Free RPG Day is Saturday, June 24. Like Free Comic Book Day, it is traditionally an occasion to friendly local games shop and stock up on bite-sized tabletop roleplay and one-off adventures. For 2023, publishers have ramped up the dial to 11 by throwing several meaty quick start guides into the mix. But what really stands out is how the dogs fared – literally.
Heckin’ Good Doggos
Image: games with wet ink
This year’s most interesting release is Heckin’ Good Doggos: Someone’s last day on the tracka TTRPG quick start document for all ages of games with wet ink. With just a handful of six-sided dice and a regular deck of playing cards, players can crack open this thin, 33-page, soft-cover book and get straight to work. And that business, my friends, is role-playing like a dog. It’s a great introductory experience for families – or really anyone new to tabletop roleplaying as a hobby. This booklet contains all the rules necessary to play and experience an adventure. You can find the full game at DriveThruRPG.
Can’t beat the Ennie Awarded team at Playing the 9th level is back at Level 1, an 80-page soft cover book filled with new rules-light TTRPGs. The standout is called here Rainbow Bridge. In it, players take on the role of pets who go to the afterlife. It is a small game of three pages full of emotion. You can find previous years Level 1 volumes, available as free downloads, op the 9th Level website.
Completing the rare animal lovers TTRPG trifecta is a one-time adventure for Steamforged Games’ Animal Adventureswhich uses the rules of the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. The Far Sea: Apocalypse Meow is 27 glossy pages long and features full-color art and a battle map — the perfect complement to the Animal Adventure Starter Setincluding seven miniatures of adorable furry adventurers.
Quickstarts for days
A “quickstart” document for a TTRPG traditionally comes with all the rules you need to play the game, plus an introductory adventure and some pre-generated characters. Think of them as pamphlet-sized starter sets, and there are a ton of them to be had this year.
Image: Magpie Games
By far the most voluminous quickstart in the mix is for Avatar Legends: The Role Playing Game, which absolutely killed it on Kickstarter with over $9.5 million from backers. The game is available to pre-order now, but if you don’t want to dive in just yet and buy a copy, the quick start guide is 48 pages long plus contains pre-generated characters and some quick reference sheets. You can read more about Magpie Games’ blockbuster in our feature article.
Also included this year are quick start guides for the following games: Achtung Cthulhu (Modiphius Entertainment), Dragon track (Free League), Root: the role play (Magpie), and Swords of the Serpentine (Pelgrane press).
Finally there’s a nice little quick start pack for a game with few rules called Mazes (9th Level Games) which I find really fascinating. It is literally a piece of paper with rules written on both sides. Just tear them off in order, read aloud what you’re told to read aloud, and your table is set and your players are ready to roll. If you only have 30 minutes to hang out in your FLGS this weekend, spend it on this game and you won’t be disappointed.
One-time adventures
“One-shot” adventures are short, multi-encounter supplements that require you to master the basic rules to perform them. They are all available for free in stores, but all of them also require you to have the rules of a particular TTRPG in order to use them. Fortunately, most of those rules are available as quick start documents that you can download for free. We link to them below when they apply.
Here are the other one-time adventures available during Free RPG Day:
- A taste of the moon for Vampire: the masquerade (Find the quick start guide at DriveThruRPG.)
- Cobra/Con Fusion for GI Joe role play And Transformers role play
- Operation Coastal Park for Star Finder (Find the Basic Rules Cheatsheet bee the Paizo website.)
- The calm of the storm eel for Adventures in Rokugan (This game is compatible with the rules for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.)
- Piercing the demon’s eye for Dungeon Crawl Classics (You can find a quick start guide at the Goodman Games website.)
- Car in love And Oliver rotated for Zombie Killing: Chronicles (The quick start is enabled the CMON website.)
There are also plenty of surprises in store for those who make it to their neighborhood game store. Keep in mind, though, that quantities of all this stuff are limited, so before you head out with one of the more sought-after items, you might want to ask around to see if anyone would like to play a quick game before heading home with your loot.