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.

Take on the role of Ron Edwards in this satrical futuristic entry in the October 25 Ronnies!

This game simulates the situation faced by Ron Edwards after the fall of the Forge in the future. This is a solitaire game, and your goal is to preserve the promotion, creation, and reviewing of independent role-playing games and defeat the oppressing forces of mainstream game design.

In Left Coast, you play semi-famous science fiction authors living in late 196Os California. The game’s inspired by the lives of people like Philip K. Dick and L. Ron Hubbard.

As an author, you try to balance writing with dealing with your everyday lives and problems (marriage, children, rent) and the struggle to not go nuts under the strain of your immense creativity.

And your situation is complicated by the fact that one of your friends is writing a novel about you, … and either their plot is bleeding over into your real life or you are slowly becoming aware you might be a fictional character. As a game of Left Coast plays out, you will gradually become enmeshed in an web of weird and unnatural forces – forces who have a plan designed to upset your already-unstable life.

Left Coast is a game for 2-4 players that involves some co-GMing. It’s designed to promote a relaxed exploration of character and setting, with the occasional pretentious flash of meta-narratives, post-modernism, and nuttiness.

Play is divided into chapters or short stories, and every author sets a goal that they’re trying to achieve during that chapter. You can probably play a self-contained short story of Left Coast in about 2 hours, with the option to continue the game for longer (probably between 3 to 6 sessions).

Hierarchy is a game for large groups of people. It is set in a psuedo-Japanese world where the Emporer and his lords constantly jostle for control of the empire. All players are responsible to be GM’s at some point and take the risk of putting thier honor on the line. This game was a submission in the Ronny Award Contest of October 25 run by Adept Press.

Hierarchy is an engaging roleplaying game for groups of 8 to 15 people. It is set in a very pseudo-Japanese fantasy world where the Emperor reigns with iron authority, but is always in danger of being usurped. The key to Hierarchy is conflict. If you can overcome the obstacles you put before yourself, then you will advance and win the game. To win, you must become the undisputed Emperor of Fhen (the world in which this game is set). Conflict and contention are built heavily into this game. The player who helps you one moment, will turn on you the next. Danger and heroism lurk around every corner.

A role-playing game of blood and sweat pain and hope. Contenders is a rpg dealing with the shady and painful world of boxing. Each player takes on the role of a contender, a pugilist trying to overcome his pain and fight his way out of the gutter. This is a submission for the ronnies 2, taking inspiration from Pain and Fight.

1,
2,
3,
4?
My vision returns at the count of five, I taste blood, my blood. The roar of the crowd is deafening, they want more. They always want more.

More blood, more pain.

I?m kneeling as the ref gets to seven, I can see in his eyes that he doesn’t expect me to get up. Why would I?

Face more pain.

Now I see her, in the front row, tears black with mascara streaming down her face, I?m drawn to the eyes, deep pools, reflecting the pain.

My pain.

The moment seems to last an eternity. I needed that, that reminder of hope. This is for you babe!

Bring the pain.

I?m on my feet again at nine. The ref hesitates for a split second.

?Ok, box!?

Now feel the pain?

Mathematicians, theologicans, physicists and philosophers vie to discover the secret of the cosmos in this hybrid strategy-narration game inspired by the movie Pi. This is submitted for the October Ronnies with the words Pain and Cosmos.

For eons, humans have asked the eternal question: is there a meaning to life? Is there something more than the mere repetition of a million billion lives? Is there really nothing more to the universe than the random collisions of infinitesimal particles?

Ever have they searched for patterns, tried to find order in the chaos of the world around them. And sometime, they succeeded. From nothing, they built rules and laws. They solved equations and calculated sums. With theories and law and formulas they held back the randomness that threatened to overwhelm their thoughts.

From the chaos, they built the cosmos.

Action! Ancient evil! Mysticism! Kung fu! Gunplay! Players are members of a highly trained secret society of martial artists and mystics known as the Brotherhood, trying to save humanity from the assemblage of mind-destroying alien horrors from beyond called the Drove. This is an entry to the October 25 Ronnies, using Fight and Cosmos as the keywords.

This is a game about ass-kicking and mad cosmic power. Each player represents a member of a highly trained secret society of martial artists and mystics known as the Brotherhood, trying to save humanity from the assemblage of mind-destroying alien horrors from beyond called the Drove. Reality pulses to the tick of a cosmic clock. Every eight hundred and forty-seven years the battle must be fought again, else reality as humanity knows it will slip away, to be replaced by something else. Now that the cycle is at an end, rumors have surfaced within the cloister that it is possible for one human, after surviving the battle, to sit at the throne and shape the cosmos for the next twenty-eight generations.

The Dark Wood was produced as a part of the October 25 Ronnies, a 24-hour RPG challenge sponsored by Ron Edwards on the Forge. Each player takes the role of a poor soul who has committed suicide, and is given one last chance to redeem themselves. Those who succeed will ascend to one of the ten Heavenly Spheres, and those who fail will be condemned to suffer on the banks of the Phlegethon River for the rest of eternity, never to know the grace of God. This game is built around the terms “Pain” (in reference to the worldly pain experienced by the characters, which drives them to their sad fate at the beginning of play), and “Sphere” (referring to the Heavenly Spheres which represent the redeemed characters’ ultimate goal).

The Dark Wood is a role-playing game about worldly pain, the consequences that may follow, and redemption after it seems that all hope is lost. The players play the part of the souls of people who have committed suicide, and have therefore been condemned to Hell, their souls inhabiting a black, thorny tree on the banks of the River Phlegethon, their bodies hanging from their barren limbs. All hope is not lost, however. As the trees are wounded by the Harpies as part of their torment, they are granted the ability to speak, and tell the stories of how they came to take their own lives, and land themselves in such a lamentable situation. Although it is not often mentioned (for obvious reasons), this infernal torture is not always eternal ? some fortunate souls may, though introspection and atonement, cast off their worldly sins, and ascend to one of the Heavenly Spheres, to bask in the presence of God for the rest of eternity.

This task is not easy as one might imagine at the outset. The chance at salvation carries with it certain responsibilities and risks. Firstly, no soul may attempt to redeem itself alone ? when they are ready, a set number of damned souls are chosen, and given the opportunity to purge themselves of their Woe, and of the sins that brought about their fall. These souls are bound to one another, and may not leave the company of their fellow aspirants, lest they bring about the damnation of them all. Additionally, salvation is not assured. It is possible that this clutch of souls may fail at their task, and condemn one or more of their company to return to their punishment as a wounded

tree for some indeterminate period of time ? perhaps they will receive another opportunity to save themselves from eternal torment, perhaps this was their last hope, and they will never see grace again.

They are the last survivors of their race, adrift in the cosmos and trying to find a new home. During their search, some of them will die. How will the other deal with the pain of their loss. Submitted for the October 25 Ronnies using the themes pain and cosmos.

Their world is gone now, destroyed by their lone, unstable sun going supernova. They are the survivors, inhabitants of a massive colony ship carrying one million people, frozen and asleep, searching for a home. When the ship reaches a suitable star system, it awakens a small number of people to serve as crew and explore the planets in hope that one of them will prove a suitable home for the last remnants of their race.

The universe is not a hospitable place. There is vast space between the individual pockets of life, the hope of the silent millions aboard the ship.

It is a false hope. The universe does not want these survivors, and everywhere they go, there will be threats that would annihilate their. The crew visits the planets, each time hoping against hope that the next planet will be the one they can live on, their new homeworld. The rest of the time, they are adrift in the cosmos.

Cosmic Combat is a game about the Existence Wars, fought to determine the Fate Of The Universe. Players act the part of incredibly powerful creatures called Incarnates, able to manipulate the elementary matter of the cosmos. They’re generals leading armies that are fighting The Evil Hordes Of The Lords Of Entropy.
A year ago, at the center of the universe, a hole was ripped in the Fabric Of Space And Time, and a horde of Demonic Creatures poured out from The Other Side. Commanded by the terrible Lords Of Entropy the demon armies started their conquest of the cosmos, destroying everything in their path. Only the Incarnates stand between them and total annihilation, and you?re one of them.

Cosmic Combat is a game about the Existence Wars, fought to determine the Fate Of The Universe. Players act the part of incredibly powerful creatures called Incarnates, able to manipulate the elementary matter of the cosmos. They?re generals leading armies that are fighting The Evil Hordes Of The Lords Of Entropy.

This game was written for the October 25 Ronnies, using the terms Fight and Cosmos.

Monotheism is a game of cosmic struggle where rival deities compete to control the world and avoid falling into the trap of their personal despair. It is an entrant for the October 25 Ronnies, using the keywords pain and cosmos.

A group of Gods has created a new cosmos, an infinite expanse. Or perhaps they merely found it, exploited it, and molded it to their own ends. Perhaps it summoned them into being as an expression of itself. It doesn?t matter.

They are there, and they are hardly perfect beings ? they exist through the actions of their followers, increasing in power as they do their Lord?s willing and suffering writhing, physical pain as their followers thwart and subvert them.

Eventually, they will this succumb to this pain, becoming bestial formless beings that live to harm others, dragging the whole world down with them.