do X?” someplace and have been directed to a section of this page. The format and links here share a lot in common with the wiki of the r/rpg subreddit, because I (as u/omnihedron) wrote most of the content like this for that wiki. I don't use reddit anymore, though, so wanted a place for this sort of reference. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to provide quality examples of particular types of gaming.

Games marked with ¤ are either free or pay-what-you-want. This page does not use affiliate linking.

A Short List

If your exposure to roleplaying has been a single system, these offer a number of directions to other ways of gaming:

• Lady Blackbird ¤
• Primetime Adventures
• Fiasco
• Index Card RPG
• Wushu: the Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying ¤
• Mechanical Oryx ¤
• Scum and Villainy
• Trophy
• Legacy: Life Among the Ruins
• 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars

Universal Systems

Minimalist

Minimalist systems attempt to use as few rules as possible to cover a wide range of genres.

• The Bean Engine ¤ — a skill-based system using summed 2d6 (or best two of three for advantage/worst two of three for disadvantage), trying to hit 8+. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Capriccio RPG ¤ — Easily adaptable, free, generalist two-page system with 4 attributes, powers and skills.
• CORE Micro ¤ — a minimalist hybrid (trad/narr) SRD designed by Tod Foley, basis of “DayTrippers” and other games. (CC BY 3.0)
• Cornerstone RPG ¤ — a dialog-heavy, simple d6-based system, intended to run zero-prep one-shots.
• Elemental — aims to be “a fast and flexible roleplaying game for any character, any setting, any story”. It is a skill-based system with free one-page rules, but deeper support materials.
• Fast FU — a two-page minimalist version of Freeform Universal
• Fudge Lite — a rules-light generic RPG that uses natural language to describe character traits (fair, good, great, etc.) The game is designed to let the mechanics fade into the background and allow the players to focus on playing the game.
• Heroic Tales — a “genre-neutral, rules-light role playing game of heroic problem solving.”
• MAG — uses step die for the attributes and everything is an opposed roll (CC BY 4.0)
• Paper-Free RPG — a one-page RPG for situations in which character sheets are not very feasible, such as during nature hikes or night-time car-rides.
• QAGS — “Quick-Ass Game System”. Minimalist RPG first published in 2001, notable (notorious?, infamous?) for its explicit use of edible tokens as a dice modifier currency called “Yum-Yums”.
• Risus: The Anything RPG ¤ — a free four-page game with a large following, supporting a variety of play styles.
• SHARP — a lightweight descriptive system, Simple Handy Adaptable Role-Playing claims to be a “love child” of WaRP, FitD, and Gumshoe. (OGL)
• Septible (aka Alpha-7) ¤ — a lean, flexible system playable with pools of any type of 50/50 randomizer (dice, coins, etc.). (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Simply6 — A simple d6 pool system.
• Tricube Tales — a free “minimalist, narrative-driven” system using 3d6 and some tokens. Aims to be kid-friendly and is supported by a number of settings. (CC BY 3.0)
• TWERPS — minimal system from Zocchi Games first published in 1987, “The World’s Easiest Role-Playing System”. Notable for being published by Lou Zocchi of GameScience “precision” dice fame.
• Ultra Accelerated — a one-page simplification of the already streamlined Fate Accelerated. (CC BY 3.0)
• Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying — three stats, simple dice, and a narrative currency, in two pages.
• Universalis — token-based system to share out story-telling authority
• 五德 (Wu De) — The Five Powers ¤ — a narrative RPG, system based on the east-asian philosophy of Yin & Yang and the 5 Elements. Requires 6 d6 in two different colors.

Hackable

Simple games intended to be (or, at least, in actuality) co-opted and hacked into other published games.

• 24XX ¤ — the system from 2400 prioritizes “description and narrative positioning over detailed rules processes”. (CC BY 4.0)
• The Black Hack — an OSR fantasy game that spawned a vast number of games in other genres. (OGL)
• Charge ¤ — a free, open and generic role-playing game (CC BY 4.0)
• D6xD6 — an open system using two d6 multiplied together and characters that can be written on a business card. Provides the framework for many games and settings. (D6xD6 OSL)
• DIPER — a tabletop roleplaying game framework that puts players in control of dynamic and engaging stories (CC BY 4.0)
• Forged in the Dark ¤ — SRD based on the award winning Blades in the Dark RPG, a game focusing on daring heists and building a criminal organization. Generally specializes in episodic, story-driven play with a set gameplay cycle. (CC BY 3.0)
• FU: the Freeform Universal RPG ¤ — a lightweight system supporting degrees of success that “lends itself to a ‘seat of your pants’ style, where little preparation is needed.” (CC BY 4.0)
• Fudge ¤ — supports a number of dice rolling systems, including using the eponymous Fudge dice, to drive a “rules-light role-playing game engine providing a common set of game mechanics that can be used to create any role-playing game you desire”. (OGL & FSTL)
• Fuzion — a crunchy system that (somewhat quietly) forms the backbone of dozens of games (e.g. Artesia, Cyberpunk v3, Victoriana), built to unify “the best of the Hero System (Champions) and Interlock (Cyberpunk)”. (Currently unclear licensing. At one point, Action! was an OGL system mostly compatible with Fuzion, but it is no longer.)
• Lasers & Feelings ¤ — originally a sci-fi game, but its many modifications tune its very simple system to widely different ends. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
• Microlight20 ¤ — the d20 system stripped as bare as possible, currently supporting over a hundred different games. (OGL)
• Mini Six ¤ — a slimmed down version of the OpenD6 system (see below). (OGL)
• minimalD6 ¤ — a minimalist game engine with over two dozen games written using it, by a variety of authors. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Pip System — aimed at beginning role-players, but with scaling complexity, using opposing pools of black and white d6. Supported by a number of kid-friendly games using the system, as well as a number of genre-specific guides.
• Questworlds ¤ — A flexible system, with characters defined by key words and a resolution mechanic that covers all challenges, be they physical, mental or social. (Questworlds OGL) Based on HeroQuest, which was an alternate system to play in the Glorantha setting of RuneQuest.

Unusual dice/randomizer

Games that leverage atypical randomizers to support many genres of play.

• Fastlane: Everything, All the Time — Uses American or European roulette wheels, though rules for dice are included as well.
• Fate — uses Fudge dice (dice with equal numbers of blank, −, and + faces) to back “story-focused tools” that “puts the narrative and fiction first”. In addition to a number of published games and settings built on top of it, Fate comes in three “flavors”, divided by degree of complexity:
  • Fate Core — the full, medium-crunchy, version, with more options and examples. Also supports of line of world and toolkit books. (OGL & CC)
  • Fate Condensed — a compact, stand-alone version of Fate Core streamlined for clarity and ease of reference. (OGL & CC)
  • Fate Accelerated — a greatly simplified version of the system, designed to be quickly read and low prep. (OGL & CC)
• Genesys — uses dice with customized symbols, “with a system so adaptable and expansive you can explore every popular roleplaying genre”. The main book contains five settings, and other games use the system for a particular setting. (Genesys Foundry)
• Rosette Diceless — “dedicated to a consensus-based, story-first, and improvisational approach”, using no randomizers at all.
• Sapio — “lightweight, flexible framework for telling the stories” making use of pools of d12s with combinations of three symbols on each face.
• Unbound — features “session zero” tools for collaboratively figuring out what genre/setting/concept you want to play in the first place. The system itself uses decks of playing cards for randomization.

Toolkit

Toolkit systems offer numerous options or subsystems, with explicit guidance to mix and match a subset of the parts for a specific campaign or experience.

• 4C ¤ — explicitly a toolkit “foundation for you to build upon”, using a lightweight percentile/chart lookup system, heavily influenced by FASERIP. The title is an abbreviation of “four color”, owing to the game’s superhero roots. (text is public domain)
• Active Exploits ¤ — diceless generic rpg system from Precis Intermedia first published in 2002
• Breathless ¤ — helps you design a game where every mechanic ever-increasingly rises the tension until the characters are forced to suffer dangerous consequences (CC BY 4.0)
• Chimera RPG — a 64-page “framework for gaming in any conceivable genre” using d12 non-binary checks and opposed polyhedral rolls, that is “easy to learn and optimized for fast play”. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Cortex Prime — a mid-complexity, “multi-genre, modular, session-centered” toolkit, with explicit knobs for tuning the system for a desired campaign. Evolved from earlier iterations of Cortex that powered many games from Margaret Weis Productions.
• FAST System — “a new generic setting gaming system based solely around a D10 mechanic from Art of the Genre. It is designed to be ‘anti-bloat’, with everything geared toward an easy gamemaster experience and quick resolution mechanics for the players.”.
• Forge Engine ¤ — a mid- to high-crunch system using opposed d10 dice pools with degree of success. Tunes available skills and equipment to the genre. (CC BY 4.0)
• Lumen ¤ — A lightweight toolkit for action packed, power fantasy games, providing the framework for several dozen games, and growing. Mixes a 2d6 degree of success system with tactical, fast, combat-heavy play. (Free to use, with credit given.)
• OpenD6 ¤ — originally the house system for West End Games, now a free, open, mid-complexity system. Attributes and skills available to characters are defined based on genre/setting with actions resolved using a summed pool of d6. (OGL)
• Solar System — had an outsized influence on the games that came after it, particularly in more indie design spaces, it's notion of "keys" spreading into the DNA of a lot of games.
• WOIN — “What’s OLD is NEW, three toolkit-oriented tabletop roleplaying games designed to work together”, using a fairly crunchy mechanics driving a summed d6 pool for resolution. (WCPS)
• UGIS ¤ — the “Universal and Generic Imagination System”. Low complexity and rules-lite with a focus on character development and roleplay. Opportunity to create any setting and genre with numerous options for customization. Resolution works with d6 pools against difficulties. Has its license open to all types of hack or additional material.

Toolkit + genre book

Toolkit systems that go a step further, offering products tuned to specific genres or settings.

• GURPS — the original “generic universal role-playing system” has accumulated a huge number of supplements over the years, each adapting the basic concepts of the game to particular genre or setting. A 32-page “distillation of the basic GURPS rules” is available for free.
• 6d6 ¤ — combines characters defined by a collection of “advantages” with a token system measuring their “potential” (how many advantages they can actually use at a particular time) to build a summed dice pool. Adapts to different genres with setting and adventure books. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
• Everywhen — a medium-crunch system “designed for high action roleplaying and suitable for campaigns in any era or background”, based on Barbarians of Lemuria. Setting books provide examples of using the system for particular genres. (custom license)
• Index Card RPG — a system that “throws out all the clunky parts” while providing numerous choices for characters. Class-based, but with available classes tailored to the genre. Provides a number of “world” books which customize the game for a given setting or genre. (CC BY 4.0)
• JAGS ¤ — Just Another Gaming System claims to be “rules-heavy”, and interested in a very wide power scale, a “variance in lethality”, and nice production. Several setting books tune it to particular genres.
• OneDice — a system based on rolling a single d6, with dozens of genre-specific variations.
• Saga ¤ — a low- to mid-crunch storytelling system, with several setting books as examples of use for particular genres. While it contains “a deadly and believable combat system, it is not combat focused”. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• TinyD6 — a very light system using descriptors and a pool of one to three d6, with genre specific books (e.g. Tiny Wastelands, Tiny Frontiers) to expand it into specific genres.

Comprehensive

Systems aiming to offer options for every possibility at once.

• HERO System — The 400 pound gorilla of point-buy, crunchy, high character customization systems, originally extracted from the Champions superhero game. Resolution pits a summed d6 pool (usually 3d6) against a target.
• Cosmic Cutthroats — a complex, “kitchen sink” sort of system built to support multi-genre dimension-hopping. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• EABA — stands for “End All Be All” and routes everything through a universal chart, taking the sum of the best three d6 from a pool. (Custom open license)
• Open Legend — a mid-complexity system using pools of exploding dice. Claims to be “open-source”, by which it means using a license reminiscent of the OGL. (Open Legend Community License)
• True20 — a simplified (three-class) version of the d20 system (the open portions of D&D 3.5), liberated from some of d20’s license restrictions. (OGL/True20)

Specific

Systems that support a particular type of play in a genre-agnostic way.

• 3Deep — a lightweight system “designed to emulate the episode structure” of TV, and also dedicating a significant section of the book to support solo play.
• Arium — two books, Arium: Discover is a streamlined RPG system that is built to run games in any world built with Arium: Create.
• Blackwind — might be what would have happened if RPGs were originally made by novelists instead of wargamers. Uses lots of the technical tools of writing.
• DOGS — “a genre and setting agnostic” interpretation of the now out-of-print Dogs in the Vineyard, using a dice pool and wagering system that is “heavily intertwined with the narrative… ideal for games where the players are solving mysteries, settling disputes, and making moral and/or ethical decisions”.
• DramaSystem — a token-based narrative system to support both procedural and dramatic scenes equally; originally part of Hillfolk, winner of the 2011 Diana Jones Award] (OGL, CC BY 3.0)
• Fiasco — A narrative game of ”powerful ambition and poor impulse control”, supported by hundreds of playsets (2014 Diana Jones Award)
• Forthright — a mid-complexity system based on non-binary results of a d20 roll. Heavy emphasis on expectation setting (both for the game as a whole, and for each die roll), collaboration, and GM guidance. (CC BY 4.0)
• Gumshoe — offers an engine designed for building investigative, mystery-solving games, regardless of genre. A kickstarter opened the SRD for the system. (CC BY 3.0)
• Narrative Game System — rules-light, heavily targeting narrative, collaborative play. Bulk of the book details fifteen example settings.
• The Pool ¤ — a free, simple system using a “dice pool gambling mechanic” to decide narrative control, and advancement is handled by adding words to your character’s story.
• Primetime Adventures — designed to create games that feel like television shows of any genre.
• Spark — “purpose-built to foster creating dynamic, custom settings” where play is “about challenging values and beliefs”. The main book contains example settings for “shogunate science fiction”, “montreal police drama”, and “fantasy under siege”. (CC BY 3.0)
• Strike! — a medium-complexity system built around grid-based tactical combat, aiming for “variety without complexity” and non-binary resolution using a single d6.
• Theatrix — originally published in 1993, this diceless system leans into many theatrical metaphors in its structure.

House systems

Systems that back a particular company’s line of games, usually extracted into their own setting-agnostic book.

• 2d20 — the backbone of a large number of games produced by Mōdiphiüs, though they have never produced a “generic” book for the system.
• AGE — powers a number of Green Ronin’s games, using complex system built around a 3d6 pool where one of the dice is special and determines degree of success and some other factors.
• Amazing Engine — genre-neutral system published by Wizards of the Coast in 1993 primarily used to drive a series of genre-specific supplements.
• Cypher System — drives the various titles of Monte Cook Games using an “I’m a blank blank who blanks” approach to character building and “GM intrusions”.
• Era d10 ¤ — an extraction of the pool of exploding d10s system behind the Era: … games from Shades of Vengeance.
• Fragged Rules System — a high-crunch 3d6, system using “tactical miniature combat” and “best for long sandbox games”, supporting several games from Design Ministries. They treat the first half of the Fragged Empire Core Rules as the baseline rules engine.
• Masterbook — originally a house generic system from West End Games from 1993, still available via DTRPG. Made extensive use of custom cards called Masterdeck
• Mythic D6 — based on the idea that all RPGs are basically superhero games with different trappings, using a modified d6 success pool. House system for Khepera Publishing.
• PDQ Sharp! ¤ — A generic version of the house system used by Atomic Sock Monkey press in games such as Truth and Justice and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies
• RuneQuest descendants — first published in 1978, RuneQuest has gone through a number of revision and more than its fair share of legal maneuvering. Out of all this have come a number of generic games:
  • Basic Role-Playing — a common distillation of the games produced by Chaosium. A fairly crunchy percentile skill-based system. (ORC)
  • Mythras Imperative ¤ — a “free introduction to the Mythras system, and geared towards generic adventures”. A fairly crunchy percentile skill-based system. (ORC)
  • Revolution D100 — “proposes a new approach to percentile-based role-playing games, while keeping the unique flavour of the classic D100 engine”. A fairly crunchy percentile skill-based system.
  • Note that QuestWorlds (listed in the “Hackable” section above) is based on Heroquest, which was an alternate rules system for playing in the Glorantha setting of Runequest.
• Savage Worlds powers Pinnacle Games. It has a liberal (though not open) license as well, so many settings have been published for it.
• Tri-Stat dX ¤ is the free, generic expression of the games first made by Guardians of Order, revived with the latest edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth.
• WaRP — for the 20th anniversary of Over the Edge, Atlas Games released the “Wanton Role-Playing System”, an open expression if its system. (OGL)

Historical

Systems that are no longer available but were notable in their time.

• Cortex was once the house system of Margaret Weis Productions, when they still produced RPGs, now supplanted by Cortex Prime (see above).
• The D6 System formed the basis of games by the bankrupted West End Games like Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, and now lives on as OpenD6 (see above).
• Lords of Creation — an early generic game published in 1983 notable for its publisher (Avalon Hill) and its author (Tom Moldvay).
• CORPS — generic toolkit game from Blackburg Tactical Research Center published prior to, and considered superseded by, EABA.

Fantasy

All the editions, revisions, competitors, knock-offs, revolutions, renaissances, and “killers” of “the world’s greatest roleplaying game” mean there are nearly endless fantasy games. This list doesn’t attempt to catalog all their branches, mostly because it doesn’t care. It cares even less if a game is “really” a TLA game (where “TLA” is whatever three-letter acronym you care about).

Retroclones

When gamers realized that rules can’t be copyrighted a great many built games by cloning rule sets wholesale. Few are exact clones, many are close (so will show up in this section), and many heavily mutate the original (so will not show up in this section). Where that line falls is fuzzy, and this list is far from comprehensive. It is worth noting that retroclones are often less for players (who, after all, could just play the original) and more for writers who want to publish new content for these closed systems.

• The Original “White Box” D&D (1974)
  • Microlite74
  • Swords & Wizardry
  • Whitehack
• Holmes D&D (1977)
  • Blueholme
  • Mazes & Perils
• AD&D (1977)
  • OSRIC
  • Dungeon Smashers — a simplified, chibi version of AD&D
• B/X D&D (Moldvay/Cook, 1981)
  • Basic Fantasy RPG
  • Labyrinth Lord
  • Old School Essentials
• BECMI (1983)
  • Darker Dungeons
• Second Edition (1989)
  • For Gold & Glory ¤
  • Myth & Magic
• Rules Cyclopedia (1991)
  • Dark Dungeons
• Some others
  • Against the Darkmaster — mostly clones Middle Earth Roleplaying System (MERPS) (Openoo)
  • Legend — mostly clones Runequest
  • Lightmaster ¤ — mostly clones Rolemaster 2E.
  • OpenQuest — mostly clones Runequest (CC BY 4.0)

Old-ish School

Games that have an “old school feel”, and might (or might not) pull from old-school origins (or mash up several), but have more modern design or “drift” the concept in a new way. (Some of these drift out of fantasy entirely, so can be found in above in the “universal” section.)

• The Black Hack — streamlined design emphasizing speed of play (OGL)
• Cairn — exploring a dark and mysterious Wood filled with strange folk, hidden treasure, and unspeakable monstrosities (CC BY 4.0)
• Dragonbane — “mirth and mayhem roleplaying”, refined from the 1982 Scandinavian game Drakar och Demoner. (Dragonbane Open License)
• Dungeon Crawl Classics — unusual polyhedrals (d16, d24, etc.), a massive catalog of quality adventures, and a history of bringing old classics back into print.
• Five Torches Deep — bills itself as “5e skeleton, OSR meat”, less than 50 pages
• Knave — modular design, slot-based inventory, GM tools
• Monsters & Magic — compatible with old school adventures, but with more narrative gaming elements (OGL)
• Shadowdark — a “nostalgic-but-new adventuring” system with familiar elements of classic fantasy gaming, but unafraid to embrace new ideas from the last 50 years
• Sharp Swords and Sinister Spells — rules light, custom system.
• Torchbearer — dungeon delving, managing light, built on a simplfied Burning Wheel system.
• Trophy Gold — “tells the story of the treasure-hunters’ obsessive drive to seek ever greater riches in a desperate bid to stay alive”, driven by a specific adventure template.
• Worlds Without Number — tools for sandbox play

Prominent

A few fantasy systems outside of TSR/WotC have risen to support large product lines and dedicated fanbases.

• 13th Age — created by the lead designers of D&D 3e and 4e, a year before 5e was published, avoiding mistakes from all three (OGL)
  • 13th Age
  • 13th Age Second Edition
  • 13th Age Glorantha — adapts the system to play in the setting popularized by RuneQuest (see below)
  • 13th Age SRD
• Daggerheart — polished, collaborative high fantasy from the people behind Critical Role.
• Dungeon World — easily the most played fantasy game Powered by the Apocalypse, supporting a massive amount of fan content, an SRD and a number of games building from it (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
  • World of Dungeons — a minimalist version of the original
  • Dungeon World 2 — a new edition in the works, by different authors
  • Chasing Adventure — an evolution of the original (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
  • Fantasy World — inspired by the original (PbtA)
  • Homebrew World ¤ — a revision of the moves, class playbooks, and equipment rules for Dungeon World optimized for one-shots or short campaign play (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
  • Ironsworn — a darker fantasy, supporting solo play (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
  • One Shot World ¤ — a more streamlined presentation, built for short form games (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
  • Stonetop — a “hearth fantasy” version, with a lot of thought and tinkering of the main moves
  • Uncommon World — collects years of hack, tweaks, and subsystem replacements from the original DW into one place (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
• Exalted — god-like fantasy in one of the best settings and fan wikis of all time. It has had several editions with a couple of publishers:
  • Exalted: First Edition
  • Exalted: Second Edition
  • Exalted: Third Edition
  • Exalted Essence
  • The game‘s dense rules have bred a slew of alternate systems
• Legend of the Five Rings — great samurai clans vie for control
• Pathfinder — continued evolution and refinement the D&D 3.5/d20 concept, now in its second edition tons of fan-made tools and references (OGL, ORC, others)
• Runequest — first published in 1978, RuneQuest has a timultuous past, with a number of revision and offshoots:
  • It spawned many “universal systems”, described above under “House systems”.
  • 1st Edition — 1978, Chaosium
  • RuneQuest 2nd Edition — 1978, Chaosium, became RuneQuest Classic
  • RuneQuest 3rd Edition — 1984, Avalon Hill
  • RuneQuest 4th Edition/Adventures in Glorantha — planned in the late 1980's, but never officially published.
  • RuneQuest (MRQ) — 2006, Mongoose
  • RuneQuest II — 2010, Mongoose
  • RuneQuest 6 — 2012, The Design Mechanism, became Mythras after licensing changes
  • RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha- 2018, Chaosium
  • The more narrative HeroWars/HeroQuest/QuestWorlds became a more universal system (see the “Hackable” section above)

Thematic

Some systems target particular types of fantasy or styles of play.

• Agon — “epic heroes who face trials from the gods in an ancient world of myth and legend”, on its second edition, with an SRD supporting numerous hacks (CC BY 4.0)
• Anima Prime — combines narrative freedom in character scenes, combat maneuvers, powers, megaswords, and summoning with a flexible goal system lets you infuse any fight with meaningful story decision points and unlimited tactical options (CC BY-SA 3.0 US)
• Band of Blades — mission based military fantasy (FitD)
• The Black Company — soliders in service to an ”empire ruled by wicked sorcerers with the powers of gods”, based on the novels of the same name
• Break!!! — anime-inspired high fantasy about exploration & teamwork
• Burning Wheel — an interlocking arrangement of sub-systems, heavily driven by characters’ beliefs
• The Clay That Woke — minotaurs live as menial laborers for a human civilization sundered by a surreal, trackless jungle
• Draw Steel — high fantasy tactical combat (DS Creator Licence)
• Epyllion — play as dragons
• Fabula Ultima — heavily influenced by Japanese-style console RPGs
• Fellowship — one player is the Overlord, out to destroy the world, the others a band of heroes out to stop them (PbtA and CC BY 4.0)
• Hearts of Wulin — wuxia melodrama surrounding skilled martial artists in a world of rival clans, conspiracies, and obligations (PbtA)
• Houses of the Blooded — “Set in the fantastic world of ven myth and legend, players take the roles of powerful characters bent on conquering their world, destroying their enemies and possessing all they desire”. Coronets But Never Crowns is a “family and politics” expansion for the game.
• In a Wicked Age… — a narrative swords & sorcery game driven by random “oracle” prompts, and where players move through characters and time in an anthology style.
• Lost in the Fantasy World — kids from the real world who have been magically transported to a world of magic and monsters, gifted with strange and amazing artifacts by a mysterious mentor
• Monster Care Squad — elite vets save and heal infected monsters
• Nefertiti Overdrive — high-octane action in Ancient Egypt, defying physics and common sense
• On Mighty Thews — pulp swords & sorcery, built for one shots and rapid play
• Perilous — plain language, freeform character generation, tag based mechanics
• Reign — a high fantasy game where you can give quests instead of taking them, in a world full of complex cultures, old grievances, religions in conflict and sullen old schools of wizardry (ORE)
• Root — woodland creatures fighting for money, justice, and freedom from powers far greater than them
• Sig: City of Blades — clever spies, renegade sorcerers, and reckless smugglers in the city at the nexus of the multiverse (FitD)
• The Skeletons — meditative structured freeform game, playing skeletons cursed to guard a tomb for eternity
• The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power — “focuses on power, politics, and intrigue in a setting you create using a unique world building exercise. … Take control of powerful sorcerers, regal nobles, and hardened warriors as you plot your rise to glory” (PbtA)
• Swords Without Master — laser focused on swords & sorcery
• Red Mists: Swords Against Sorcery — lightweight swords & sorcery, built on FU
• Sword Noir — cooperative, narrative hardboiled crime fiction in the worlds of sword & sorcery
• Tiny Dungeon — minimalist fantasy roleplaying game, including a dozen settings, using a single d6
• Wandering Monster High School — humorous fantasy where you take the roles of monsters going to school
• Zenobia ¤ — adventure and magic in the ancient world, using a fast and easy-to-use 2d6 mechanic

Franchises & Setting-Focussed

Games for playing in specific fantasy settings that are most known from books, films, tv or other media.

• Artesia — built for the world of the comic of the same name, leans on a tarot-like structure, and is built on the Fuzion system.
• Atlantis — the second edition of a much older game, featuring very different classes and “races” than most fantasy games.
• Avatar: Legends — licensed game for Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise (PbtA)
• Conan — for Conan the Barbarian, using the 2d20 system.
• Dictionary of Mu — a pulp fantasy setting “where demons are dead things, bits of history made wrong” and players add to the dictionary through play. Uses the Sorcerer system.
• Dishonored TTRPG — for the video game by the same name
• Dragon Age — for the video game series with the same name, using the AGE System.
• Early Dark — built for “a world of magick, yes, but not a world of fantasy… to invoke a world populated with realistic human minds and ecologies”. All PCs are human, and the technique used for world building is interesting.
• Earthdawn — conceived as a fantasy world that explicitly rejects most Tolkien (and, therefore, D&D) fantasy tropes. It has many versions and hacks.
• Forbidden Lands — sandbox survival roleplaying in a cursed world
• Lankhmar: City of Thieves — one of many takes on Fritz Leiber's city (Savage Worlds)
• Midnight — play in the aftermath of the victory of a dark lord
• The One Ring — the current holder of a license from the Tolkien estate.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord — streamlined, brutal dark fantasy in a world collapsing toward apocalypse
• Sword of the Serpentine — a fantasy investigation game of “daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery” set in an intriquing Venice-like city (Gumshoe)
• Spire: The City Must Fall — revolutionary dark-elves rebel against oppression. The companion game Heart expands the setting and gameplay
• Tékumel captures the world of M.A.R. Barker in RPG form. Even though TSR originally published it, it is not based on D&D. The world is way more interesting than the game.
• The Witcher TRPG — for the books & video games by the same name

System Agnostic Fantasy Settings

A surprising number of fantasy setting books exist containing little or no system-specific information.

• Pirate's Guide to Freeport — a pirate city, with a long publishing history
• The Chronicles of Talislanta ¤ — the original, system-agnostic version of this expansive setting, now available for free
• Citybooks — one of the first agnostic supplements
• Downcrawl — “a weird, wondrous underworld so far from the surface that the sun and sky are only legend”
• Drakonheim: City of Bones — a city built on the bones of a dragon, run by necromancers
• Dragon Kings World Book — factions and strange races vying for control of the wastelands and sand-blasted cities
• Embers of a Forgotten Kingdom — dark fantasy setting inspired by the Dark Souls video games
• Guide to Glorantha — a set of heavy coffee-table books detailing one of the earliest fantasy settings (2015 Diana Jones Award)
• HârnWorld — a detailed, realistic, flexible, and system-neutral setting for medieval fantasy adventures
• Karthun: Lands of Conflict — an arcanepunk, high-magic based on the 10-year TTRPG webcomic series d20Monkey
• The Lost Lands — sprawling fantasy world with dozens of setting books
• Primeval Thule — a savage, intense campaign setting designed for multiple game systems
• Ptolus — a heavy detailed fantasy city, with versions supporting several games, supported by several adventures and detailed maps
• Swordfish Islands — agnostic island setting controlled by six evocative factions
• Uresia: Grave of Heaven
• All of The Art of Magic: The Gathering series work really well as systemless setting books

Like Now

Games set in the modern day real world, or a rough approximation thereof, and usually with a twist (often supernatural).

Urban Fantasy

Magic exists in urban fantasy games, but it is often hidden or secret, allowing more of the ”real world” to remain familiar. PCs are almost always in on the secret.

• The many editions of the different World of Darkness games cast a long shadow in urban fantasy roleplaying. These games are somewhat infamous for promising game play (intrique and politics) they never delivered (here's 200 pages of combat rules).
• Dark Places & Demogorgons — 1980s teenagers from a small town where strange occurrences began popping up all around.
• Dresden Files — based on Jim Butcher’s series of novels (FATE)
• Kids on Bikes — “everyday people grappling with strange, terrifying, and powerful forces that they cannot defeat, control, or even fully understand”
• Liminal — supernatural misfits solving mysteries and managing tensions at the edge of the hidden world
• Monster of the Week — well supported modern day monster hunters (PbtA)
• Monsterhearts — “the messy lives of teenage monsters… create stories about sexy monsters, teenage angst, personal horror, and secret love triangles” (PbtA)
• Over the Edge — “a fantastic cornucopia of fringe science, conspiracy, and hyper-reality”
• A number of games build on SCP Foundation, a long-running collaborative wiki of speculative fiction about secretive organization that contains anomalous or supernatural items and entities away from the eyes of the public (all SCP information is CC BY-SA 3.0):
  • SCP The Tabletop RPG ¤ — mission-based, degree of success
  • Fear in the Foundation — a somewhat traditional d20 system
  • Warped World ¤ — narrative and collaborative
  • SCP: Directors — management-focused
• Tales From the Loop — based on Simon Stålenhag’s illustrations of an alternate 1980's Scandinavia. Won five Gold ENnies in 2017, including Best Game and Product of the Year.
• Unknown Armies — in its third edition, occult horror about broken people trying to fix an equally broken world where magick is real but hidden
• Urban Shadows — vampires, werewolves, faeries, wiards on a political battleground layered just under the reality we think we know (PbtA)

Espionage

Spy games range from serious, to cinematic, to over the top.

• Blowback — basically Burn Notice, the RPG.
• Classified - retro clone of the old James Bond 007 game.
• Cold Shadows — a more grim/realistic/LeCarre style, based on Houses of the Blooded.
• Deniable — a story game of “unwitting spies temped by fast money”.
• Danger International — revised and updated the earlier Espionage!, bringing “action with fast cars, vital secrets and high-tech hardware… and special game mechanics to simulate any modern adventure setting” to HERO System 3rd Edition.
• Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, Combined Edition — is a modern merging of the prior Blade (1983) and Sleuth (1986) editions, similar in system to Tunnels & Trolls but “more of a skill based system… based on modern abilities”.
• Minutes to Midnight — a crew of spies trying to disrupt the balance of power in a modern cold war (FitD)
• The Spy Game — the (perhaps inevitable) 5e “spiritual successor” to Spycraft
• One of the first espionage RPGs, Top Secret has been through many editions:
  • The First Edition was revised and updated within a year, and hard to find
  • The revised Second Edition is mired in legal rights issues, and neither the box set nor missions are legally available digitally
  • Ditto for the thrid edition, “Top Secret/SI”, which changed the system significantly, and leaned into more cinematic espionage
  • New World Order is a crowd-sourced reboot
  • White Lies is a sort of “spirirtual successor”, based on Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox
• Wilderness of Mirrors — a fourteen page exercise in using The Big Three questions to build an espionage game

Supernatural espionage

• Cold City — the espionage portion of a pair of related games, in a 1950’s Berlin and “grapples with the legacies of twisted sciences, occult experiments, and the reality-fracturing horror of war”
• Conspiracy X — “a world just like yours, if you could see beyond the lies” (Unisystem)
• Delta Green — “agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors, often at a shattering personal cost”
• The Laundry — cosmic horror, tech-driven magic, and occult spycraft, based on The Laundry Files by Charles Stross
• Nights Black Agents — “puts you in the role of a deadly secret agent, taking down the forces of darkness” (Gumshoe)
• Project Perseus — superspies vs. supernatural forces at the end of the 20th century with a focus on “dynamic action, hard choices, and troubled trust issues” (PbtA)

Special Ops/Military

• The Company — corporate special forces “responding to industrial accidents and experiments gone wrong”
• Covert Ops — uses d00Lite system, somewhat like early Top Secret, focusses on covert operations.
• FIST — disposable paranormal mercenaries (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Grey Ranks — assume the roles of a young Polish partisans before, during, and after the disastrous 1944 Uprising against the Germans (2008 Diana Jones Award)
• Hot War — the Cold War goes hot, and operatives have to “deal with relationships, loves, hatred, and hidden agendas against the backdrop of a collapsing, ravaged, horror-strewn Britain”
• Night Witches — women bombing fascists from biplanes in WWII. Rotating gamemaster

Mystery/Investigation

Games with investigation as the primary activity.

• Brindlewood Bay — play a group of elderly women who help the authorities solve murder cases in a picturesque New England town (CfB)
• Cthulhu Dark — short, focussed, Lovecraftian, investigative horror (Gumshoe)
• The Esoterrorists — elite investigators combating the plots of a loose affiliation of occult terrorists (Gumshoe)
• Magic School Mystery — solve clues, cast spells, cause mischief
• Meddling Kids — kids and their anthropomorphic sidekick solve mysteries and save the day.
• Trail-of-Cthulhu — investigative horror set in the 1930s (Gumshoe)
• The Unexplained — part time paranormal investigators (Fudge)

Thematic

Different styles, approaches, and takes on modern-day roleplaying.

• Adrenaline — a crew-based heist game with “optional rules for cyber, bio, and pharmaceutical augmentations”. (FitD)
• All Outta Bubblegum ¤ — one page game about kicking ass, using sticks of bubblegum and a d10 (CC BY 4.0)
• Apocalypse Keys — monsters bound by fate, love, and power holding back the apocalypse (PbtA)
• Cartel — stay alive in a dangerous game of drugs, money, and power, emulating Mexican narcofiction (PbtA)
• A Dirty World — noir roleplaying about secrets, deception, betrayal and hidden vice (ORE)
• Escape From Dino Island — intrepid heroes trapped on an island overrun with creatures from a lost age; one-shot friendly (PbtA)
• Feng Shui 2E — a Hong Kong martial arts inspired game, with sourcebooks for playing in Wuxia settings
• The Final Girl — horror movie emulation where the characters are picked off one by one until only one survivor remains to confront the killer
• Hollow Earth Expedition — pulp adventure roleplaying
• Kids on Brooms — taking on the lives of witches and wizards at a magical school
• One Last Job — a washed-up, past-their-best crew and tackle one last big score
• Outgunned — cinematic action roleplaying
• Pasión de las Pasiones — passion, drama, secrets, delights, and heated conflict, telenovela style (PbtA)
• Pigsmoke — a roleplaying game of sorcerous academia (PbtA)
• Tailfeathers Academy of Magic — students at a school of wizardry, and the magic sport they play
• Three Days Until Retirement — grizzled cops on the edge try to solve one last case* Wushu: the Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying ¤ — high-flying, hyper-stylized action, where over the top description makes success more certain (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• World Wide Wrestling — feuds, championships, betrayal, righteous victory… and what the audience thinks (PbtA)

System Agnostic

• All Must Bow — a system-agnostic setting of cosmic horror, from the view of the villain
• Krevborna: A Gothic Blood Opera — a land of Gothic ruins preyed upon by fiends, ravening beasts, and the unquiet dead
• City of Clocks — a Victorian-like steampunk setting

Post-apocalyptic

For some reason, there are a lot of post-apocalytpic RPGs.

Wander the Wasteland

Characters wander a generic wasteland, trying to survive/find adventure. The nature of the apocalypse is either unspecified, forgotten in the distant past, a general multi-faceted collapse, or some other “classic” wasteland.

• Aftermath! — a 1980’s era, detailed reality simulator that features levelless, classless and skill based characters. Beloved by many, but very crunchy.
• Apocalypse World — a narrative, character-driven wasteland game, based on playbooks and triggered “moves”. The somewhat infamous sex moves are removed in Burned Over, a “pretty deep redesign… suitable for play across wider age groups and more general audiences”. Its design philosophy and concepts drive a slew of other games, known as “Powered by the Apocalypse”. (PbtA)
• Atomic Highway ¤ — a free game that “doesn’t spend any time on backstory or metaplot” and is “well-suited to one-shot games and short campaigns”. System counts successes from pools of d6, and provides heavy support for vehicle-related play. (V6 Engine)
• Darwin’s World — an evolution of an older d20 take on PA, with a good number of supplements (Savage Worlds)
• Glow in the Dark — “play to find out if your tribe can flourish despite other hungry gangs, forgotten prewar threats, the unforgiving elements, and their own dark impulses.” (FitD)
• Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wastelands ¤ — being a “post-apocalypse game of big guns, big bikes and diminutive IQs”, this free game replicates the feel of cheesy 80’s post apocalypse movies. (Fudge OGL)
• Tiny Wastelands — a minimalist rule-set using “only one to three single six-sided dice on every action [and] characters that can be written 3×5 notecard”. The book contains a dozen or so sample settings. (TinyD6)

Make Your Own Wasteland

Similar to the previous category, but also containing play elements specifically about defining the specifics of the apocalypse during session zero, or during play.

• Barbarians of the Aftermath — expansion for Barbarians of Lemuria to create any type of PA setting. (Everywhen)
• Downfall — no GM, no dice, no prep, for three people, with step-by-step tools to build a world, and then destroy it.
• Maximum Apocalypse — based on the board game of the same name, using a percentage system. Each player chooses their own personal apocalypse.
• Other Dust — “is not here to dazzle you with brilliantly novel mechanics” but rather “designed as an industrial-strength toolkit for postapocalyptic sandboxing”, using an old-school system “completely cross-compatible” with Stars Without Number. Heavy on setting generated from random tables.
• Rust and Redemption — a toolbox for building a post-apocalypse campaign of any kind (Cypher)

We Can Rebuild

Play focusses on rebuilding society after the apocalypse, with mechanical or other focus on community, “base-building” and so on.

• After the War — set ten years after a mimetic virus laid waste to a galactic union, survivors try to rebuild a frontier world. Uses a belief-driven narrative system including mechanics for settlements. CC BY-NC 3.0
• Flatpack: Fix the Future — “optimistic apocalyptic roleplaying” about “building a new society using pre-apocalypse technology that you don’t always trust or understand, and solving terrible problems creatively”. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
• Legacy: Life Among the Ruins — Rebuilding after the calamity, using a flexible, multi-generational system, with players controlling both families and individual characters. (PbtA)
• The Morrow Project — “intended to be part of an organized plan to rebuild America” after a nuclear war, the PCs are woken from stasis too late. “Now, far outside the original time frame and unable to contact the rest of the project, they must start alone the process that was intended for thousands”.
• Mutant: Year Zero — a well-supported evolution of the Swedish game Mutant, originally published in 1984. Play involves maintaining and upgrading “The Ark”, the character’s home, and exploring the surrounding wastelands for whatever can help. (Year Zero Engine)
• Wreck Age — a game that merges a focus on community and rebuilding, miniatures skirmish rules, and rpg mechanics. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

This Particular Apocalypse

Games that lean heavily into a specific setting.

• Arrhenius — a narrative-based adventure, exploration, and combat game set in the harsh and far-future ruins of the next Ice Age in the year 100,000.
• Asphalt & Trouble — “You are a biker gang, riding the open road and fighting to survive the corporate-fueled climate apocalypse” (FitD)
• Degenesis ¤ — a free game based on a dense, dark setting, brought to life with impressive visual design and art.
• Deadlands: Hell on Earth — the most recent iteration of a post-apocalyptic take on the weird-west Deadlands setting (Savage Worlds)
• Fragged Empire — “four genetically engineered races seek to build a new society for themselves as they emerge from the ruin of genocidal war, and back to the stars”. Heavy emphasis on tactical miniatures combat. The first half of explains a more genre-neutral system, with the second half adapting it specifically to the setting.
• Gamma World — grew out of the not-exactly-post-apocalypse Metamorphosis Alpha, and moved through many different editions, with the nature of the apocalypse and the setting mutating over time. Most of these editions (and their supplements) are still available, though none of them is in active development:
  • First Edition and Second Edition shared a similar, traditional design, with second largely being a cleaned-up and expanded version of the first.
  • Third Edition reworked the game to use a four-color “action table”, trendy in TSR’s games of the era.
  • Fourth Edition moved to a class and level system, somewhat reminiscent of a streamlined D&D 2e.
  • Fifth Edition was a setting supplement for the sci-fi game Alternity.
  • Omega World was a standalone d20 mini game published in Dungeon/Polyhedron magazine.
  • Sixth Edition brought the full setting to d20 Modern. While unpopular at the time for its more sombre tone, it includes an interesting approach to community building, and a GM’s Guide useful beyond just this game or genre. (OGL)
  • Seventh Edition made polarizing use of the D&D 4e engine to build a more gonzo tactical fighting game, adding extremely fast character generation, high lethality, and cards for random powers. Arguably a better use for the 4e system than D&D. (GSL)
• GURPS post-apocalype worldbooks — a wide range of books bring particular post-apocalypse settings to life over different editions of GURPS.
• Onyx Sky ¤ — explores our world after a devastating global war and environmental collapse plunge humanity back into the stone age
• PunkApocalyptic — based on the miniatures skirmish game of the same name, with a modified version of rules from Shadow of the Demon Lord.
• Summerland — about desolation and redemption in a world destroyed by a vast supernatural forest growing overnight. (OpenD6)
• Twilight: 2000 — a newly revived fourth edition for “roleplaying in the World War III that never was” as soldiers or civilians. (Year Zero Engine)

During the Apocalypse

Part of play deals with the apocalypse as it happens, and its immediate aftermath.

• Chaos Earth — a game/setting based on Rifts, when the world suddenly comes apart.
• Down in Flames — thirteen “wrecking scenarios for CORPS or any other role-playing game”.
• Dream Askew — a heavily narrative game of “queer strife amid the collapse”, set in a strange, gradual apocalypse. Uses a token economy, no randomizers, and playbooks (for more than just characters).
• eCollapse — a setting for Wild Talents featuring supers in “a future that didn’t explode so much as give up in disgust”. (ORE)
• The End of the World — a series of four related, but distinct, games originally created by the now-defunct role-playing arm of Fantasy Flight Games and now in the hands of Edge Studio. Each game puts players in the middle of a particular kind of apocalypse, as it happens, using a story-focussed, narrative ruleset.
• Mörk Borg — set during the destruction of a fantasy world, a somewhat standard OSR game popular for its distinct artistic aesthetic. “Rules light, heavy everything else.” Ennies Product of the Year 2020 winner.

Zombie Apocalypse

Specifically targeted at zombie/infection style post-apocalypse play. Some of these may be “during the apocalypse” games.

• All Flesh Must Be Eaten — an early, setting-agnostic rule-set for zombie survival horror, combined with a wide variety of sourcebooks for specific settings. Tasks resolved using d10 plus skill, attribute, and modifier. (Unisystem)
• The Dead Are Coming — “a minimalist, classically-inspired RPG about survival in a post-apocalyptic world where the dead have risen and other survivors can be much worse than the undead”. Based on Into the Odd.
• Outbreak: Undead — a “zombie survival simulation” presenting “a modular system to create your own horror setting… with a variety of undead or infected monsters“. Uses a percentile skill system, mixed with several special varieties of d6 and tokens. Awarded Ennie Judges Spotlight in 2011.
• Red Markets — a game of “cut-throat capitalism with its knife on your neck” where “characters risk their lives trading between the massive quarantine zones containing a zombie outbreak and the remains of civilization”. Features a highly detailed setting, backed by a system using two opposed d10s. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Rotted Capes — B-list superheroes are the last hope in a “horrific world where the super zombies sit atop the food chain”. (Arcanis)
• Survival of the Able — people with disabilities vs. plague zombies in the Middle Ages.
• Ultima Forsan — “set in a macabre alternate version of our Renaissance”, after a plague of the dead ravaged the world. “Now, in the year 1514, heroes from the New Kingdoms are ready to fight to reconquer the World.” (Savage Worlds)
• Zombi ¤ — a lightweight 2d6 survival game which considers the other survivors the main adversaries.
• Zombie World — a zero-prep, card-based rpg “designed for easy, quick, and intense play”, built around defending some type of enclave. Mechanically, different situations or character actions trigger particular types of card draws.
• Zombiepocalypse ¤ — a minimalist survival game “designed to be easy to pick up and simple to play”, with quick character generation to balance a low survival rate. (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Gonzo

Games where the main draw is over-the-top weirdness, genre bashing, kitchen-sink inclusion, not particularly-serious play.

• Barbarians of the Ruined Earth — a “weird post-apocalyptic fantasy setting” providing “a Saturday Morning Cartoon Stew fueled by heavy metal”. (Black Hack OGL)
• Death is the New Pink — a “bizarre, crazed” setting where play is “brutal, bloody, and chaotic” and “things should be kept fast-paced and it’s more than fine if it doesn’t make sense”. Based on Into the Odd.
• Low Life: Rise of the Lowly — based on the somewhat scatalogical art of “whimsical yet twisted bizarrities” by Andy Hopp. If you ever wanted to play as a sentient Twinkie or elevated worm, this is the game for you. (Savage Worlds)
• Mutant Crawl Classics — an old-school mutations-give-cool-powers game, built for full compatibility with Dungeon Crawl Classics. (OGL)
• Mutants of Ixx — a “pamphlet sized” game based on Into the Odd.
• octaNe — psychotronic game of post-apocalyptic, trash-culture America
• The Rad Hack — set in “a weird, post apocalyptic future where mutants, robots, psionics and humans team up against the dangers of the wasteland in search of tech, slugs and adventure”. (Black Hack OGL)
• See the many attempts to replicate Thundarr the Barbarian, below.
• 2400 Xot, 2400 Exiles, 2400 Tempus Diducit, and 2400 Data Loss are all various flavors of weird post-apocalypse. Each one is a three-page rules-lite module and they can be combined together with minor finangling.

Magical Wasteland

Differentiated by the inclusion of magic and/or other fantasy elements.

• Dark Sun — set “amid the barren wastelands of Athas”, based heavily on the art of Gerald Brom. Originally designed for D&D 2e, and later released for D&D 4e.
• Day After Ragnarok — a “submachine guns and sorcery” setting, set after the Midgard Serpent rises near the end of World War II, only to have its head nuked by Truman, and devastate the world when its body crashes. (Fate Core, HERO, Savage Worlds)
• Desolation — “set 18 months after a high-fantasy world was nearly brought to an end”. Uses a free-form approach to magic. (Ubiquity)
• Earthdawn — “hopeful, post-apocalyptic fantasy”, recently updated to its “fourth” edition. The setting’s “kaers” are strongly associated with Fallout “vaults”, and can lead to a similar (though fantasy-themed) sort of play.
• Planet Apocalypse — a supplement for turning 5e fantasy worlds into a hellscape overrun by fiendish hordes. (OGL)
• Reclamation — “combines sci-fi, fantasy, and survival horror themes with a unique card-based game system”.
• Sundered World — “a fantastic, kind of gonzo campaign setting for Dungeon World” set in the “shattered remnants of the worlds… ravaged during a cosmic war between the gods and primordials”. (PbtA, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Tribe 8 — “set in a tribal future where PCs are blessed with mystical insight and marked by destiny”. Mechanics use the highest result from a d6 pool. (Silhouette)
• The Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City — “psychedelic metal roleplaying” where heroes journey across the titular grasslands. The book contains both a beautifully illustrated setting and a light D&D-like system.
• Unity — a high-production-value fantasy apocalypse, with a combat system “design to facilitate teamwork” and shared narrative authority.

Other Thematic Approaches

Games with a targeted “feel” or mode of play, often using a very specific setting.

• After the Bomb — originally a post-apocalyptic setting for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but became its own game, set in a world dominated by uplifted animals. (Megaversal)
• Belly of the Beast — “brazen survivors… plumb the depths of a world-eating monster’s guts, scouring the remains of the mighty empires that were eaten by the Beast.” (Ethos Engine)
• Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands ¤ — in which “the players take on the role of bounty hunters, banding together to hunt down bad guys for reputation and reward”. (Fate Accelerated CC BY 3.0)
• deadEarth ¤ — though long out of print, “possibly one of the worst RPGs ever” was made freely publishable for non-commercial use.
• Devil’s Run — “a post-apocalyptic future in which gang warfare dominates”. (2d20)
• Future Imperfect ¤ — players take on the roles of centuries old sentient machines, in a world where humans became unable to breed. (Risus)
• High Plains Samurai — “a storytelling game of extreme mash-ups” in a super-powered world of “gunslingers, barbarians, samurai, gangsters and steampunk”. Dice rolls do not measure success or failure, but are instead used as complications against your enemies.
• Libreté — a translation of a French game where you “assume the lives of children trying to survive in a world without adults”. (PbtA)
• Threadbare — jury-rigged stitchpunl toys in a broken world (PbtA)

Franchises

Games based on specific post-apocalypse movies, books, video games, or media franchises.

• The Fifth Season — will be an rpg based on N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy.
• Mad Max — pretty much every game listed above owes something to the Mad Max franchise, but no official RPG exists. Games mentioned above with a heavy focus on vehicle chases/combat include: Asphalt & Trouble, Apocalypse World, Atomic Highway.
• Stalker RPG — like the film and video game series of the same name, this diceless game is based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, but brought to “modern times and modern audiences”. Available in Finnish and English.
• Thundarr the Barbarian: See Thundarr Roleplaying

Science Fiction

Broad-focused sci-fi

• Coriolis — Middle Eastern-inspired sci-fi setting, described as “Arabian Knights in space”.
• DayTrippers — surreal reality-hopping science-fiction. Low prep, high collab, universal yes/no/and/but mechanic (CORE)
• Diaspora — based on an older edition of Fate, won the gold ENnie for best rules in 2010. It contains a number of interesting approaches to sci-fi exploration play. (Fate 3)
• FrontierSpace — an action/adventure OSR-type game highly influenced by Star Frontiers. (d00Lite, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
• Infinite Galaxies — broad focus system with a setting that “presents a positive and engaging future state of the universe”. (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Shadows Over Sol — hard sci-fi horror set in our own solar system.
• Star Frontiers — an early general sci-fi system from TSR.
• Stars Without Number ¤ — an OSR sci-fi game built “to encourage sandbox play”. Has both a free and paid version.
• Traveller — one of the earliest sci-fi games, has seen nearly a dozen different versions, all of which still have their adherents. Some versions are famous for cases where your character can die while being generated. The OGL portion of Mongoose Traveller Version 1 is known as the Cepheus Engine.

Broad-focused transhumanist sci-fi

• Eclipse Phase — a post-singularity game of transhuman horror. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Farflug — “about the ends of the universe, where nothing has been undone and everything is permitted”. (PbtA)
• FreeMarket — a post-scarcity, transhumanist game set aboard a space station, asking the question “what will you do with forever?”. The box set of this game is hard to find.
• Mindjammer — takes place in an award-winning far-future, transhumanist setting. (Fate)
• Nova Praxis — “a post-singularity sci-fi setting that explores transhumanism and post-scarcity societies against a backdrop of action, adventure, conspiracy and intrigue”. (Fate, Savage Worlds)

Broad-focused space opera

• Archives of the Sky — “a tabletop story game of galactic scope and threatened ideals” won a Judges’ Spotlight ENnie in 2019.
• Baroque Space Opera — “Enter a fantastic universe beyond time and space… filled with strange technology, stranger cultures, exotic locations, and incredible danger.” (Fate)
• Blood in Space — minimal rule set with a fully realized setting. (Fudge)
• Fading Suns — a game of heavy combat, vicious politics, weird occultism, alien secrets and artifacts, from the makers of Das Schwarze Auge. Recently kickstarted second edition.
• Faith is a space opera RPG “of epic adventures, where starfaring alien civilizations race to explore a dangerous, unknown universe; while the Gods compete for followers; and the Ravager threaten civilization as a whole”.
• Galactic — “tell the character-driven, relationship-focused space opera stories you want to see in the world” in this GM-less RPG inspired by Star Wars (Belonging Outside Belonging)
• Hellas — a “fusion of high drama, action-adventure, romance, mythology-infused space opera”
• ORUN — A rich and fully realized, and immersive Afrocentric science fiction setting in the Post-Apotheosis Age
• Rebel Scum — “a cinematic RPG about a war in the stars inspired by a deep love of old school action figures and of punching Nazis in the face”.
• Space Opera — “an old school RPG including complete rules for character and planet generation, human and alien races, skills and professions, starships, individual and ship combat, etc.”.
• Tiny Frontiers — a “minimalist space opera” game based. (TinyD6)
• Trinity Continuum: Æon — Psions in a Mass Effect-ish galaxy, in recovery 60 years after a devastating war. Extrasolar colonies, aliens, space weirdness, jumpships. (Storypath)
• Uncharted Worlds — a wide-scope “space opera of discovery and adventure”. (PbtA)

Starship crew

• Ashen Stars — Investigative game about freelance law enforcement on the fringe of civilized space. Described aptly as the crew of Serenity tasked with the job of the Enterprise (Gumshoe)
• explorers — a crew-game of planet exploration SciFi, moderate rules, focus on teamwork and limited resources.
• Impulse Drive — focused on a ship crew “making a living on the fringe of civilized space”. (CC BY-SA 3.0, PbtA)
• Lasers & Feelings ¤ — a free one-page game about a starship crew, is about as rules-light as you can get, and has spawned literally hundreds of hacks to different genres. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
• Offworlders — as “owners of a small starship”, a group of “adventurers, outlaws, and guns for hire make their fortune on the rough end of the galaxy”. (CC BY 3.0 US, PbtA)
• Rust Hulks — a game about “playing space truckers in a grimy science-fiction future.” (PbtA)
• Scum and Villainy — a game ”about a spaceship crew trying to make ends meet under the iron-fisted rule of the Galactic Hegemony”. (FitD)
• Teens in Space — a spinoff of Kids On Bikes. A relatively lightweight system with cooperative storytelling elements about a crew of alien teens and their spaceship exploring space.

Thematic approaches

• 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars — a mechanically simple, low-prep campaign game about being a member of a self-serving military tasked with wiping out alien threats.
• Blue Planet — “offers hard sci fi adventure on the ecologically wild, sociopolitically contentious frontier of Earth’s first extrasolar colony world: a distant waterworld named Poseidon”.
• Cosmic Patrol — built to be more “golden age scifi”, using a simple rule-set. (Cue, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Coyote & Crow — set in an alternative solarpunk future where North America was never colonized ,featuring advanced technology developed without fossil fuels (2023 Diana Jones Award)
• Danger Patrol ¤ — captures some of the aesthetic of 1930’s sci-do serials, mixed with a more modern cinematic vibe. Has evolved through several versions, including a two-page “pocket” approach. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
• Exilium — a game of “of science fiction adventure and intrigue set against a backdrop of post-human loss and redemption”. (Mini Six)
• Flatline — “a near-future dystopian roleplaying game about armed EMTs who execute intensive medical ops to protect the richest clients”. (Fate)
• Hello World — set in a digital utopia where only memory is in short supply. (FitD)
• Hostile — “a gritty, near future roleplaying setting for the 2D6 Cepheus Engine rules… inspired by movies like Outland and Alien”. (Cepheus Engine)
• Hunt the Wicked — focusing on “bounty Hunters: peacekeepers, gunslingers, saviors, and assassins, the heroes and mercenaries that go after the bad guys”.
• Lady Blackbird ¤ — the gold standard for a game based around a specific scenario and characters. Steampunk and free, the first of three.
• Mothership — “a sci-fi horror roleplaying game where you and your crew try to survive in the most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space”.
• Never Tell Me the Odds — a “space-scoundrel RPG about risking it all”.
• Paranoia — the Computer is still your friend.
• Predation — A desparate future uses time-travel to build a colony 66 million years in the past, stranding them there. High tech meets dinosaurs. (Cypher)
• Shock: Social Science Fiction — a “fiction game of culture and future shock. Inspired by the works of Bruce Sterling, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Philip K. Dick, the game pushes the players to make stories that matter to them — stories about politics, philosophy, love, and death.” A variation of it, Shock: Human Contact is pretty much the Star Trek Federation with the serial numbers filed off.
• Sufficiently Advanced — a distant-future, somewhat optimistic game. The most recent edition uses a diceless system.
• Synthicide — makes use of tactical grid combat, in a grim semi-cyberpunk setting where the machines have taken over.
• Vast and Starlit — a “complete nano-game of interstellar crime & rebellion” using diceless mechanics and minimal verbiage.
• The Void — a “hard sci-fi survival horror setting with Lovecraftian elements”.

Mechs

• ArCS — “try and outrun debt collectors, fight space battles, and try to destabilize warring corporations for pay… all from the cockpit of a giant robot”. (PbtA)
• Beam Saber — a “game about the pilots of powerful machines in a war that dominates every facet of life”. (CC BY 3.0, FitD)
• Firebrands — is a casual game about pilots in the universe of the lego mech fighting game Mobile Frame Zero. (PbtA)
• LAST SENTINELS — a GM-less storytelling game about a doomed mech pilot, inspired by Polaris
• Lancer RPG — centered on shared narratives, customizable mechs, and the pilots who crew them in the future.
• Mecha — designed specifically to emulate both the combat and the drama of mecha anime. Core book contains three different settings, and advice on building your own.
• Mecha Aces — a more minimalist, generic approach to mech gaming. The book includes four different settings. (Fudge)
• The Mecha Hack — a standalone game “of titanic warmachines and their intrepid pilots, made with The Black Hack.”
• Mecha vs Kaiju — Mechs vs giant monsters, both for Fate Core and Cypher.
• Mechwarrior: Destiny — the latest in a line of (very different) games for role-playing in the BattleTech universe. (Cue)
• Mekton Zeta — “enter a world of high adventure and mechanized combat”.
• Tiny Frontiers: Mecha and Monsters — you take on the role of jockeys who pilot massive robots, defending the world and cities of man from threats, giant aliens or monsters (Tiny Frontiers)

Cyberpunk

• Ætherium — a d10 pool system, set in a cyberpunk world that puts heavy emphasis on virtual reality.
• Altered State — a cyberpunk supplement for the Index Card RPG which brings cyberpunk to that system.
• Black Code — a transhuman cyberpunk game “set in a future where humanity and technology are intermingled so closely we don’t know where we are going next”, using a toolkit approach.
• Blood Chrome Neon — a “relatively lightweight” game that is “pretty straightforward to hack”.
• Carbon 2185 — uses a class-based approach, and a better than average visual aesthetic. (5e OGL)
• CBR+PNK — designed for one-shot sessions, where a crew makes their last run. (FitD)
• CRASH//CART — play “a paramedic crew in a near-future Californian coastal metropolis.” Uses playing cards instead of dice. (FitD)
• Chrome Shells & Neon Streets — a two-page rpg “inspired by popular cyberpunk fiction”. (Tricube Tales)
• Cities without Number cyberpunk RPG built for old-school sandbox adventures in a dystopia of polished chrome and bitter misery
• Corporation — leans into the megacorp notion, to the point that nations no longer exist.
• Cyberblues City — “offers a lighter take on the cyberpunk genre, both in terms of system and tone” and supplies a number of free adventures. (Fudge)
• Cyberpunk is Dead ¤ — A rules-light Forged in the Dark-hack of playing a faceless corporate hit squad in a dystopian cyberpunk world.
• Cyberpunk RED — the latest version of the early Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0., advancing the timeline to the year 2045.
• CYBER//PUNK ¤ — a Lasers & Feelings hack.
• Cyberspace — an early cyberpunk game. Like many Iron Crown Enterprises games, never took off the way its contemporaries did.
• Ex Machina — contained a trio of quite nice cyberpunk settings for the now-defunct Tri-Stat dX.
• Hack the Planet — has particular focus on arcologies and environmental activism. (FitD)
• Hard Wired Island — anti-capitalist cyberpunk inspired by 90s anime
• Neon Black — anticapitalist game about “a community of poor people fighting back against tyrannical corporations and the indifference of the rich”. (FitD)
• Neon City Outlaws — presents an alternate setting for Dusk City Outlaws, “a dystopian cyberpunk city where the crew takes on Jobs targeting the monolithic corporations and the execs that run them”.
• Neon City Overdrive — Forged in the Dark mixed with Freeform Universal. Fast, player-facing, tag based, a focus on heists/jobs/missions but with longer term goals for PCs that tie things together.
• Remember Tomorrow — rules-lite and GM-less.
• Shadow of the Beanstalk — a cyberpunk setting built around a space elevator and link to the Android board and card games. (Genesys)
• SIGMATA: This Signal Kills Fascists — a cyberpunk RPG about ethical insurgency against a fascist regime, taking place in a dystopian vision of 1980’s America.
• The Sprawl — turns up the mission-based, genre-simulation dials. (PbtA)
• System Shutdown ¤ — a one-page one-shot, features a burned cyberoperative trying to extract vengeance before his implants fail.
• TechNoir — correctly dubs itself as “high-tech, hard-boiled roleplaying”, with unusual mechanics to match.
• Uprising — explores the tradeoff of freedom for technology. (Fate)
• The Veil — focuses more on character emotional drives and the impact of secondary realities (AR, VR, etc.). (PbtA)
• Wired Neon Cities — “minimalist cyberpunk roleplaying” in five pages.

Cyberpunk plus…

Cyberpunk worlds with fantastical elements, without quite reaching “science fantasy”.

• Cybergeneration — a spinoff of Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. that includes superhero elements.
• Entromancy is a cyberpunk/magic fusion setting. (5e OGL)
• Psi-Punk — A psionic cyberpunk game. (Fudge)
• Shadowrun — the 400-pound gorilla in the “cyberpunk plus magic” genre. Known for having a lot of hacks to move the setting to other systems (see Shadowrun Alternative Systems).
• SLA Industries — takes place in a cyberpunk world with the horror elements turned up.
• The Spire — doesn’t bill itself as a cyberpunk game, but has a definite cyberpunk vibe, as your drow revolutionaries resist the high elf establishment that runs a mile tall tower-city.
• Vault — “designed to combine relatable near-future cyberpunk elements with the mysterious and heroic nature of fantasy”
• Vurt — takes place in a cyberpunk setting that adds travel into parallel worlds. (Cypher)

Science Fantasy

A (usually pulpy or over the top) mix of fantasy/magic with technology.

• Adventures on Dungeon Planet — a science fantasy supplement for Dungeon World. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, PbtA)
• Cryptomancer — The inevitable Age of Information which magick would bring to a Tolkienesque high-fantasy setting. “Made by hackers, for hackers.”
• Numenera — Set a billion years in our future, it’s a game of exploration and discovery. Abilities and artifacts of the past seems like sci-fi, magic, or both, depending on how you look at it. (Cypher)
• Otherworlds — a “future fantasy” game, which aims to provide lots of variability without overcomplicating.
• Space Wurm vs Moonicorn — “Space Wurm and Moonicorn are rivals, fighting over the future of galactic civilization.” Two players play them, while others play characters caught in their web, while GM is tasked with undermining them all. (CC BY-SA 4.0, PbtA)
• Starfinder is a “science fantasy adventure” game derived from the Pathfinder rule set. (OGL)
• Troika — science-fantasy universe in the spirit of works such as Dying Earth, Viriconium, and Book of the New Sun.

Franchises

Games officially based on existing science fiction franchises.

• Alien — brings the universe of the Alien franchise to life, “a universe of body horror and corporate brinkmanship, where synthetic people play god while space truckers and marines serve host to newborn ghoulish creatures”. (Year Zero)
• Altered Carbon — aims for the neo-noir, bod-swapping feel of the TV series.
• Dune: Adventures in the Imperium — “a journey through the storied worlds of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi masterpiece”. (2d20)
• The Expanse — brings the setting of James S.A. Corey’s bestselling fiction series to your table. (AGE)
• Farscape is a d20 system that can still be purchased, but is no longer supported. (OGL)
• Flash Gordon — “Do you have what it takes to join the Freemen, defy the rule of Ming the Merciless, and become the savior of the universe?” (Savage Worlds)
• The Gaean Reach — based on the “legendary cycle of science fiction classics” by Jack Vance. (Gumshoe)
• Girl Genius — Based on the comics and graphic novels by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Kaja and Phil are listed among the authors and have done the art for the book.
• John Carter of Mars — created “under license and with the cooperation of the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs”. (2d20)
• Star Trek
  • Star Trek Adventures — the latest in a long line of official Star Trek games. (2d20)
  • Prime Directive has a contract with Paramount, but can’t actually use the phrase “Star Trek”. (OGL, GURPS)
  • Star World — intends to emulate Star Trek and “includes PC playbooks, ship playbooks and a special set of ship moves for interstellar combat and maneuvers”. (PbtA)
  • Games listed above that directly emulate Star Trek include: Shock: Human Contact
• Star Wars
  • Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game (WEG)(1987) — the original D6-based game, which in 2019 got a reprint
  • Star Wars Roleplaying Game — Uses a unique dice system for determining outcome. The dice system was later adopted as the core for the universal Genesys RPG.
  • Star World: Streets of Los Eisley — A free, rule-lite, playset, based on World of Dungeons.
  • Games listed above that directly emulate Star Wars include: Never Tell Me the Odds, Rebel Scum, Scum and Villainy, Galactic.
• Stargate SG-1 Roleplaying Game — (published Summer 2021). (5e OGL)
• The Terminator RPG — Kickstarter funded in 2021, quick start has been released. (S5S)
• Vorkosigan Saga offers the science-fiction stories of Lois McMaster Bujold. (GURPS)

Adaptive approaches

Some generic systems offer sci-fi-specific variations or guidebooks:

• Cortex Prime contains some serviceable advice for running “starship crew” style games in that system. Cortex excels at ensemble mission-driven play and was used to drive the Firefly and Serenity games, when they were still available.
• D6 Space — uses the OpenD6 to approach many different types of science fiction. This is the same system that powered West End’s Star Wars game.
• GURPS
  • GURPS Cyberpunk — a line of books provide a toolkit for cyberpunk play in that generic system. It also has a somewhat infamous history.
  • GURPS Space — a whole line of books for bringing GURPS to space.
  • GURPS Tech — a whole line of books for bringing technology to GURPS.
• N.E.W. is the future-focused component of the What’s Old is New system (W.O.I.N), a generic system.
• The Stars Are Fire — Extends and optimizes the Cypher System for science fiction.
• Ultramodern5 — a toolbox which brings various genres of sci-fi to the 5e ruleset. (5e OGL)

System Agnostic Scifi Settings

• The Worlds of Android — a guide to the the rich, fictional universe made famous by Android: Netrunner and the Android board game
• Equinox Setting Guide — “a future fantasy setting of stunning action, frightening intrigue, and mystical powers, set in a war-ravaged dark future”
• The original five BattleTech house books detail a thousand years of one of the greatest settings in gaming, with no rules material at all.

Superhero

Genre-spanning

A number of games approach supers in a general way, aiming to support many different genres of stories with a generalized set of rules. Games like this include:

• BASH! — matches a lightweight system with a ton of supplements, with advice on targeting different eras of comics.
• Champions has gone through a confusing array of editions. At this point, two main lines carry the torch in different ways:
  • Champions Now — is a “recovery and re-imagining of first-generation Champions role-playing” using much more modern design.
  • Champions Complete — builds a more traditional supers toolkit on HERO System 6th Edition.
• The Contract RPG — A gritty origin story game with a system that allows Players to build custom powers for any concept.
• Era: The Empowered — sets the game around a timeline of “events”, each of which captures a particular flavor of comics. The system itself “offers the chance to play any superhero story you could possibly want”. (Era)
• The Four Color Hack — “rips the heart from The Black Hack, and transplants that still beating organ into a Frankenstein’s monster of a system”.
• Galaxies in Peril — is a Forged in the Dark supers game where heroes progress from street-level vigilantes to galaxy-saving heroes. (FitD)
• Heroes Unlimited — still on the market since its debut in 1984, “enables players to create virtually every type of hero imaginable” in exactly the way you’d expect from Palladium.
• Icons — is intended for “silver age” style supers play, and strikes a good balance between “freeform” and “ultra-crunchy”, with a somewhat-crunchy power system.
• Kapow! ¤ — is a free universal supers game which “blends free-form play… and dice-driven mechanics using degree of success”. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
• Metagene — is a lighter-weight system with “random and point-based character creation, rules for investigation and combat, and a built-in setting”. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
• Mutants & Masterminds — was written by the same guy who went on to write Icons, though it is more crunchy. It is a d20/OGL style game, but without classes, and has a pretty large collection of supplements. (OGL)
• Mythic D6 — Using a d6 dicepool & successes system, creates a heroic adventure game with (super)powers ranging from the classic to fantasy. Light to run for the GM.
• Sentinels of Echo City — asks “what if the makers of the FASERIP game engine decided instead to use the B/X rules as their inspiration?”. The author considers this game to have supplanted his earlier Resolute. (CC BY 4.0, OGL)
• Spectaculars — creates the setting as you play, building your own comic book universe.
• Villains & Vigilantes — after a lengthy legal battle, is now back in the hands of its creators and updated to version 3.0. Still apologetically ultra-crunchy.

Thematic

Many supers games target a specific type of supers story, with mechanics to match the theme:

• Amp — an “emergence” style supers game, with additional “years” that follow.
• Brave New World — set in an alternate America, under perpetual martial law, with a handful of rebellious supers fighting for freedom
• Capers — set in the 1920s, and uses a standard deck of cards and has a number of supplements that take the game into other eras (CC BY 4.0)
• Cold Steel Wardens — “inspired by the rise of dystopian, darker, contemporary comics from the 1980s onwards”, the “Iron Age” of comics
• Hit the Streets — aims for 6-10 session, street-level heroic campaigns
• Godlike — imagines a WWII where ordinary people who manifest amazing powers are sent to the front. (ORE)
• The Kerberos Club is a “sourcebook for superheroic roleplaying in Victorian London”. Pubished variations exist for Savage Worlds, Fate, and Wild Talents.
• Masks — a “young adults trying to figure out who they are and what kind of heroes they want to be” style supers game, and succeeds at producing this type of experience better than most. (PbtA)
• Mutant City Blues — covers the investigative genre in a superpowered world. (Gumshoe)
• Mutants in the Night — works the “mutants being hunted by the government” angle. (FitD)
• Necessary Evil — calls on villains to save the day against an alien menace that destroyed all the heroes. (Savage Worlds)
• Psi*Run — a “persecuted heroes on the run” style game.
• Rotted Capes — where b-list supers deal with a zombie apocalypse.
• Trinity Continuum: Aberrant — the slightly-future era of the White Wolf/Onyx Path’s Trinity Continuum line, takes on the “emergence” theme, where supers suddenly spring up in a world that has never seen them before.
• Venture City — a near-future urban setting for corporate “heroes” and unsponsored “villains”, and lots of shades of gray. (Fate)
• Vigilante City — a “gritty, street-level, superhero game set in the near future”, implemented multiple systems in the same kickstarter: Survive This!! Vigilante City, a mix of 5e/OSR concepts, ICRPG Vigilante City, a version for the Index Card RPG, and The Vigilante Hack, based on The Black Hack.
• Wild Talents — strives for a “realistic” feel, heroics with consequences. But, it can be altered to do more four-color style play as well. (ORE)
• Worlds in Peril — starts with urban-based supers, but can become more fantastic. (PbtA, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Minimalist

Some games capture supers play with very light rule-sets:

• 3d6 Supers! — uses both dice and playing cards “to run exciting action in any comic book universe”.
• Capes — a GM-less supers game with heart, using an interesting interlocking concept.
• Four Color System (4C) — an emulator of an older superhero game system, fitting in 34 pages. (free)
• Marvelous Superheroes — uses a mix of Fudge and 4C System to tackle supers play. (OGL)
• OneDice Supers — uses the lightweight, quick, and flexible OneDice system for any supers genre.
• Spider and Man — a Lasers & Feelings hack. (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
• Stuperpowers! — uses rock-paper-scissors to pit “heroes with silly, useless, and occasionally downright gross powers…against the only slightly less ridiculous forces of evil”.
• Supercrew! — uses a comic book format to present a game where players play themselves, but with super powers.
• Supers Unleashed — crams a lot into a small package.
• Tiny Supers — a minimalist, four-color-style supers take on the tinyD6 system. (TinyD6)
• Truth & Justice — uses the slim PDQ system containing several settings and a lot of good advice. (PDQ)

Franchise

Unsurprisingly, official tie-ins between published comic book/fiction lines and role-playing games are common:

• Bulletproof Blues — brings an open, rule-light engine to the universe of Kalos Comics. (CC BY-SA 4.0, OGL)
• DC Comics have occasionally licensed games, all of which are out of print:
  • DC Adventures (OGL)
  • DC Universe Roleplaying Game (D6)
  • DC Heroes
  • Smallville — aimed to recreate the feel of the TV show of the same name. (Cortex)
• Marvel Comics backed a number of RPG lines, none of which officially lasted very long:
  • Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game (2023) — the currently licensed game, using it’s own d616 System
  • Marvel Heroic Roleplaying — was the prior official marvel RPG. (Cortex)
  • Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game (2003) (a.k.a MURPG) was published by Marvel itself, and didn’t last long
  • Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game used cards as both randomizers and experience. (SAGA)
  • Marvel Superheroes (1984) used a percentile system with a colorful “universal results table”. It lives on in two different retroclones: FASERIP — and Four Color System.
• Valiant Universe — offers a modern, more casual play style, with a lot of the moral ambiguity found in the Valiant Comics line.
• Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game — boasts a modern design that allows play using either Sentinel Comics characters, or those of your own making.
• Wearing the Cape: The Role Playing Game — brings the Wearing the Cape fiction series to the role-playing table. (Fate)

Adaptive

Some generic systems offer supers-specific variations or guidebooks:

• The Cypher System has Claim the Sky — and The Origin — as implementing supers play using that system.
• GURPS has no shortage of supers based material, starting with GURPS Supers
• Mythras has a sourcebook with urban setting called Destined that provides general rules for creating superheroes with Mythras.
• Savage Worlds has a Super Powers Companion

Demigod

In some games, the characters are demigods, avatars of the gods or characters who get their powers from gods in some form, in many ways functioning as (or indistinguishable from) superhero games.

• City of Mist — characters embody both myth, story, or legend, and a noir-like archetype, such as a detective (PbtA)
• Demigods — about “what happens when mortal life is turned upside down by the discovery of your divine heritage”. (PbtA)
• Exalted — has much more of a high-fantasy feel than a supers game, but features characters elevated from the ranks of mortals.
• Godbound — features divine heroes in a broken world, men and women who have seized the tools that have slipped from an absent God’s hands, using B/X retroclone rules with the power levels dialed up.
• Godsend Agenda — explicitly treats superhumans as god-like, especially culturally. It has gone through a number of iterations/additions, including D6 Powers and MythicD6 (D6)
• Mythender — a game about “stabbing gods in the face”. (CC BY-NC 3.0)
• Nobilis: the Game of Sovereign Powers — was a diceless RPG that gave each character control over an elemental aspect of reality
• Part-Time Gods of Fate — supplanted the original Part Time Gods. Players take the role of ordinary people imbued with the powers of a god. Balancing one’s mortal and divine lives can be tricky. (Fate)
• Part-Time Gods Second Edition — (PTG2E) — published in 2018, unclear if rules are FATE-based
• Scion — characters are mortal descendants of gods tasked with working as the hands of their parents in the mortal world.
• Tiny Gods — about expanding TinyD6 to handle the divine. (TinyD6)

Other Categorizations

Some other ways to categorize games aren't really about genre, span genres, or otherwise don’t fit nicely into the genres above.

Kid Friendly

• Amazing Tales — making up adventures with your kids
• Adventure Maximus — a fast character generation system, with somewhat complex play
• Dinosaur Princesses — you and your friends are dinosaurs who are princesses solving problems together; rulebook is a coloring book
• Do, Pilgrims of the Flying Temple — a slapstick fantasy storytelling game about helping people and getting into trouble
• Fuzzy Heroes — game of conflict for stuffed animals and toys
• Hero Kids — fantasy gaming for kids
• Little Wizards — an introduction to roleplaying for 6–10 year olds that also succeeds as a decent game for adults
• No Thank You, Evil! — Ennie-award winning system with built-in safety tools and scalable complexity for different age players; also a decent use for Wardlings minis (Cypher)
• Project Ninja Panda Taco — about masterminds taking over the world and the minions who try to help
• The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men — holiday themed family game about magically animated gingerbread men adventures

For Grown Ups

• Bacchanal ¤ — “It is late summer in Puteoli, south of Rome, 61 A.D., when the city finds itself playing unexpected host to the god Bacchus”. Many dice in goblets.
• Bluebeard’s Bride — an investigatory horror tabletop roleplaying game for 3-5 people, based on the Bluebeard fairy tale
• Consentacle — two-player cooperative card game using non-verbal communication to help a tentacled alien and a curious human
• Honey & Hot Wax — an anthology of games by a diverse group of designers, intended to challenge how you think about roleplaying, sexuality, and human relationships.
• My Life with Master — a game of “villainy, self-loathing and unrequited love” where you play minions of an evil master (2004 Diana Jones Award)
• Romance trilogy — a compendium of ground-breaking romance themed role playing games
• A Scoundrel in the Deep — collaborative storytelling game for two adults, a matchbook, and an ashtray
• Star-Crossed — a two-player game about really, really wanting to, when you really, really can’t (2019 Diana Jones Award)
• Thirsty Sword Lesbians — flirting, sword-fighting, and zingers in a system designed for both narrative drama and player safety (PbtA)
• …and then we held hands — a non-verbal cooperative game for two players about finding balance.

Magical Girls

• For the Honor — an anthology game inspired by She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Firebrands)
• Girl by Moonlight — offers a more comprehensive take on magical girls (FitD)
• Glitter Hearts — an “action-packed RPG in a fun filled world of everyday people who transform into powerful super heroes that fight off the forces of evil” (PbtA)
• Heroines of the First Age — “the intersection between monstergirls, RPGs, and myth & legend”, with quite a few supplements that expand it in different directions (PbtA)
• Inevitable Lasers & Feelings hack:
  • Friendship & Fukus
  • Love & Justice
• Magical Burst — a work in progress, aims to focus more on the costs of being a magical girl
• Magical Fury — a darker take on the magical girl genre (PbtA)
• Ultimate Hyper Fantastic Magical Girls RPG — uses a lighter weight card system.
• The Excellents — an excellent game of Saturday morning cartoon princesses (polymorph)
• Games tagged with "magical girls" on itch

Monster Trainer

• Animon Story — kids team up and, with their monster buddies, go on adventures and grow as friends
• Blasting Off Again! — grunts scheme for their boss, resisting all these kids and their pet monsters
• Convocation Prime ¤ — normal people (usually children) train magical creatures to solve problems, with settings aimed at three different target audiences
• Cute and Fuzzy Cockfighting Seizure Monsters — discover what it would really be like to be a kid growing up in a world where every boy and girl had their own personal monster gladiator
• Mons — rules-light monster bonding and growth, inspired by the Pokémon Adventures book series (24XX)
• Monster Friends Underground Fight Club ¤ — befriend wonderful creatures and make them fight for your amusement
• Monster Wrangler — monster training and battles, with age variations for trainers and monsters
• A Monster’s Tail ¤ — broad monster-catching play (PbtA)
• Mushi Melee — “It's 1990, summer vacation just started, and your best friend is a Hercules beetle the size of a minivan”
• Many Pokémon-based games, some with exhaustive (and exhausting) emphasis on replicating exact powers and such from the franchise, including
  • Pokémon Tabletop Adventures ¤ — an early trad game, heavily based on d20 concepts.
  • Pokémon Tabletop United — created to “fix” PTA, with more unified and deeper, more complicated mechanics
  • Pokémon Odyssey ¤ — more modern evolution of PTU design with a more tactical, structured campaign loop
  • Pokémon Episodes ¤ — slightly lighter mechanics
  • Pokémon Zero ¤ — extremely light rules (24XX)
• The Pokéthulhu Adventure Game ¤ — “You're 10 years old…rmed with a shining dodecahedron and the elder incantations to make it work”
• Shatterkin — kids with evolving monster pets defend your small town from dangers (FitD)
• Wild Souls — players walk around the real world; real animals they see drive gameplay.

Pirates

• Freeport — a pirate city, with a long publishing history
• 50 Fathoms — pirates finding themselves in a strange, magical world — (Savage Worlds)
• Honor+Intrigue — “inspired as much by Hollywood as by history”, based on Barbarians of Lemuria
• Pirates of the Spanish Main — fast and furious swashbuckling, based on the boardgame of the same name (Savage Worlds)
• Poison'd — pirates were not good people, and this game knows it
• Rapscallion — swashbuckling adventure with characters whose flaws and vices drive the story (PbtA)
• Scum and Villainy — though not explicitly space pirates… you're pretty much space pirates (FitD)
• Sea of Dead Men — motley gang to pirate kings, with different modes of play for missions vs. downtime (FitD)
• Sea Kings ¤ — pirate crews in a world wide struggle for ascension (Paragon)
• 7th Sea — in its second, more narrative, edition (more interested in answering “what does it cost you?” than “do you succeed?”), set in a world tailored to cinematic pirates
• Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies — airship pirates clash in aerial kingdoms (PDQ#)

Tarot-driven Games

• Armored Bones — skeletons who quest beyond death, inspired by the video games of Hidetaka Miyazaki (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Anomaly — a sinister organization investigates a supernatural anomaly
• Divination — players control a single hero in a modern magical society
• Eidolon — characters fight for their ideals with unlocked power (DftU)
• Fortunes — stories of the spiritualist movement in 19th century London
• The Hidden Isle — collaborative swashbuckling adventures in the 16th century Mediterranean Sea
• House of Cards ¤ — through-the-looking glass style fantasy
• Imaginarium ¤ — cooperative storymaking using the major arcana
• Oathbreakers — arcanists in a world inspired by 90's Vertigo comics (Belonging Outside Belonging)
• Querent — a solo story game
• Tarot Tales — GM-less cooperative storytelling

Two Players

Games specifically for two players, or built to handle two players well. (The “For Grown Ups” section contains a number of other two-player games).

• Beast Hunters — kill dangerous beasts to take their power
• DeScriptors: I Mean Business — high stakes interpersonal relationships, with rules that fit on a business card
• Mars Colony and 39 Dark — one takes the role of the colony’s appointed savior, while the other plagues the citizens of Mars with problems
• Murderous Ghosts — a card-based party game for Halloween or for horror fans
• Scarlet Heroes — old-school fantasy for one player and one GM
• A Second Moment — an intense duel
• World vs. Hero — card-based storytelling for two

World Building

• Arcanadrome — use tarot cards to generate a backstory and develop a world
• Decuma — tarot-inspired “R&D for your RPG” to guide collaborative world-building
• Delve — solo map drawing game that puts you in control of a dwarven hold as you discover the horrors that lurk below
• Dialect — a game about language and how it dies
• How to Host a Dungeon — a solo game mapping an underworld developed by a history of civilizations
• ’inkadia ¤ — collaboratively build a world by mangling a Thomas Kinkade painting
• Kingdom — create any kind of group or organization you want to explore, confronting critical decisions that force the community to change
• Microscope — a fractal game to build a world with rich, problematic turning points
• The Quiet Year — define the struggles of a community living after the collapse of civilization