Getting Started can be intimidating

When you’re first wanting to get into roleplaying games, it can be really intimidating. The books seem expensive, everyone has so many dice, minis, etc. It can be hard to know where to start, especially if you’re limited on funds. Many people will tell you to just join an existing group and someone will most likely let you use their dice, and lend you the book that you need. This is definitely true for a lot of groups! However, not everyone has this opportunity. You may not have a local group that you would feel comfortable joining, and you may not know where to look for online groups.

So, lets break down the different aspects of TTRPGs and how you can get started with each of them entirely for free. I would say that the main concerns you have when starting out are:

• The Game: game books can be expensive, and it’s not always clear which ones you need
• Dice: Some games use dice, playing cards, tarot cards, tokens, a Jenga tower, etc. It’s not always obvious which ones of these you’ll need or how many of them
• People: Most roleplaying games involve playing with other people, where can you find them?
• Maps, Minis, and Adventures: Not a requirement, but many games utilize some combination of these things, and you may want them around just for a visual aid even if they’re not necessary.

The good news is, if you’re reading this, it most likely means you have access to the internet, and therefore access to tons of absolutely free resources.

Free Games

Many games out there have downloadable quick starts, demos, test drives, or a System Reference Document for the rules. These are incredibly useful, especially if there is a game out there that you know you want to check out. Some notable examples are the Archives of Nethus for Pathfinder, Cortex Lite which is essentially a demo of Cortex Prime, Slugblaster Turbo X which is a simplified demo version of Slugblaster meant for one shots, Fabula Ultima: Press Start, Salvage Union Quickstart and the Avatar Legends Quickstart. This guide is also by no means an exhaustive list of the free games out there, so if your favorite free game didn’t make the cut, I apologize. If none of the games on this list are quite what you want, or if you’re just curious what other free games are out there, you can pretty easily find free games by browsing through DrivethruRPG or the physical games section of itch.io and filtering to show only free games.

Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game

The basic fantasy roleplaying game is a fully open source D20 fantasy game with incredible community support. This game uses the standard 7 piece set of dice you would get from a game store (don’t worry, there are free ways to use these dice we’ll cover later). The player characters in this game are fantasy adventurers such as a halfling fighter, human cleric, dwarven thief, etc. You’re probably familiar with some of the ideas in this game from popular media. It falls into the OSR style of play, which focuses on exploration, dangerous combat, rulings over rules, and emergent story. This game not only has the base rules available for free, but also has a lot of free supplements and adventure modules as well available on the Download Page

Quest

Quest is a heroic fantasy adventure game. It uses a simple D20 system with no modifiers. Character Roles in Quest are going to be familiar if you have an interest in RPGs, but many of them have their own spin. The Doctor, for example, has the healing spells you expect, but can also talk to the dead, alter the perception of others, and put creatures to sleep. Character sheets look like a mad-lib that you fill out to describe what your character looks like, how they act, and what their history it. There’s also a world building sheet that works the same way, allowing for very easy to pick up collaborative world building. Like most of the games on this list, there’s a lot of community content available for this game, such as Bond Creation, a Monster Manifest, and adventures like Flowers From the Lost. Unlike Basic Fantasy, many of these will not be free, but some of them are, and the core book gives you enough to get started without the need for any additional adventures.

Cloud Empress

Cloud Empress is a game about travelers in a dangerous science fantasy world that uses the same d100 system found in Mothership. The stakes are high in Cloud Empress, and dice are only rolled during big moments. The setting features giant cicadas called The Imago, which emerge from the ground every summer to feed on the dead. Humans carve the molts of Imago for Chalk, a resource that is required for magic, which always comes with an additional cost. The core rulebook comes with an adventure, and there are several more official and third party adventures available like Nest of Gates, Unseen City, and Land of Cicadas.

Cairn

Cairn is a rule-lite fantasy adventure game about exploring a dark and mysterious wood. The game uses a simple D20 roll-under system,and characters that can be created very quickly. Combat is very fast and deadly, and the game rewards clever and careful exploration. This is a fantastic game if you want to do hex crawls or dungeon crawls. The game features many supplements and adventures which can easily be found on the Cairn website. There are also collections on itch for Resources and Adventures

Mausritter

Mausritter is a game about being a little mouse in a big dangerous world, and looking for resources for your mouse village. It uses the Mark of the Odd system also found in Cairn and Liminal Horror. One of the main mechanics that sets it apart is the inventory system. Like other games, wounds and items both take up inventory space. However, in Mausritter, inventory management is important as it’s a grid system and some items can take up multiple slots, like you might find in a horror video game. Mausritter has an impressive library of adventures and supplements, as well as very convenient resources like a character and adventure site generator.

Mork Borg

Mork Borg offers fast and frenetic roleplaying during the apocalypse. The system is a very light but familiar D20+mod. Characters roll up very quickly, and naming them is optional, as you will likely go through a lot if you don’t play very carefully. The full book has layout and art that really exemplifies the apocalyptic doom metal vibe. However, the Barebones Edition doesn’t quite offer the same experience as it is text only. Fortunately it still contains the entirety of the text and you can play the game and the many adventures for it with the barebones edition.

Liminal Horror

Liminal Horror is a supernatural investigation game where you play an ordinary person who gets in over their head. It features the same D20 roll-under system you can find in Cairn and Mausritter. Characters, at least at the beginning, are mostly defined by what assets they have. While combat and encountering the supernatural is very dangerous, the game focuses more on long-term consequences than death, with tables for wounds and fallout. Which represent long-term effects suffered from physical harm or how you change from the encounters you have. The game also has a large library of content to play through.

Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a powered by the apocalypse game about disaster queers. This is a game where a sword fight can be a fight, a negotiation, or flirting, depending on the intention of the characters. The game has no default setting, but many example settings and starting scenarios are included. The game mostly revolves around character relationships, and often has a goal of working together to overcome and outside force that seeks assimilation of some kind. Characters are made by using a playbook which defines your role, such as the Spooky Witch, the Beast, or the Trickster.

Monster Care Squad

Monstercaresquad takes place in the world of Ald Amura, which has powerful and historically benevolent monsters that have recently become infected. You play as characters that seek to track down monsters, identify what their ailment is, and then synthesize and apply the solution in order to heal them. The game system is similar to pbta, almost everything is a 2d6 roll which is triggered by a move. However, there are no playbooks, you instead build a character with the moves and specialities that you desire. Gameplay is divided into three distinct phases: Diagnosis: figuring out what is infecting the monster, Synthesis: the production of the cure, and Symbiosis: adminstering the treatment. You will wrestle the monster for control and if you are successfully able to cure the monster, it will give you a gift in the form of a magical ability.

Fate

Fate is a flexible narrative system that can be used to tell many different kinds of stories. It’s a setting-less game so you will need to have an idea to start with and create the world on your own. The player characters are driven and capable people, and the system focuses more on fictional consequences than reducing HP bars. It comes in three different editions. Core has all of the rules, Accelerated is a lighter and more action-driven version that can be played with less prep, and Condensed is a simplified version of the core rules for easy reference and a few tweaks to make things run more smoothly. Fate uses non-standard d6s that have two ‘+’ faces, two ‘-‘ faces, and two blank faces. These can be difficult to find, and not all dice rolling apps support them. Fortunately, there are tools to roll dice for Fate specifically. Fate also has many non-free specific games, settings, and resources. It’s the system that powers games such as Atomic Robo and Dresden Files, for example.

Risus

Risus is an incredibly simple role playing game, coming in at just 4 pages. Characters are made up of Cliches, and you can have as many or as few as you want, so long as the points you put into them total 10 at character creation. Each point in a cliche is the number of d6s you get to roll when you want to do something and there’s something in your way of accomplishing that. The GM will set a target number, you add the results of your roll together and try to beat it to get a success. The feel of Risus is very much a silly, over-the-top cartoon. Risus has a fan site containing a lot of material called the Risusiverse which has cliche options, additional rules, settings, adventures, and other extras.

The Zone

The Zone is a zero prep, play to lose, GM-less RPG of weirdness and mutation. It’s a card based game with only one survivor, where the players will journey into a realm of madness, beauty, and horror until only one of them is left. Unlike other games on this list, this one doesn’t have much in the way of third party support. However, I think that it’s a fairly easy game to just pick up and play, since it requires no prep, no dice, and no GM. All you need is a device with internet access, and let the website walk you through the process.

Open D6

OpenD6 is an open license version of West End Games D6 system. It comes Adventure, Space, and Fantasy flavors. Adventure is a modern action-adventure game, Fantasy is a heroic fantasy game, and Space is a sci-fi game, as you might expect. While each game features many character options, the core of the system is rolling a number of d6s equal to your relevant attribute and skill, then totaling them. Due to the open license of the game, there is an active third party developer community which has released many different games and supplements based on the OpenD6 system.

One Page Games

One page games are, of course, not a singular game, but an entire category of them that is almost always free. These are excellent party or beer & pretzel style games. The stakes are usually low, and humor and absurdity is often emphasized as these elements often shine with the design constraints of writing a game that fits onto a singular page. While there are countless examples of one page games, I’ve included a few notable ones below

• Lasers & Feelings a sci-fi game where you play the crew of an interstellar ship called the Raptor. You have a singular stat which is your number, you want to roll under your number when you use Lasers (technology, science, cold precise action) and over it when you use Feelings (intuition, diplomacy, wild passionate action). Not only is Lasers & Feelings a great free game, it has inspired countless other games such as Cars & Family, Flats & Fangs, and Oh Dang! Bigfoot Stole My Car with my Friend’s Birthday Present Inside.
• Honey Heist is a game where you play a criminal bear trying to steal honey from the worlds largest honey convention. Your two stats are Criminal and Bear, both of which start at 3. You also have a role and a bear species. You want to roll equal to or under your relevant stat, if you are using your role or species, you roll twice and take the lowest. As you might imagine with a game this simple, many people have created their own hack of it, and there’s a collection on itch of some of these hacks.
• Crash Pandas is a game where all of the players play racoons and they’re each trying to drive the same car. Though it’s not entirely about driving a car, as you can also get into racoon mischief outside of a car. When driving, the game uses a blind bidding system to determine what happens with the car. Outside of driving you roll a number of d6s equal to your stat, with fours or higher counting as successes.
• All Outta Bubblegum is a game where all of the players are here to kick ass and chew gum. You start the game with 8 pieces of bubblegum (or candy, or tokens, or whatever you want). This is your only stat, you roll a d10 when you want to do anything. You roll over your bubblegum to succeed at Kicking Ass, which is anything that is high action and combat related. You want to roll under or equal to your bubblegum when Chewing Gum, or doing literally anything that isn’t Kicking Ass. This includes things like waiting in line, opening doors, and basting a turkey. Failing a non-combat roll causes you to lose 1 bubblegum, you can also sacrifice some gum to ensure success. When you run out of gum, you may no longer do any ordinary actions, but you automatically succeed at Kicking Ass.
• Cracker Barrel Has Fallen is a game about Waffle House employees during the Zombie Apocalypse. Each character has a role, a personality, and 2 special skills, as well as the stats Survival and Wit. When you want to take an action, you roll 2d6 and add the relevant stat. If you can use your Role, Personality, or a Special Skill then you roll 3d6 and take the top 2. Instead of HP, the game uses the Waffle House Index to measure the overall health of the Waffle House. If it reaches Red 1, then the game is over.
• Roll for Shoes is possibly the simplest game in this entire entry. When you want to do something in Roll for Shoes, you roll a number of d6s equal to the relevant skill that you have. If your total is higher than an opposing roll, then you get what you wanted to happen. If you roll all 6s, you get a new skill more specific to the action you were taking. You start with only one skill: Do Anything 1. Like All Outta Bubblegum, this game is excellent at taking mundane scenarios and making them fun and ridiculous.

Dice

Roleplaying games often require dice, cards, tokens, or other physical objects that aren’t included with the game itself. These can be difficult, and not everyone has a shop around that carries the common polyhedral set used in RPGs. Fortunately, there’s ways to roll dice without actually having them in your hand.

Dice Rollers

Dice Rollers are apps or websites that will roll dice for you. So if you can read this post, then you can use at least one of these options.

• DnDice is one of countless dice rolling apps available on the google play store. In fact, if you simply search for Dice Roller in your relevant app store, you’re bound to find more options than you know what to do with, most of which will be free. There’s often very little differences between dice rolling apps, so feel free to download a few to try out and figure out which one works best for you.
• Roll A Die is a web based dice roller, if you happen to be on a computer rather than a mobile device. It’s very light and easy to use, and certainly not the only web-based dice roller around. You can even just type “roll 2d6” into Google if you want.
• DiceMaiden is a discord bot that rolls dice for you right in the discord chat. These bots are incredibly common in RPG focused discord servers and generally free to add to your own discord server. There’s even dice bots for specialized dice or games such as D1-C3 for games that use Genesys Narrative Dice.
• Role is not just a way to roll dice, it’s a virtual tabletop that runs in your browser and is entirely free to use. It also features virtual character sheets, cards, voice & video chat, and a space to share images of maps, enemies, items, etc.
• Owlbear Rodeo is another free virtual tabletop, this one focused more on maps and minis for games that use gridded combat rules. On top of maps and dice, it also has character tokens and an initiative tracker.
• Roll20 is one of the oldest virtual tabletops out there, and probably supports more games than any other out there as well. Featuring a store to buy game rules and assets. Of course it’s still free to use if you don’t want the extras. It’s got worse performance and isn’t as pretty as either Role or Owlbear Rodeo, but probably has the most community support available due to its popularity.

Virtual Playing Cards

If you’re playing a game that uses cards instead of, or in addition to dice, you’ll also need access to playing cards. While it’s likely that you have an old deck lying around somewhere, there are still options available if that’s not the case, or if you’re trying to play online. First up, we have our virtual tabletops. As mentioned above, both Role and Roll20 have cards available. Another option is to use PlayingCards.io. While it’s meant for playing actual card games, you can create a lobby with no specific game rules, and just deal out, play, and discard cards as you see fit.

Virtual Tarot Cards

Tarot Cards are one of the hardest ones to emulate. Many of the free tarot card options out there don’t work especially well for RPGs for a number of reasons. The first being that tarot cards are often associated with divination today, and many websites are specifically for that. Another is that most of these tarot websites don’t work for multiple players. That being said, I did find a couple of options that could work for you.

• Moonlight is a tarot website that is still meant for divination, but it is built for doing live readings, so it supports having more than one person in the app at a time.
• PlayingCards.io supports custom card decks of any size, so you could download A PlayingCards.io Custom Tarot Deck to use
• Tabletop Simulator is technically not free. So this is only free if you already own TTS on steam, because what is free is Tarot Card Mods for the game.

Web App Alternative to a Jenga Tower

A few games like Dread and Starcrossed use a Tumbling Block Tower as their resolution mechanic (technically the name Jenga is copyrighted so you can’t reference it in your games). There’s really no good option for doing a block tower online, though there might be one you could use at your local library, community center, or game store. However, since we want this list to be accessible to everyone, there is a web app called Tension built for this specific purpose.

Maps & Tokens

If you’re using a virtual tabletop with a game that uses maps, you’re likely going to need tokens to represent the various characters in the game, and maps to put them on.

• Game Icons has a collection of over 4000 free icons that you can use in your games
• RPG Mape Share is a website specifically for sharing maps and tokens to use in virtual tabletops and all of them are completely free
• 2 Minute Tabletop has a very large collection of maps and other assets. It also features a Token Editor to customize the look of your tokens. Not all of the assets for free, but many of them are, and you can filter your maps by Pay What You Want/Free
• HeroForge is technically a website to build custom minis which can then be 3D printed and sent to you in the mail. However, it’s very common to make the mini of your character, and simply take screenshots to use as character portraits or tokens.
• Picrew is a japanese web app for making 2D avatars. Instead of being a singular collection, people can make their own picrew generators using their own art and upload it to picrew for people to use. Some examples are this Sci-Fi OC character maker and this Fantasy OC Character Maker

People

For most role playing games, you’ll need other people to play with. Forunately, if you have friends that already want to play with you, then you can skip this section! Otherwise, keep reading and we’ll give you some options.

Local Games

If you want to play in person, that usually means looking for places that host games locally. Look at places like your local library, community centers, and game stores. Often times they will have game nights that are free to join. Sometimes you’ll find that bars and other venues host D&D nights as well. If you are in school, many schools have clubs for D&D or other RPGs, and if they don’t, you could look into starting one. You can also look into a local facebook group or subreddit and ask who is interested in RPGs, where they play, etc.

Online Games

There is no shortage of ways to find players to play with you online. Of course, you could join our own Titterpig Academy Discord, though there are countless other discords for RPGs out there as well. Some specific to certain publishers, games, etc. Additionally there are Facebook Groups for gamers and nerds of all kinds that often will form ttrpg groups, the Looking for Group subreddit, or simply asking on social media if you happen to be active on platforms like tiktok or bluesky.

Solo Games

There is also the option to just not look for other people at all. Some games can be played completely alone. Games like Delve, Quests over Coffee, Princess with a Cursed Sword, and Ironsworn are free and designed for solo play. Ironsworn being the one exception on the list that supports solo, co-op, or traditional play with a GM.

Other Misc Items

So now you have a game, dice (or cards, or…), and people to play with. What’s left? While not technically necessary, there are some things that can be very helpful when playing, or especially when running RPGs. Generators (not generative AI, that’s a different thing) are super useful ways to help inspire you on either side of the table in an RPG. Adventures are also incredibly useful to some game runners. As well as other resources like like bestiaries and lists of magic items.

• Fantasy Name Generators is the first resource on our list, as it’s a great way to get names for different characters of fantasy races, real world cultures, locations, and basically anything else you could think of
• Donjon has a collection of many generators for many different games that is incredibly useful. You can get names, quests, locations, even maps.
• GM’s Apprentice is a very quick way to get inspiration for an adventure
• Tomb of the Serpent Kings is a fantastic free adventure that helps you learn how to run games
• Itch.io has a collection of free tools, adventures, and bestiaries that will undoubtedly have something that you will find useful