Game Styles
When selecting a game to play, you can tell almost any story with any system if you're creative enough. However, some games lend themselves much better to specific types of games. When playing a game where the story is the most important thing, you may not want to get bogged down in detailed rules. When playing a game focused on dungeon crawling and combat, you'll want those rules, because building characters is half the fun. Still other games focus on solving mysteries or investigating clues, and gameplay is focused on that instead of combat.
At TVG, we tend to talk about games as one of these broad categories.
Powered by the Apocalypse ◈ Forged in the Dark ◈ Fate ◈ Daggerheart ◈ Cortex Prime ◈ Kids on Bikes ◈ Wanderhome ◈ Fiasco ◈ City of Mist ◈ Heart: The City Beneath
Dungeons & Dragons ◈ D&D 5E Advanced / Settings Spin-offs ◈ Pathfinder ◈ Draw Steel ◈ Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG ◈ Lancer ◈ Fallout: The Roleplaying Game ◈ Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of ◈ Star Wars: Fantasy Flight Games ◈ Genesys ◈ Champions ◈ Cyberpunk RED ◈ Mutants & Masterminds ◈ Savage Worlds
Old School Revival (OSR) & High-Stakes
Dragonsbane ◈ Forbidden Lands ◈ Deadlands ◈ Old-School Essentials (OSE) ◈ Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) ◈ Mörk Borg ◈ Shadowdark ◈ Worlds Without Number ◈ Mothership
Call of Cthulhu ◈ Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game ◈ Vampire: The Masquerade ◈ Delta Green ◈ Gumshoe System ◈ Brindlewood Bay ◈ Vaesen ◈ Tales from the Loop
Narrative & Rules-Light
Story-first gameplay. Focused on collaborative storytelling, character arcs, and improvisational drama. Rules emphasize "fail forward" mechanics, and theatrical gameplay mechanics.
Powered by the Apocalypse
Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Avatar Legends
A versatile game that can emulate most genres where narrative actions trigger specific fiction-first moves, keeping the spotlight on character drama. It uses a rules-light 2d6 system with partial successes ("fail forward") and a soft GM narrative loop.
Forged in the Dark
Blades in the Dark, Scum & Villainy, Band of Blades
A high-stakes game about scoundrels pulling off dangerous operations in fast paced, improvisational manner. It is a d6 dice pool system focused on fictional positioning, stress management, and flashback mechanics.
Fate
Core, Accelerated, Condensed
A versatile system where characters are defined by their narrative traits and catchphrases rather than numeric stats. It is a system using specialized fudge/fate dice (+, -, blank) driven entirely by a collaborative meta-currency economy.
Daggerheart
A cinematic heroic fantasy system built for expressive player characters and fluid, narrative-driven action. It utilizes a 2d12 engine using "Hope" and "Fear" dice to determine who controls the mechanical momentum of a scene.
Cortex Prime
Tales of Xadia, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
A modular, award-winning multi-genre toolkit built to replicate the pacing and dramatic stakes of television and comic books. It features a variable dice pool system where stats like values, relationships, and distinctions are rolled together.
Kids on Bikes
Kids on Brooms
A nostalgic adventure game where everyday people confront strange, supernatural mysteries in small towns. Uses a rules-light system where stats map directly to a single die type (e.g., d20 for your best stat, d4 for your worst).
Wanderhome
A cozy, pastoral fantasy game about animal-folk traveling together through a world recovering from an ancient war. It runs on a completely diceless and GM-less token-economy system focused on emotional choices.
Fiasco
A cinematic one-shot generator designed to emulate high-ambition, low-impulse dark comedy capers gone horribly wrong. It is a GM-less, prompt-driven system using black and white d6s to construct scenes and resolve tragic, funny endings.
City of Mist
A moody noir detective game where ordinary humans become living avatars of ancient mythic legends. It is a narrative hybrid combining a Powered by the Apocalypse engine with descriptive tags from Fate Core.
Heart: The City Beneath
Spire: The City Must Fall
A desperate dungeon-crawler focusing on characters venturing into a subterranean wasteland to fulfill their doomed ambitions. It runs on the Resistance System, which uses d10 pools and tracks severe, character-altering stress and fallout across multiple survival resource tracks.
Tactical & Heroic
Rules-first gameplay. These games focus on character-build optimization, grid combat, and resource management with "crunchy" tightly-defined game mechanics.
Dungeons & Dragons
1E, 2E, 3E, 3.5E, 4E, 5E, 5.5E
The granddaddy of heroic fantasy, focusing on larger than life characters growing from fragile level-1 nobodies into world-saving demigods. It relies on the d20 system, leaning heavily on class features, resource slots, and tactical grid combat to create dynamic encounters.
(OD&D, Basic, B/X, BECMI, and the Blackbox edition probably have more in common with OSR** than they do with modern D&D.)
D&D 5E Advanced / Settings Spin-offs
Level Up: A5E, Tales of the Valiant, Fateforge, Humblewood
Direct evolutions or major setting overhauls built on the 5E core chassis, introducing new systems, unique settings, or themed classes and spells. They feature d20 base systems with extensive modular crunch, advanced talent trees, or specific lore-mechanic tie-ins.
Pathfinder
1E, 2E, Starfinder
A hyper-refined tactical fantasy engine renowned for intense character customization, intricate skill builds, and balanced encounter math. It is a d20-based system; 2E uses a strict 3-action economy.
Draw Steel
A modern tactical heroic fantasy game built from the ground up to let epic heroes perform amazing cinematic feats without the legacy design constraints of traditional d20 systems. It uses a 2d10 "Power Roll" system that resolves attacks, effects, and damage simultaneously, heavily emphasizing grid-based tactical movement and battlefield command features.
Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG
An official adaptation of the hit MMORPG designed to accurately replicate massive, scripted boss fights, status rotations, and heroic team synergy at the table. It features a d20 and d6 hybrid tactical system using grid positioning matrices, threat/enmity tracking, and explicit character action rotations.
Lancer
A game of mud-and-lasers mech combat featuring a sharp divide between freeform narrative roleplaying and hyper-crunchy, miniature-wargame style robot battles. It uses a hybrid d20 + d6 system using detailed grid maps and complex mech assembly/loadout rules.
Fallout: The Roleplaying Game
A post-apocalyptic scavenger simulator mapping the iconic video game wasteland, balancing weapon-modding and base building with brutal tactical gunfights. It relies on Modiphius's 2d20 system, tracking Action Point economies, localized body damage, and radiation exposure.
Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of
A sword-and-sorcery pulp epic capturing the brutal momentum of Howard's legendary barbarian, prioritizing over-the-top combat maneuvers. It is built on Modiphius's 2d20 system using dynamic "Momentum" and "Doom" pools to exchange advantages between players and the GM during combat.
Star Wars: Fantasy Flight Games
Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force and Destiny
A cinematic sci-fi game tracking scoundrels, soldiers, and Jedi across the galaxy, balancing equipment/talent trees with open-ended action resolution. It features a custom narrative dice pool system where players must interpret matching symbols of Success, Failure, Advantage, Threat, Triumph, and Despair.
Genesys
A universal generic adaptation of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars engine designed to handle settings ranging from high fantasy to cyberpunk. It utilizes a proprietary Narrative Dice System using custom dice that generate mechanical successes alongside secondary narrative side effects.
Champions
Hero System
A superhero sandbox that gives players total freedom to design any character concept or power imaginable from scratch. It is a point-buy d6 system featuring heavy mechanical crunch, complex sub-systems, and granular tactical combat simulation.
Cyberpunk RED
Cyberpunk 2020
A grim, high-octane game of high-tech and low-life corporate warfare where looking cool is just as mechanically vital as staying alive. It runs on the Interlock System, a d10 + stat resolution engine featuring detailed armor degradation, hit locations, and precise firefight rules.
Mutants & Masterminds
2E, 3E
A fast-paced d20 comic book simulator built to let heroes swap between world-shattering brawls and classic investigative superhero tropes. It utilizes a point-buy d20 system that replaces traditional hit points with a lethal, rolling Toughness/Damage Resistance track.
Savage Worlds
Adventure Edition (SWADE)
A pulp-adventure generic system designed to handle large-scale combat with miniatures quickly while preserving tactical choices for players. It uses a variable trait die system (d4 to d12) where rolling maximum value causes the die to "explode" for massive cinematic swings.
Old School Revival (OSR) & High-Stakes
Challenge-first gameplay. Rules emphasize "rulings over rules", player ingenuity over character stats, and high-tension, gritty encounters with high lethality.
Dragonsbane
Remake of Sweden's classic "Drakar och Demoner," delivering fast-paced, brutally lethal fantasy adventures. It uses a streamlined d20 roll-under skill system featuring severe "Conditions" instead of direct stat drain.
Forbidden Lands
A gritty, open-world survival sandbox game where players are raiders building strongholds in a cursed, dangerous wilderness. It uses Free League's Year Zero Engine, using a d6 dice pool mechanic where "pushing" your luck physically damages your attributes.
Deadlands
Classic, Reloaded, Weird West
A dark alternate-history game mixing spaghetti western action with gothic horror, steampunk mad science, and high-stakes supernatural magic. It features a unique system blending traditional dice pools, poker chips (Fate Chips), and playing card decks to resolve magic and initiative.
Old-School Essentials (OSE)
A modern reproduction of the 1981 Basic/Expert D&D ruleset, focusing on dungeon crawls. It is a retro-clone system relying on traditional d20 roll-high combat, d6 dungeon turns, and brutal classic saving throw tables.
Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC)
A gonzo, heavy-metal fantasy system that channels 1970s pulp fantasy, featuring chaotic magical anomalies and fragile starter characters. It uses a modified d20 system using "zocchi" dice (d7, d14, d16, d24) featuring random magic tables and a brutal level-0 character meatgrinder called a funnel to determine starting characters.
Mörk Borg
Cy_Borg, Pirate Borg
An art-punk, doom-metal fantasy game where characters crawl through a decaying, apocalyptic world that is fated to end completely. It uses an ultra-lean d20 roll-under/over system with rules-light mechanics, high lethality, and randomized catastrophic events.
Shadowdark
A dark fantasy dungeon crawler that bridges the gaps between classic 1980s resource survival and modern interface design. Uses the d20 system combining 5E-style rolling conventions with strict inventory space, real-time light sources, and no-healing survival elements.
Worlds Without Number
Stars Without Number
A lethal sci-fi or fantasy sandbox system celebrated for giving GMs massive tables to generate worlds, factions, and sectors. It is a hybrid system using 2d6 for non-combat skill checks and a d20 roll-high system for dangerous, gritty combat.
Mothership
An award-winning sci-fi horror game about fragile blue-collar space laborers trying to survive encounters with horrifying alien monstrosities. It features a d100 roll-under percentile system driven by an escalating character Panic meter.
Mystery & Investigation
Information-first gameplay. Focused on detective work, uncovering secrets, psychological tension, and atmosphere.
Call of Cthulhu
Standard (1920s), Pulp (1930s), Cthulhu by Gaslight, Down Darker Trails
The definitive game of cosmic horror and investigative terror where everyday professors and detectives research dark secrets at the cost of their minds. It utilizes a d100 percentile skill system focusing heavily on library research, investigation, and tracking a steadily depleting Sanity score.
Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game
An approachable, pulpier cosmic horror investigation game set in the classic Fantasy Flight universe, focusing on cinematic encounters with eldritch cults. It introduces the Dynamic Pool System (DPS), an intuitive d6 pool economy where taking physical or mental damage actively shrinks the player's available action pool.
Vampire: The Masquerade
V5 (Modern Edition), 20th Anniversary (Compiled)
A game of gothic personal horror where players navigate the deadly social politics and ancient mysteries of secret vampire societies. It uses a d10 dice pool system where player choices are mechanically strained by an escalating "Hunger Dice" system.
Delta Green
A modern psychological thriller detailing a rogue, clandestine government conspiracy dedicated to investigating and burying alien/mythos anomalies. It features a lethal d100 percentile system focusing on forensic work, professional tradecraft, and the erosion of a character's personal bonds as they descend into madness.
Gumshoe System
Trail of Cthulhu, Night's Black Agents
An eldritch investigative game built on the design rule that missing a dice roll should never stop a detective from finding a crucial clue, focusing instead on interpreting the clues. It uses a point-spend system where possessing a relevant skill guarantees finding evidence, shifting the focus to decoding the mystery.
Brindlewood Bay
A cozy mystery game about elderly women in a seaside town who solve local murder cases while uncovering a dark local cult. It features a Powered by the Apocalypse hybrid system featuring a collaborative "Theory Roll" mechanic where players invent the final solution out of clues found.
Vaesen
A gothic 19th-century horror game where investigators use specialized sight to interact with and solve mysteries surrounding folk monsters. It uses the Year Zero Engine, using a d6 pool system focusing on treating physical/mental conditions rather than structural hit point tracking.
Tales from the Loop
An alternate-1980s adventure game where children investigate sci-fi anomalies outside their small towns while handling their ordinary childhood lives. It is a rules-light d6 dice pool system where kids can get scared, lost, or broken, but can never physically die.