Free RPG Day 2022: 5 great games including the latest from Critical Role

Free RPG Day is this Saturday June 25th. This is your signal to visit a participating friendly local play store to snag some free stuff. But if you’re just doing a flyby to see what goodies you can get away with, then you’re missing the point. Free RPG Day is about building a community, not devouring merch. Instead, why not grab a brochure, flop down at a table, and start playing one of these games right away?

Polygon had the chance to preview all the materials that were being given away during this year’s Free RPG Day. Here’s our pick of the top five tabletop RPGs to get you off the ground with just a handful of inexperienced players and very little prep time.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: Danger in the Air

A nondescript serf with a pig under his arm notices his neighbors relentlessly clambering into the dangling vines of a desiccated corpse that hovers in the air above his farm.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game is a throwback ruleset by Goodman games that evokes the same sense of danger and exploration that was present in the original 1974 version of Dungeons & Dragons. The system has been “modernized” in a way that makes it very familiar to fans of later editions of the game – including the latest 5th Edition.

danger in the air is a level 0 character funnel that requires little more than a working understanding of the d20 system. (If that scares you, there’s a 44-page one too Quick Start Guide available online.) At the end of an hour or two, a handful of level 1 adventurers await, ready for their first real quest – and dozens of corpses from those who failed the quest. What is this task? Well, it explores a drifting extraplanar spaceship of mysterious origin that has been hovering over the city for a few days. It’s a great way to kick off a bigger Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign – or tease folks hyped for the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer setting reboot.

Level 1: The Indie RPG Anthology Volume 3

The sexy green Medusa graces the cover of this Free RPG Day anthology.

Stage 1: The Indie RPG Anthology is back for its third installment of the year, and it’s basically a bag full of thoughtful, easy-to-follow RPGs. This year’s jewel is called Old Gods of Media through Graham Gentzthat encourages you to take on several of the world’s most popular characters and transform them into Eldritch forces bent on world domination.

Imagine that all the passion, love and attention that fans pour into their favorite fictional characters also empowers those characters. Now imagine that these characters exist as immortal gods whose power relative to their kind – and even to humanity itself – fluctuates with each movie or video game release. Just roll for brand awareness to get started. The pairings are endless, especially when you consider the power reserve of demonic beings old enough to be in the public eye.

A known issue

A press photo for A Familiar Problem, written in thick black ink.

A known issue is a light-hearted game with excellent confidence; It was co-designed by Critical Role‘s Marisha Ray and honey robbery Creator Grant Howitt. A known issue puts players in the shoes of “shabby and stressed out” familiars – magical, sentient animal companions of spellcasters – trying to keep up with a group of adventurers. The project was announced earlier this month and now that I’ve had a chance to check it out I’m really impressed. It has all the charm I’ve come to expect from a real game star’s crew, and all the randomness and open-ended design that Howitt’s work is known for. It’s the perfect icebreaker for an event like Free RPG Day, or maybe your next regular home game.

Rolled & Told Volume 1

The biggest offering for Free RPG Day this year is Rolled & Told Volume 1, a full-size hardcover book first published in 2019. It is a collection of seven adventures from the Rolled & Told series, a hybrid publication combining serial comic book adventures and a supplementary set of 5th edition compatible adventures. The original price of $39.99 might just have been because publisher The Lion Forge had a lot of these lying around in storage and wanted to get rid of them. But that doesn’t make the excellent and lengthy adventures it contains any less worthwhile.

Homeworld revelations

Of the officially licensed goodies on offer during Free RPG Day, by far the most interesting is the softcover Quick Start Guide for Homeworld revelations, the high-concept tabletop RPG based on the popular real-time strategy series. While it doesn’t include all the delicious fluff written by the game’s original author, Martin Cirulis, it does give you a healthy look at how the game’s mechanics will work ahead of general release.

Other licensed games include modules for Paizo’s Pathfinder and Starfinder settings; Epic Encounters series by Steamforged Games with adventures compatible with 5th edition; a new quick start for Root: The RPG; Cyberpunk Red Easy Modewhich is a stellar little version of the full-fat TTRPG that serves as the progenitor of Cyberpunk 2077; and a new one-shot for the Iron Kingdoms take called by Privateer Press A strange light emerges.