Best Games that No One's Ever Heard Of

I wanted to make a thread where people could post about great small press and indie games that have probably flown under most people's radar. If you've found a hidden gem, please post it here so that players can check them out and support them. Thanks!

Dead of Night by SteamPower Publishing. A great rules lite game for simulating horror movies. Perfect for one-shots, and even mini campaigns using the idea of movie sequels. Very fun and can be campy or scary or any other flavor of horror movie you want to emulate. Highly recommended!

Polyhedral Dungeon. Easy to learn and a lot of fun!

My favorite indie RPG is Troika!



This quote sums it up!

"Imagine, if you will, that Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett have returned from the dead. They both pile into a Ford Cortina and take a long drive across the American Southwest, pondering the nature of the fantasy genre. Once they arrive in California, they legally acquire several ounces of the finest cannabis sativa and hotbox the Cortina. Then they write an RPG. This, roughly speaking, seems to be what produced Troika, a delightfully simple and delightfully absurd game."

One day I'll run it here, I promise.

This.
Sounds.
AMAZING.

Troika is awesome! Basically a hack of Advanced Fighting Fantasy mechanics in a wild setting! There's another AFF hack I saw that looked really cool, I'll see if I can dig that one up too.

Kids on Bikes. This might be a little under the radar... I just caught wind of it and it looks quite fun.

Kids on Bikes

Also Quest. Quest

Ironsworn

Some oldies but goodies.

True20

Blue Rose

Colonial Gothic

And two newcomers that are a lot of fun:

Cavemaster from Jeff Dee!

And speaking of Jeff, why not take a look at the present of Villains & Vigilantes, Mighty Protectors (aka V&V 3.0)

I'm totally interested in Quest. I followed it way back on Kickstarter and tried to launch a game here, but sadly it didn't take off. :(

My latest obsession is Rocket Amoeba. A little oddly named, true, but it's an all genre toolkit for story-centric games. After I read this one, I basically packed up all my FATE stuff and put it in the closet. I LOVE love LOVE this one!

Ironsworn seems pretty popular so I think lots of people have heard of it lol.

@KaeJae I adore AFF! Would love to see that other game you're thinking of, if you recall it.

@Len There are few I've seen, actually. The one I had really high hopes for but seems to be dead in the water is B.Y.O. Dungeon which really has a lot of potential, is super rules-light tweakable, and could probably be used with alot of stuff from AFF with very little modding. And it's free. :)

Another one is Quarrel & Fable which is also free and hews a lot closer to AFF, although with some tweaks to the dice mechanics.

Lancer, one of the best mech systems I've ever had the pleasure of using. Oh, don't want to spend hours building a mech, like in Mekton? Lancer is fast for mech building (I can crank out a LL0 character in minutes, mechanics wise, and that includes the mech). Want a nice crunchy combat system, but doesn't take hours to fight? Lancer is your man. But you don't want a lot of mechanics to bog down the role-playing aspect? Excellent - Lancer takes a page from PbtA when the mechs aren't blasting or bashing each other! Want the slickest chargen/utility tool that makes D&D Beyond look like amateur hour in comparison? Check out Lancer's Comp/CON, a fan-made but dev-approved app/site that is the slickest thing to ever exist for a TTRPG.

I'm usually not a big fan of random generation tables, and the more there is, the more i'm allergic to it. Usually.

Well, today, i just discovered Maze Rats (and its french evolution, Maze Monkeys), and to be honest, there is some quite good ideas in there.

Though a few of you have heard it from me. Tiny dungeons and other tiny adventure games are great if you are looking for rules light game. It is picking up popularity as drivethrurpg has given it it's own tab under game systems.

Another is Bare-bones Fantasy. It is a good system with a variety of supplements though recent support has fallen off.

One that might not be super well-known is Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game. It's 100% free and has a very active community that is constantly adding things, supplements...etc.

Basic Fantasy RPG (It's FREEE!!!!!!!)

Thanks! This is great. My love of AFF goes back to my early teenage years when I was too poor to afford RPG books but my local library had every AFF book in print (and the FF cyoa books). I had those books signed out constantly for two years!

The Fyxt RPG is pretty interesting. :)

Fyxt RPG

Xas Irkalla by James Vail is an awesome horror/survival game where your character can die anytime. It's on drivethrurpg.