Where to get indie TTRPGs this Black Friday
If you can’t shop locally at a friendly local game store this holiday season, your friendly, virtual, independent TTRPG retailer will be happy to help – and may have a few more options. While itch.io and Drivethru RPG are the place for tabletop designers and players to find their new favorite game, independent distributors are offering discounted physical copies this Black Friday. Polygon has rounded up some of the best indie tabletop deals and bundles these virtual stores have to offer.
A sole proprietorship that opened in December 2023, Tabletop Bookshelf has quickly earned its place as a trusted seller of great indie and small press TTRPGs. Among the games currently available for purchase are gems like Evil Hat’s Deathmatch Island (A Squid games meet Survivor style RPG) and SoulMuppet’s Orbital bluesa game about sad space cowboys — albeit the original Cowboy Bepop RPG is also for sale. It also includes classic games such as the satirical Paranoia and games from emerging designers such as Elliot Davis’ Project Eccoa solo RPG about a rogue time traveler evading a mysterious Agency and an evil Entity, played on an annual planner.
Knave of Cups is another online outfit run by a team of two. They stock games from prominent indie designers such as Sam Leigh, Ken LoweryAnd Cassi Motwin. Knave of Cups also stocks everything you need, such as dice, tarot cards, diaries 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 go-to publisher and distributor for fans of Old School Renaissance games. It contains a huge catalog packed with original games and settings like the Redwall-esque Mausritter or the psychedelic Ultraviolet Grasslands. Exalted Funeral also sells experimental supplements for more than 30 systems, including Dungeons and Dragons, Mork Bork, Mothership, and Old School Essentials. From November 29 to December 2, there’s a 30% discount sitewide, with up to 50% off books and zines published through Exalted Funeral.
Indie Press Revolution is a staple of the indie tabletop scene and has perhaps the largest selection of tabletop games and adjacent material on this list. IPR has been in business since 2004 and is a common presence at gaming conventions in the US. It sells staples of the medium such as John Harper’s Blades in the Dark and Tim Hutching’s Thousand Year Old Vampire, alongside newer games and supplements such as Quinn Murphy’s Welcome To Nightvale-inspired Community Radio and Watt’s Cloud Empress. Currently, IPR only has a handful of games on sale Signal to noise and Onyx Paths Chronicles of Darkness.
Last but certainly not least on this list is Plus One Exp, a tabletop publisher and distributor with the tagline “Weird Indie Games,” a sentiment we should all get behind. Plus One Exp distributes table games with truly fascinating concepts like those of Alexi Sargeant The great soul train robbery, a game with little preparation about robbing a train to hell, Navaar Jackson’s The corruptan intimate zombie apocalypse game along the lines of The last of usAnd Longsword, a d100-based variation on Arthurian legends and knightly virtues by Viditya Voleti and Sam Tung. Many of the games on the Plus One site are their products RPG Zine Cluba monthly subscription where members pay a flat rate for monthly games from designers around the world. While not technically a Black Friday deal, Zine Club subscribers get these games at a discounted rate.