The Highlight Reel
TTRPGs I think more people should see! I have a similar collection on Itch but using my own site gives me extra freedom for games to include.
Blood on the Rocks
Blood on the Rocks focuses on very brave (or very foolish) efforts to understand the the things that can't be understood. Your characters track Titans, massive magical creatures, across the wilderness, as far as they can. You have magic of your own, to keep yourself safe, but this isn't a game about fighting monsters, or even about befriending them. This game is about bearing witness to the pieces of the universe too big for any of us.
Blood on the Rocks is available freely on Itch. I also recommend its one-shot predecessor, Sand in the Gutter
Keywords: Cosmic wonder, monster zoology, travel
BREAK!!
BREAK!! is a well-made fantasy adventure game. This is high praise. There is a long line of games where you travel around a magical world, getting into trouble, and fighting monsters along the way. Playing Break!! is just one entrance into that well-established tradition, but it's a very good one. The visual presentation is top-notch, the setting is unique enough to demand your attention (especially with lifepaths in character creation), and the strong procedural frameworks help the GM manage the world without needing to depend purely on their strength of narration and people managment skills. It's a system that innovates to make itself extra approachable, but stays close enough to tradition that a whole ecosystem of old-school gaming advice is available to help you run it the way you want.
Break!! can be purchased from its site store. Further material and advice can be found at the devblog.
Keywords: Exploration, fantasy, old-school gaming
Crucible of Aether
Crucible of Aether presents an industrial fantasy world on the brink of great change. This game broke down a lot of my resistance to number-heavy, simulation-focused games, and I think this approach works particularly well when the fully-realized original setting is so important to the Crucible of Aether experience. Your characters might be warriors, or farmers, or revolutionary theorists, and the game provides the machinery to make any of those options a meaningful angle from which to tackle your challenges. While still in playtest, I appreciate the design tech here a lot.
Crucible of Aether is currently in playtest, materials can be found for free at its Discord.
Keywords:Industrial fantasy, setting-focused, simulationist
Emergent
Emergent is a horror game that pits superpowered teens against monsters-of-the-week. As a book, it has a very strong sense of style; the visual direction and in-character narration help you settle into the right mindset before you even start playing. As a game, there's some very compelling ideas, like a roll-under step dice system, and a scheduling stage to define the player characters' routines before the monsters throw their lives into chaos. It's a very strong first release, I'm interested in seeing what else the team comes up with.
Emergent can be purchased on Itch.
Keywords: Horror, superpowers, teen drama
The Far Roofs
The Far Roofs is a game about entering a new world and being changed by your experience. This is a game about the monstrous and divine. This is also a game about talking rats. The Far Roofs uses resolution mechanics based on dice, cards, and Scrabble tiles, combined with the narrative scaffolding pioneered by Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. It's a core system, a set of sample characters, and campaign guide, all at once. Like the characters you play as, you're getting the chance to discover something truly wonderful.
The Far Roofs can be purchased on Itch. I made a VTT setup on Screentop to make playing online easier, and Karma Chameleon made this rat dollmaker for rats in your mischief!
Keywords: Jenna Moran, portal fantasy, talking rats
Floria: The Verdant Way
Floria: The Verdant Way lets you play as forest mages who draw power from ley lines, represented on your character sheet as literal lines on a grid. These lines form shapes that you can spend to cast spells, but they're also your main vulnerability. Like many other Japanese tabletop role-playing games, Floria has very defined phases of play and methods of interaction, and is less reliant on freeform narration. It's also built more for episodic sessions than long ongoing campaigns, although you can certainly run an extended campaign of it fi you're up to the task.
Floria: The Verdant Way was translated by Silver Vine Publishing and can be purchased at DriveThruRPG.
Keywords: episodic, plants, spellcasting
Flying Circus
Flying Circus is a game of daring feats, dramatic defeats, and airplanes, so many airplanes, airplanes everywhere. Mechanically inspired by Apocalypse World, historically inspired by World War I, aesthetically inspired by Miyazaki, Flying Circus is the kind of system that creates an experience you can't find anywhere else.
Flying Circus can be purchased on Itch.
Keywords: Airplanes, combat, relationships
Panic at the Dojo
Panic at the Dojo is one of the most innovative grid combat systems in recent years. Your dice are already rolled, the decision to make is how to spend them. This produces a totally different dynamic than traditional "roll to attack, roll for damage" combat systems, while preserving the importance of tactical flexibility to react to chance and the decisions of your opponent.
Panic at the Dojo can be purchased on Itch.
Keywords: Action, combat, martial arts
The Treacherous Turn
The Treacherous Turn is a game about becoming an AI supervillain. All players share control of an emerging superintelligence, playing as different aspects of its mind and technology. It's an apocalyptic take on artificial intelligence that I can't agree with in a real-world context, but as a sci-fi supervillain? It's incredible work. There's some of the coolest information roll mechanics I've seen, and almost an idle clicker game sensibiliity to how your AI amasses processing power and technologies.
The Treacherous Turn is available freely through its website.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, science fiction, shared character
Triangle Agency
Triangle Agency pits corporate agents against reality-bending anomalies; I've most often heard it compared to Control and the SCP Foundation. A standout feature is the "playwall," a legacy game-inspired design where the rules of the game change as you play them. This is a game that does its best work over the course of an extended campaign.
Triangle Agency is available for purchase on Itch, including free demo material.
Keywords: Corporate horror, legacy game, urban fantasy
Wilderfeast
Wilderfeast is deeply concerned with life as a vast, interconnected web. When you build a character, you learn what foods were important to them at different times in their life. When you go on a journey, you learn how to travel and forage in that land specifically, not just build up a general skillset. And when you kill a monster and make a meal of it, you add its strength to your own. Over and over again, Wilderfeast returns to what it calls the One Law: "You are what you eat."
Wilderfeast is available for purchase on . A quickstart is also available as a preview.
Keywords: Cooking, monster zoology, set-map combat
Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast
Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast is a collection of dozens of micro-modules, episodic adventures of Gertrude, Hey Kid, Yazeba, and the many, many other residents and guests of the titular Bed and Breakfast. Each "chapter" defines its own mechanics, but the real magic happens when you let yourself settle in over the course of a campaign. You may not have created these characters, but they become yours as you cross out parts of their sheet, write new sections in, slap stickers on their rooms, and so on. The Bed and Breakfast will be a different place once you've come to stay there yourself.
Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast is available for purchase on Itch, some free demo material can also be found there.
Keywords: Capsule game, found family, legacy game