Many tabletop RPG hobbyists have made the switch to digital books, and DriveThruRPG has established itself as a one-stop shop for building a digital library of RPGs from Dungeons & Dragons to experimental independent games. Every year sees new titles added to the massive selection of available games, and 2022 has been no exception. Although many books have a “print on demand” option, the pandemic saw more tabletop groups transition to digital gaming sessions, making PDF books an obvious pairing.
DriveThruRPG offers decades worth of tabletop RPG classics that have been long out of print, for those wishing to delve into the past or rediscover an old favorite. New games continue to grow the hobby, and for those excited to try the latest and greatest tabletop RPGs of 2022, DriveThruRPG also delivers. Tabletop RPGs like D&D can help players overcome shyness but established RPG aficionados should not shy away from trying some of 2022’s newest additions to the world of tabletop roleplaying.
The Midnight World Offers A Better Thought-Out Approach To Modern, Cosmic Horror
One of 2022’s exciting original products is The Midnight World, a modern-era horror game from Gem and Eye RPG Studios. The game shares similarities to games like Call of Cthulhu and Chronicles of Darkness, where the story takes place in a dark reflection of our own world. The Midnight World distinguishes itself from the Lovecraftian tradition with its cosmology that is more coherent than the Lovecraft mythos, but just as terrifying. In the game’s lore, the Big Bang birthed not one universe, but an infinite multiverse.
Many of these universes died shortly after their creation. The Corpse Universes left behind, absent stable laws of physics and mathematics, became the breeding ground for Dread Beings, akin to the Elder Gods of Lovecraft. Game Masters aiming to run a perfect horror tabletop RPG will find ample resources in The Midnight World. The players portray someone who has been Touched by an encounter with a Dread Being, impacting them psychically and metaphysically.
Unique mechanics include The Midnight Clock, which functions both as a pacing mechanic and a means to track a character’s rising Power alongside Distress and Dread. The game uses a dice pool system, which is d6-based by default, with 5s as successes. Certain circumstances can either raise die size to a d8, increasing odds of success, or reduce them to d4s, where success is impossible and critical failure is likely. The Midnight World is especially recommended for those who want the cosmic horror vibe of Call of Cthulhu without the baggage of Lovecraftian lore.
Into The Odd - Remastered Is A Rules Light Game For Bizarre OSR-Style Adventures
Another quality new 2022 game is Into the Odd – Remastered from Free League Publishing, which is an updated version of the original 2014 Into the Odd, building off the rules of the 2020 follow up Electric Bastionland. Hacks can make D&D more accessible for newbies, but the rules-light systems of Into the Odd, and its Remastered version, are even more streamlined than 5e D&D.
The system uses only three ability scores, Strength, Dexterity, and Willpower. It relies on Old School Renaissance simplicity alongside modern, intelligent tabletop RPG design. This makes Into the Odd easy to learn, but with enough thought and foresight to allow for both satisfying campaigns or quick one-shot adventures. Into the Odd – Remastered returns to Industrial Bastionland, the setting of the original Into the Odd game. Bastion is the principal city in a loosely defined fantasy setting, and the players act as Explorers, setting out into a world of “industrial horror and cosmic strangeness.” The evocative minimalism of the setting pairs well with the rules. This makes Into the Odd – Remastered an ideal choice for those wanting an old-school adventure with modern design sensibilities and a strange setting that might remind players of the works of China Mieville.
Third-Party Campaign Settings For D&D 5e Provide More Exciting & Dynamic Options
Fans can argue about whether Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance is the better D&D setting but limiting a gaming group’s options to only the official campaign worlds published by Wizards of the Coast misses out on some of the imaginative and daring campaign settings from third-party publishers. This year saw 5e D&D-compatible adaptations of three beloved campaign worlds with every bit as much campaign potential as any official D&D setting books.
Iron Kingdoms: Requiem from Privateer Press brings the popular Iron Kingdoms world into the new D&D rule set. Iron Kingdoms originally launched as third-party D&D setting during the third edition of the rules alongside the popular Monsternomicon series of monster books, and The Witchfire Trilogy adventure module series. The new book brings the trademark Iron Kingdoms “full metal fantasy” blend of steampunk and magic to the current streamlined D&D system.
The Midnight campaign world was another that made its debut with third edition D&D rules originally, and Midnight: Legacy of Darkness from EDGE Studio brings the grim setting to 5e D&D. There are tabletop RPGs for Dark Souls fans beyond the video game’s official 5e adaptation (which took some strange liberties with the core D&D rules to mimic the video game’s mechanics) and Midnight: LoD is high on that list. Midnight is a world where Izrador, the Sauron analogue of the setting, won and darkness has ruled for nearly 100 years.
Perhaps the most exciting third-party setting for the current D&D rules is Adventures in Rokugan, also from EDGE Studio. Rokugan is the world of the Legend of the Five Rings tabletop RPG, which is currently in its sixth edition. Despite being a third-party setting, Rokugan was used as the official campaign world for third-edition D&D’s Oriental Adventures line. Adventures in Rokugan features a blend of samurai clan warfare and politics, alongside supernatural threats from The Shadowlands.
Beloved White Wolf TTRPGs Received New Editions In 2022, Available On DriveThruRPG
White Wolf game fans were not neglected in 2022, as this year saw new editions of two classic properties from that company. While some are unclear why both Vampire: the Masequerade and Vampire: the Requiem exist, hardcore fans have tracked the tumultuous second life of White Wolf games, as those properties have been split between different publishers. Fans of Onyx Path’s products, as well as Renegade Game Studios’ Vampire: the Masquerade 5e line, both received new takes on old White Wolf fan favorites.
Rengade’s Hunter: the Reckoning 5th Edition core book brings Hunter into the new rules and time period established with Vampire 5e. Fans of the original Hunter may have a bit of trouble adjusting, as the new Hunters eschew the supernatural origins of the Imbued for a more traditional take on exceptional humans battling the monsters that hide among them. The game steps away from the dense lore of older Hunter editions for more loosely defined, enigmatic threats, but this could arguably make it the most approachable game for players entirely new to the World of Darkness to be released in decades.
Some DMs struggle to prevent high-level D&D parties from looking like gods, but other games, like White Wolf’s Scion series, aimed for exactly that. Scion used a similar system to the World of Darkness games and Exalted, but featured its own setting, a modern-day world where the player characters are the children of gods from real-world pantheons, similar to the American Gods novel and TV series. The original was split across three core books, each addressing increasing power levels, from Scion: Hero, to Demi-God, to God. Onyx’s Path’s Scion 2nd Edition changed up the naming convention somewhat, beginning with Scion: Origin before Hero, and 2022’s Scion: Demi-God is the third core book for the new edition.
2022 Saw Supplements For Popular TTRPGs & A Classic D&D Version Released Digitally
There were many other promising new tabletop RPGs released this year that are available through DriveThruRPG. Fabula Ultima TTRPG from Need Games aims to capture the feeling of console JRPGs in tabletop form. The Star Trek Adventures line from Modiphius received a setting supplement for the era of Star Trek: Discovery. Fans of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game might find Shadowrun’s TTRPG appealing, and the current 6e Shadowrun line added Hack and Slash, a supplement centered on hacking the Matrix.
For those who do not want to try something new, but prefer to revisit a classic, DriveThruRPG also added The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game in 2022, available digitally for the first time. This self-contained game was originally released by TSR in 1994 as the last of many variations on the “Basic” Dungeons & Dragons rules that launched the entire tabletop RPG hobby in the first place, well before the era of digital storefronts made collecting books easier than ever.
