Free RPG Day 2022: 5 great games, including the latest Critical Role

Free RPG Day is Saturday, June 25th. This is your reference to visit a Sharing a friendly local toy store To grab some free stuff. But if all you do is take a flight to see the good things you can achieve, then you miss the point. Free RPG Day is about creating a community, not gobbling up merchandise. Instead, why not pick up a brochure, land on a table, and start playing one of those games right away?

Polygon had the opportunity to preview all the materials awarded during this year’s Free RPG Day. Here’s our pick of the top five board game role-playing games that you should be able to pull off with few inexperienced players and very little setup time.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Danger in the Air

Photo: Goodman Games

dungeon crawl classic role-playing It is a set of throwback rules Goodman Games Which evokes the same sense of danger and exploration found in the original 1974 version of Dungeons & Dragons. The system has been “updated” so that it will be very familiar to fans of later versions of the game – including the latest 5th edition.

danger in the air It is a path for level 0 characters that requires little more than a working understanding of the d20 system. (If this worries you, there are also 44 pages Quick Start Guide Available online.) By the end of an hour or two, expect to have a handful of Tier 1 adventurers ready for their first real quest—and dozens of dead bodies for those who failed the mission. What is this task? Well, it’s exploring an off-planet drift craft of mysterious origins that has been hovering over the city for the past few days. It’s a great way to kickstart a bigger Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign – or to piss people off with Dungeons & Dragons’ pending reboot. Spielgamer Adjust.

Level 1: Anthology Indie RPG, Volume 3

Image: 9th level games

Level 1: Anthology Indie RPG It’s back with its third edition this year, and it’s basically a bag full of thoughtful, lightweight RPGs. This year’s gem called Ancient Media Goddess by Graham Gentzencouraging you to contain many of the world’s most beloved characters and transform them into Eldrich forces bent on world domination.

Imagine that all the passion, love and attention that fans pour into their favorite fictional characters also gives them strength. Now imagine that these characters exist as immortal deities, their power oscillating in relation to their peers – and even humanity itself – with each theatrical or video game release. All you have to do is start your ‘Brand Awareness’ campaign. The matches are endless, especially when you consider how deep the reserve of power must be for ancient demonic entities enough to enter the public realm.

Familiar problem

Photo: Darrington Press

Familiar problem It is a fun game with excellent bona fides; Created jointly with critical role“s Marisha Ray And the honey theft Creator Grant Howitt. Familiar problem It puts players into the role of the “tense and exhausted” family – the magical and mindful animal companions of the spellcasters – trying to keep up with a group of adventurers. The project has been announced in advance this monthAnd now that I’ve had a chance to look at it, I’m really impressed. It has all the charm you’ve come to expect from an actual gameplay star cast, and all the randomness and open-ended design that Howitt’s work is known for. It’s the perfect ice breaker for an event like Free RPG Day, or perhaps for your next casual game at home.

Rolled and told size 1

Photo: The Lion Forge

The most important free RPG day offer this year is Rolled and told size 1, a full-size hardcover book first published in 2019. It is a collection of seven adventures from the Rolled & Told series, a hybrid publication that combines the series of comic book adventures with a sequel of fifth edition compatible adventures. Originally priced at $39.99, publisher The Lion Forge may have put too many of them in the warehouse and wanted to get rid of them. But that doesn’t make the excellent and long adventures inside any less valuable.

Homeworld Revelations

Photo: MODIFIUS Entertainment

Finally, among the officially licensed goodies on offer during Free RPG Day, the most interesting one so far is the thin-shell quick start guide for Homeworld Revelations, a high-concept tabletop RPG game based on the beloved Real-time Strategy series. While it doesn’t include all the delicious fluff that the original game’s writer, Martin Cirulis, penned, you do get a healthy peek into how the game’s mechanics work in motion before the public release.

Other licensed games include units of Paizo Pathfinder and Starfinder settings; Steamforged Games’ Epic Encounters series of 5th Edition compatible adventures; New fast start for Root: RPG; Easy Red Cyberpunk Modewhich is a great pint-sized version of TTRPG full fat This serves as an introduction to Cyberpunk 2077 movie; And one new shot to prepare the Iron Kingdoms of the Privateer Press Strange light refracted.