If you can't shop at a friendly local game store this holiday season, your friendly virtual independent TTRPG seller is here to help – and may have a few more options. While itch.io and Drivethru RPG are the go-to places for tabletop designers and gamers to find their new favorite game, independent distributors are offering discounted physical copies this Black Friday. Polygon has put together some of the best indie tabletop deals and packages these virtual stores have to offer.
As a one-person shop that opened in December 2023, Tabletop Bookshelf has quickly earned its place as a trusted seller of great TTRPGs for independent and small publishers. Games currently on sale include gems like the one from Evil Hat Deathmatch Island (A Squid games hits Survivors RPG style) and SoulMuppet's Orbital Bluesa game about sad space cowboys – but in the original Cowboy Bepop Role play is also on offer. It also includes classic games like the satire paranoia and games from emerging designers like Elliot Davis' Project Eccoa solo RPG about a renegade time traveler evading a mysterious agency and an evil entity played on a yearly planner.
Knave of Cups is another online outfit run by a team of two. They stock games from well-known indie designers like Sam Leigh, Ken LoweryAnd Cassi Mothwin. Knave of Cups also carries everything you need like dice, tarot cards, journals and puzzles. They are having a sale on their collection until November 27th Indie board games from designers like Japanese game design studio Oink Games, which creates pocket-sized games perfect for holiday gatherings.
Exalted Funeral is the preferred publisher and distributor for fans of old-school Renaissance games. It contains a huge catalog full of original games and settings like the Redwall-esque Mouse Knight or the psychedelic Ultraviolet Grasslands. Exalted Funeral also sells experimental supplements for over 30 systems, including Dungeons and Dragons, Mork Bork, Mothership and Old School Essentials. From November 29th to December 2nd, there's a 30% discount sitewide and up to 50% off books and zines published through Exalted Funeral.
A staple of the indie tabletop scene, Indie Press Revolution offers perhaps the largest selection of tabletop games and related materials on this list. IPR has existed since 2004 and is frequently represented at gaming conventions in the USA. It sells staples of the medium like John Harper's Blades in the Dark and Tim Hutchings Thousand Year Old Vampire, as well as newer games and supplements like Quinn Murphy's Welcome To Nightvale-inspired Community Radio and Watt's Cloud Empress. Currently IPR only has a handful of games on offer Signal-to-noise ratio and Onyx Paths Chronicles of Darkness.
Last but not least on this list is Plus One Exp, a tabletop publisher and distributor with the slogan “Weird Indie Games,” a sentiment we should all support. Plus One Exp distributes tabletop games with truly fascinating concepts like Alexi Sargeant's The great soul robbery, a low-prep game about robbing a train to hell by Navaar Jackson The corrupt onesan intimate zombie apocalypse game in the style of The Last of UsAnd Longsword, a d100-based variant of the Arthurian legends and chivalric virtues by Viditya Voleti and Sam Tung. Many of the games on the Plus One website are their product RPG Zine Cluba monthly subscription where members pay a flat rate for monthly games from designers around the world. While it's not technically a Black Friday deal, Zine Club subscribers can get these games at a discounted price.
