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.

The Secret Lives of Serial Killers was written for the February 2011 Ronnies, based on the ingredients of
“Murder” and “Morning.” It is a horrible, brutal game, that no one should ever play, based on the concepts
of “abusive game design.”

In The Secret Lives of Serial Killers, two players deceive a third player into thinking they are playing a
game called “Sunshine Boulevard,” a feel-good structured freeform game about quirky recluses in love. In
fact, they are setting up the third player as the serial killer’s victim, to be killed in play.

“It’s a strange world out there. The old timers tell stories from the previous century, of great submersible ships exploring lost sunken cities and huge aerial vessels journeying across the face of the world. Those were just stories to most people, though, until the Great War. Only just over twenty years ago, it was when everything changed. Sure, the Wrights had led us into the sky, and Ford’s cars were already crowding the cities, but the real breakthroughs came when the aliens, in their monstrous towering contraptions landed on that day in the summer of 1917. The war ended right there, as both sides immediately had bigger problems to deal with. Shoulder to shoulder, the countries around the world fought the alien invaders. “Things looked bad at first, as the invaders’ death rays slew men and armoured tank alike, but humanity held and held, until the Germans broke the stalemate. Yellow clouds appeared on the horizon as they released deadly mustard gas into the war zone. It was an indiscriminate killer, and many a soldier still has nightmares of that day, but it broke the alien lines. Within hours their machines had stopped moving. We had won. The war never started back up, what with the nations of the world temporarily being more interested in what they could learn from the technology scattered around the field of corpses. Tesla made the first breakthrough. He had been claiming he could build a ray capable of making an end of war. With what the aliens left, he was soon able to show he was partly right. He could make a death ray. It wasn’t an end to war,
however, and the Spanish can attest. “Since that time technology has been racing forward, death rays, flying packs, computation devices, robots, where will it end?” 

“I barely recognize the world any more.” 

– Allen Stacy, The Bugle

Entry for the Ronnies 2011

A game about Crows;

Humans are stupid.

Maybe there are a few of them who are clever in their own
ways, but on the whole they don’t know much about the
world of the spirits, they don’t know what happens to them
after they die, they don’t even understand the damage they
are doing to the world they live in.

Most of the other intelligent Animals wrote them off as a lost
cause centuries ago, in a few more centuries they’ll wipe
themselves out. Only a few of us still care about them; but
the Dogs have become too close, forgetting their sacred pro-
tective duties, the Cats have always had agendas of their own,
the Rats have lost their way and many of the wild Beasts are
scared to walk into the great canyons of steel and glass.

As one of the few old races at home in the cities and the wild,
we are still able to do what is necessary. We might not be able
to restore the balance, but we can stop it getting too far out of
control. By imparting wisdom to the living, and bringing
back the dead, we can help the humans get things right. This
is still their world, even if they are killing it, but through
bringing back the dead ones willing to make a change, im-
parting wisdom to the ones willing to listen, and leaving the
right hints for the inquisitive, we can channel the humans
into making the changes that might just save us all.

An Entry for the February Ronnies, based on the words Whispers and Wings.

The Volume of Secrets is a cooperative or competitive RPG where you take the role of an Angel that is trying to hide or expose a secret to the world by manipulating people and the environment. Join the Owls, and quiet the volume of the Whisper, or join the Ravens, and bring the whisper to a conversational tone. Be careful though, If a secret goes to quiet or goes to loud, you have the potential to become a demon, and lose the ability to adjust the volume forever.

Play the flashy flyboys of the 3rd expeditionary aerial force – the MurderWing.

Take to the air and unleash bloody murder on the enemies of Terra!

Soar over the ground pounding grunts and bring death from above.

MurderWing is a 24hr expansion for the award winning 3:16.

The Stormlands are a world of flying islands, mountains of earth and stone, big and small, floating naturally in an endless sky without an horizon.

A people, whose civilization has stopped at feudalism, lives here and strives to survive, almost only from hunting, farming, and what little commerce is possible. A people that respects, worships and draws power from his Ancestors and from the Spirits of the sorrounding world.

A strange people. You are one of them.

A people of humanoid reptiles, each one different from the others: they are the Saurids, the Sons of the lizards. No Saurid is like another: tall or small, snake-like or brawny, with two or four arms, with small or protuberant eyes, with vivid or shy colors… The most variable combinations are possibles.

And some have wings. Not everyone, but some have them. They are very little, and many of them abuse of their freedom.

Who has wings, is one step above the others. He can travel, he can communicate, he can visit the islands searching for others like him, and gather them to subjugate the weaks.

In the Stormlands, who has wings often goes searching power and wealth. They are warlords, power-hungry aristocrats, tainted sciamans, greedy assassins and who knows what else.

Then one day, the massacre came to your home. The blood knocks at your door. It’s the blood of your relatives, shed from who have wings and use them to make other suffer.

But the blood knocked to the wrong door.

Because you have wings too.

So you can try the impossible: unlike all the others, you can track from island to island who killed your loved ones, you can search for him far away and in the end kill him without mercy. You can fly searching for your revenge, driven by your fury, because you have nothing to lose.

And here starts your story.

Here is my forge/Ronnie competition entry, based on the key words whisper murder.

description:

This is a game based on the court of Louis XVI, the last King of France, who was executed after the French revolution.  His reputation is of a well meaning, but indecisive ruler who relied heavily on the effectiveness of his appointed advisors and was forever subject to the desires of the nobles who comprised his court.  Any historical accuracy presented in this game is purely coincidental.

Each player takes the role of one of the nobles in Louis’s court, but their identity is kept secret from other players.  The aim of the game is get a puppet King installed on the French throne who is beholden to the player’s character for his position.  Untold wealth and favors then ensure.  The trouble is, all of the other players  are also angling for the same outcome with their own man.  And of course there is the pesky business of running the country itself, lest the peasants revolt and chop off everybody’s head.

These unscrupulous, wannabe  “powers behind the throne” will stop at nothing to achieve their aims.  Sex, scandal, blackmail, bribery, strong-arming, dueling and even murder are de rigueur.

An entry for the February 2011 Ronnies.

You’re a hard-boiled man (or woman) in a gritty, corrupt world.  Lust, greed, vengeance, jealousy — one of these is the bitter taste in the back of your throat.  Some might call it a sin.  You call it a mission.  And you’re not going to let anything stand in your way (except maybe your own flaws).

Meanwhile, the city is seething around you.  The night is steamy, and ready to boil over at the slightest provocation.  And in the shadows, steely eyes glint from above a demonic black beak, silently driving people into ever greater acts of desperation …

Waiting to unleash chaos and hell … with one mighty CAW.

Deathbird Black: Comedy noir.  Tongue-in-cheek, dice-flinging fun.

Anathema is an entry for the February 2011 Ronnies, using the words “wings” and “murder”.

In this roleplaying game for two to six players, you play a Shroud. Once human, you are now an angel of death tasked with the culling of millions of human lives. To do so, you will use the powers of war, pestilence, famine, misfortune, atrophy, and despair at your fingertips to kill men, women, and children indiscriminately. This horrible act is nothing less than necessary, to decrease the surplus population of Earth in order to save the entire human race from extinction.

How can you kill millions of people to serve The Balance while clinging to the tatters of your humanity?

Moral Dawn is my submission for the February Ronnies 2011. It is a roleplaying game about the definitions of Good and Evil, featuring ‘Angels’, normal people gifted with supernatural powers linked to their idea of Good.