Free RPG Games

Welcome to 1KM1KT, the largest collection of free rpg games online! Please take a moment to subscribe to our mailing list and check out our RSS feed. We offer freely downloadable rpg games to our readers and accept submissions of all kinds. Please check out some of our reader's latest work below.

By Simon Washbourne and Mark George

The Wood – a place where animals live, love, fight and die

Tales From The Wood (TFTW) is a role-playing game in which the players in the game take the roles of creatures which can typically be found in and around the British woodland ; creatures such as Mouse, Rabbit, Vole, Squirrel and Hedgehog. The creatures do have their own individual abilities – Mouse for example is extremely acrobatic, Hedgehog is tough and good in a fight, Mole can dig tunnels etc., but when Fox is on the hunt, or Owl has hungry owlets to feed then life becomes exceptionally difficult for everycreature. Then there is ?The Bane’ but of this great evil more later…

I wrote this game originally in response to a challenge on The Forge forum to design a role-playing game within 24 hours, from start to finish. I actually worked on the first draft for only 16 hours. However, the finished game was only half the game I really wanted, so I have continued to add to it ? adding more skills, rules for wound recovery, expanded weapon tables, updating the character sheet, adding some rules for gaining hero points after adventures and some adventure and mission ideas.

I decided on a traditional style of role-playing game, where characters are created by assigning attributes and skills and so on because the old-fashioned feel of the game seemed to warrant it.

The game is inspired by recent events in Iraq, The Eagle has Landed (book by Jack Higgins and movie starring Michael Caine), The Secret Army, lots of movies about the resistance in France and so on, and an old West End Games rpg by Greg Costikyan called The Price of Freedom. I suppose I can?t talk about the HomeGuard without also mentioning Dad?s Army and although this game is not a comedy, much is owed to that famous British sit com. It is pure fantasy albeit with a historical base and should be read and should be played as such.

Half a million years ago, on the lost continent of Lemuria in the Pacific, the first civilizations arose from the red murk of barbarism. For thousands of years the first men had struggled heroically to overcome the Dragon Kings – a cruel reptilian race which had ruled the Earth during the Age of Reptiles, but at last The Thousand Year War was done and the Dragon Kings were destroyed or driven from the land.

And so began Nemedis, the first kingdom. Over the centuries her children spread slowly throughout the vast, untamed jungle-lands and across the huge mountain ranges of prehistoric Lemuria and kingdoms were founded…… and fought…… and fell. But with enormous slowness civilization began to grow and before long the first great Empire would unite these tiny warring Kingdoms into one mighty power.

It was an age of warriors, when brave men and beautiful women, savages and savants, wizards and champions struggled to carve a red path that led to the Throne of the World. It was an age of legends and heroic sagas too.

And this is one of them……

I was going through the 1KM1KT logs this morning – something I like to do whenever I get a chance – and I notice that we had a visitor coming to us directly from the Departmnent of Defense’s Space and Naval Warfare division based in Washington D.C.

Naturally, my first concern is that someone has uncovered my secret plan to use mass printing of open-source RPG’s to influence the economic development of a certain third world country so that I can corner the import market on tin and tin-products.

My second thought was that it’s just someone like me who’s into RPG’s, gets bored at their job, and has access to a computer. If you fit that description, drop us a line. We’d love to hear about what you do, what you’re into, and any suggestions you might have to kill time on a Thursday afternoon before five.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the underlying theme, and the ideas you express are very innovative. I just can’t get past your grammar. No, I don’t mean you’re not smart, you just ought to – why are you looking at me like that? What are you going to do with – ouch!

So you suck at writing. Does it really matter? Yes it does. Despite all your great ideas, fabulous stories, and background information, if you can’t put together a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight, your RPG isn’t going to be read by anyone. That’s not to say that a few people won’t thumb through it (like your mom and the lonely guy at the RPG store who makes fun of everything), but the majority of the audience you’re trying to reach will get a headache, put your book back on the shelf, or click the back button and move on.

Maintaining readability in your work isn’t the easiest part of the job, but it isn’t the hardest either. Pay some attention to these six tips on copy editing and you can turn an unreadable mess into something you’ll be proud to show the world.

1. Think about what you are going to say. Brainstorming is a great idea and is very effective. When it comes time to put fingers on the keys though, take a moment to organize your thoughts. Things like introductions and setting backgrounds go first, main concepts and rules second, footnotes and afterthoughts go last. Divide your work up into sections and categorize all of your ideas before you begin writing. You’ll be able to go back and add stuff later, but this will get you started. When you finish writing, go back rename the sections – call them chapters.
2. Spell check your work. Not just with the automatic spellchecker either. Go through and read your work just like you would if you had picked it up off the shelf for the first time. When you find mistakes, circle them, make corrections, back up a few paragraphs, and begin reading again. This will help you to not to not only make sure your spelling is spot on, but will also give you a chance to improve the readability of your work.
3. Check your grammar. Again, not just with the automatic grammar checker! Your computer may be able to help you with your spelling, but it’s horrible at grammar. Trust me. To check your grammar go back through your work from the beginning – the very beginning starting with the title – and re-read it for grammar mistakes. Do it just like you did the spelling part and pay attention to the organization and overall document flow. Do not try to do both spelling and grammar at the same time – you’ll miss something. If you just don’t feel comfortable editing your own grammar, make friends with a good copy editor.
4. In fact, step four is all about making friends with a copy editor. At the very least find someone else who will read your work and give you honest critiscm. Avoid your grandmother and anyone who works beneath you in your office. Find the guy who will tell you when your fly is open and ask him. If he knows nothing about roleplaying games, even better. Remember, your game my fall into the hands of the uninitiated someday and needs to stand on its own merit.
5. Re-read your own work. Read it again. Read it a fourth time and a fifth. Make minor changes and put it on the shelf. Re-read it after a few days. Put yourself in the mindset of your target audience and read like they will. Any good editor will look at your work in as many ways as possible before they let you release it to the world. If youvre trying to save yourself some bucks you’ll have to do it yourself.
6. This one is the hardest. Know when to quit. I can’t teach you how to know when your done editing, so you’ll just have to figure it out on your own. The goal here is to reach the perfect point of refinement in your work where any changes will just make it different, and not necessarily better. Experience is the only way to learn this one. If you do get stuck, drop me a line.

By the way, if you catch the obvious (read: not overtly technical) grammar mistake in this article, e-mail me for your prize.

Update 7/24/4 – Congratulations to Vicki P. for being the first one to spot the error! The official contest is now closed, but feel free to let me know if you find the mistake and I will bestow my props onto you.
Keeton Harrington is Director of the “one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters” online publishing group, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the roleplaying game, fantasy, and science fiction genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net

The role-playing game of Marvel City’s not-so-super superheroes, in the style of The Mystery Men. This game was conceived, written and laid out within a 24 hour period as part of a game design challenge.

The role playing game of dreams and nightmares. This game was conceived, written and laid out within a 24 hour period as part of a game design challenge. I will work on it from time to time, but the original will stay here for comparison.

The sun, sea, sand and sex rpg.

This is the fun role-playing game of beach babes and lifesaving hunks posing and playing their way through improbable adventures on the golden sands of Malibu or Hawaii.

As if I need mention, this role-playing game is inspired by the tv series of a similar name.

It is a tongue-in-cheek game and can be fun for those nights when you want to play, but have limited time or simply want to have a laugh.

Character generation takes minutes, the rules are are as simple as the tv series plots and there are 17 episode ideas in the rulebook!

Jay Steven Anyong was born and raised in the Philippines in 198, and has always been known to most of his family as the weird one.

Inspired by a rotting copy of an RPG and hobby mail order catalog, he spent many hours designing dungeons and making his first pseduo-rpg at the age of 6, trying to figure out how to format a good looking document in an old ratty typewriter in his room.

Years later, after killing his once perfect eyesight with a Commodore 64 and acquiring his first “real” RPG, a box set of Star Frontiers, Jay took his first baby steps to being a game designer. Realizing that his rules were crap compared to TSR’s sci-fi game, Jay became a system junkie, scavenging ideas for game rules from any possible sources.

Aside from trying to be more than an amateur game designer, Jay also writes, tossing most of his stories into Fiction Press and wondering when he’ll be able to make a game that would finally introduce Roleplaying games into the Mindshare of Philippine Pop Culture.

Jay’s mind is usually accessible through the web through The Secret Files of the Pointyman

Projects

24 Hour RPG Project – Crack Kung-Fu Fighting Bunnies Go!

So you're an internet diva and you want to take advantage of the web to leverage your newest work online? Here are some ideas to get you started:

Get it up. Find a home for your work ASAP. You can publish your own website, or you can submit it to a publishing group like 1KM1KT to put it online for you for free. Either way, your work needs to be posted somewhere where people can check it out.

Tell your friends. Start with the people closest to you. Most of the time, they'll be happy to pass it on to anyone who may be interested. Think about all the people you know who have never met each other. Chances are you have a huge network of people at your fingertips that you don't even know about!

Give yourself credit. Take a moment to add credits and a link to your work as a signature line for e-mail, online forums, or anywhere else you may have that option. Here's what I use:

Keeton Harrington
Director – 1KM1KT
One Thousand Monkeys, One Thousand Typewriters
http://www.1km1kt.net

Get Googled. Take 15 minutes to submit your webpage to the big search engines. If someone else is hosting your work, just submit the URL where your work is located. It would look something like this: http://articles.1km1kt.net/expose_your_rpg_online.php

Here are some of the most popular search engines to get you started:
# Google

# Yahoo!

# Ask Jeeves

# AllTheWeb

# Hotbot

Read more about search engines here

Find the collectors. Lots of sites collect links to free RPG's, RPG's in a specific genre, RPG's based on movies or books, etc. Browse the internet and see if anyone is collecting your kind of work. Don't be shy about contacting these sites to be added to their lists. Most of the time, they're hobbyists like you and will be glad to post your link. Publish an article. RPG and publishing websites are always looking for fresh new material for their readers. Write and submit an article with a tagline linking the work you'd like to promote and a little information about yourself. 1KM1KT currently publishes a syndicated news feed that can potentially go to hundreds of websites. You can learn about writing for the 1KM1KT news feed here

Exchange Links. Contact other websites with similar content and ask them if they'd like to exchange links. Link exchanges can boost internet traffic and offer sites a chance to tap into new viewers. If 1KM1KT is hosting your work, just let us know who is linking to your work, and we'll add them to our links section.

With the examples above you can see that the internet offers a variety of free resources for aspiring authors. Using some of these simple techniques you can greatly increase public interest in your work and advance your career as an independent author. We wish you the best of luck and we look forward to seeing you online!

Keeton Harrington is Director of the 'one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters' online publishing group, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the roleplaying game, fantasy, and science fiction genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net