Many tabletop role-playing enthusiasts had to make big changes to their playstyles in 2020. Whether it meant suspending long-running games, moving to virtual play sessions, or playing more with those they lived with, it’s been a challenging time to get a fix of that dice-rolling goodness. Regardless, there was no shortage of wonderful new RPG books, expansions, boxed sets, and full games over recent months.
Whether you’ve got a way to play right now, or you just want to read up and learn some great games ahead of when the pandemic is all over, here are some of the absolute best role-playing game releases of 2020.
BFF! – Best Friends Forever
Publisher: Heart of the Deernicorn
If the game BFF could have a middle name, it would Charming. This lovely GM-free role-playing game challenges players to take on the role of tween girls as they navigate friendship, moments of discovery, and the small quiet moments that shape our emotional selves when we’re young. Brought to life through playful standee characters that represent your characters, and further enhanced through a book of illustrated locales the girls can visit, this is a quiet, easy-to-learn game that is a perfect fit for young players, but grown-ups can also uncover a lovely throwback to the silly and sometimes poignant moments that unfold in pre-adult life.
While BFF is undoubtedly a role-playing game, it succeeds for how very different it is from almost any other game you have likely played. This isn’t an experience about monster slaying or leveling up. Instead, you’ll do things like select charms to give to your friends, and then narrate why you chose that particular item. You might talk through the snacks you’re enjoying at the slumber party, or detail the way you cemented your friendship that one day at your beach hangout.
Vibrant in both theme and art, BFF! – Best Friends Forever includes numerous card prompts, hangout maps (contained within a guidebook), and other components to help fuel your adventure. But it’s ultimately the wholesome and emergent stories you craft together that hit on one of the core dynamics of role-playing games – the way that the developing relationships amid a party of characters in a game can, in turn, fuel the development of real-life friendships and memories.
Cyberpunk Red
Publisher: R. Talsorian Games
Long before CDPR’s video game arrived on the scene, Cyberpunk lived for decades as a tabletop role-playing game. The latest edition is a thoughtfully crafted RPG that requires zero previous experience with the franchise, and offers a perfect gateway into this dark and dystopian future.
Cyberpunk Red sits in the fictional timeline between the older editions, like Cyberpunk 2020, and the new video game set in 2077. Within those decades of history, players will find the same morally ambiguous conflicts, mind-twisting netrunning, and explosive battles that characterize the best of the cyberpunk genre. Many of the rules are flexible, allowing you to dip your toes into various systems to whatever degree you want. For instance, a smartly balanced combat system can be handled with incredible ease using the core rules, but there’s plenty of extra depth to dig into if giant street wars are going to be at the heart of your campaign. The cyberware aspect of gameplay is especially nuanced, exploring issues around what makes us human, and the tension between upgrades and holding on to the empathy and soul of the flesh.
The full-color core rulebook is especially inviting and beautiful, mixing in-fiction anecdotes, ads, and flavor seamlessly with the nuts and bolts of gameplay, all alongside some evocative art that helps to bring the weapons, characters, and locations to life. There’s also a wealth of world-building and history packed inside, revealing the breadth of depth of a fiction that has been carefully crafted over multiple years and editions.
Dishonored Roleplaying Game
Publisher: Modiphius
Anyone who played either of Arkane Studios’ Dishonored video games can tell you; the weight of history and fiction grounded the video games, and helped them to feel authentic and engaging. It always felt like there were hundreds of additional stories that could be told in this world. Emerging to answer that need, the Dishonored tabletop game gives you the tools to once again enter that world, and explore its many dark and infested corners.
Modiphius has spent years refining and creating options for its proprietary 2d20 system, adapting it to suit the needs of a variety of settings and styles of play. For Dishonored, the focus is on a streamlined and action-packed version, where story is placed front and center.
The hardcover digest-style book packs a ton of content into its 300 pages, including a wealth of worldbuilding for anyone who always wanted a more codified place to read about the Dishonored world and the myriad conflicts playing out on its islands. The game ably supports playstyles that match the assassin vibes encountered in the video games, but there’s also plenty of other directions you can go, from palace intrigue to sprawling campaigns of exploration. In addition, the system handles the occult and mystical elements of this universe with great skill, giving players the ability to warp reality to further their ends. The Dishonored Roleplaying Game is a lovely gift to anyone who hungered for more of this shadowy and richly drawn world, with a system that is more than up to the challenge of bringing it to life at your table.
Fiasco
Publisher: Bully Pulpit Games
The original Fiasco has been around for over a decade, offering incredible opportunities for storytelling and laughter with friends. A new edition rolled out to retail earlier this year, maintaining all the drama and disasters inherent to the original, but with a new card-based formula that is easier to learn and faster to play.
Like the original, the new boxed set is a GM-less RPG for three to five players, in which the players enact an unusual scenario that usually ends badly for most involved. Structurally, the stories are very similar to a Cohen Brothers film, like O Brother Where Art Thou?, or Fargo. Everyone plays out scenes that gradually build up tension and dark humor, before a “tilt” in the story offers a crazy twist that sets everyone crashing toward an often wild conclusion.
The new version is beginner-friendly thanks to its use of cards instead of the dice and index cards of the older version. Fiasco is a great time for anyone who is up for a little improvisation; the game does a stellar job of showing how embracing a characters’ failures are often the best way to “win” an RPG.
Kids on Brooms
Publisher: Hunter Entertainment/Renegade Game Studios
Kids on Bikes won a spot on this list back in 2018, and that game remains an awesome way to bring life to stories about young people on adventures as they come of age. But if your particular preferred flavor of adolescent hijinks includes schools of magic, broom flying, and the learning of magic, then this is the game for you. To put it another way, this is a Harry Potter RPG in all things but name and license.
Like Kids on Bikes, Kids on Brooms puts a lot of control and power in the hands of the player to craft their own setting. In fact, the game gets going in the first session by letting the players work together to name and shape the magical school the characters will attend. From there, the rules are mechanically light, providing clear tools to govern the nature of your magic-using hero, and how they can confront the challenges they’ll encounter.
While its straightforward rules make this game an ideal choice for anyone who loves stories of wizards and witches, experienced gaming groups that like to have a more communal approach to worldbuilding will be especially enchanted.