Role playing games have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years and 2020 has seen some truly excellent potential additions to your tabletop gaming library. This year we have seen plenty of games with different themes and settings. There are definitely top games which are also new to the market to consider picking up and playing.
Blades in the Dark
Blades in the Dark is a rather focused game: it’s the story of a gang on a mission to carve out their own piece of a corrupt city. What makes Blades in the Dark special is, in part, the “engagement roll” for a mission. This is a game mechanic that removes the ho-hum tedium of players getting bogged down in the limitless what-if scenarios with the dice. Instead, the game master asks a few questions and builds a dice pool out of the answers—this lets players back into the action much quicker.
It is Blades in the Dark inventive dice mechanics which encourage experimentation and a wonderfully grim aesthetic which makes for a great place to be a thief. This game is designed for adults with 2-4 hours to play in the dark fantasy genre.
Top new RPG games for 2020
Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game
This edition of Root is based on the lore of a board game with the same name. You and your party play as poor woodland animals (a wolf, a fox, or a cat) seeking to control the forest. Each character has five stats, so when you want to do something, you’ll generally roll 2 D6s and add in any relevant stat modifiers.
There are different factions roaming the woods: Root features a living world where these factions will battle each other whether the players are part of those conflicts or not. Based on the “Powered by the Apocalypse system,” famously used in Dungeon World, Root features animals living in a melancholic world and it may be the next great addition to your collection.
Vaeson: Nordic Horror Roleplaying
There are plenty of horror games on the market, but horror RPGs tend to be less popular. While this game may not be exactly Lovecraftian like Call of Cthulhu or Dread, Vaeson is a Nordic-themed game set in the Mythic North where Scandinavian myths become real. While cities do exist in this setting, few dare to enter the mysterious forests.
You and your party each make your own character gifted with the “sight:” an ability which allows you to see beyond the limits of the ordinary and then head out to remote villages to uncover the mysteries of the world. You’ll also be able to build your group’s headquarters and hire staff to research in laboratories and libraries.
Mechanically, Vaeson borrows the “Year Zero Engine,” which you may have been exposed to in games like Mutant: Year Zero.
Different RPGs take new and innovative approaches to gameplay. Some of the best tabletop games are able to pick up existing game mechanics from older games and put an interesting twist on them to keep players engaged. Other games seek to totally upturn the tabletop gaming norms like games which remove the need to have a devoted game master. Every year brings about new innovations and ideas and 2020 has certainly been no exception.
