Blades in the Dark
- Steampunk fantasy
- Narrative driven
The world underwent a cataclysmic event a thousand years ago, where the sun was shattered and the Gates of Death were broken. The world is in perpetual darkness. Each time a death occurs, the bells toll and another vengeful spirit is formed. Crackling lightning towers keep out the majority of these spirits from Doskvol, the city the player characters call home. Doskvol is an industrial-fantasy city where the daring scoundrels that are the player characters are building a criminal enterprise. Expect heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and, above all, riches to be had — if you’re bold enough to seize them.
Blades in the Dark is the source of the Forged in the Dark generic RPG system. It is a narrative system that encourages daring and flashy activities. The ruleset and sessions are based around “scores” and then there are rules for the metagame as the players build up their criminal enterprise.
Official Website: Blades in the Dark
Dungeons & Dragons
- Fantasy
- Adventure driven
Your typical high fantasy setting where the player characters are epic adventurers (or on their way to becoming them). Think “Lord of the Rings”.
Official Website: Dungeons & Dragons
Fate (Core/Accelerated)
- Any setting
- Player driven
Fate is a generic role-playing game system that can be adapted for anything. It inherently has no setting, and there are even rules to completely co-operatively build the world. This flexibility means that many settings have been created that utilise the Fate rules and can be picked up for play. The main goal as players in Fate based systems is to make the other players be awesome.
Official Website: Fate
SRD: Fate SRD
Scum & Villainy
- Space
- Narrative driven
It is year 1261 since the founding of the Galactic Hegemonic Alliance. The player characters are a crew of a spaceship, trying to keep flying, and make ends meet in the Procyon sector, far from the centre of the galaxy. The Procyon sector is too far from the Core for the full power of the Hegemon to care. The motley crew of daring, conflicted player characters attempt to develop their presence and enterprise in this lawless part of the galaxy.
This RPG is based on the Forged in the Dark system (as with Blades in the Dark above) and the stories can be played from a space opera (e.g. Star Wars), to a space western (e.g. Firefly/Cowboy Bebop).
Offical Website: Scum & Villainy
On Evil Hat Website: Evil Hat
Shadowrun
- Cyberpunk fantasy
- Adventure driven
The Sixth World is here. After the magicless period of the Fifth World, magic flooded back into the world, and elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, and all manner of other metatypes reappeared in the world. In this alternate, near-future world, megacorporations have gained huge amounts of power and effectively run large parts of the world. Technology has advanced at a higher rate and life is a hard working utopia for most people. However, where there’s light, there are the shadows. The player characters are Shadowrunners. Existing in grey areas of the law, they are deniable assets for the corporations as they fight against each other for dominance, or they are actively fighting to take back some of that power from the corporations.
This is a dystopian, alternate, near-future setting that includes aspects of both cyberpunk, as well as typical fantasy (albeit in a near-future setting). Magic is inexplicably linked to life, or individuals can be cybernetically or biologically enhanced with cyberware, bioware, or geneware.
At the moment, Ross D. already runs a Shadowrun 5th ed. campaign outside of the club.
Websites:
Shadowrun Tabletop
Shadowrun Sixth World