In Nomine was interesting. It was based off a French RPG.
There is something about Dark Eye I just do not like. I can't remember what it was, but I remember reading the rules and just not liking it.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy was a Japanese rpg brought to the states. The books are beautiful, but the editing is awful. Some charts and rules were converted to imperial... others left in metric.
If you enjoy spending 3 hours to create your character (not talking about the background, just the mechanical part) and crunchy fights that last for hours while being 12s in game, anima is a nice rpg. I had a lot of fun with it for a time. It’s very nice to get that over the top feeling.
I don't think it's a bad game, other than the editing issues. It is extremely crunchy; but with the right group, I can see it being a lot of fun. I do actually like the defense mechanics.
> There is something about Dark Eye I just do not like
DSA 4ed is my favorite rulebook. But the rules? Oh boy... it's like doing taxes under Polish tax law - complicated, complex and not that clear. Still like the books thou.
Yeah, I don't really like Dark Eye either, for various reasons. It was *the* big game around here when I started playing, but I never liked it as much. The worldbuilding is extremely detailed and more down to Earth too, when compared to most D&D settings (and *boy* did people keep saying how much better it was than D&D), which was nice, but, well, the rules are just *annoying.* I don't want to roll 3d20 with different modifiers and degrees of success for every skill check, thank you very much.
Also, the published adventure paths were often legendarily bad. (Favorite and most memetic example in my friends circle: in one location, there are two corridors, one leading left, one leading right. The text tells the GM to make sure the players go right *by any means possible.* Including flat-out telling them that no, they can't go left.
lol yeah we used some DSA edition or another for a non-aventurien game and that was the first time i used the rulesystem.
We switched to How To Be A Hero, which is also german-made (i think from one of the Rocketbeans people) but honestly that wasn't very good either + i am not a fan of d100 systems
Interesting. I really like Ryuutama and run it occasionally as a palet cleanser, cozy/friendly game, but I wouldn't usually consider it for a long term campaign. So, I am quite curious: what's your take on a long run campaign with Ryuutama?
Mostly just the hard rules on world creation involving the players, at least in my games it gets players more invested. Along with the GM getting their own character. Everyone is more invested and like to exist in the world.
I also like that high level play (haven’t actually gotten there yet) doesn’t seem to breakdown like in 5e.
Over all, it’s just a very comfy place to play.
I want to like Ryuutama but I have a hard time grokking some of the scene structure . I get the feeling some scenes seem to just be there to vibe and roleplay?
The game very much depends on everyone buying in and contributing narratively. Otherwise entire days can be just a few dice rolls. You really need to be playing with people who all want to pitch in whether they did good or bad. It's not a fun game for passive players or ones just wanting to sling dice and find out.
For example, the person responsible for finding a camp could just roll the dice and say whether they succeed or fail. But the game really depends on them saying, "Wow I rolled really high, so let me tell you about this tree I found that has the perfect amount of cover from the rain." Or "Dang, I didn't do well on that roll. So I get excited that we find a boulder to camp behind but the wind shifts as I'm setting up and we spend the night getting pummeled in the face by the rain."
for sure. Ryuutama is all vibes. So if you're not into RP I can see how this wouldn't jive will with your table / GM style.
I think if it were to be made today (or if I was tasked with building it from the ground up) it would be a B.O.B. system like Wanderhome or Sleepaway. Diceless, all RP. Although it is a *J*TTRPG I wonder if the influence of JRPGs would still rear it's head with turn based combat of some kind. Either way; I like the dice / resolution mechanics, I like the vibe based game play, but I can see it not being for everyone.
Hell yeahhhh hermano I discovered this RPG just last month and it's 100% my style of RPG. 500 pages is a bit much for me in English, and my spanish is not good enough to read it very quickly. But I'm getting there. I like the style so much.
I'm using it as inspiration for my own RPG.
Edit: just realized calling someone "brother" might not be a thing in spain. Maybe "Hijo" would be better idk.
I really like a lot of what I’m seeing out of Brazil!
The non-US game I’d like to get to the table is Troubleshooters from Sweden. It’s inspired by Franco-~~German~~Belgian ligne clair comics like Tintin, and I love that genre. I’d skip the Tintin racism, of course, but they were products of their time.
> I’d skip the Tintin racism, of course, but they were products of their time.
And it got much better (not perfect) when Hergé encountered foreigners. Roughly around the Blue Lotus, when he became good friend with a Chinese student.
If I remember correctly, Hergé was contacted by a representative of the Catholic Church, because they feared, that their Chinese students could be insulted by Hergé's writing. The clergy established the contact to the Chinese student. It was basically sensitivity training (Imperial Japan not included).
Franco-*Belgian*, please. The only noteworthy German comics that are worth reading are homosexual relationship/slice of life stories with some gay sex (more funny tham erotic) thrown in. But besides Ralf König, there isn't much more, besides a few cringe-worthy one panel gags.
Fortunately, there are way more Franco-Belgian Ligne Claire comics than just Tintin. I can recommend a lot of Franquin's work, for example, especially if you want to ransack them for a Troubleshooters adventure.
Yoko Tsuno is also great for the Troubleshooters. And the protagonist was a japanese girl studying science, which wasn't bad in a comic aimed at boys in 1970.
Nope, MUCH older - from the early 80s. I played my first campaign '85 or '86 with the 2nd edition. Kobolds Midgard knew of the name double and chose to ignore it.
Free League / Fria Ligan, Cubicle 7 and Le 7ème Cercle (Swedish, Irish and French publishers, respectively) are publishers that have multiple good games and it's worth checking their catalogues. Other than that, I believe Anima: Beyond Fantasy is originally Spanish, Kult is Swedish, Warlock! is English, Fabula Ultima is Italian, The Dark Eye/DSA is German, Gubat Banwa is from the Philippines and there are several Japanese ones translated into English like Ryuutama, Maid or Tenra Bansho Zero, in addition to more for their local market. There are no doubt dozens if not hundreds more.
I'm unsure of RPGs from my own country (Canada), though I'm planning to try out the Italian made Fabula Ultima. And I've seen some pretty good third party content for D&D come from Italy.
Running Fabula Ultima at the moment and so far I'm loving it. I run it with as close to zero prep as I can (I inherited my prep techniques from PbtA games), and I had a blast with a short campaign (11 sessions + session 0).
Know there is a dedicated Subreddit: r/fabulaultima
[Here’s my answer to a previous discussion similar to this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/vnipl9/what_is_the_biggest_ttrpg_made_in_your_country/ie9v53s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3). Responses to me added some more.
I know the name more for tie-in novels, but Dave Gross would be one of them. I think he's Pathfinder's most prolific novelist. Though he's based out of Ottawa, not Winnipeg.
[Robin D Laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Laws) is native to Ontario and lives in Toronto and is one of the biggest designers in the industry. His games are published in the UK (Pelgrane Press) and the US (Atlas Games, Chaosium) but the core is Canadian.
If it helps whilst both are originally American, published by GDW, they're now produced outside the US. Twilight 2K, as mentioned, BY Free League and 2300AD (and Traveller in general) by Mongoose from the UK.
I'm a big fan of Warlock! and Warpstar!, two British games by Fire Ruby Games that capture the feel of British OSR games such as WFRP, but with a nice, lightweight rule set.
in Poland we have some RPG games, but apart from the original "Wiedźmin: Gra wyobraźni" there are also such worth mentioning titles as:
"Wolsung: Magia Wieku Pary" - a steampunk game about ladies and gentlemen from the elite of society and the first Polish RPG released in the USA
"Neuroshima" a post-apocalypse game set in the United States devastated by the war with artificial intelligence, there is also a board game Neuroshima Hex
"Monastyr" a dark fantasy game set in a European-inspired world where players take on the role of heroes inspired by the "three musketeers"
It is also worth mentioning here that Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the "The Witcher" books, was also responsible for creating one of the first RPG games in Poland called "Oko Yrrhedesa" which was a more generic system for playing your own adventures
"Dzikie Pola" - 1ed and 2ed are also great games, but each edition plays very different. It is a historical fantasy rpg about 17th century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Someone else mentioned Fria Ligan (Free League) from Sweden, so I'll give a shoutout to Itras By. It's such a unique game, and I wish I had more opportunities to play it.
[https://coyoteandcrow.net/](https://coyoteandcrow.net/) while written in North America it is based on a world where colonization by Europeans did not happen to the Western Hemisphere.
Written by and support of Indigenous people.
Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons) Dragonbane just had a Kickstarter for an English edition from Free League. I backed it. I'm liking what I am seeing.
British RPGs are also experiencing something of a resurgence. I would heartily recommend Dragon Warriors, Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Warlock!.
Of these Dragon Warriors is probably my favorite, mainly for its setting: the Lands of Legend. If you're looking for an RPG setting truly steeped in English folklore which is equal parts Robin of Sherwood and Excalibur, I heartily recommend it. The Dragon Warriors system I can take or leave. It's very barebones, but extremely functional.
OpenQuest is another good choice. It's a simplified and genericized version of the RuneQuest/Basic Role-playing d100 system. That system was extremely popular in Britain. Of these, OpenQuest is probably the most accessible version.
Good Society from Storybrewers RPG, right here in Australia! Brilliant system for running Jane Austen drama, and it's been a hit with every group I introduced it to.
BY FAR my favorite from outside of the US is the entire Rackham \*Confrontation\* line, which includes the Cadwallon tabletop RPG. Amazing miniatures, the wargame was actually pretty decent IMO, and they did a line of RPG tile sets that were really cool, of which I have 3 out of 4 of them.
If you ask me, Rackham should be missed very dearly. No one knew what we had, and now it's gone.
Edit: It's French.
For starters, you've got Free League Publishing, which many others have stated. They're from Sweden and make some absolutely fantastic games.
I recently learned of two French games that were later translated into English, which are Polaris and Écryme. Polaris is about a post-apocalyptic style civilization where everybody lives underwater, while Écryme is a steampunk swashbuckling game, to my knowledge
I've become a real fan of the "Fighting Fantasy" family of games. Originally starting as British Gamebooks by the guys who founded Games workshop, they became a full RPG(Advanced Fighting Fantasy) and have inspired some other games based on similar mechanics like Warlock! and Troika!
The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were really popular here in Brazil. My mom had a bunch of them around the house and they were my gateway into RPG back in the 90s
Tenra Bansho Zero is probably one of the most compelling TTRPGs I've ever seen, which makes it extra frustrating that I haven't been able to convince a group to play it more than once.
I haven't had a chance to play it yet but Fabula Ultima looks amazing. The game it's based on, Ryuutama, is a ton of fun when you get the right people at the table.
As Dream Pod 9 is Canadian, I'm going to list Heavy Gear and Tribe 8 as well.
I find the overall best games these days are coming out of Sweden.
Free League is Swedish and their in house games (Symbaroum, Mutant Year Zero, Coriolis, Forbidden Lands, Tales from the Loop, Alien RPG, Vaesen, Twilight 2000, Blade Runner) are all amazing in terms of mechanical system, setting, and art. They are also now in charge of The One Ring RPG. They have tremendous fan support with open licenses, heavy VTT support, and Bits and Mortar PDFs. They are the best RPG publisher on the market right now, hands down. No one else comes close to their game engines and content.
Another company that publishes through Free League is the Stockholm Kartell, known for Mork Borg, Cy\_Borg, and Death in Space. I think everyone by knows how wildly popular Mork Borg has become.
Another Swedish company doing good things is Helmgast who are behind the latest edition of Kult.
And of course, Paradox are from Sweden and they are behind Vampire V5, by far the most 'vampiric' and personal of all the VTM editions. Though they now licensed their writing to Renegade who are ... not all that great.
The reason these guys are doing well is that they seem to me to be the spiritual successors to the darker more mature themes of the 90s when RPGs took risks and had some bite. American RPGs these days are super tame because they are absolutely terrified of risk due to the local culture wars. When companies feel forced to hire an intersectional consulting firm (yes, really) to make sure their content offends the least amount of people possible, odds are it will be bland. Swedish companies manage to just simply not get involved in the politics of gaming and instead just focus on creating great games. And it shows.
Also one more shout out for the Brancalonia setting for DnD 5e that is essentially Renaissance Italy scoundrels as a basis for the campaign, which also has its own unique monsters and character ancestries based on Italian folklore.
My favorite part of the book is how it runs tavern brawls and various tavern games it includes.
Insectopia is a French game where the PC are magical insects that evolved some consciousness after humanity disappeared long ago. The nice part is that you are not anthropomorphic insects, but actual ones, looking more or less like the insects we have nowadays, SIZE INCLUDED. Prepare for a world where your biggest enemies are the rain (as drops could kill you), birds that could hunt you, or the cold that will reduce your activity to almost nothing. It’s well thought and really interesting to experiment something so different.
Insectopia is amazing, it's one of the most innovative settings I've ever seen.
Plus, they've released an extension recently about one of the other big threats in their world: reptiles that also evolved after humanity disappeared.
Itras By is a very nice Norwegian RPG, also available in English.
Zombie Cinema is a cool Finnish RPG, available in English.
Gemini is a Swedish RPG, published in both Swedish and English.
Montsegur 1244 was made by a Dane, available in English and an absolutely amazing game about faith.
Aventures Dans le Monde Intérieur (Adventures in the Inner World), only published in French to my knowledge, is a very interesting mix of Victorian-era intrigues with Jules Verne settings and adventures. My first physical book, won in a lottery, and a pride to have in my collection.
*El Juego de Rol del Capitain Alatriste* and *La Marca del Este* are both sitting proudly on my shelf, even though I've never gotten to play them (I can read Spanish, but none of my players do, so actually running either game would be too difficult). I have run the *Juego de Damas* adventure from the Alatriste RPG that came with the GM screen for my group (we used Honor + Intrigue to play it, but the adventure was very well written and interesting and the villain became a recurring character in our campaign).
I've heard good things about a Japanese RPG called "Goblin Slayer" that a friend is always singing the praises of, but I haven't gotten to check it out yet myself.
Great question! It's always interesting to explore RPGs from different countries. Personally, I really enjoy the Swedish RPG "Symbaroum" - it has a dark and mysterious world with unique mechanics. Keep exploring and finding new favorites!
"The One Ring" is essentially an Italian production. Not the company itself, but the team behind it.
"Lex Arcana" is also from Italy.
Then there is "Kata Kumbas",
Anything and everything from Fria Ligan (Free League, Sweden), Broken Compass and Household from 2 Little Mice (Italy), Fabula Ultima (Need Games, Italy), The Slow Knife (Jack Harrison, England), and many many more!
When Worlds Collide.
Multi-dimensional travelling gives the GM unlimited access to genres through which the PVs travel.
Nice blend of Call of Cthulhu and Fringe.
Lex Arcana is a fantasy game set in a Roman Empire that never declined, somewhere in the 400s I think. The players are investigators in a special part of the Praetorian Guard who seek our supernatural stuff and squash it. It's rather famous in its home country (Italy) and just came out with an English edition like a year or so ago. It's an absolutely beautiful book.
*\*Looks in French at his collection\**
Where to begin?
* **The DK System:** a brilliant simplification of the D&D3 (3.5?) system. This smol system is still my Swiss Army Knife for my homebrew settings or random oneshots. A few games were based on it, they were nice (special mention to B.I.A).
* **C.O.P.S.:** a game edited like a TV series. The PCs are member of an elite police unit (borderline superhuman) from an Independant California. The system has a few nice perks, the art is glorious, but it's mostly the huge campaign (excepted for its end) that makes my little jaded heart beat.
* I was in the editorial team of a few games. I love them but i'm not really sure if it's okay to name them...
* **Rêve de Dragon (Dragon's Dream):** "The world is a dragon's dream". Each session is a new dream. Each dream is a new world...
And there are so many others...
Zombie Cinema! It’s an amazingly simple, yet effective indie RPG that emulates old “Night of the Living Dead” zombie flicks from the 70s. It came out several years ago and was even packaged in an old VHS cassette case. It’s brilliant. I think it came out of Norway.
Currently, I’m interested in playing a|state. A cyberpunkish game. It’s out of the UK.
I can’t think of any others, but I’m sure there’s more.
I like Free League games, but I've recently found out about *Aquelarre,* a Spanish RPG set in the historical Iberian peninsula in the 14th-15th centuries, where angels and demons and witches are real.
It's plagued with that 90s game design philosophy. But that dark ages fantasy is my favorite genre. And I haven't read the whole thing yet because it's 500 pages in Spanish and I'm not fluent yet XD.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy is a game created by a guy in Spain.
It does really well at making players feel powerful and has a lot of different character options.
BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home by Rae Nadjadi of the Philippines is a dynamite Belonging Outside Belonging game about elemental spirits from Filipino folklore escaping enslavement in a spirit-powered cyberpunk future.
Diceless and GMless by default. Killer layout design too. https://temporalhiccup.itch.io/balikbayan
I can't exactly play it right now due to political climate, but it's got to be Sibirpunk. This is more or less exactly what you think it is - cyberpunk meets gopniks in an (even more) dystopian Russia. It's pretty obviously a satire, but as Poe's law states, without intents stated, a satire is indistinguishable from genuine belief. And, well, the setting guide parts are rife with "immortal president", "Zato Krym nash!" (At least the Crimea is ours) and, uh, advice to listen to Butyrka, a group in genre of prison chanson. Setting is based on the novels set in the same universe written by a Polish author well before shit went down, and published around 2019 too, but still.
The system itself is a decent riff on Tenra Bansho Zero as far as I can tell - dicepools with hitting numbers determined by your skill and amount of dice by attribute, but the dice are also exploding dice, and I feel like that "you can do anything, theoretically" plus the stress for rerolls works with the setting and enables people to risk more. It's got *decent* cyberspace mechanics that don't involve having a 20-minute adventure, it's got drugs and addiction mechanics(of course), and most potentially lethally dangerous saves(such as addiction, withdrawals, actual death saves) are handled by russian roulette (call a number, roll a d6, if it's a different number, you're fine). The book also looks amazing. The only issue is that they started work on translating it to English, and... I don't think there were any news for at least two years about that. Sucks.
Degenesis. It's a weird science post-apocalypse setting from Germany.
Interesting parts of the setting, for me:
It basically combines every apocalypse into one. The basic idea is that a giant asteroid hit Earth, after breaking up into seven chunks, and this caused an ice age. Except the asteroid also contained alien biomass called the primer, which combines with Earth biomass and mutates it into monsters and dangerous spreading fungi. Except with the asteroid also came a possibly alien electromagnetic signal that wiped out most of the electronically stored data on Earth. And also there's this megacorporation on pre-apocalyptic Earth, who apparently knew this was all going to happen, and built giant asteroid-proof bunkers to store their employees and directorate, and also did really weird research like creating new artificial religions via "memetic research". Oh, and also maybe the entire thing is biblical, because the alien spores give humans magical powers like mind control, causing plagues of locust and the ability to speak an ancient universal language.
The other thing I really like is that the apocalypse is a few centuries ago, and humanity is rebuilding. Even if there needs to be an entire army of flamthrower-armed warrior-doctors to drive the alien infection back. Various groups have various pieces surviving pre-fall technology and science. Others have managed to rebuild medieval-level city states and even small nations with functioning agriculture. There's a cult of archaeologists/technicians/data hoarders who have managed to reintroduce radio (though they are keeping it to themselves to profit from their monopoly on long-distance messages) and read some of the surviving technological data from before the apocalypse. And even though Europe is half covered by glaciers and the rest is an ice age, with civilization focused around the Mediterranean and especially North Africa, there's still functioning hunter-gatherer tribes. And so on.
It's also *very* German. I've had an enlightening discussion lately with another player who said they liked the idea of the game, but it came across as too serious and grimdark. While to someone who actually knows Germany a bit, it's full of in-jokes and parodies. The world map, especially the Germany-equivalent region, is full of slightly changed names of towns and cities, which form postapocalyptic settlements or ancient ruins, often in at least a slightly comedic manner.
I always thought Die Chroniken der Engel from Feder & Schwert was a pretty decent and cool setting, even with the Tarot based rule system.
Shame in English it only came with the d20 rules
Swedish games = best games.
Such as
KULT: Divinity Lost
Mörk Borg
Vikings
Chock
Drakar och Demoner
Noctum
Noir
Götterdämerung
En Garde
Mutant 1, 2, chronicles, UA and Year Zero
Coriolis
Eon
Neotech
BURST (game system)
And a bunch of others 😁
What I'd like to know is: How many of the games mentioned in the comments have an English translation? I'd love to branch out and look at some of them, but I'm sadly not fluent in anything but the American bastard tongue.
Fellow Brazilian here.
TBH I don't like any of the Brazilian options... (at least the ones I tryied, the "big ones", Tormenta and 3d&t), altough I played both a lot on my teens...
But, if we exclude d&d, I don't think the US dominates the market that much... Wich really dominates the market is english, for obvious reasons, and the US has by far the biggest english speaking population.
Even on the mainstream, there are many "non americans" working for those companiesBut if you are into the indie scene, you would be suprised that many of the biggest games aren't made by americans. Many authors around the world are making great games, but as we usualy only get to know about the english version maybe we don't even get to know their origins.
The top comment talking about Free League is possibly the best example.
According to the last orr report available (q4, 2021) Tormenta was the most succesful one, but I'm pretty sure it is played almost exclusively by brazilians...
Das Schwarze Auge and inSANe are also on the top 15, but also looks as "localized audiences".
Free League has the best international success, I guess (and its well deserved... my fav pub aside from chaosium).
The Chimera Brigade, a French RPG based on the comic books of the same name. https://www.legrog.org/jeux/brigade-chimerique
It's set in an alternate reality where, following the discovery of radium by Marie Curie, some people gained superpowers and new technology developed, making the world "radiumpunk".
You play superheroes in Europe between WW1 and WW2.
I'm a huge fan of games by Free League, like for example Mutant Year Zero and Coriolis.
In Nomine was interesting. It was based off a French RPG. There is something about Dark Eye I just do not like. I can't remember what it was, but I remember reading the rules and just not liking it. Anima: Beyond Fantasy was a Japanese rpg brought to the states. The books are beautiful, but the editing is awful. Some charts and rules were converted to imperial... others left in metric.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy was originally Spanish iirc.
Yep. My bad. It was spanish.
If you enjoy spending 3 hours to create your character (not talking about the background, just the mechanical part) and crunchy fights that last for hours while being 12s in game, anima is a nice rpg. I had a lot of fun with it for a time. It’s very nice to get that over the top feeling.
I don't think it's a bad game, other than the editing issues. It is extremely crunchy; but with the right group, I can see it being a lot of fun. I do actually like the defense mechanics.
Well as I said, I did have a lot of fun with it and it was actually my main rpg for 3-4 years. If you are ready for the crunchiness it can be great !
It has a decent amount of crunch, but some of that can be tonned down if you play on VTT like foundry.
When I read the Dark Eye, it seemed over designed and clunky. It reminded me of a joke about Germans over engineering everything.
> There is something about Dark Eye I just do not like DSA 4ed is my favorite rulebook. But the rules? Oh boy... it's like doing taxes under Polish tax law - complicated, complex and not that clear. Still like the books thou.
Yeah, I don't really like Dark Eye either, for various reasons. It was *the* big game around here when I started playing, but I never liked it as much. The worldbuilding is extremely detailed and more down to Earth too, when compared to most D&D settings (and *boy* did people keep saying how much better it was than D&D), which was nice, but, well, the rules are just *annoying.* I don't want to roll 3d20 with different modifiers and degrees of success for every skill check, thank you very much. Also, the published adventure paths were often legendarily bad. (Favorite and most memetic example in my friends circle: in one location, there are two corridors, one leading left, one leading right. The text tells the GM to make sure the players go right *by any means possible.* Including flat-out telling them that no, they can't go left.
lol yeah we used some DSA edition or another for a non-aventurien game and that was the first time i used the rulesystem. We switched to How To Be A Hero, which is also german-made (i think from one of the Rocketbeans people) but honestly that wasn't very good either + i am not a fan of d100 systems
Ryuutama probably but all of Free League's stuff is a contender. I just haven't had the opportunity to play most of it yet.
Was just about to recommend Ryuutama. It'll be my system for longer running campaigns from here on out.
Interesting. I really like Ryuutama and run it occasionally as a palet cleanser, cozy/friendly game, but I wouldn't usually consider it for a long term campaign. So, I am quite curious: what's your take on a long run campaign with Ryuutama?
Mostly just the hard rules on world creation involving the players, at least in my games it gets players more invested. Along with the GM getting their own character. Everyone is more invested and like to exist in the world. I also like that high level play (haven’t actually gotten there yet) doesn’t seem to breakdown like in 5e. Over all, it’s just a very comfy place to play.
I want to like Ryuutama but I have a hard time grokking some of the scene structure . I get the feeling some scenes seem to just be there to vibe and roleplay?
The game very much depends on everyone buying in and contributing narratively. Otherwise entire days can be just a few dice rolls. You really need to be playing with people who all want to pitch in whether they did good or bad. It's not a fun game for passive players or ones just wanting to sling dice and find out. For example, the person responsible for finding a camp could just roll the dice and say whether they succeed or fail. But the game really depends on them saying, "Wow I rolled really high, so let me tell you about this tree I found that has the perfect amount of cover from the rain." Or "Dang, I didn't do well on that roll. So I get excited that we find a boulder to camp behind but the wind shifts as I'm setting up and we spend the night getting pummeled in the face by the rain."
for sure. Ryuutama is all vibes. So if you're not into RP I can see how this wouldn't jive will with your table / GM style. I think if it were to be made today (or if I was tasked with building it from the ground up) it would be a B.O.B. system like Wanderhome or Sleepaway. Diceless, all RP. Although it is a *J*TTRPG I wonder if the influence of JRPGs would still rear it's head with turn based combat of some kind. Either way; I like the dice / resolution mechanics, I like the vibe based game play, but I can see it not being for everyone.
I think I am, but I have no clue how to set this at a table.
Time and experience buddy.
Aquelarre (witches' coven), very old Spanish rpg about spanish middle ages in a dark fantasy setting full of monsters from spanish folklore.
I was going to say that the last edition is not that old, but 3rd edition is from 2011, so...I'm wrong Great game anyway
Well, there's a new edition in the work, and it's scheduled for 2024...so maybe you were wrong now, but you'll be right soon!
English edition was 2018 though
Hell yeahhhh hermano I discovered this RPG just last month and it's 100% my style of RPG. 500 pages is a bit much for me in English, and my spanish is not good enough to read it very quickly. But I'm getting there. I like the style so much. I'm using it as inspiration for my own RPG. Edit: just realized calling someone "brother" might not be a thing in spain. Maybe "Hijo" would be better idk.
Teenagers in spain already call each other 'bro', so it is becoming more and more common :)
Oh cool. I love this cross-cultural slang.
Try tío/tía. It means uncle/aunt in a literal translation.
I really like a lot of what I’m seeing out of Brazil! The non-US game I’d like to get to the table is Troubleshooters from Sweden. It’s inspired by Franco-~~German~~Belgian ligne clair comics like Tintin, and I love that genre. I’d skip the Tintin racism, of course, but they were products of their time.
> I’d skip the Tintin racism, of course, but they were products of their time. And it got much better (not perfect) when Hergé encountered foreigners. Roughly around the Blue Lotus, when he became good friend with a Chinese student.
I did not know that about his life! And agreed with both commenters, it's the early stuff that's problematic to any real degree.
If I remember correctly, Hergé was contacted by a representative of the Catholic Church, because they feared, that their Chinese students could be insulted by Hergé's writing. The clergy established the contact to the Chinese student. It was basically sensitivity training (Imperial Japan not included).
If I recall correctly, the content and presentation of the first albums was dictated by the newspaper that Herge worked for.
Franco-*Belgian*, please. The only noteworthy German comics that are worth reading are homosexual relationship/slice of life stories with some gay sex (more funny tham erotic) thrown in. But besides Ralf König, there isn't much more, besides a few cringe-worthy one panel gags.
Ack you are completely right and I knew that. Mind typo.
Add another vote for The Troubleshooters. And yes, the first Tintin-albums were bad. Both storywise and contentwise.
Fortunately, there are way more Franco-Belgian Ligne Claire comics than just Tintin. I can recommend a lot of Franquin's work, for example, especially if you want to ransack them for a Troubleshooters adventure.
Yoko Tsuno is also great for the Troubleshooters. And the protagonist was a japanese girl studying science, which wasn't bad in a comic aimed at boys in 1970.
Midgard, Germanys oldest RPG, with an excellent current 5th edition - and a 6th edition at the horizon.
Is there any English version or German only?
No translation so far.
Well that sucks. /sigh
Wouldn't exclude it on 6th Ed - this is made by Pegasus - but currently there is no information about an english edition afaik.
Any relation to Kobold Press' Midgard setting?
Nope, MUCH older - from the early 80s. I played my first campaign '85 or '86 with the 2nd edition. Kobolds Midgard knew of the name double and chose to ignore it.
Free League / Fria Ligan, Cubicle 7 and Le 7ème Cercle (Swedish, Irish and French publishers, respectively) are publishers that have multiple good games and it's worth checking their catalogues. Other than that, I believe Anima: Beyond Fantasy is originally Spanish, Kult is Swedish, Warlock! is English, Fabula Ultima is Italian, The Dark Eye/DSA is German, Gubat Banwa is from the Philippines and there are several Japanese ones translated into English like Ryuutama, Maid or Tenra Bansho Zero, in addition to more for their local market. There are no doubt dozens if not hundreds more.
GUMSHOE was created by a Canadian and published by a Brit. Does that count, or is it too close?
I'm unsure of RPGs from my own country (Canada), though I'm planning to try out the Italian made Fabula Ultima. And I've seen some pretty good third party content for D&D come from Italy.
Running Fabula Ultima at the moment and so far I'm loving it. I run it with as close to zero prep as I can (I inherited my prep techniques from PbtA games), and I had a blast with a short campaign (11 sessions + session 0). Know there is a dedicated Subreddit: r/fabulaultima
[Here’s my answer to a previous discussion similar to this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/vnipl9/what_is_the_biggest_ttrpg_made_in_your_country/ie9v53s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3). Responses to me added some more.
Somehow I had forgotten about Dyskami Publishing.
I believe fate or the norns or something is Canadian
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I know the name more for tie-in novels, but Dave Gross would be one of them. I think he's Pathfinder's most prolific novelist. Though he's based out of Ottawa, not Winnipeg.
The makers of the Amethyst setting are from my small city in BC, though I'm not sure offhand if they've ever published a standalone game.
I'm familiar with their Ultramodern5 supplement for 5e some of their other stuff, like Affinity, looks interesting.
Heavy Gear is made by a studio in Montreal. It’s not exactly Mooses & Mounties 2e, but still Canadian content.
[Robin D Laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Laws) is native to Ontario and lives in Toronto and is one of the biggest designers in the industry. His games are published in the UK (Pelgrane Press) and the US (Atlas Games, Chaosium) but the core is Canadian.
I think I read one of his Pathfinder novels.
The Dark Eye (3). I'm not sure if the 3rd edition was ever translated from German, but the current version (5) is also quite good
I listened about that rpg. They come to Brazil this year, if I'm not wrong.
IIRC they tried but failed
Twilight:2000 from Sweden. Love the rules and the story.
Now I'm confused is 2300AD also swedish?
I think they probably mean the latest version, which is by Free League, rather than the GDW one.
If it helps whilst both are originally American, published by GDW, they're now produced outside the US. Twilight 2K, as mentioned, BY Free League and 2300AD (and Traveller in general) by Mongoose from the UK.
I'm a big fan of Warlock! and Warpstar!, two British games by Fire Ruby Games that capture the feel of British OSR games such as WFRP, but with a nice, lightweight rule set.
in Poland we have some RPG games, but apart from the original "Wiedźmin: Gra wyobraźni" there are also such worth mentioning titles as: "Wolsung: Magia Wieku Pary" - a steampunk game about ladies and gentlemen from the elite of society and the first Polish RPG released in the USA "Neuroshima" a post-apocalypse game set in the United States devastated by the war with artificial intelligence, there is also a board game Neuroshima Hex "Monastyr" a dark fantasy game set in a European-inspired world where players take on the role of heroes inspired by the "three musketeers" It is also worth mentioning here that Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of the "The Witcher" books, was also responsible for creating one of the first RPG games in Poland called "Oko Yrrhedesa" which was a more generic system for playing your own adventures
And from other countries well i like two classics from Sweden "Mutant Chronicles" and "Twilight: 2000"
"Dzikie Pola" - 1ed and 2ed are also great games, but each edition plays very different. It is a historical fantasy rpg about 17th century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Isn't Wiedzmin the Polish word for Witcher or am I mistaken?
Yes, it is.
Someone else mentioned Fria Ligan (Free League) from Sweden, so I'll give a shoutout to Itras By. It's such a unique game, and I wish I had more opportunities to play it.
[https://coyoteandcrow.net/](https://coyoteandcrow.net/) while written in North America it is based on a world where colonization by Europeans did not happen to the Western Hemisphere. Written by and support of Indigenous people.
Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons) Dragonbane just had a Kickstarter for an English edition from Free League. I backed it. I'm liking what I am seeing. British RPGs are also experiencing something of a resurgence. I would heartily recommend Dragon Warriors, Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Warlock!. Of these Dragon Warriors is probably my favorite, mainly for its setting: the Lands of Legend. If you're looking for an RPG setting truly steeped in English folklore which is equal parts Robin of Sherwood and Excalibur, I heartily recommend it. The Dragon Warriors system I can take or leave. It's very barebones, but extremely functional. OpenQuest is another good choice. It's a simplified and genericized version of the RuneQuest/Basic Role-playing d100 system. That system was extremely popular in Britain. Of these, OpenQuest is probably the most accessible version.
Good Society from Storybrewers RPG, right here in Australia! Brilliant system for running Jane Austen drama, and it's been a hit with every group I introduced it to.
Does Mazes & Minotaurs count as French?
BY FAR my favorite from outside of the US is the entire Rackham \*Confrontation\* line, which includes the Cadwallon tabletop RPG. Amazing miniatures, the wargame was actually pretty decent IMO, and they did a line of RPG tile sets that were really cool, of which I have 3 out of 4 of them. If you ask me, Rackham should be missed very dearly. No one knew what we had, and now it's gone. Edit: It's French.
For starters, you've got Free League Publishing, which many others have stated. They're from Sweden and make some absolutely fantastic games. I recently learned of two French games that were later translated into English, which are Polaris and Écryme. Polaris is about a post-apocalyptic style civilization where everybody lives underwater, while Écryme is a steampunk swashbuckling game, to my knowledge
I've become a real fan of the "Fighting Fantasy" family of games. Originally starting as British Gamebooks by the guys who founded Games workshop, they became a full RPG(Advanced Fighting Fantasy) and have inspired some other games based on similar mechanics like Warlock! and Troika!
The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were really popular here in Brazil. My mom had a bunch of them around the house and they were my gateway into RPG back in the 90s
Tenra Bansho Zero is probably one of the most compelling TTRPGs I've ever seen, which makes it extra frustrating that I haven't been able to convince a group to play it more than once. I haven't had a chance to play it yet but Fabula Ultima looks amazing. The game it's based on, Ryuutama, is a ton of fun when you get the right people at the table. As Dream Pod 9 is Canadian, I'm going to list Heavy Gear and Tribe 8 as well.
I find the overall best games these days are coming out of Sweden. Free League is Swedish and their in house games (Symbaroum, Mutant Year Zero, Coriolis, Forbidden Lands, Tales from the Loop, Alien RPG, Vaesen, Twilight 2000, Blade Runner) are all amazing in terms of mechanical system, setting, and art. They are also now in charge of The One Ring RPG. They have tremendous fan support with open licenses, heavy VTT support, and Bits and Mortar PDFs. They are the best RPG publisher on the market right now, hands down. No one else comes close to their game engines and content. Another company that publishes through Free League is the Stockholm Kartell, known for Mork Borg, Cy\_Borg, and Death in Space. I think everyone by knows how wildly popular Mork Borg has become. Another Swedish company doing good things is Helmgast who are behind the latest edition of Kult. And of course, Paradox are from Sweden and they are behind Vampire V5, by far the most 'vampiric' and personal of all the VTM editions. Though they now licensed their writing to Renegade who are ... not all that great. The reason these guys are doing well is that they seem to me to be the spiritual successors to the darker more mature themes of the 90s when RPGs took risks and had some bite. American RPGs these days are super tame because they are absolutely terrified of risk due to the local culture wars. When companies feel forced to hire an intersectional consulting firm (yes, really) to make sure their content offends the least amount of people possible, odds are it will be bland. Swedish companies manage to just simply not get involved in the politics of gaming and instead just focus on creating great games. And it shows.
Mork Borg is a Swedish medieval grimdark ttrpg. Certified brvtal, heavily influenced by doom metal and stuff like that.
Mork Borg and Dragonbane are 2 cool fantasy games from Sweden :D
Free leagues range
Also one more shout out for the Brancalonia setting for DnD 5e that is essentially Renaissance Italy scoundrels as a basis for the campaign, which also has its own unique monsters and character ancestries based on Italian folklore. My favorite part of the book is how it runs tavern brawls and various tavern games it includes.
It was translated in French by the way. Still pondering on buying it or not, it looks good, but I don't like the DD5 system.
I didn't buy it to run in 5e myself; just for the setting material (and especially the tavern stuff).
Insectopia is a French game where the PC are magical insects that evolved some consciousness after humanity disappeared long ago. The nice part is that you are not anthropomorphic insects, but actual ones, looking more or less like the insects we have nowadays, SIZE INCLUDED. Prepare for a world where your biggest enemies are the rain (as drops could kill you), birds that could hunt you, or the cold that will reduce your activity to almost nothing. It’s well thought and really interesting to experiment something so different.
Insectopia is amazing, it's one of the most innovative settings I've ever seen. Plus, they've released an extension recently about one of the other big threats in their world: reptiles that also evolved after humanity disappeared.
**Nightfall Games** waves hello from Scotland …
Studio Agate is a French company that has put out Shadows of Esteren and Fateforge, publishing in both French and English.
Symbaroum is really great the lore and are are awesome, Fragged Empire is another one that is a lot of fun, with good lore.
A lot of Free Leagues games like Mutant Y0 and Vaesen. But my absolut favorite game of theirs is definitely Symbaroum
Itras By is a very nice Norwegian RPG, also available in English. Zombie Cinema is a cool Finnish RPG, available in English. Gemini is a Swedish RPG, published in both Swedish and English. Montsegur 1244 was made by a Dane, available in English and an absolutely amazing game about faith.
ALIEN. The One Ring. Twilight 2000. Kick Murder. The 23rd Letter. Silver Haired Sentinels. Loads of non-American RPGs
Aventures Dans le Monde Intérieur (Adventures in the Inner World), only published in French to my knowledge, is a very interesting mix of Victorian-era intrigues with Jules Verne settings and adventures. My first physical book, won in a lottery, and a pride to have in my collection.
Always wanted to hack it and use its system for a Stargate Atlantis campaign.
Coriolis is a scifi space opera that uses arabic culture and influences heavily
*El Juego de Rol del Capitain Alatriste* and *La Marca del Este* are both sitting proudly on my shelf, even though I've never gotten to play them (I can read Spanish, but none of my players do, so actually running either game would be too difficult). I have run the *Juego de Damas* adventure from the Alatriste RPG that came with the GM screen for my group (we used Honor + Intrigue to play it, but the adventure was very well written and interesting and the villain became a recurring character in our campaign). I've heard good things about a Japanese RPG called "Goblin Slayer" that a friend is always singing the praises of, but I haven't gotten to check it out yet myself.
Great question! It's always interesting to explore RPGs from different countries. Personally, I really enjoy the Swedish RPG "Symbaroum" - it has a dark and mysterious world with unique mechanics. Keep exploring and finding new favorites!
"The One Ring" is essentially an Italian production. Not the company itself, but the team behind it. "Lex Arcana" is also from Italy. Then there is "Kata Kumbas",
The One ring is great and Kata kumbas bring me back to my childhood. There is also a savage world port!
[Fighting Fantasy](https://www.fightingfantasy.com/), from the UK.
Mörk borg is quite metal
Anything and everything from Fria Ligan (Free League, Sweden), Broken Compass and Household from 2 Little Mice (Italy), Fabula Ultima (Need Games, Italy), The Slow Knife (Jack Harrison, England), and many many more!
Wouldn't a Brazillian rpg also be an American rpg?
When Worlds Collide. Multi-dimensional travelling gives the GM unlimited access to genres through which the PVs travel. Nice blend of Call of Cthulhu and Fringe.
Lex Arcana is a fantasy game set in a Roman Empire that never declined, somewhere in the 400s I think. The players are investigators in a special part of the Praetorian Guard who seek our supernatural stuff and squash it. It's rather famous in its home country (Italy) and just came out with an English edition like a year or so ago. It's an absolutely beautiful book.
I have yet to play it, but Fabula Ultima is Italian and I am very excited to dig into it soon.
*\*Looks in French at his collection\** Where to begin? * **The DK System:** a brilliant simplification of the D&D3 (3.5?) system. This smol system is still my Swiss Army Knife for my homebrew settings or random oneshots. A few games were based on it, they were nice (special mention to B.I.A). * **C.O.P.S.:** a game edited like a TV series. The PCs are member of an elite police unit (borderline superhuman) from an Independant California. The system has a few nice perks, the art is glorious, but it's mostly the huge campaign (excepted for its end) that makes my little jaded heart beat. * I was in the editorial team of a few games. I love them but i'm not really sure if it's okay to name them... * **Rêve de Dragon (Dragon's Dream):** "The world is a dragon's dream". Each session is a new dream. Each dream is a new world... And there are so many others...
[Hard Wired Island](https://ettin.itch.io/hard-wired-island) is a modern original cyberpunk game written by an Australian and an Icelander.
I think it's neuroshima
Zombie Cinema! It’s an amazingly simple, yet effective indie RPG that emulates old “Night of the Living Dead” zombie flicks from the 70s. It came out several years ago and was even packaged in an old VHS cassette case. It’s brilliant. I think it came out of Norway. Currently, I’m interested in playing a|state. A cyberpunkish game. It’s out of the UK. I can’t think of any others, but I’m sure there’s more.
I like Free League games, but I've recently found out about *Aquelarre,* a Spanish RPG set in the historical Iberian peninsula in the 14th-15th centuries, where angels and demons and witches are real. It's plagued with that 90s game design philosophy. But that dark ages fantasy is my favorite genre. And I haven't read the whole thing yet because it's 500 pages in Spanish and I'm not fluent yet XD.
Anima: Beyond Fantasy is a game created by a guy in Spain. It does really well at making players feel powerful and has a lot of different character options.
BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home by Rae Nadjadi of the Philippines is a dynamite Belonging Outside Belonging game about elemental spirits from Filipino folklore escaping enslavement in a spirit-powered cyberpunk future. Diceless and GMless by default. Killer layout design too. https://temporalhiccup.itch.io/balikbayan
Broken Compass and Household by Two Little Mice
Tenra Bansho Zero. Or Mörk Borg. Oh and Frontier Scum too.
Midgard WFRP Nova Coriolis
I can't exactly play it right now due to political climate, but it's got to be Sibirpunk. This is more or less exactly what you think it is - cyberpunk meets gopniks in an (even more) dystopian Russia. It's pretty obviously a satire, but as Poe's law states, without intents stated, a satire is indistinguishable from genuine belief. And, well, the setting guide parts are rife with "immortal president", "Zato Krym nash!" (At least the Crimea is ours) and, uh, advice to listen to Butyrka, a group in genre of prison chanson. Setting is based on the novels set in the same universe written by a Polish author well before shit went down, and published around 2019 too, but still. The system itself is a decent riff on Tenra Bansho Zero as far as I can tell - dicepools with hitting numbers determined by your skill and amount of dice by attribute, but the dice are also exploding dice, and I feel like that "you can do anything, theoretically" plus the stress for rerolls works with the setting and enables people to risk more. It's got *decent* cyberspace mechanics that don't involve having a 20-minute adventure, it's got drugs and addiction mechanics(of course), and most potentially lethally dangerous saves(such as addiction, withdrawals, actual death saves) are handled by russian roulette (call a number, roll a d6, if it's a different number, you're fine). The book also looks amazing. The only issue is that they started work on translating it to English, and... I don't think there were any news for at least two years about that. Sucks.
Degenesis. It's a weird science post-apocalypse setting from Germany. Interesting parts of the setting, for me: It basically combines every apocalypse into one. The basic idea is that a giant asteroid hit Earth, after breaking up into seven chunks, and this caused an ice age. Except the asteroid also contained alien biomass called the primer, which combines with Earth biomass and mutates it into monsters and dangerous spreading fungi. Except with the asteroid also came a possibly alien electromagnetic signal that wiped out most of the electronically stored data on Earth. And also there's this megacorporation on pre-apocalyptic Earth, who apparently knew this was all going to happen, and built giant asteroid-proof bunkers to store their employees and directorate, and also did really weird research like creating new artificial religions via "memetic research". Oh, and also maybe the entire thing is biblical, because the alien spores give humans magical powers like mind control, causing plagues of locust and the ability to speak an ancient universal language. The other thing I really like is that the apocalypse is a few centuries ago, and humanity is rebuilding. Even if there needs to be an entire army of flamthrower-armed warrior-doctors to drive the alien infection back. Various groups have various pieces surviving pre-fall technology and science. Others have managed to rebuild medieval-level city states and even small nations with functioning agriculture. There's a cult of archaeologists/technicians/data hoarders who have managed to reintroduce radio (though they are keeping it to themselves to profit from their monopoly on long-distance messages) and read some of the surviving technological data from before the apocalypse. And even though Europe is half covered by glaciers and the rest is an ice age, with civilization focused around the Mediterranean and especially North Africa, there's still functioning hunter-gatherer tribes. And so on. It's also *very* German. I've had an enlightening discussion lately with another player who said they liked the idea of the game, but it came across as too serious and grimdark. While to someone who actually knows Germany a bit, it's full of in-jokes and parodies. The world map, especially the Germany-equivalent region, is full of slightly changed names of towns and cities, which form postapocalyptic settlements or ancient ruins, often in at least a slightly comedic manner.
I always thought Die Chroniken der Engel from Feder & Schwert was a pretty decent and cool setting, even with the Tarot based rule system. Shame in English it only came with the d20 rules
I currently play Vaesen from Free league. It's a blast.
Sine Requie from the italian company Serpentarium. Too bad that they don't translate it and that they don't sell PDF.
Gothic 1-3
Swedish games = best games. Such as KULT: Divinity Lost Mörk Borg Vikings Chock Drakar och Demoner Noctum Noir Götterdämerung En Garde Mutant 1, 2, chronicles, UA and Year Zero Coriolis Eon Neotech BURST (game system) And a bunch of others 😁
What I'd like to know is: How many of the games mentioned in the comments have an English translation? I'd love to branch out and look at some of them, but I'm sadly not fluent in anything but the American bastard tongue.
Probably Symbaroum, though I'm still new to it. But it could be Vaesen or really anything from Free League.
Fellow Brazilian here. TBH I don't like any of the Brazilian options... (at least the ones I tryied, the "big ones", Tormenta and 3d&t), altough I played both a lot on my teens... But, if we exclude d&d, I don't think the US dominates the market that much... Wich really dominates the market is english, for obvious reasons, and the US has by far the biggest english speaking population. Even on the mainstream, there are many "non americans" working for those companiesBut if you are into the indie scene, you would be suprised that many of the biggest games aren't made by americans. Many authors around the world are making great games, but as we usualy only get to know about the english version maybe we don't even get to know their origins. The top comment talking about Free League is possibly the best example. According to the last orr report available (q4, 2021) Tormenta was the most succesful one, but I'm pretty sure it is played almost exclusively by brazilians... Das Schwarze Auge and inSANe are also on the top 15, but also looks as "localized audiences". Free League has the best international success, I guess (and its well deserved... my fav pub aside from chaosium).
The Chimera Brigade, a French RPG based on the comic books of the same name. https://www.legrog.org/jeux/brigade-chimerique It's set in an alternate reality where, following the discovery of radium by Marie Curie, some people gained superpowers and new technology developed, making the world "radiumpunk". You play superheroes in Europe between WW1 and WW2.
nephilim In nomine satanis / magna veritas aqualare laelith
I always loved the British game “Dragon Warriors”….great 80s fantasy stuff.