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.

You hold before you the sacred words of the Shinobi ancients.

Ninja, you are duty bound to your clan to prove your might.

You have been chosen for –
The Challenge of the poisoned Chalice

Once all ninja are introduced then the chalice of poisoned emotion is placed in the centre (a pint glass will do).

Each ninja is given a smaller glass, this will hold the poison known as alcohol.

All ninja?s glasses are filled.

A deck of cards is shuffled and dealt out into a circle around the chalice of emotion. A basic Gaijin 54 card deck will suffice.

The challenge now begins in earnest.

Euthymia is a game set in a dystopian future, eerily similar to the world today. Can you regain your humanity? Or will you be crushed by The Committee? Can you even handle being human?

Euthymia is a game set in a dystopian future, eerily similar to the world today. To play, you need:

• A bottle of drink to share. This should be a special drink that everyone likes. It should have a utopian feel: perhaps a bottle of good wine or cream liqueur. You will drink one bottle every session (see below).
• An identical glass for each player.
• A clock or watch. A ticking egg-timer or a clock with a countdown function is ideal.
• A pack of cards.
• One copy of the character sheet, at the back of this booklet, for each player.
• Pens.

Euthymia is played in ten sessions, each lasting one hour. These sessions are referred as hours: the first hour, the second hour and so on. Despite this description, the sessions do not run back-to-back and are likely to be spread over several evenings.

The Holmes and Watson Committee is about creating your own mysteries adventures as you play. Players are given power over the plot to guide the clues and information towards a villain of their own choosing. The game is loosely based off the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. While some homage is paid to the intrepid duo, this game is not about celebrating the ingenious works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Instead, the villains, tropes, and atmosphere of Victorian England are put at the players’command to do with as they please. The point of the game is to solve the mystery, collect the reward, and eventually match wits with the likes of the infamous Professor Moriarty.

The Situation:

As mentioned, all the PCs in The Holmes and Watson Committee are Detectives. They all also work together for a detective agency called ?The Holmes and Watson Committee? located at 221b Baker Street. The apartment that you use for your offices used to belong to a couple guys named Holmes and Watson, but their exploits were mostly unheralded. They left the biz and you and your compatriots snatched it up at a cheap price. You?ve been working there for about a year now.

In the wake of several crime sprees, Scotland Yard has come to recognize the private detectives? fledgling skills. Official ?detective committees? have been authorized all over the city of London. Detectives that serve in these special committees (like yours) have official Police clearance in all public buildings and have law enforcement authority while on a case.

Scotland Yard will offer assistance to you if you can produce enough evidence to convict the villain. However, you are looking for your first big case. The one that will open up the gates that hold back the flood of customers who are in desperate need of your assistance.

The object of the game is to eventually take on the infamous Professor Moriarty in a case. However, the PCs will have to take down several of his henchmen in order to work their way up to the top. A single game of The Holmes and Watson Committee will last four sessions. Each session will take about 2 hours to play- and yes, they are timed. This includes generating your character in the beginning, but since your first case is an easy one, you should be able to get them both done in the space of two hours.

Imagine that time is a towering spiral of water, arcing through a vast void, and disappearing into infinity at either end. You can move freely along its graceful curve, dipping in and out of it at will, making no wave or ripple. You can watch dinosaurs grazing in Pangaea; the Battle of Hastings; the day when two thieves and another man were crucified on Golgotha. All that ever was is yours to observe, and record.

Touch the column, though ? interact with it, change it, and ripples begin to flow up the column, towards the present. They begin slowly, gaining momentum and power, until some years or centuries or eons in the future, the column shatters into a fine spray of droplets, vanishing into the void.

Now you know the power of time travel, and you understand the First Law:

The Past Cannot Be Undone.

Setting

In the far future, humanity has embarked on a bold adventure. Massive ships drift silently between the planets of the Solar System, bringing raw materials back to Earth, and the terraformed worlds of Venus and Mars are home to billions. These billions live in a paradise – war, poverty, hunger and disease have all been eliminated. No one is born into want, and none but the foolish or the unfortunate need ever die.

These are the fruits of the mastery of time.

Orbiting silently above each of the three homes of humanity is a great sphere, carved and fused from an icy body from the furthest reaches of the Oort Cloud. In each of these spheres, time travelers, known as Factors, study and train for decades to become perfectly proficient at their Function, the aspect of time travel over which they have unfettered domain.

When they are ready, they shed most of their physical reality – they are sealed inside neural caskets, their consciousness drifting in and out of the nanofoam circuitry substrates, picofactory clusters, and quantum computers which are their tools of trade. They are banded together in groups called Pods, and enter the Deep, the water-filled inner chamber of the Spheres, where the vast time machines themselves reside.

When they are called to service, the members of the Pod enter the machine and their consciousness’ meld into a fifth-dimension construct, grounded in the here and now by their bodies and the skill of their Engineer, who keeps watch over the Pod.

From there, they are projected down the Spiral – the shared psychoconstruct of spacetime which represents the planet in its endless revolutions around the Sun, to the source of any disturbance in the timeline. Once there, they begin the task of repairing splits, divergences or disruptions before they become the equivalent of spacetime tsunamis, washing away all of the progress and peace which humanity has worked so hard to create.

But the struggle never ends – that is the First Paradox:

Once time travel is invented, its inventors must constantly strive to keep it from being uninvented.

There are those – warlords and libertines – who believe that humanity has been stripped of its free will and vitality. Working quietly in the far corners of the Three Worlds, they prepare students to enter the ranks of the Factors, and undo what has been done. And there are those within the ranks of the Factors who forget that they serve, and instead seek to rule – to remake time in their image. They learn enough of the other Functions to travel on their own, in secret, and alter the course of the Spiral.

They are the cause of every paradox, every knot and divergence in time.

They are traitors.

Mississippi Steel is all about the racetrack. It combines the fun of roleplaying with the thrills of high-speed competition all in a setting that begs to become a terbacker-spewing, trailer trash-talking, clich?-ridden battle royale if’n I ever seed one. With a simplified rules system and plenty of information even for the most invalid of car connoisseurs (raises hand), Mississippi Steel puts you on the road to asphalt glory!

Introduction

Trash-talking, backwoods mentalities, and redneck racing: that’s what Mississippi Steel is all about. Combining the best of roleplaying games and automotive competition, this game was designed to be played over ten one-hour sessions-the first session to create your racing team, the other nine as races in a single season. Each race lasts approximately one half-hour, allowing your team fifteen minutes before and after the race to interact with the other teams and outside influences. Using a competitive-racing point system, a grand prize winner will be determined at the end of the last race.

As a Player, you control at least one racing team consisting of a Driver, Pit Crew, and Car. The gamemaster, or Announcer, controls the track conditions, the scoring, the actions of any Non-Player Teams or People, and the Crashes. And, oh?there will be lots o’ crashing.

Important Note: With all the rules that have developed over the last few years for the safety of everyone involved?well, we’re going to go back in time a bit to make it even more risky. Figure it’s around 1985. There are no disqualification rules against fighting, obscenities, or what takes place off-track. The only basic driving rule we always have on the track is that there is no driving under the influence.

NECESSARY FOR PLAY: six-sided dice and this book.

FUN TO ADD: Toy cars and a drawn-out race track. Following the map below, sketch out on a large piece of paper a track that is at all points three toy cars wide with a bit of room between each. Trophies for the end of the season are really cool too. If you can pull it off, get a hold of some green, red, yellow, black and checkered flags.

THE RACE

All races will take place at the Dirty Water Raceway, which consists of an oval asphalt track with an “X” in the middle. The type of racing we’re focusing on is figure-eight car racing. It’s also been called “Demolition Racing” or “Playing Chicken at 6 Miles per Hour.” This is high-risk car racing that uses standard cars that have the barest minimum of modifications. We’re working here with 15 laps in 15 minutes.

Terra Nova is a game about the disastrous end of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1912 Antarctic expedition. In it, the players will assume the roles of Scott’s team. They will be forced to make brutal decisions that balance the immutable laws of nature with the facile laws of men. In the end, they will fall one by one.

Robert Falcon Scott continually referred to his men as hard – these were seasoned polar veterans who volunteered for a journey into the most dangerous and inhospitable terrain on earth. Their resolve, their toughness, their steel is, in retrospect, astonishing. They walked to the south pole. In 1912. And almost returned alive.

The four of them were chosen as much for their compatibility as for their physical prowess and technical expertise. A year of laying dep?ts, working with sledge and ski, had galvanized them into a tightly-knit team of single-minded professionals. Although each had a role and specialty, by necessity they thought and acted as one when it counted.

The Terra Nova expedition was governed by two sets of contradictory but immutable laws. The first were the laws of nature – merciless and implacable, utterly inimical to human survival, and incontrovertible. The second were the laws of civilization – more specifically, the laws of His Majesty King George V. The men who followed Scott to the south pole lived and died by a moral code that ignored the harsh realities of Antarctica when they interfered with the prerogatives and obligations of an English gentleman. In the end, it could be argued that this is what killed them all.

Heart of Glass is a story-centric game where players take turns narrating the parts of the Minions of an ancient and wizened dragon. Can you manipulate the Dragon’s heart of glass in order to fulfill the Dragon’s needs and your own? Have fun and tell a great story with your friends!

Introduction

There is an ancient Dragon living deep within its den. Every Dragonslayer, Knight Errant, Sorcerer and Adventurer wants to test their mettle against the beast. And, the only thing standing between the Dragon and them, is you!

You will play a Minion of an ancient Dragon, you could possibly be an Ogre, a Dark Wizard, a Devilish Rogue, a kindred soul or whatever else you can imagine. You will use your resources and the Dragon’s, when possible, to overcome all the adversity headed your way!

What do you need to play?

• This rulebook
• Two to six players
• Paper and pencils
• A Deck of Cards (rules are written for a Poker/Bridge deck of 52 cards)
• 3-4 tokens per player (you can use coins, poker chips, crackers or beads, whatever suits you)

Concepts

You are playing a character that has their own desires, hopes, dreams, and plans for the future. But, that future is tied to a very old Dragon. The Dragon is fierce and has amassed many resources to deal with the potential threats facing them. Can you play on the Ancient Dragon’s emotions well enough to actually overcome these challenges?

With great power?Comes great responsibility, that’s how it goes doesn’t it?

This court is convened to determine the fate of the costumed vigilante group known as Team Steel. Team Steel is accused of doing more harm than good. If found guilty then Team Steel will be publicly de-masked and disbanded.

The trial is played out in real time over two hours, at the end of which the jury will deliver a verdict on Team Steel’s fate.

This court is convened to determine the fate of the costumed vigilante group known as Team Steel. Team Steel is accused of doing more harm than good. If found guilty then Team Steel will be publicly de-masked, disbanded and all Team Steel assets will be seized. Individual members may even face further criminal charges.

The trial is played out in real time over two hours, at the end of which the jury will deliver a verdict on Team Steel?s fate.

This is deep immersion baby, if that ain?t your role-play bag then you probably won?t like this game (and it is a game because there are explicit goals from the outset). It?s diceless and designed for performance, with the audience taking an active role. It?s close to a Live-Action-Role-Play, but should work well as a piece of radio (or podcast) drama. It?ll be fun at conventions!

This game is a bit shit but it has a Dreidel in it and you can’t argue with that.

The team of characters will now go on an adventure.

Whichever player arrived last will start off as the Dudgeon Master. Whenever a player becomes the Dudgeon Master, he doubles his gold.

The Dudgeon Master begins by describing an ancient dungeon:

?You see a tunnel, lit by a flickering torch?

It is then the job of the other players to do anything but proceed with the adventure. Whatever stupid actions they come up with, the Dudgeon Master must either:

• Respond to the action
• Tell them to spin the dreidel (whatever the result, it will have no effect)
• Attempt to interest them in something else (which he won?t)

DM: ?You see a tunnel, lit by a flickering torch?

Player 1: ?What sort of torch??

DM: ?Beeswax.?

Player 2: ?I check for bees?

DM: ?Spin the dreidel.?

Player 2: ?Gimel!?

DM: ?There?s no bees.?

Player 1: ?That beeswax must have come from somewhere.?

DM: ?You hear a noise.?

Player 3: ?Does it sound like bees??

DM: ?No.?

Player 1: ?We ignore it.?

The players should fire comments and stupid questions at the Dudgeon Master in anattempt to throw him.

If at any time the Dudgeon Master is lost for words or responds inappropriately ? as judged by the players* ? he stops being the Dudgeon Master and the player to his left becomes the new Dudgeon Master.

This carries on until someone wants to hit something.

Pinnacle Empty Quiver – The first Game Chef 26 Submission!

Situation Pinnacle: A terror organization has infiltrated an overseas military base in an occupied country, secured a nuke, and has taken hostages. The military base is the home base of an elite anti-terror squad and the hostages are loved ones. The nuke can be prevented from exploding or the hostages can be saved. There is no other outcome. If the nuke goes off a city of 1, will be destroyed. No other citizens of the player’s country will die in the explosion. Your mission: Disarm the nuke, or will you go rogue and rescue your loved ones?

Steel is a resource representing the weapons, guns, equipment that a character uses during the game. These are used up to move the game forward towards resolution. Teamwork is rewarded in the game through better retention of Steel, but it makes the mission harder. Going solo makes the mission easier, but the player loses Steel more quickly. The characters are a member of a special forces group that specializes in restoring Law and Order, and as the Threat level of the game moves towards fulfillment it is a representation of Law being restored on the base. Also, players can utilize Laying Down the Law during combat to combat any GM hording of Steel until end game. In addition, the Laws of The Black Box dictate that if a nuclear countdown is aborted, those injected with poison capsules will die or if those injected with poison capsule are moved, the nuke will blow. There can be no other outcome. Also, the situation involves a law about nuclear security and transport, which was violated and created this situation.

All traits, skills, and equipment are taken from recruiting pamphlets for British or American Special Forces or from wikipedia entries about these organizations. Everything in the squad set up is based on American Army Special Forces, except for Squad Specialties, which is based on British Forces. The Threat Track and Mission Breakdown is a descendant of Metal Opera or InSpectres and spiced up by separating resolution from story advancement to give the players some more choices but also to make it slightly more difficult to resolve, and hopefully this will help keep the game slightly more serious. The combat is system was inspired by Wushu, but dreamed up while watching Lord of the Rings. The event system just popped in my head when I got the idea of a televised hostage forced to say something against their will.