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 Suburban Crucible is a game about institutional racism and the serious impact its subtle influence can have on your life. Written, sort of, as an entry for the Ronnies, but more because the idea grabbed my be the throat and wouldn’t let go.

Yes, this is a game about racial prejudice. But it’s not about violent, hate-filled prejudice, it’s about subtle and insidious prejudice. It’s also a game about relationship friction: how do you reconcile the relationships you have with the one’s you’re building. Finally, it’s a game about choice: when it comes down to him or her, who gets the ax?

Ideally this is a game about difficult choices. It turns out that it does not take much to make the choices easy, and it takes quite a bit of work to make them hard.

“I Love to Hate to Love” actually turned out a lot funnier than I thought it would.

When Ron gave out his keywords for the Ronnies, ‘Hatred’ & ‘Girlfriend’ immediately struck me. I wanted a game where the Boyfriend had been totally damaged by the break-up and was giving an insanely biased account of events – while the Girlfriend was way more reasonable and laid back. But as the game developed – it’s got a resolution system based on Snap! – the victory conditions have turned out to be a bit of black comedy in themselves.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. I think the game’s summed up by a bit of graffiti on page 4:

Please come back. I’m sorry. It’s not my fault …

… It’s your fault.

In Black Widows, this incredibly short yet awesome RPG, you play the ex-girlfriends of Cobalt Gunn, a super-spy. Your mission: bring him to his knees.

There is a man, the world?s greatest super-spy, named Cobalt Gunn. Tall, dark, and handsome, he travels the globe doing super-spy things. If it?s an English-speaking country, he?s probably worked for it, stealing technology, learning secrets, shooting bad guys, and sleeping with exotic beauties. Wicked, deadly exotic beauties that he so casually left behind without even as much as a convenient lie to at least show he cared; not even so much as a ?well, that was nice, but I?ve got to go out and save the world early this morning and I?ll call you later.?

That son of a bitch.

A game of suburban desperation

I wrote Want as part of my participation in the first round of the Ronnies, a 24-hour RPG contest sponsored by Ron Edwards and his Adept Press. The challenge is to make a complete role-playing game in 24 hours, using as core elements exactly two of the following four terms: Suburban, Girlfriend, Hatred, and Rat. Want is, quite clearly, making use of Suburban and Hatred. Whether or not it is a role-playing game I leave as an exercise to the reader.

Quite honestly, the game creeps me out more than a little. I think it may be the most depressing thing I?ve written, and I?m the guy who wrote the game about fighting the totally unavoidable end of the world.

I?d like to play it, if I could find a group that knows the genre.

A game of choice and consequence, where several sisters have discovered a valley of untold magic. Now bound to three magics and strange forces, these sisters explore their newfound limitations and powers…

January?s Frost is a game about choices and consequence in a land of fairy-tale magic. From the next part of the story, you will see what I mean clearly. The game requires a spirit of wonder and a bit of concern, not to mention a handful of players. One of these players takes on the role of the sorcerer. They have rather extensive control over the game, and are in many ways like the game-masters (GMs) of other role-playing games. At any one time, the player in the role of the sorcerer is playing a particular sorcerer. The other players take on the role of the sisters, a handful of young women who got a bit too curious one night and with a single choice, inflicted amazing consequence onto themselves. Well, now I can get back to the second part of the story.

Get Out, Get Away, Get Wise, Get Back, Get Even is a game about running for your life. It is inspired by movies such as The Fugitive, North By Northwest and The Thirty-Nine Steps.

This game was written in 24 hours, starting at 2pm on 1 September 25 and ending before 2pm on 11 September 25.

It is an entry for Ron Edwards? ?Ronnies? competition, which challenged the entrants to design a roleplaying game based on two of the following words: Suburb, Hatred, Girlfriend and Rat. I chose Suburb and Hatred.

The idea of narrating a story with a known ending is stolen from Paul Czege?s game My Life With Master. Many other things are stolen from that game too.

The structure of the chase story is stolen from Joseph Campbell?s ?Hero?s Journey? story structure, outlined in his book ?The Hero with a Thousand Faces?. I learnt the structure from Christopher Vogler?s book ?The Writer?s Journey?.

This RPG is a downward spiral into madness. To find out what is real and what is a halucination within the rat maze of the city you must step outside the lines of reason…

Fink is a rules-light game about social warfare, of life in a supposedly peaceful suburb where everyone is trying to evict deviant neighbors while pretending to be their friends.

Ray puts down the receiver. Everything is going as it should. Soon that closet-Satanist neighbor of his will be evicted, and peace and harmony would one again be restored. The doorbell rings. Ray goes downstairs and opens the front door. Outside are two serious-looking men in suits. “Mr. Barnes”, the tall one says, “we have reason to believe your daughter has been selling cocaine at school. May we come in?”

You have got everything you were told you ever wanted. Nice house in the suburbs, loving partner, 200.4 smiling children, white-picket fence, the works. But you aren’t happy. In fact you hate yourself for having all this stuff, and as such, the perfection appearance doesn’t represent the reality. Maybe your kids are off the rails, maybe you can’t afford the mortgage repayments, and maybe there is infidelity in the marriage. You were managing, just about, living in quiet desperation, until the scandal erupted.

Sleep Over is a nasty little roleplaying game where you take on the challenge of being girls at a Sleep Over. These girls are friends, but they sure do like to talk smack on each other. Will you be the one to run home crying to mommy, or will you be the one who never loses their cool?