Free and PWYW RPG products on DriveThruRPG that I enjoy

As of this writing, there are 7,597 free and pay-what-you-want (PWYW) PDFs on DriveThruRPG, and depending on when you’re reading this there are probably many more than that. That’s a daunting number, and there’s a lot of free stuff that frankly looks like pretty weak sauce. It’s hard to know where to start.^[1]

I thought it would be useful to create a curated list of the free DTRPG products there that I like (which I also do for RPG books on Lulu, where the problem is searchability rather than volume), so I started one. I spent several hours going through the entire category — all 7,500+ products — and then several more hours going back for more organic searches, as well as checking out suggestions from folks online (thank you!).

This turned out to be a fun project, and what shook out was two lists, one for RPGs and one for supplements. Together, these two lists represent roughly 3% of the free/PWYW products available on DTRPG.^[2]

What’s on the lists?

I like and recommend everything that appears below, and I extra-super-duper-like the starred entries. If you’re curious why I like something, I eventually rate and comment on every gaming book I own; here are my RPGGeek ratings.

Both lists are in alphabetical order. In general, neither includes previews, quickstarts, micro-supplements (d100 Fantasy Roofing Tile Materials, et al), character sheets, or the like.^[3] If you have a suggestion for either list, let me know in the comments (and thank you!). (Lists updated: June 29, 2018.)

Free and PWYW RPGs

These are all affiliate (paid) links. Using them helps support Yore, at no cost to you.

1. Atomic Highway
2. * Babes in the Wood
3. Basic Fantasy RPG 3rd Edition
4. Blood & Treasure Complete
5. BLUEHOLME Prentice Rules
6. * Cepheus Engine System Reference Document
7. Dark Dungeons
8. * Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy
9. Delving Deeper: The Adventurer’s Handbook, The Referee’s Guide, and The Monster & Treasure Reference
10. * Dog Eat Dog
11. Dragon Warriors
12. Encounter Critical
13. English Eerie
14. * ESCAPE Short-Play RPG
15. * Exemplars & Eidolons
16. Fate Accelerated Edition
17. * Fate Core
18. Fleshscape
19. Forthright Open Roleplay
20. * Galatea’s Mirror
21. 44: A Game of Automatic Fear
22. Godbound
23. High Moon: The Great Werewolf Robbery
24. Ironsworn
25. The House Always Wins
26. King Arthur Pendragon, 1st Edition
27. * Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition
28. Maze Rats
29. Mini Six, Bare Bones Edition
30. Mutant Future, Revised Edition
31. The Nightmares Underneath
32. * Old School hack
33. OSRIC Pocket SRD
34. * The Petal Hack
35. * Pokéthulhu Adventure Game (3rd Edition)
36. The Pool
37. Queer Messes
38. * Risus: The Anything RPG
39. The Role With It System
40. * Seppuku: Fury of the Samurai
41. Shamblington
42. Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells
43. Sixtacular SRD
44. Songbirds
45. Spirit of the Century
46. * Stars Without Number: Revised Edition
47. * Swords & Wizardry Complete
48. Swords & Wizardry Core
49. * Talislanta Campaign handbook, 2nd Edition and The Chronicles of Talislanta, 5th Edition, plus all the other free Talislanta products^[4]
50. * Tenocha: Heroic Adventures
51. 13th Age System Reference Document
52. * Tequendria: Fantastical Roleplaying
53. * Troika!
54. ViewScream
55. The Void
56. White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game
57. White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying
58. Worlds Apart

Free and PWYW supplements

On this list, the system (or broad “mechanics umbrella,” like OSR) appears in parentheses after each supplement.

These are all affiliate (paid) links. Using them helps support Yore, at no cost to you.

1. * Advanced Edition Companion (Labyrinth Lord)
2. * Augmented Reality, The Holistic City Kit For Cyberpunk Games (universal)
3. Bad Myrmidon (OSR)
4. Big List of RPG Plots (universal)
5. Blackmarsh (OSR)
6. Black Pudding zine (OSR)
7. BLUEHOLME The Necropolis of Nuromen (OSR)
8. Book of Knights (Pendragon)
9. Book 0: Introduction to Traveller (Mongoose Traveller)
10. Broken System zine (OSR)
11. B/X Essentials Core Rules and the other entries in the B/X Essentials line (OSR)
12. Cities: Shadepoint (universal/OSR)
13. Codex fanzine (various)
14. * Convicts & Cthulhu (Call of Cthulhu)
15. Convicts & Cthulhu: Ticket of Leave zine (Call of Cthulhu)
16. Creature Compendium (OSR)
17. Deluge (universal)
18. * Escape from the Astral Spellhold
19. * Fate Adventures & Worlds line — there are over 30 of these, all with excellent production values, but my favorites are Aether Sea, Behind the Walls, Blood on the Trail, Ghost Planets, and Straw Boss (Fate)
20. Fate System Toolkit (Fate)
21. * Fiasco playsets — there are over 25 playsets, but my favorite is Touring Rock Band (Fiasco)
22. From the Vats (OSR)
23. Frontier Explorer magazine (Star Frontiers/universal)
24. Fundamentals of Tabletop Roleplaying (universal)
25. The Game Master (universal)
26. The Grey Knight (Pendragon)
27. * The Gyre (Mutant Future)
28. Hill Cantons Compendium II (OSR)
29. Home by Dark playsets — try Them as a starting point (Home by Dark)
30. How to Hexcrawl (OSR)
31. * In the Shadow of Mount Rotten (OSR)
32. Irradiated Freaks (Atomic Highway)
33. * Kaldor Kingdom Sampler (Harn)
34. * Lesserton & Mor and the Player’s Guide (OSR)
35. A Magical Medieval Society: City Guide (universal)
36. The Marriage of Count Roderick (Pendragon)
37. Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine (OSR)
38. The Metamorphica (OSR)
39. * Murcanto’s Lair (OSR)
40. My Life as the GM (My Life with Master)
41. Narcosa (OSR)
42. The One Page Dungeon Codex 2009, Deluxe Edition (OSR)
43. * Petty Gods: Revised and Expanded Edition (OSR)
44. * Planarch Codex: Dark Heart of the Dreamer (Dungeon World)
45. * Proteus Sinking (OSR)
46. * Ptolus: A Player’s Guide (Ptolus)
47. Realm of the Technomancer (Labyrinth Lord/Mutant Future)
48. Risus: Ring of Thieves and Toast of the Town (Risus)
49. Roll XX and Roll XX: Double Damage (OSR)
50. The Sandbox zine (OSR)
51. Situations for Tabletop Roleplaying (universal)
52. Skull Mountain (Labyrinth Lord)
53. SlaughterGrid (OSR)
54. Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine (OSR)
55. Star Frontiersman magazine (Star Frontiers)
56. Sword Breaker zine (Dungeon World)
57. Tales of Gothic Earth (OSR)
58. * Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque I, plus volume II and volume III (OSR)
59. * Tenocha: Setting Guide (Tenocha)
60. Theorems & Thaumaturgy Revised Edition (OSR)
61. * 2017 Gongfarmer’s Almanac, Vol. 1-8 and older single issues (DCC RPG)
62. * Two OSR Dungeon Crawls (OSR)
63. Uresia: Lore and Curiosities (universal)
64. Welcome to Dolmenwood (OSR)
65. Wheel of Evil (Labyrinth Lord)
66. White Box Omnibus (Swords & Wizardry)
67. White Star Companion (White Star)
68. * The World Wide Wrestling Roleplaying Game: Expanded Universe (World Wide Wrestling)
69. Wrack & Rune (Labyrinth Lord)
70. Yngarr zine (OSR)

Happy gaming!

[1] Fun fact: When you sort the free/PWYW category by Highest Rated, which sounds like a useful filter, the first product rated less than five stars doesn’t appear until entry 2,462 of 7,597 (as of this writing).

[2] This percentage takes into account not only the raw number of entries on the list, but those that include multiple products (issues of a zine, Fiasco playsets, etc.).

[3] I like all of those things, but if someone is looking for recommendations for cool stuff to check out, I’m not going to recommend a character sheet. This kind of support material is great, and I love that so much of it is on DTRPG.

[4] Talislanta creator Stephan Michael Sechi generously makes virtually the entire Talislanta line available for free, but not all of it is on DTRPG. (I hope he’ll eventually migrate it all there.)