What better way to celebrate Free RPG Day than with some free RPGs you can come play at your favourite friendly local game store. If you’re looking for ideas of new games to bring to your table or something to play with your group as you check out our event space, then look no further. These games can be picked up for free online to supplement the delightful goodies we’ll be giving away to folks who stop by tomorrow in store. Without further ado, here’s four games you absolutely need to check out (for free!).
1. Durf
Durf is a charming, rules-lite dungeon-fantasy game, taking inspiration from inventive games like Knave, Into The Odd, and Troika, and isn’t much longer than a single pamphlet, at only 12 pages. The core mechanic of rolling a d20 to hit a target number will be familiar with most RPG players, but where Durf really lets its inspirations shine is in how intuitively it tracks inventory and just how risky combat is. What I find especially interesting is the game’s stress mechanic. When your character pushes themself for an advantage or casts a spell, you take stress, which fills up an inventory slot. Therefore, If your character is heavily armoured, and lugging around a great deal of equipment, they’ll be much more limited to use magic or exert themself, meaning you need to think carefully about how you equip your character. While the game is entirely complete and ready for your next campaign as is, it’s also released under the creative commons license, so there’s a whole host of community made content for it, including other rules and adventures to get you started. Now, I honestly don’t want to say too much about this one, because well, it’s twelve pages. Any time spent here could instead be spent just reading the game and therefore getting closer to playing Durf! Go read it already!
2. Crash Pandas (and GS Howitt’s Other One Page Games)
Crash Pandas is a one page RPG that lets you step into the paws of a small band of raccoons attempting to drive a car and make a name for yourselves in the world of L.A. Street racing. This game was of course made by G.S. Howitt, who you may know of as one of the lead designers of Rowan, Rook, & Decard. or more likely, as the guy who made Honey Heist, that game where you play as a band of criminal bears stealing honey. Now why not just pick Honey Heist to show off? Most people who’ve spread out into rules-lite indie RPGs have at least heard of everyone’s favourite bear/villain mastermind heist game. Everybody loves Honey Heist. And that’s precisely why we’re talking about street-racing raccoons instead. Any time you and your fluffy friends approach a challenge in your dragster, you each secretly choose an action to try and all take at the same time. This could mean that you send the car crashing directly into a wall or masterfully ducking between obstacles (but probably crashing). Even better, you get to play that all out with little toy cars on whatever map you draw to represent the situation. Now, you could just use generic tokens or whatever, but given the playfulness of roleplaying a raccoon in a fake beard and glasses wielding a lead pipe failing desperately to drive a car that’s rattling itself apart, do you really want to pick the boring option? Even if Crash Pandas doesn’t appeal to you in particular (no idea why it wouldn’t, but hey, it’s your table), I’d take a look at GS Howitt’s other games, like the Witch is Dead, where you play as a group of a witch’s familiars seeking revenge on her murderer, or Hostile Work Environment, his latest one page game that has you surviving the new merger at your office firm while your superiors sadistically hunt you for sport. It’s really quite a treasure trove (of free RPGs).
3. Exclusion Zone Botanist
Do you like drawing plants? Do you like drawing freaky sci-fi plants using real plant classification terminology? Do you like doing all that while trying desperately to not get corrupted and transform into freaky sci-fi plant life yourself? Do you want to engage with your favourite hobby without the hassle of scheduling four of your busiest friends? Yes? Then you need to play this solo drawing RPG. See, your electronics don’t work in the Exclusion Zone, so the only way to document the plants of this strange, mutating landscape you’ve been dropped into is to draw it with a physical pencil and paper. Each round marks an hour, in which you’ll explore a new hex of the map, hopefully see some strange new to document, and then check to see if the forest mutates you along with it. For every hour that passes, that risk gets ever higher, so you need to carefully budget your time and the risk you take on. While you do that though, you’ll be finding flora of all shapes and sizes, with features ranging from strange glows and razor-sharp leaves to barely heard, unintelligible whispers. It even comes with the EZB Plant Discovery Guide, expanding the plants you can discover from the original brochure-sized game out to include things like caustic berries dissolving other life around it, teeth-covered vines ensnaring prey, or even time manipulation in the area around the plant. I strongly recommend you play with the EZB Plant Discovery Guide, and I recommend you play it right now! Because it’s free!
4. The Hollows
The Hollows is the newest game from Rowan, Rook, & Decard, which is all about intense fights against nightmarish bosses in a rotting, gothic world. In it, you take on the role of a hunter, a sort of cursed entity implanted with a seed of a Hollow, the same corruption turning other depraved souls into a terrifying creature with its very own pocket dimension, blighting the land. It’s only your role as a hunter, assisted by your two archetypal weapons making up the two halves of your class and promising you false, toxic fantasies of power, that keeps you from turning into one of the very abominations you destroy. If you think that sounds like Bloodborne or any other Soulsborne game, you’re right! The Hollows takes direct inspiration from games in that vein, focused on presenting crunchy, engaging combat against a massive, intimidating beast. These terrors you fight literally take centre-stage, as combat is played on a circular grid with your enemy always at the centre. If they shift to face you, you can suddenly find yourself in the line of fire, so you’ll always need to be careful of your positioning in relation to the monster while you space yourself out to maximize your offensive as well as your ability to support your teammates. If you want a dark, mechanically satisfying boss rush of an RPG, well then stop by tomorrow to pick up a free copy of the quickstart from our store! Even if we happen to run out of copies before you come in, you can pick up a pdf of the quickstart adventure The Sins Of Grisham Priory for free on the game’s backerkit page through the publisher’s website. Happy hunting!
Whether you’re playing these or another favourite RPG of yours, we’d love to see you come play at our store, and while you’re here, don’t forget to pick up some goodies from Free RPG Day! There’s a wide variety of stuff we’re giving away tomorrow (June 22nd), but supplies are limited, so make sure you come in early. See you soon, and happy Free RPG Day!
– Amelia
Sentrybox's Blog 