There is a massive Humble Bundle going on right now featuring 57 books from an alliance of role playing game publishers big and small. The Roll Big or Go Home RPG Megabundle has timeless classics, Kickstarter hits and indie upstarts. The top level can be had for a minimum pledge of $40 with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Extra Life.
This article highlights some of my favorite titles out of the bundle. I already own several of these games and I still picked up this bundle to support charity and to encourage these publishers to offer their titles in bundles such as these. For anyone looking to see what’s in the world of role playing games outside of Dungeons & Dragons, this is a massive opportunity to try something new.
Apocalypse World 2nd Edition
There’s something thrilling about the end of the world. Whether battling mutants aboard deaththrucks rattling down a broken highway or picking through the ruins of the world before for treasures, post-apocalyptic games share many of the themes of classic fantasy games. Apocalypse World 2nd Edition lets groups build their own doomed world and play out the struggles to survive within.
This game has also become one of the most influential games of the past 20 years with a simple, fast system that embraces the fiction. The character classes don’t just define the character but they also weave the complex web of relationships within the player’s circle. Everyone has a say on how the world ends here, taking a little weight off the GM’s shoulders.
Call of Cthulhu
This stone cold classic celebrated its 40th anniverary a few years ago. Call of Cthulhu flipped a lot of gaming conventions on their head with characters that degraded over time and scenarios that rewarded fleeing monsters instead of slaying them. While investigating the Cthulhu Mythos is bad for the character health, that hasn’t stopped players from coming back again and again.
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It could be argued that at this point more people have come to know Cthulhu through spin off media than H.P. Lovecraft’s original writings. Call of Cthulhu is one of the big reasons for that shift. It’s one of the first gams that offered players a hidden world to explore underneath the one we all know to be real.
Cyberpunk RED
Just because we might be already living in a cyberpunk dystopia doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play a game in one. Cyberpunk RED has taken advantage of the popularity of Cyberpunk 2077 to bring one of the most influential games of the 80s and 90s back to a place of prestige on the shelves of local gaming stores. Sometimes, gaming through it, is the best way to deal an uncertain real world.
Picking up the core book in this offer unlocks a massive amount of additional content. Publisher R. Talsorian Games puts out free DLC on a regular basis that expands the rules, offers new gear and new inspirations for Game Masters. Night City lives and breathes just like any real world place, choom.
Masks: A New Generation
While Avatar Legends is the bigger name from Magpie Games in this bundle, Masks: A New Generation is my favorite game from the publisher. It’s a Powered By The Apocalypse game that emulates teen superhero comics like Teen Titans and Invincible. The game focuses on the teenage experience, making mistakes and shifting identities.
Rather than hit points, characters take conditions that reflect negative emotional states. The conditions act as guides to role play an emotional teenager and give penalties to certain action. The cleverest bit of design is that to get rid of the condition, the player must take rash, unthinking actions or dramatic mistakes like unintentionally hurting someone they love or stubbornly trying to do something they can’t.
Mazes
There are a lot of games in the space that want to feel like the way things “used to be”. Modern D&D tends towards high fantasy and cinematic action. Classic D&D is weirder, darker and bloodier.
Mazes captures that older feel by playing just the most important parts of the dungeon. Characters are built around a single die with the GM having a pool of darkness points that reflect how dangerous the situation is at the moment. This is a great choice for people who have old D&D modules they want to play without grinding through endless hallways and small encounters to get to the good stuff.
Outgunned
Action movies exist in their own version of the fantasy genre. From James Bond to Fast and the Furious, these series bend the laws of physics and tell mythic tales of CGI enhanced heroism. Outgunned is set in the world of these wild blockbuster films.
The system uses a matched pool of dice rather than a set difficulty number that speeds up play. Characters are built from combining a broad Role, like the Commando or the Nobody, with a dramatic Trope like being a Lone Wolf or a Jerk With A Heart of Gold. This game is built for short two or three session runs that can always return as the inevitable sequel.
Spire
These are revolutionary times and Spire puts players inside a doomed revolution. They are the underclass in a fantasy city ruled by high elves that are thrown together to strike back at their callous, rich overlords. Anyone who loved the sticky morality of Andor should check out this game.
While it is high fantasy, the classes are weird, idiosyncratic and memorable. Why play a wizard when you can play a Vermissian Sage, who knows the secrets of the decommissioned magic subway syste, in the city? Though they may not free the city of Spire from the high elves, the story about how they went down swinging will be one for the ages.
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play
Warhammer seems to be perched to have its moment after years of living in D&D’s shadow. What started as a miniatures game has evolved to a multimedia IP with novels, video games and, Emperor willing, a TV show starring superfan Henry Cavill. Warhammer Fantasy Role Play helped build this house and this edition is a great way to learn about the greatest grimdark setting of the 80s.
This is a classic dark fantasy game with a rich world that’s been developed over decades. It has its own European flavor that mixed cultures inspired by real world history and eldritich horrors waiting to tear eveything down. The real suprise is how darkly funny the whole thing can be.
Wildsea
Role playing games are often the most fun when they are very strange. Wildsea is one of the strangest in recent memory. Players sail a chainsaw ship acorss the tops of a vast ocean of trees that grow back almost instantaneously caused by Verdancy.
Ships usually go with pirates in this space and, while that can be true, exploration is one of the focuses of the game. One of the example adventures features players raiding a vast library of books from the world before the Verdancy. It’s hard to convey a sense of wonder these days, and Wildsea nails it.
This Humble Bundle runs through July 21st, 2025.
