What’s Hot in Indie TTRPGs 2025 - pre-release version for Dragonmeet
A compilation of data and opinionProduced by Epistolary Richard "
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Daggerheart Corebook
Alt link: Daggerheart is a heroic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game designed for narrative-driven play. Punctuated by fast-paced and dynamic combat, the system’s collaborative tools encourage everyone at the table to be a storyteller. When it’s time for the game mechanics to control fate, players roll one Hope die and one Fear die (both 12-sided dice) to determine the outcome. When the Hope die is higher, you also gain Hope to power future abilities and turn the tide in your favor! If the Fear die is higher, the game master gains Fear, which they’ll use to challenge the characters and richly complicate the narrative. Every choice matters as the adventure hangs in the balance between hope and fear! |
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False Kingdom
Alt link: FALSE KINGDOM is a grotesquely comic role-playing game for 3-5 players in which a group of conniving courtiers attempt to survive a bloody succession crisis in a cursed corner of 12th-century England. It also won the ENNIE Silver Award for the best free game of 2025. Pretty cool. Each player takes on the role of a sycophantic courtier who has made the mistake of supporting a deranged pretender to the crown. This False King is a capricious and dangerous fool who is certain to die when the True King arrives with his army. And yet, until that moment, he remains the courtiers’ only lifeline and single hope of advancement in a desperate feudal world. All they can do is attempt to survive the treachery and chaos of the False King’s final days - and time their betrayal very well indeed. |
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Grimwild: Free Edition
Alt link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/508618/grimwild-cinematic-fantasy-roleplaying?affiliate_id=487648 The goal with Grimwild is simple. Take D&D-inspired heroic fantasy, with its 12 classes and super tropey monsters, and match it up with a super fast, cinematic narrative rules system. The rules are concerned with the dramatic over the realistic, and minimizing detailed tracking. The game is very low-prep for the GM. The fiction maps to the rules simply, on-the-fly. Designed to run in your own setting (or a published one), or use our pointcrawl exploration system and collaborative worldbuilding to create emergent storylines. Characters earn bonus dice for pursuing self-set goals, pushing the story in the direction they want. The GM is given a clear GM framework of principles and moves to run the game by. Get strong player buy-in with the adventuring party creation system and creative freedom for the players. The rules create fluid action and gets rid of the mechanical slog that bogs down D&D. |
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Heroes of Cerulea
Alt link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/480299/heroes-of-cerulea?affiliate_id=487648 Heroes of Cerulea is an adventure tabletop role-playing game where you explore dungeons, fight monsters, solve puzzles, gather keys, find new items, and defeat bosses. It’s heavily inspired by the classic Legend of Zelda games, and by old-school role-playing. In this game, a key works in pretty much every lock—but it disappears when used. Characters heal through eating food, and for some reason, random pots contain money, arrows, and bombs—and boomerangs can bring those items to you. Monsters are evil; NPCs are focused on one single thing. Dungeons are designed for heroes to solve them. |
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His Majesty the Worm
Alt link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/488062/his-majesty-the-worm-digital-edition?affiliate_id=487648 His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities: a classic megadungeon experience given fresh life through a focus on the mundanities and small moments of daily life inside the dungeon. The Game Master is given tools to create a megadungeon called the Underworld. The players create adventurers to explore the Underworld in pursuit of their personal quests. Tarot cards are used as a randomizing element. Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun. Tarot cards are used to create an action-packed combat system that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime! The game has robust procedures. Characters adventure in the Underworld, rest in roleplaying-driven camping scenes, and plot long-term schemes in the City at the center of the Wide World. The relationships between companions, called Bonds, powers the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. Roleplaying drives the game forward. |
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Land of Eem: Beginners RPG for Kids
Alt link: “The Lord of the Rings meets The Muppets” in this lighthearted fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about exploration, discovery, and being creative! Land of Eem, created by Ben Costa and James Parks, is a game of whimsical, colorful characters exploring a wondrous world full of danger and discovery. Set in the fantasy world of the graphic novel series Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, and the book series Dungeoneer Adventures(link opens in new tab/window), Land of Eem is easy to learn and packed with rules and resources that make playing and running the game a breeze. |
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Legend in the Mist - Core Book
Alt link: Legend in the Mist is a narrative-first RPG for players who want a fantasy role-playing experience that feels like a folktale, with heartfelt moments, exciting conflicts, and gasp-worthy character-altering consequences. Legend In The Mist is inspired by works of fiction about everyday heroes from rural communities that embark on a journey such as The Lord Of The Rings, Princess Mononoke, Wheel of Time, and even The Wind In The Willows. |
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Let Us Build a Tower: A Mythic Bronze Age Adventure in Babel
Alt link: https://sojournrpg.itch.io/lubat Let Us Build a Tower is a roleplaying game, megadungeon generator, monster manual, player guide, and Mythic Bronze Age campaign setting all in one. It’s like nothing you’ve never played before. Download the game book, grab any number of your friends, and prepare for the adventure of a lifetime—or several. How many attempts will it take you to ascend the Tower? It changes every time you try. Babel’s curse of chaos confuses not only your languages, but the very shape of the Tower itself. Revolutionary dice tables—and a free companion web app—build the Tower for you anew each time you enter its deadly halls. The possibilities for adventure are as limitless as your imagination. Who will be the first to claim Heaven’s Throne? |
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Mythic Bastionland
Alt link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514996/mythic-bastionland?affiliate_id=487648 Take the Oath and venture into Mythic Bastionland, a tabletop RPG set in the imagined past of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland , built on the same lightning fast, ultra-streamlined rules system. Designed by Chris McDowall and illustrated by Alec Sorensen. In Mythic Bastionland you begin as a young knight errant, seeking the glory to lead warbands, earn a place in court, and rule your own domain. Glory is found in hunting the Myths of this world, manifesting them into reality while protecting the Realm from their strange influence. Each player is one of 72 Knights, with personal equipment, a unique ability, and a passion that fuels their spirit. As your glory grows, you might eventually embark on the legendary City Quest, an impossible challenge to find The City itself, a shining metropolis seen only in dreams |
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Punk is Dead: a post apocalyptic songwriting TTRPG
Alt link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/499817/punk-is-dead?affiliate_id=487648 Punk is Dead is a TTRPG set in the Un-united Kingdom where the world is going to sh*t in a sack cart, and music is all you've got left. Just like those four brave bozos on the Titanic, you're gonna keep playing until your last amp falls into the abyss. You may have picked up this game because you are a Mörk Borg fan or a lover of punk. There’s also a good chance you adore both those things. The reality is that this game is rooted in both, but is also its own beast. My intention was, as always, to create a role-playing game that inspires those who get together as friends around a table – real or virtual – to get creative. This is also a game about people in desperate times who keep moving forwards. These are people who would not necessarily be together but for a passion they all share: Music. |
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Triangle Agency
Alt link: Triangle Agency is a tabletop role-playing game in a present-day setting about wielding enormous, reality-warping power, navigating bureaucratic red tape, and juggling your everyday responsibilities. Player characters work at the Triangle Agency, an international corporation with influence in every industry. As Field Agents, players investigate and capture supernatural Anomalies that threaten the lives and comfort of normal citizens. |
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Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
Alt link: Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is many things. It’s a bed and breakfast, of course, but it’s also this book. And this book is a book, of course, but it’s also a role-playing game—the sort of game we can play with our friends around a table, or on a voice call while hanging out, or even very, very slowly by mail. Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is played over the course of 48 chapters, each of which is a 1 to 2-hour scenario with its own unique but quick-to-learn rules. Players can take control of one of the 7 long-term residents of the B&B or choose from a cast of 50 quirky guests, each of whom has their own ongoing storylines. |
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