Free RPGs

Welcome to the RPG section of 1KM1KT. Here you’ll find member submissions of tabletop pen and paper role-playing games. All of the RPGs available in this section are free for download and are generally in .pdf format. If you’re interested in submitting your own RPG for publication, please visit our submissions page for details or send it to us using our contact form.

“Two people, trapped in a tiny sub, alone in the dark waters at the bottom of the sea. Will they be rescued before they succumb to the elements…or each other.”

The entirety of this game is presented as a single image, sized to print on an 11 by 17 piece of paper. There is a reason for that…

This was a combination of two different “thought threads” on the story-games.com forums. The first goal was creating a game where the story takes place in a single confined space, and the second was to try and create an entire game not as a rulebook, but as a poster.

Because of the poster restriction, it assumes a lot from the players, in that they are generally familiar with narrative-styled games and board game conventions. For example, it doesn’t explicitly state that you should shuffle a deck of cards at the start of the game.

Additionally, the rules are not “ordered” as one would find in a rulebook. Instead, they are linked to various graphic game elements, so you’ll definitely need to read the entire thing and puzzle the rules together.

Anyway, I am hesitant to add any rules outside of the poster; the whole point was that you needed nothing else but the graphic. And I am more than fine with players ‘making up what they need’ outside of what is presented.

Quick Play came about from a simple idea, and was written over the course of about two hours on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It is a very simple universal system designed for the kind of day it was created on. Meant for short games with quick startup, it is a diceless game that contains within it full character creation, conflict resolution, supernatural/superhuman abilities, and even a few optional rules – all contained in three pages.

Snuff – The dark disturbing role playing game of horror and survival in the sick internet phenomena that is Murdertainment where the players are the unwilling cast in a snuff production and must try to rewrite their ending.

The free pdf contains all that you will need to play and uses the simple yet versatile tenGINE rules system.

Snuff can be played as a one of survival horror game or as a series of games to establish The Mongoose Squad – a group of embittered survivors that have vowed to hunt and kill those working in the snuff industry.

Play the ten snuff sites included and create your own.

In the world of Disparity 2% of the people hold 99% of the wealth most people scrape by with what they can grow, or make.

Others however, have learned to make a living by selling their unique skills to the rich, in order to fuel their petty spats and lust for power. These men and women are known as the Nujahara, though others may call you thief, conman, rogue or even pirate.

By searching out both useful bits of information and arcane items of power from other noble houses, ancient tombs, mazes, and vaults you will earn your wages and live a life much nicer life than your dirt farming contemporaries. Rumors say that those items have the ability to bend reality to the users will.

While there is no formal organization for the Nujahara you probably will not find it hard to find others of your kind, if you pay attention the world around you.

Game Chef Competition 2011

This is a game of drama, of desires, motivations, and downfalls. You play characters caught up in a devastating circle of events that can lead only to a tragic fall. Set them on their course, turning a volatile situation into a disastrous final act, until the stage is filled with the bodies of the fallen, and the grief-stricken words of a single survivor.

An RPG in five acts.

A game of Shakespeare and time travel, characters cast out of the Bard’s plays must choose between their mission and their personal desires.

Made for Game Chef 2011, the Lost Years is a role-playing game for 2-5 players and one game-master telling the story of characters from alternate versions of Shakespeare’s plays, cast out of them into reality and assigned to protect William Shakespeare during his “Lost years” from the machinations of time travelers. It ultimately focuses on the out-of-place characters and their choice between the mission essential to their existence and the ambitions and desires which linger from their play.

Lords of Titania is my entry for game Chef 2011, a GM-less game for 3-5 players.

The game is set on Titania, a huge colony ship drifting through deep space towards… somewhere. A central biosphere generates food, oxygen and recycles water for hundreds of habitation pods floating at the end of trailing umbilical connections. Each habitation pod is ruled by a family, lords of their domain. Lords of Titania is the story of the downfall of one such family.

You will play the flawed rulers of a habitation pod; a family enclosed by Nature and divided by their own natures. Each of you will control a particular component of the pod and you will use that control to gain power over your family members. This will not go smoothly. There will be oath-breaking, betrayal and murder, and an exile will return to seek vengeance. But if you survive… How sweet will your victory be then.

Getting our Game Chef 2011 submission, Forsooth!, in under the wire.

Forsooth! is a game inspired by Shakespeare, wherein players control multiple characters with disparate motivations to, together, improvise a tale of Shakespearean scope. Unlike traditional RPGs, Forsooth! uses no game master or storyteller. One man in his time plays many parts, so we are all storytellers, all actors, all directors, all playwrights. As an ensemble, the players will tell the tale of a group of Exiles. Whether that story is comedy or tragedy, history or farce, is up to the players to decide as the game runs its course. Along the way, the players characters may scheme, fight, deliver moving soliloquies, question their mortal nature and even forswear their solemn oaths, all in the name of applause. The action begins when the first character enters, and ends when all the Exiles are either married or dead.

This is a four-player game that simulates the struggle for power among four characters in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. In their own ways, Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, and Caliban seek release from their island bondage. The shipwreck of the King of Naples sets in motion a competition among these characters to fulfill their hearts’ desires before the drama draws to a close. All you need to play is a standard deck of 52 playing cards, a fair recollection of lines from Shakespeare’s play, and a few willing friends.

Here’s my submission for Gamechef 2011. It’s also the first game I ever wrote.

This is a game where you will play a group of mortal lovers whose relationships are tangled in a web of unrequited love, who stumble into the realm of fairies. You will also play the fairies that are toying with the mortals to confront them with the flaws in their characters and help them find true love. It is a game about people experimenting with identity (and having their identities experimented with) to find out who they are and what they really want.

You need:
Players: 3-8
Time: 2-4 hours (More players mean a longer game)
Materials: Note-cards, writing utensils, counters (glass beads, poker chips, coins, dice, or something like that)