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The list here in now way is meant to be a definitive list of Core Rule Books, indeed in truth I could list a hundred hundred here and still barely scratch the surface of excellence. Also, as the title implies quite clearly…..me being me, any ’favourites’ list that I have invariable changed for week to week, heck even from day to day. So next week the list could, and probably would, be very different.
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So some people may be unhappy that the list here may omit their particular favourite (As our previous, D&D alternatives, fantasy and horror lists certainly did). But you know, that’s ok as it’s just my subjective list of what I love. Are they the best? Are they the definitive 5 corerule book titles? Certainly not. But they are a list mainly off the top of my head of recent books that I have read, or intend to play after collecting PDF’s and physical copies galore of the subjects. Oh, and I’ve also not included any sci-fi titles included in the D&D alternatives list featured here on the website a frw weeks ago.
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Worlds Without Number
(From Sine Nomine Publishing)
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The stars gutter and the skies fade and the earth grows weary with years. Ages of men and of Outsiders have ascended and been forgotten, and only the bones of their cities and the dust of their dreams remain upon this tired world. The Legacy of their laws is woven deep now, the edicts of dead gods and fallen sorcerer-kings made to trace patterns of power we no longer understand. We are heirs to their unseen empires, and our lives are built upon their ashes.
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Worlds Without Number is a fantasy role-playing game, one fully compatible with the hit sci-fi game Stars Without Number. It’s built from the ground up to provide gritty, hard-edged adventure in the fathomless future of the Latter Earth, a fantastic realm of time-lost sorcery, savage foes, and barbaric splendor. The cold steel in the fists of your heroes and the half-understood sorcery in their tomes must suffice to overcome the monstrous remnants of ancient alien rulers and the present depredations of ruthless lords and hideous beasts alike. The riches of lost ages await in the subterranean Deeps that once held their kingdoms, and even the heavens above are not beyond the reach of the recklessly daring.
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Worlds Without Number isn’t just a savage game of steel and sorcery. It’s packed solid with system-neutral GM tools and worldbuilding support, with hundreds of pages of useful tools, tags, tables, and practical advice usable by any GM, regardless of their favorite setting or system. The well-loved sci-fi tools of Stars Without Number are reworked here to support fantasy gaming, whether in the provided setting of the Latter Earth or in your own carefully-crafted homebrew world. Even GMs who don’t prefer the OSR-compatible game system of WWN will find more than half the book dedicated to tools they can use in the systems they like best.
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So what do you get in this book?
Sword and sorcery heroes of blade, cunning, and spell. The proven OSR-compatible character creation system of Stars Without Number is redone here for a fantasy world of blade and black magic.
OSR-compatible rules, allowing you to plunder decades of existing adventure material for your play. You can even pull in Stars Without Number content, as it’s fully compatible.
The Gyre region of the far-future Latter Earth, a premade sandbox for quick play. Venture forth to clash with the sinister powers that gather in the shadow of the waning rule of the Reaping King.
Worldbuilding tools crafted to the renowned Sine Nomine standard. Did you like the hundred different world tags in SWN? Then have two hundred inspirational tags to help you build ruins, courts, communities, and wilderness points of interest. Grab a wealth of tools for building histories, societies, governments, religions, and geography, all written with a keen eye toward producing good, playable content for your adventuring group.
Adventure creation tools to soothe the pangs of a working GM, with guides for building adventures out of combat, exploration, social, and investigative challenges. Use the tags you picked in the worldbuilding section to speed up your creation of a good night’s gaming.
Faction rules for fantasy worlds, with dark cults, fierce lords, grasping abbots, and greedy merchants all serving to keep your world in motion even when the PCs aren’t on the scene.
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Heroic characters, ones fired with the prowess of high fantasy heroes and epic Chosen Ones. Don’t care for gritty sword and sorcery? Use these rules to turn even novice adventurers into the protagonists of mighty deeds.
Legates, those heroes touched with the power of the Legacy itself. Reach beyond the limits of mortal prowess to embrace superhuman abilities and impossible might, and dare adventures that will live for an age in legend.
Bonus character classes, including the Adunic Invoker, Darian Skinshifter, Llaigisan Beastmaster, Sarulite Blood Priest, Kistian Duelist, and Vothite Thought Noble. Each one is built to help support a broad character concept, such as shapeshifting, mind control, animal companions, divine blessings, or swashbuckling fighters- concepts you can import to any setting.
Additional GM tools, including a hundred fractal adventure seeds, help with extradimensional Iterums, and a sheaf of bonus GM tables for fleshing out architecture, NPC relationships, and random adventure NPCs.
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Seize your chance, bold adventurer! Earnest souls have been waiting for years for a fantasy counterpart to Stars Without Number; now it awaits your daring grasp to help you forge your own mighty deeds!
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Avatar Legends
(From Magpie Games)
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Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game brings you and your friends into the beloved setting of Avatar Legends–as new heroes of your own stories! Weave tales of self-discovery and action with your team of friends, and go penguin-sledding while you’re at it! In this RPG, you might face off with the Triple Threat Triad in Republic City, travel through a spirit portal to rescue a missing child, negotiate peace between Earth Kingdom outlaws, pursue enemies through the Four Nations, and even learn a thing or two from beloved Avatar Legends characters.
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Choose a setting amid the eras of Kyoshi, Roku, the Hundred Year War, Aang, and Korra. Create your heroes from 10 playbooks archetypes that help you play compelling protagonists. Master an element, weaponry, or technology to rise and meet your destiny. Pursue balance by learning from great mentors and getting into trouble across the Four Nations.
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Wan Shi Tong’s Adventure Guide expands the play material found in Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game with new Legendary NPCs from every era, new techniques for each of the six trainings, and new character archetypes packed with unique moves and character arcs!
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In addition, Wan Shi Tong invites you to explore the Avatarverse in new and exciting adventures from every era-you might rescue a mentor from the clutches of evil villains, help negotiate peace at a prestigious summit, aid a Fire Nation defector as they flee the Fire Lord Ozaï’s wrath, or even recover long-lost Air Nomad artifacts!
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Expanded material for exploring Wan Shi Tong’s infamous Spirit Library.
4 new character playbooks -archetypes that help you play compelling protagonists.
5 exciting adventures set in the eras of Kyoshi, Roku, the Hundred Year War, Aang, and Korra
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Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game is Universally Accessible in accordance with the standards of PDF/Universal Accessibility. By meeting this standard, we have worked to ensure everyone can independently access information contained within the PDF document and make use of the materials without assistance from other people in an efficient manner through assistive technology.
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Everyday Heroes
(From Evil Genius Games)
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Full disclosure: This product was prevoiusly sent to us at the 5D Pop Culture Website for an honest and objective review. No promises were made of financial remuneration, free gifts or holidays in the sunny Bahamas…….sadly.
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GET INTO THE ACTION! From the excitement of blockbuster action films to the combat options and tactical gear of first-person shooters, adventures in contemporary settings offer a wide range of opportunities and challenges. The Everyday Heroes Roleplaying Game provides everything you need to run a modern-day campaign, be that car chases, computer hacking, radiation hazards, or just lots of guns. Along with flexible rules to create characters from hard-bitten soldiers to genius inventors and masterminds, these rules open the doors to playing through nearly any present-day plotline. This complete core rulebook for both Gamemasters and Players brings the ease of the 5th edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game into the Modern era.
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Everyday Heroes™ is a modern-day roleplaying system based on d20 Modern, refreshed for the 5th edition. Updated by some of d20’s original designers, Everyday Heroes will delight fans everywhere.
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From the excitement of blockbuster action films to the combat options and tactical gear of first-person shooters, adventures in contemporary settings offer a wide range of opportunities and challenges for tabletop gamers. The Everyday Heroes Roleplaying Game provides everything you need to run a modern-day d20-style campaign with elements such as car chases, computer hacking, radiation hazards, or gunplay.
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Along with flexible rules to create contemporary characters from hard-bitten soldiers to genius inventors and evil masterminds, the Everyday Heroes core rules open the doors to playing through nearly any present-day plotline—creating nearly endless possibilities.
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This complete Everyday Heroes Core Rulebook for both Gamemasters and Players brings the ease of the 5th edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game into the modern era. This single rulebook is required to understand and play the contents of all of our officially licensed movie franchise games.
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Mörk Borg
(From Free League Publishing)
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A doom metal album of a game. A spiked flail to the face. Light on rules, heavy everything else.
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MÖRK BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world. Who are you? The tomb-robber with silver glittering between cracked fingernails? The mystic who would bend the world’s heart away from it’s inevitable end? Confront power-draining necromancers, skulking skeletal warriors and backstabbing wickheads. Wander the Valley of the Unfortunate Undead, the catacombs beneath the Bergen Chrypt or the bedevilled Sarkash forest. But leave hope behind – the world’s cruel fate is sealed, and all your vain heroic efforts are destined to end in death and dismay. Or are they?
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MÖRK BORG is a complete game in the OSR genre, that can be played as is or be picked apart for use in your own homebrew. The rules are easily made compatible with most of the editions of the world’s largest role-playing game. Within the book you’ll find:
A brief look at this dying world. From The Two-Headed Basilisks’ gothic cathedral in Galgenbeck and Blood-countess Anthelia’s limestone palace, to the fields of death in Graven-Tosk and the barren wastes of Kergüs.
The Calendar of Nechrubel, that decides the speed of the world’s demise.
20 occult Powers that let you bend reality, and just as many magical catastrophes for when you disastrously fail.
Optional rules which brings more depth to the game. Omens let you turn bad luck into a slightly better one. Classes with unique traits and quirks, and tables that will bring life into your character.
12 creatures to be murdered by.
Game master tools such as tables for corpse plundering, occult treasure, adventure sparks, dungeon generating and other devilry.
The introductory dungeon crawl scenario Rotblack Sludge, where you investigate a forgotten part of the Shadow King’s enormous ruin palace. Cannibal warlocks, poison peddlers from beyond the void and hungry gutworms await.
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MÖRK BORG is constructed by Pelle Nilsson (Ockult Örtmästare Games) and Johan Nohr (Stockholm Kartell). The game is published by Free League Publishing and is available in Swedish and English – the English text is edited and cursed by Patrick Stuart (Veins of the Earth, Silent Titans).
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Shadow of the Demon Lord
(From Schwalb Entertainment)
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The End Is Just the Beginning
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Sometimes the world needs heroes. But in the desperation of these last days, the world will take all those it can get: heroes, blackguards, madmen, and whoever else is willing to stand against the coming darkness. Will you fight the demons or will you burn it all down and dance among the ashes? Who will you become when the world dies?
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Shadow of the Demon Lord® opens a door to an imaginary world held in the grip of a cosmic destroyer. Enter a land steeped in the chaos and madness unleashed by the end times, with whole realms overrun by howling herds of beastmen, warped spirits freed from the Underworld, and unspeakable horrors stirred awaken by the Demon Lord’s imminent arrival.
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A complete tabletop roleplaying game in one book, Shadow of the Demon Lord provides everything you need to create and play characters, form groups in pursuit of adventure, and tell exciting stories with your friends. As well, the book gives Game Masters all the tools they need to create adventures, over one hundred foul creatures, a detailed region of the campaign world, and extensive advice to help run the game.
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As the Demon Lord’s shadow creeps across the world, it creates the chance for heroes to seize their destinies and villains to accomplish their despicable goals. As you play the game, you and your friends tell stories about thwarting the plots of twisted cultists, hunting down and destroying bizarre demons, exploring lost lands, investigating weird mysteries, and so much more.
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