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.

A large town in the middle ages. The Dragon will destroy it unless he is given a virgin sacrifice.

You’re one of the town’s Virgins.

The Dragon is coming tomorrow morning.

The object of the game: get enough mud on your reputation to avoid being killed.

Designers notes

I wasn?t going to enter this month?s Ronnies, but then ? 3 hours before the deadline ?some time freed up. The rough draft of this game was written in 43 minutes.

I wanted something with the spirit of a German boardgame, where the abilities you needed to use in the first phase actually starts to hinder you (or become meaningless) in the endgame. I guess play testing will show me if I succeeded.

This game was written for the November Ronnies 25 and uses the keywords ‘ mud ‘ and ‘Dragon’.

Firestarter is a role-playing game set within the shadows of the Soviet Union’s paranormal research. Psychokinesis (PK) and demons (“dragons”) are real and amuck. You might play a scientist, a psychic, a skeptic outsider, a Russian mobster, a KGB agent, an American agent, a corporate mercenary, half-demon prince, or some surprising combination! You might not even know yourself. Think KGB X-Files meets Hellraiser noir.

INTRODUCTION

“Firestarter” is a role-playing game set within the shadows of the Soviet Union’s paranormal research. Psychokinesis (PK) and demons (“dragons”) are real and amuck. You might play a scientist, a psychic, a skeptic outsider, a Russian mobster, a KGB agent, an American agent, a corporate mercenary, half-demon prince, or some surprising combination! You might not even know yourself. Think KGB X-Files meets Hellraiser noir.

A Firestarter game session requires a Game Master (GM), players, and a dice pool (of your favorite sidedness). Firestarter sprung to life as a last-minute entry for the November 25 Ronnies competition. This is my first attempt to design a role-playing game and it is admittedly incomplete. I chose to include the keywords DRAGON and SOVIET and exclude GUN and MUD.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. GENERAL MUD is a 24-hour rpg, written for the November Ronnies, about a farm, a revolution, and what comes after.

THE ANIMAL MANIFESTO

A spectre is haunting the Farm: the spectre of Animalism. The animals of the Farm toil all their lives for the Farmer. The horses give their labor to the Farmer, the cows their milk, the chickens their eggs, the pigs their very flesh. Even in death animals are butchered for the Farmer?s table or boiled down for glue and parts. But some animals dream of a different Farm: a paradise where all animals are comrades, where every animal enjoys the fruits of their own toil.

General Mud is a game about the animals? revolution, and what comes after. The setting is an ordinary farm. It could be in the English countryside, or the American Midwest, or the Ukraine?anywhere animals toil for the tables of men.

The game has two distinct phases. In the first phase, the Revolution, there is no Game Master as such. Each player takes the role of a barnyard revolutionary, a Proletarian Comrade (PC) in the Soviet of Beasts. All the players are equal in narrating the overthrow of the tyrant Farmer. In the second phase, the Trials, one of those PCs will emerge as the leader of the animals: the fearsome General Mud (GM). Inside the game world, General Mud is a ruthless dictator? Stalin by way of Napoleon the pig?who will stop at nothing to cement his (or her) rule. In real life, the player of General Mud becomes the Game Master and directs play like a GM in any traditional role-playing game. But the other PCs may chafe under the General?s rule. It is possible for the General Mud?s old comrades to overthrow him? and take his place.

Throughout these struggles, the ideals of the revolution do battle with the muddy realities of a post-revolutionary state. The PCs confront terrible pressure to compromise their ideals?to fight dirty, to betray one?s comrades. Sometimes this is the only way to survive?but each time the ideals of the revolution are abused in this way, the red banner of the Soviet of Beasts sinks a little further into black, black mud.

Animals of the Farm, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

it’s not like it’s the end of the world….

a november 25 Ronnies submission using the words “gun” and “dragon”

Who are you in this story?

If you’re the Girl…
God chose you to save the world. Congrats.
Here’s the thing: Nobody gave you any superpowers. You get no Slayer strength, no kung-fu grip, no costume. You’re just you. Except, of course, for the Super 3-D Saint John of Patmos Vision ™ where you pass someone in the street and you see the numbers on their forehead, or a lamb standing as if slain, or that goddamned dragon again, and you know what their destiny will be. If you don’t change them. Convert them? Seduce them? Shoot them in the head? That’s up to you.

If you’re the Dragon…
God chose you, too.
They threw you out of heaven and you bounced. Now you’re everywhere at once, with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns, whispering inside people’s ears, helping them be the bastards that they really are. Let the Big Guy send all the saints He wants: They are delicious. This world is yours. Rule it? End it? Or be a good guy for a change, just to screw them all?

If you’re the World…
You don’t want to end. Duh.
Powers, principalities, please: Leave us alone. You are every ordinary person just trying to get along — get home, get a job, get laid, get an SUV. You’re busy. Armageddon’s going to have to wait. Okay?

It’s not okay. Because Heaven and Hell have grown insistent, the End Time’s ticking down, and the Girl’s definition of “save the world” looks just as uncomfortable as the Dragon’s. You don’t like uncomfortable. But you’re hardly powerless. You can tie them up and wear them down. And maybe, if you work it right, you can give the crusaders something to care about they aren’t willing to sacrifice on their altars.

Then there’s the Gun….
It is the only real superpower in the world.
It is the only superpower you need. It is there, waiting, whenever you decide to reach for it. But the thing you shoot at is never the only thing that’s hurt.

An entry for the November Ronnies. In the last outpost of order in a world fallen into chaos, the Shaper Familes make Dragons from Mud to defend themselves from the Unmakers.

When the grandsires of the grandsires of our grandsires were young, there was a world.

Now, there is just the Valley and the River.

The world was consumed by the Unmakers. The peoples of the world fled before this terrible storm. A lucky few ? so few ? found the Valley, and there they hid as the skies boiled, as the mountains birthed slimy horrors, as things made of stripped bone and bile stalked the land.

For a time, there was no hope.

A child played in the mud in the Valley by the banks of the river. She made a dragon out of the mud, and it came to life. The next day, her family came to the river bank and made a bigger dragon. It too came to life.

And so hope was born out of the mud.

When the Unmakers came to the valley, the first dragon rose up to stop them. The child?s family became the first family of Shapers.

Others came to the river and made their own mud effigies. Those who mastered the art became Shapers; others sheltered beneath the wings of the dragons? and became the Settlers.

For all of history, this has been the way of things. The Settlers till the fertile land of the Valley, Shaper families make dragons from the River mud, and the dragons battle the great Unmakers when they attack.

But each year, the Unmakers come a little closer, and the Valley grows smaller.

One day, the dragons will be turned on each other.

This is a draft of a role playing game. You and your fellow players take on the role of saints, prophets, in the struggle of ?Man? vs. ?Evil? and their symbols, ?Mud? and ?Dragon?. And – one of you will be the Dragon.

The Dragon, ancient symbol of evil, called Satan, Leviathan, and a host of other names, has risen. His goal: Apocalypse. His method: manifestation as a many-headed Dragon, each of his 9 heads attacking one of God’s Commandments, perhaps in the process revealing signs of the apocalypse. Attack until reality and mankind can take no more, and the final cataclysm is upon the earth and mankind. These manifestations may be in the physical realm (yes, Dragon-fire in the sky, Dragon-bile clotting the streets) or in the metaphysical realm ? the Dragon attacking the concept of man and his capability to do good, god?s service. The Dragon is represented by just one player, and his is the momentous power of evil to fell great swathes.

Man is Mud through the way he was shaped – kneaded by God from mud and dust – and the way he tries to harness like powers to benefit fellow man1. Much of God’s knowledge and power has come down to man through mystical writings & religious Doctrines ? the Sefer Yetzirah is an example, but many other mythical texts may be of service. Another example: The Maharal of Prague, and his creation of a Golem to keep his flock safe. All the non-Dragon players are Man and Mud ? more numerous, basic, humble, and possibly resilient.

Holodomor… the great famine. The turn of 1932 – 33 , the darkest winter of Ukrainian history. It is estimated that nearly eight million Ukrainian people starved. Unbelievable suffering was laid upon the peasants, and unimaginable atrocities were committed, which crippled a nation for a generation to come.

Some thoughts

I consider, you know everything about roleplaying, and I do not want to bore you with lengthy descriptions, or texts about the nature of roleplaying. If you don’t know what roleplaying is, you will not understand this game.

This game was written for the 25 November Ronnie awards, and uses the keywords Soviet and Mud.

I am Hungarian, so I have never lived in the Soviet Union, I have only been living in a much lighter socialist regime, under much more humane leaders. I was 1 years old, when the Soviet Union collapsed, but it was enough to get a glimpse of the twisted logic of the system.

Originally communism was a utopia, an experiment, to create the most just society, based on the equal distribution of material wealth, and on total equality and on the rule of the worker class. However it soon turned into the nightmarish absolute rulership of bloody handed dictators, the rule of mindless terror, and total oppression of the mind and body.

This game is about probably the saddest chapter of the Soviet Union’s history, the Holodomor in Ukraine, a man – made famine which claimed several millions of lives. I can not imagine the true horror of this famine, I doubt anyone can. Nevertheless, this is a sad game. It is about survival, which is usually a dirty process. It is about humanity, and the lack of it. It is about morals, about what you are willing to sacrifice for your own life and what you will not. It is about fighting against the odds, and doing the impossible.

What to say? “Enjoy it!” would seem contradictory. “Think about it!” is much more appropriate.

Here be Dragons is a roleplaying game of adventuring into the darkest corners of the world, shooting strange creatures and avoiding the jealousy of your colleagues. What’s hit is history, what’s missed is mystery.

Here be Dragons!

What’s hit is history.

What’s missed is mystery.

A roleplaying game of adventuring in the uncharted areas of the world , shooting exotic creatures and giving in to petty jealousies.

A 24 hour RPG for the November Ronnies 25

Using the words ‘DRAGON’ and ‘GUN’

By Iain McAllister

For Melinda

Introduction

Ah so you have chosen to cast your eye across this fine periodical have you. Excellent choice old boy, though I must warn you. The tales within are not for the faint hearted for this is a journal full of daring do, tragic loss and lucky escapes. Of men and women willing to go to the very extremes of society in order to further that they most strongly believe in ‘Science’. You may think they sound like noble souls, no? Be careful, for even those who are willing to sacrifice much to journey deep into the darkest areas of the world succumb to human weakness, a desire to be the best, to bring back the most exciting specimen, to be recognised for the explorers they truly are. And they will do anything to ensure that they do!

What is this then?

The tome you hold in your hands is a game, but not like your conventional board or card games you will be use to playing. In this game you and a group of your friends, who we will refer to as players, sit round a table and pretend to be imaginary people called characters, or player characters (PCs). These characters you portray react to situations and people described to them by one of the players, who acts as a Games Master, essentially controlling the world the PCs interact with rather than just controlling a PC. Every Role Playing Game, RPG, has different objectives for the PCs to perform, be it rescuing damsels in distress from fiery castles, or saving the world from scheming villains.

What do I do in this game?

In ‘Here be Dragons’ the player characters, who we will call Explorers from here on in, journey into the darkest areas of the world, the unexplored areas, the areas where ‘here be dragons’ might be written on a map, to find, shoot and catalogue all manner of strange beasts, birds and insects. The dragons of the title are not literal dragons, but the metaphorical dragons of sailor’s tales, myth and legend. Along the way they will overcome obstacles described to them by the Guide, the Games Master mentioned above, as well as their seething jealousy of the other players and their desire to be the best and come out on top no matter what. The game is set in and around 185 – 186, the period of Darwin and Wallace and the beginning of the theory of evolution.

In Stalin’s personal chambers, a troupe of actors are forced to improvise a Russian fairy tale while the courtiers play their game of life and death. A Ronnies entry using ‘dragon’ and ‘Soviet’ and based on the work of Vladimir Propp.
The game text you are currently reading is not the end product of a design process. It is merely an alpha version, which means that it will have to be tested and developed further before it reaches its final form.

Stalin?s story is my entry for the November 25 Ronnies. This is a roleplaying game design competition held by Ron Edwards, in which the participants have exactly 24 hours to create a game text. Every word in this document has been written within the space of 24 hours ? which explains why it has not been polished and thoroughly tested.

In addition to writing the game within 24 hours, the participant also has to use two terms from a list of four terms as central concepts in his game. For the November 25 Ronnies, the terms were: dragon, gun, mud and Soviet. Stalin?s Story has been based on dragon and Soviet. The other two terms may not be central to the experience of play at all; guns and mud, therefore, should play no role in the game and the designer is supposed to actively exclude them.

Have fun reading the game. And, who knows, have fun playing it!

Elseworld has always existed the same way, the creative nurturing force of Gaia balanced out by the magical might of The Dragon. But now a new paradigm in Elseworld is coming to the fore, a new balance for nature based on order and rationality – The Gun. Reason leaves no room for magic and myth confounds rationality. Only one can survive. The Dragon or The Gun.

This role-playing game concerns itself with one of the universal themes in mythology, literature and human thought. The conflict between chaos and order.

In this case chaos relates to capricious magic and myth – The Dragon.

Order is represented by science and cold hard reason – The Gun.

The game is set in Elsewhere, a fantasy realm where the fate of Elseworld is about to be determined.

Elseworld has always existed the same way, the creative nurturing force of Gaia balanced out by the magical might of The Dragon.

But now a new paradigm in Elseworld is coming to the fore, a new balance for nature based on order and rationality – The Gun.