Our first Not D&D was such ripping fun, we’ve decided to learn from what we did, and offer a second Not D&D Day on May 20th, from 2 pm to 5 pm! We’ll be featuring ‘zine-style (that’s magazine style) RPGs that day, from the following great titles!
Tickets are now just $5 for players! No book needed, learn these great games at Not D&D Day.
Preregistration is required. Preregister today
Raccoon Sky Pirates
Raccoon Sky Pirates is a narrative, GM-less role-playing game for 3 to 6 players that takes about three hours to play. Take to the skies, loot a suburban home of all the trash you can carry, and try to keep your ship from exploding.
You and your friends play raccoons: chittering, baggy-pants, ring-tailed burglars. One day in the junkyard, after inventing an improbable antigravity device, you hatch a scheme to build a ship out of trash and fly to the suburbs in search of better trash. There, you’ll find a beautiful, free-standing house with a four-car garage and cable internet. While trying not to wake up the residents or the dog, loot the house of all its valuables, like Roombas, PlayStations and other trash. Finally, loaded down, escape back to the junkyard while fending off the Neighborhood Watch.
Unlike in most games, what you do is random (you’re a raccoon, after all). The fun comes in narrating a scene out of your random action, whether it was helpful or not, and all the complications you or others have introduced. When multiple raccoons act in concert, you can trade dice to get a result that works better for you.
Flying a ship takes coordination and discipline.
Unfortunately, you’re a bunch of raccoons.
Desert Moon of Karth
Desert Moon of Karth is a space western sandbox adventure zine for the Mothership® Sci-Fi Horror RPG.
Now updated to Mothership 1E!
“One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Karth is a tiny mesa studded moon on the galaxy’s edge. The only way down is an antique space elevator to the lawless boomtown of Larstown; a place surrounded by even greater danger and strangeness in the wastes beyond. Survival or salvation is not guaranteed, partner.
Harvest ossified coral corpses to live forever. Become an involuntary organ donor. Dodge ancient orbital defenses. Explore sand blown ruins. Hunt the fearsome sandsquid. Ride camels through the dunes. Drink whisky until you’ve forgotten your own name.
Karth’s inspirations include Dune, Firefly, Alien, John Carter of Mars, Cowboy Bebop, The Dark Tower, spaghetti westerns, and modern adventures like Hot Springs Island, A Pound of Flesh, Ultraviolet Grasslands, and Slumbering Ursine Dunes.
You’ll find plenty to use for your other sci-fi RPG of choice like Stars Without Number, Traveler, or Starfinder with a touch of back alley stat surgery.
Desert Moon of Karth is 52 pages, chock full of evocative illustrations and also includes:
- 10 detailed and dangerous locations to explore including a ship graveyard, camel ranch, organic coral caves, and a decadent shattered spire.
- Regional Moon Map and rules for point crawling navigation.
- Detailed Larstown map, rumors, NPC’s, prospective jobs, and fine establishments.
- 4 volatile factions for players to interact with including immortal organ harvesters, tribal park rangers, extinct coral beings, and a colonial boomtown of prospectors.
- Evolving encounters based on the day/night cycle (and it’s sometimes night for a week).
- Tons of 1d10 tables ranging from creepy prayers, to strange technology, to requested organs, to random drugs.
- Rules for sandsquid hunting and a dungeon crawl within one, should you be devoured.
- 3 detailed dungeon maps, 8 new creatures, the dark secrets of eternal youth and more!
Cowboys with Big Hearts
Cowboys With Big Hearts is a tabletop roleplaying game for 2-6 players and about 2-3 hours about the myth of the west, and in true spaghetti western fashion there will be sun-bleached suffering and stroboscopic carnage.
But there’s a twist— instead of a playing tough, competent character, you play a chuckaboo on death’s doorstep. This will be their last ride, no matter what, and all you can hope for is to make it count. The stakes are high and justice calls—do they have what it takes to right an outrageous wrong? No, they do not…
but they are going to fight like hell to make it right just the same.
A PROMISE MADE IS A DEBT UNPAID
1900. Sunny Slope, Arizona Territory.
We came here to die, but here we are strapping on our barking irons with a bunch of other pox-ridden, busted up wrecks. It is a puzzlement.
What could compel a posse of diseased chuckaboos on death’s front porch to saddle up for one last hard desert ride? Well, it’s a complicated ball of yarn, but at this end—the end we are holding in our sweaty hands—is an outrage, and at the other end of the string is the Death brothers.
We’re going to find the Death brothers and have a serious conversation about right and wrong if it’s the last thing we do.
Which it will be.
Candlelight
Candlelight is a role playing game about the restless spirits of treasure hunters reckoning with their dark past and seeking hope in a haunted forest that wants to trap them there. It is a one-shot, rules-light game, focusing on collaborative and thematic storytelling and is designed to be flexible in how you bring it to the table:
An epilogue for any fantasy game following character death – especially a TPK!
A world-building prologue for any game needing a haunted forest or other cursed place.
A stand-alone game exploring themes of dark fantasy and supernatural horror – with a glimmering of hope and redemption.
Candlelight is a game for 1 or more players and a GM. Character creation is simple, taking place as part of the game introduction. The game uses six-sided dice of 2 colors (light and dark) and each session runs approximately 3-4 hours. While the game is based on dark fantasy and horror themes, conversations about player expectations and the use of safety tools are encouraged to best fit the tone of game you want at the table. Ghost stories can be bleak, dreadful, terrifying – but also reflective, inspiring and even hopeful. The paths you choose through the forest are up to you and your group.
Candlelight is Rooted in Trophy, using the core system of Trophy Dark to tell as story of desperate characters pushing their luck in a place that constantly threatens to overwhelm them. The key difference here is that the characters have already met their doom – while Trophy Dark progresses through a series of Rings and escalating horror, Candlelight starts at that final Ring where the characters have just died. It is at the dark heart of the forest that they will begin their journey, retracing the steps they took while living, seeking hope and an escape from the forest before they become a monstrosity that haunts it forever.
