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.

Owlbears and Owlcubs battle it out for control of the Dream Hive! A crunchy boardgame RPG suitable only for the most fit Owlbears.

Background

Flush from their victory against the scurvy Owlursines, the United Federation of Owlbears basked in their acquisition of planet Lizbob. Populated only by the diminutive Owlcubs, it contained a Dream Hive, source of the precious Dream Honey necessary for space travel. Since the UFO was built on fast travel and communications between its planets, it was in their best interest to secure the Dream Hive and put the Owlcubs to work harvesting the Dream Honey. (Also, that way the Owlcubs would deal with the Nightmare Bees guarding the Dream Hive, rather than the Owlbears.)

Unfortunately, the Owlcubs had other ideas. They had just thrown off the yoke of the Owlursines and wished to revel in their new freedom and eat lots of Dream Honey. (The Owlcubs do not know how to use Dream Honey for space travel. They just find it very tasty.)

Some of the Owlbears sympathized with the Owlcubs. Enslaving the Owlcubs, they claimed, would violate the spirit of the UFO. These Owlbears soon joined up with some of the Owlcubs to form the Anti-Imperialist League.

On the other hand, some of the Owlcubs were eager for the Owlbears to step in and introduce the many technological benefits available to members of the UFO. These Owlcubs joined the Owlbears in the Imperialist Society.

Now the battle for Lizbob begins!

“Lord Knows I Don’t Begrudge Her It” is a 24-hour RPG inspired by William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying. The game is set in the southern U.S. in the early 2th century. The players take the role of a household in which one of the family members has recently died. Before their death, the deceased family member made the rest of the family promise to bury him or her in a nearby town. It is therefore the duty of the surviving family members to transport the corpse of their dearly departed kin to a proper burial site. However, each member of the family has ulterior reasons for wanting to go to town, and is largley using their newly dead relative as an excuse to get what they want. Unfortunately for them, it won’t be easy.

The Family

The first thing that the players must determine is the nature of the family itself. It is assumed for the purpose of the game that the family is composed of poor country folk. The size of the family will be equal to the number of players plus one (the dead one). The family may be comprised of ?immediate? family members (fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters) or it may include other relatives such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, and so forth. The family is assumed to all live together. The deceased may be any member of the family, from grandmother to daughter. As they will in some ways define much about the rest of the family, they are the first family member to be generated.

The Deceased

The players must discuss several aspects of the recently departed. What was their identity? How did they die? Why did they want to be buried away from their home? What was most important to them in life? Of what were they most afraid? Fleshing out the dead member of the family will help to give the players an idea of their own place in the family.

The Player Characters

After the departed member of the family has been fleshed out, the rest of the family must be constructed. This is in part an individual exercise, as each player creates their own character, but it should also be (at least partly) a group activity, as the characters are created to not only exist on their own, but also as members of the family unit. The characters need names.

Motive

Each player must choose one Motive for their character. In the game, the most important thing to your character is his or her Motive. This is what drives your character forward; what keeps them on the path toward their destination, and, most importantly, that which they value the most in the world. The Motive can be almost anything, but with the following requirements: there must be some reason that the Motive can only be fulfilled by a trip to town, where the dying member of the family has requested burial. Perhaps, for example, the motive is an object your character wishes to buy; perhaps there is someone in town that they wish to meet with. Or perhaps your character genuinely wishes to give your dead relative the proper burial that they deserve. Regardless, when obstacles threaten to turn you from the path to town, the only things that you can call on to make it through the hardship are your family and your devotion to your motive.

An inhuman power hums in the shuttles and valves of a 19th century English factory town. An alien power that lies congealed in the cloth and steel manufactured there. A hostile power that twists bone, robs children of their youth, and turns neighbors against neighbors. It is more terrifying than any unholy spirit, slithering lifeform or doomsday device because this horror is real, grounded in social relations. It is alienation and it is generated anew each shift as men, women, and children toil at the machines. Satanic Mills is a role playing game about the production of alienation and the destruction of human lives. It is based on Karl Marx’s theory of alienation as expressed in his Economic and Philosophical manuscripts of 1844

Something Strange and Hostile

An inhuman power hums in the shuttles and valves of a 19th century English factory town. An alien power that lies congealed in the cloth and steel manufactured there. A hostile power that twists bone, robs children of their youth, and turns neighbors against neighbors. It is more terrifying than any unholy spirit, slithering lifeform or doomsday device because this horror is real, grounded in social relations. It is alienation and it is generated anew each shift as men, women, and children toil at the machines.

Satanic Mills is a game about the production of alienation and the destruction of human lives. It is based on Karl Marx’s theory of alienation as expressed in his Economic and Philosophical manuscripts of 1844. Marx believed that workers in capitalist societies are stripped of or separated from what should be meaningful in their lives ? and that what is taken from us fuels our exploitation. He identified four linked types of alienation. People are alienated from their labor, since work is not done to fulfill the worker’s human needs and creativity but to meet the external agenda of the owner. Workers are also alienated from the products of their labor, which profit capitalists and emerge as commodities that the worker must buy. Workers are alienated from other people as the exchange of money and commodities warps social relationships. People are finally alienated from their species being, since the loss of meaningful productive activity removes one of the main capacities that makes us human.

Alienation, forged in Satanic Mills, will inexorably damage the lives of the game’s characters, with you serving as both victim and executioner.

Joy Division is a near-future role playing game of technological horror. Characters are agents of the Joy Division, a small but well-funded transnational espionage agency concerned with advanced, destabilizing technologies. Its mission is to neutralize major threats that might arise from transformative technologies, including planetary-scale biocide, genocide and related crimes against humanity, nonconsensual alterations of the human genome, and, where necessary, consensual but radical transformations of human identity. Characters will use a range of quasi-legal and illegal means – targeted investments, blackmail, commercial espionage, misinformation campaigns, kidnappings — to neutralize or limit technological threats.

The Change

In 1924 the writer Virginia Woolf noted that “on or about December 191 human character changed.” ** She was at least a century premature. With apologies to Ms. Woolf, who chose that date due to a provocative modernist art exhibit and expansion of the suffrage, you haven”t experienced change in character until your only daughter has her brain pulped and her personality embedded in an AI platform. Your values aren”t tested until you and your kind are viewed as expendable animals by a hypercaste of fantastically enhanced and ferociously careless hybrid machine-humans. And you can”t fully appreciate post-impressionist painting until you see the blue of the eastern horizon ripped to a congealing mass of doughy gray by invisible chains of poorly-programmed nanobots feasting on atmospheric gases, perforating the sky like termites crossbred with neutron bombs. I can”t tell you exactly when this change will come ? February 229 or June 238 or thereabouts ? because when it does there will be no one left to care, at least nothing that will concern itself with calendars or human character… Which is why we have to stop it.

By the late 2th century a number of futurists projected that accelerating technological developments would converge in the not too distant future in a Singularity ? an exponential, explosive transformation of machines, society, and human nature. *** Some celebrated the possibility that artificial intelligences and related transhumanist innovations would free mankind from the limits of human biology. Others doubted that these predictions were anything more than wishful thinking or science fiction ? techno-optimism run amok. Meanwhile a subset of the world”s business, scientific, and political elites grew concerned. They noted trends in robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology and related fields, that, while intriguing and potentially profitable in the short term, were socially problematic when extrapolated along a curve of accelerating innovation.

Doubting that nation states or intergovernmental organizations were willing or able to track and regulate the coming singularity/transhumanist revolution, in 211 a group of the concerned convened a session on “Transformative Technologies” on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. Participants drafted a declaration calling for a balance between innovation and regulation. They chartered a new organization, the Coalition on the Responsible use of Transformative Technologies (CRTT), to carry out public education, research and advocacy. Behind the scenes, conference organizers consulted with several highly-placed sympathizers who were unable or unwilling to sign the declaration. This inner circle provided funding for an Immediate Response Division (IRD). The IRD was designed as the clandestine arm of the CRTT. IRD agents would intervene surreptitiously but aggressively to stop or delay the launch of problematic technologies. And that”s what the IRD did. Although no one inside or out of the CRTT-IRD, except possibly the most unflinching bureaucrat, used that designation… They all called it the Joy Division.

Corrosion is a role-playing game of technological monstrosities. Machines stir from quiescence, propelled by evil. They stalk, terrorize and exterminate humans. Your characters are their human victims ? and whether they run, hide, or fight back, they will come to realize what the machines MEAN

Characters

Before creating your own character, talk to the other players about how all the characters will be connected. Why are they facing the same horror? Are they friends or family members? Do they live or work in the same building? Have they come together by chance (guests in a motel, strangers on a train)? Are they far-flung but linked by communication or shared interests? Once you agree on a context, each player can come up with a character concept, and flesh it out with a few biographical details: name, age, gender, job, etc. Players should also write down one thing that your character is especially afraid of and one common fear that doesn?t affect the character as much as it does most people.

Corrosion is set by default in the present, though you can play in any society that is being impacted by technological change. The moderator should pick specific locations that provide opportunities for interesting and scary scenes. As an example, for a two player game the players choose to be a young couple on their honeymoon in Hawaii. The wife will be particularly afraid of heights but about drowning since she is a strong swimmer. The husband will fearful of insects but fine with the dark.

Next, create a portrait of your character (either a head shot or a full length portrayal) by drawing a portrait on a piece of paper, cutting a picture out of a magazine, printing a image from the internet, or reproducing a picture from a book. If you have the materials, glue the picture to piece of cardboard or manila folder so that the pieces will be easier to handle.

What if the characters’ power would greater than any other character’s? What if they could create and destroy whole universes? What would the characters do with such a power? And what would the players do? In the Mighty Ones RPG the player characters are more powerful than any other character. Nothing and no one is able to stand in their way. Their abilities are only limited by their own personality.

Introduction

What if the characters would reach the one thing that they ha to strive that much for? What if their characters would get the almighty power of God without deserving it? What would they do with such a power?

In the “Mighty Ones” RPG the player characters are more powerful than any other character. Nothing and no one is able to stand in their way. Their abilities are only limited by their own personality.

What adventures are possible in thes scenario? Maybe it could seem boring at first, but after a closer look, the most interesting adventure is to discover what would the character and through it a player do with this might and what adventures does the party create for themselves.

You need only a traditional (6-sided) die to play beside paper, pencil, the players and to know what is an RPG.

Winnie-the-Owl-Pooh wants you and all his d1 Acre Wood friends to join him in a grand Adventure. However, you know that when the Owl-Pooh wants to have an Adventure, it really means you’re going to get into Troubles. But that’s okay, he’s such a Silly old Owlbear that nobody really can stay mad at him for long.

CHAPTER 1
In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Owl-Pooh and His Friends

Winnie-the-Owl-Pooh is an Owl-Pooh, a very special sort of Bear. He’s also a very special sort of Owl. Th e Owl-Pooh (or as he is known on Th ursdays, Pooh-Owl) is a very inquisitive Owl-Pooh of very little brain, except on Th ursdays when he is a very inquisitive Pooh-Owl of very little brain. He lives in d1 Acre Wood, with his d1 Acre Wood friends. He does what he does every day and goes on Adventures. Everyone else in the d1 Acre Wood calls this “getting into Troubles” rather than “going on Adventures”, but everyone has such a good time with Winnie the Owl-Pooh, nobody stays upset for long.

You are one of Owl-Pooh’s d1 Acre Wood friends. All of the d1 Acre Wood friends are like Owl-Pooh: odd little sort of mythological creatures found in fi rst editions of fantasy role-playing games that made no logical sense whatsoever. All of the friends are child-like versions of these strange little monsters. You choose your monster or creature or what have you and that’s what your d1 Acre Wood friend will be. You can either take a piece of paper and write down what type of creature your d1 Acre Wood friend is or you can just remember it.

Let’s say you want to be a Gelatin Cube. Well, we all know that full-grown Gelatin Cubes are ten feet on all sides, but that would mean that you are much, much bigger than the Owl-Pooh. Let’s make you Owl-Pooh sized, so instead of ten feet here and there, you’re two feet there and here.

Also, think about all the things that a Gelatin Cube can do. Well, not all the things that a Gelatin Cube can do, but things that make Gelatin Cubes Gelatin Cubes and not Owl-Poohs. For instance, a Gelatin Cube is soft and squishy, so if a Owl-Pooh falls on one from a Great Height, he’ll just bounce off with great joy. Gelatin Cubes can also clean things by sliding over them. Owl-Poohs can’t do that.

Once you have thought up what your d1 Acre Wood friend can do, you should write them down or just remember it. If your d1 Acre Wood friend can do a lot of things, you might want to write them down. Or not.

Owlbears. Known as Magical Beasts to many, what is the true nature of the Owlbear? What are the stories that Owlbears have been yearning to tell, from the first time an adventuring party found one standing over a pile of gold in an obscure corner of a dungeon? Who, I ask who, will champion the cause of the poor Owlbear?

You will. This game is about how you, the adolescent Owlbear, will find himherself – all without the use of thumbs. This is your time to shine, poor misunderstood Owlbear! And shine you will. Read on!

Feathers & Fur is a Fantasy Adventure Game for 3 or more players.

Finding Treasure

If you defeat a Wandering Monster, on the next cycle, in that room, you get to roll on the Random Treasure Table. This is a piece of treasure that you have to leave behind because you don’t have thumbs.

Luckily, you can use the promises of treasure you leave behind to help you out with Wandering Monsters. By checking off one of your treasures, you can add a +1 to the skill you use in an encounter. Once checked off, you can’t use a treasure again.

Any other player can spend an Interruption Token to force you to face another Wandering Monster. This counts as facing it the first time ? so, if you want to check for Treasure, you need to beat this Wandering Monster and then do it on your next turn, like normal.

Random Treasure Table

1. The bones of a dog which had recently eaten the bones of a cat
2. Perfectly preserved mummy’s hand, bedecked with rings
3. Cask of Amontillado
4. Six pounds of carpenter’s nails
5. AAHH SPIDERS
6. A Ferrari
7. Wooden tiles imprinted with the letters A, B, F, L, O, R and W
8. Skull of the much rarer “bearowl,” now disputed as a hoax
9. Bicarbonate of soda
10. Four badly discolored juggling balls
11. Nearly complete set of Bronze Age silverware, missing most of a spoon
12. That’s where my hat went
13. Three salted pork chops, now perfectly marinated
14. A troll’s arm, trying to grow a new troll
15. Egg teeth
16. Eleven lead sling bullets
17. One of those bent-nail puzzle thingies
18. Hairshirt, men’s large
19. The rest of the Antikythera mechanism
20. An Uzi

• Lord Clayton Wyndham (The Dragonfly)
  The host of the party, a count of some repute now in his early fifties. He was deeply involved in the Commonwealth and hence politically marginal at present though officially pardoned. He has been a patron of the arts and sciences, specifically to those who are politically moderate enough for his taste. He is strictly neutral between royalist and dissenter, and privately despises both the past and present kings but also considers the Commonwealth to be a failure. He is not a publically religious man, but supports moderate Anglican clergy.
• Lady Melissa Wyndham (The Bee)
  The wife of Sir Clayton, a respected society woman but also a sympathizer of the Quakers. She is an industrious woman in her mid-fifties, and her diplomacy on her husband’s behalf has often saved him in the turbulent times.
• Julian Arkwright (The Fly)
  The youngest son of an upper-class Englishman, Julian is a traveller and amateur naturalist, now in his early thirties. He has visited M. Malpighi in Italy as well as J. Swammerdam in the Netherlands. He is officially Anglican, but has considerable sympathies with the Catholics.
• The Honourable Richard Bagwell (The Grasshopper)
  The youngest son in the large family of an Irish nobleman, Bagwell is now a sophisticated scientist and member of the Royal Society. He is an extremely well-educated and erudite. He is loosely based on Robert Boyle.
• Malcolm Sterk (The Ant)
  A middle-class professional naturalist employed by the Royal Society, now in his mid-forties. He is himself a skilled scientist, and often jealous of having lower status and being required to do menial tasks for the richer and higher-class members of the society. He is skillful but only moderately educated. He lives with his young orphaned niece in a London house. He is loosely based on Robert Hooke.
• Katherine Sterk (The Silkworm)
  A beautiful and eloquent young woman of around twenty, the niece of Malcolm Sterk. Partly through her uncle and partly through herself, she is generally agreed to have qualities and connections beyond her current station, and has hopes of marrying a higher-class gentleman. Loosely based on Grace Hooke, the niece of Robert Hooke, and to some degree Catherine Barton (the niece of Isaac Newton).
• Astrea Philips (The Butterfly)
  A female dramatist and satirist, scandalous of behavior. Loosely based on Aphra Behn. She has published poetry of political, scientific, and alchemical themes under the pseudonym of “Enitharmon”.
• George Ringer (The Flea)
  A middle-class painter and writer. He was a radical Leveller, and possibly a heretical Ranter, during the Commonwealth. He anonymously published political tracts during the period, but the authorship cannot be proven. He has also had more respectable writings and illustrations. Following the restoration of the king, he left the country for a time and only recently returned. He painted a watercolor of the silkworm which was associated with the current treatise.

• Politics
• Religion
• Science

Politics

The Commonwealth was a period officially lasting from 1649 to 166, but really began with the Long Parliament in 164. At that time, Charles I called Parliament to pass finance bills, since his administration was nearly bankrupt after wars. However, there were were grave disputes over Charles’ perceived misconduct in financial and religious matters. Parliament voted to largely strip the King of his powers. After a decade of civil war, eventually Charles I was tried and executed in 1649.

The Commonwealth was a hotbed of radical groups: including the Ranters, Levellers, Diggers (or True Levellers), Quakers, and Seekers.

In London, 1661 saw the last vestiges of unrest against the Monarchy. Thomas Venner, a leader of a military faction of the Fifth Monarchy Men, who had made attempts against Oliver Cromwell in 1658. The first few days of Jan. 1661, a small group of Fifth Monarchy Men, Baptists and some 4 Quakers attempted to overthrow the civil government in London. After a few days of of local fighting the rebel forces were defeated and arrested. The ring leaders were tried and sentenced to death. Many of their supporters were arrested and sent to prison.

• The Great Fire
• The Great Fire

Religion

In 1662, the Act of Uniformity required both use of the Book of Common Prayer and an oath of allegiance, whilst the so-called Quaker Act prescribed prison for anyone refusing the oath or dissuading others from taking it.

The Conventicle Act of 1663 made it penal for any person to attend a conventicle (non-Anglican meeting for religious worship at which five people apart from the household were present). The punishment for the first offence was three months imprisonment. The Five Mile Act in 1665 punished dissenting preachers with a 4 pound fine if they came within five miles of towns.

Quakers arrested at City and East London meetings were imprisoned in nearby Newgate prison or the Tower of London. Conditions were horrific. 1665 The last great plague of London. Some natural philosophers argued that God established nature by laws and so plagues were not a direct action or a sign of his wrath. Quakers would have none of this. In his A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe wrote: “…the Quakers had at this time also a burying ground set apart to their use… and the famous Solomon Eagle, who… had predicted the plague as a judgment, and ran naked through the streets, telling the people that it was come upon them to punish them for their sins, had his own wife died the
next day of the plague, and was carried, one of the first in the Quakers’ dead-cart, to their new burying ground”.

An early Quaker victim of the plague was Henry Stokes, Spittlefields baker, who died on 24.4.1665.

Science

The first half of the 16’s saw the birth of empirical science, with the time of Galileo and Sir Francis Bacon. During the Interregnum, there were many followers interested in the methods, but the chaotic political landscape kept them from publically organizing. Their meetings were sometimes referred to as the “Invisible College.”

On November 28, 16 — just after the restoration of Charles II — a set of members met and decided to start a “College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning” which led to the “The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge” (aka the Royal Society). The founding members included Robert Boyle, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, William Petty, John Wallis, John Wilkins, Thomas Willis and Sir Christopher Wren. Wren was a Savilian Professor of astronomy at Oxford as well as an architect and scientist. He was responsible for many of the designs for the new London following the Fire. He is particularly known for his design for St Paul’s Cathedral.

Timeline

• 1661 Name first appears in print, and library presented with its first book
• 1662 Royal Charter gives permission to publish
• 1663 Second Royal Charter
• 1665 First issue of Philosophical Transactions
• Robert Hooke published his _Micrographia_
• 1666 Fire of London causes move to Arundel House
• 1668 John Locke joins Royal Society

Links

• Royal Society Home Page
• Robert Hooke (1)
• Robert Hooke (2)