Powered by Year Zero
This page collects games created by external designers under the Free Tabletop License. All of these games are built using the Year Zero Engine as a framework.
Specters
Creators: Morné Schaap
Genre: Horror
Description: Face the dead. Unravel the mystery. Beware what follows you home.
Step into the shadows where the living and the dead collide. Specters is a tabletop role-playing game of haunted places, restless spirits, and those brave, or foolish, enough to face them. Players take on the roles of investigators, mediums, and ghost hunters as they explore cursed homes, forgotten asylums, abandoned hotels, and other places where the veil between worlds is dangerously thin.
Do you want to play as a group of investigators or content creators investigating haunted places? Looking to prove your theory on ghosts is correct? Or do you want to make them hurt like they hurt you? This is where you can make that happen.
Link: DrivethruRPG
Tales of the Old West
Creators: Matthew Tyler-Jones, Dave Seamark
Genre: Western
Description: Welcome to the Old West, where life is hard, life is short, and life don’t owe you a goddamn thing.
But you are extraordinary.
Neither race nor gender can limit what you can become. It don’t matter where you come from, it’s the West that makes you. There are no monsters but other folk, and only the dead forget the land is your enemy.
This comprehensive core book contains everything you need to create gritty and hard-hitting adventures in the American West. The rules expand the acclaimed Year Zero Engine to help you create diverse characters, to build your reputation, your home, your business, your family, and a thriving community.
It also contains extensive guidance on creating player focused campaigns in the historical West of the 1870s, a sweeping campaign framework set in New Mexico, and a full starting adventure.
War Stories
Creators: Firelock Games
Genre: World War 2
Description: War Stories is a roleplaying game set during the Second World War. With it, you and your friends may play the roles of heroic soldiers parachuting into Normandy during Operation Overlord in June of 1944, or as a harried tank crew grinding their way through France in the breakout that followed. You may even explore history as an intrepid war correspondent or an underground resistance fighter. The campaign game will allow players to tell the tale of their stalwart band as they collectively liberate France and drive onward toward victory. Above all, players will create moments of valor and courage, ultimately weaving their personal tales into the fabric of history, from D-Day and beyond
These will be their War Stories.
Link: Firelock Games Web Store
The Last Wardens
Creators: Jon Barry, Bart Vickers
Genre: Horror
Description: In The Last Wardens Tabletop Roleplaying Game, it’s 1975 and you are one of the titular Last Wardens, a rogue Cell of unlikely heroes (and anti-heroes) who use chainsaws, explosives, and abilities that defy all known science to defend an unsuspecting world against the the chaotic mutations spawned by the Great Drift.
It’s a game of Retro Cosmic Grindhouse Horror, where bell-bottom jeans, tentacles, and an absurd amount of blood collide for a one-of-a-kind experience. Can you dig it?
Link: Web store, DrivethruRPG
Temples & Tombs
Creators: Christopher Grey, Stacy Dellorfano
Genre: Pulp
Description: Terror! Suspense! You will not believe the dangers in store for your intrepid heroes! Will they discover ancient secrets, lost civilizations, or priceless treasure? Will they escape treacherous villains, evil super powers, or deathly traps?
Temples & Tombs is a roleplaying game devoted to creating the fast-paced adventures popularized in pulp magazines that led to films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy (1999), and Romancing the Stone.
Built on the Year Zero Engine system, the framework that drives Free League’s games such as Tales from the Loop and Mutant Year Zero, Temples & Tombs is adapted to fit the two-fisted adventure pulp genre in several key ways.
Link: DrivethruRPG
Sleepy Hollow
Creators: Rick Hershey, Lucus Palosaari, Geoff Gander
Genre: Horror
Description: It is the early 19th Century in the new country of The United States of America, and the Village of Sleepy Hollow is shrouded in mystery and superstition. Twenty years have passed since the fateful night when Ichabod Crane vanished, leaving only whispers of the Headless Horseman and other sinister forces lurking in the shadows. But the darkness never truly left Sleepy Hollow…
Sleepy Hollow delves into the eerie and unsettling atmosphere of the village of Sleepy Hollow and surrounding area in 1810, where the boundary between the Natural and the Supernatural is thin. The small, isolated village is steeped in traditions, haunted by tales of spectral riders, witches, and dark pacts made in the Dead of Night. The residents are deeply superstitious, their lives intertwined with the land, the ancient woods, and the unseen forces that dwell within.
In a game of Sleepy Hollow, the Players take on the roles of Characters navigating this world, uncovering the mysteries that have plagued the village for generations. They will encounter haunted woods, cursed artifacts, and malevolent spirits, each with their own stories to tell. As they investigate, they must make difficult choices, balancing their survival with the need to protect Sleepy Hollow and its residents from the ever-encroaching darkness, and possibly themselves.
Between the Clouds
Creators: Andi Licht
Genre: Biopunk
Description: Between Clouds is a colorful, biopunk, tabletop RPG about a family of misfits navigating the open skies atop their beloved flying beast. Life among the clouds revolves around the Kirin, oversized animals that possess volatile genetics and the gift of flight. Across the skies, floating vessels and cities are held aloft by the animated remains of hunted Kirin, whose beating hearts defy gravity itself. Commoners are wary of becoming abducted or eaten by these creatures, while propaganda and folklore only stoke their fears. With an uninhabitable surface below, humanity must learn to coexist with the flora and fauna of their airborne realm or perish.
Terminal State
Creators: Chris Vermeren
Genre: Cyberpunk
Description: This world is an error. A glitch. It has to be. This can’t be the way life was meant to be.
It all went wrong somewhere. Probably when we let the hyper-corps take control. Now they control everything we consume. Everything we eat, drink, watch, or buy. They’re even trying to control how we think. Sooner or later, they’ll finish the job.
Unless you stop them.
Welcome to Terminal State. In this tabletop roleplaying game QuickStart, you and your friends take on the role of the protagonists of the story. Traversing the mean streets, executive boardrooms, and barren wastelands of a near-future corporate dystopian world. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the ones who change the fate of humanity.
Or, maybe you’ll just earn some credit and blow stuff up!
Eldritch Automata
Creators: Nicholas Francia, Ian E. Muller
Genre: Science Fiction
Description: Welcome to the dark and dangerous world of Eldritch Automata. Designed in the Year Zero Engine and inspired by the likes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Pacific Rim, and Escaflowne, Elridtch Automata takes place in a recent-apocalyptic world filled with horror, drama, and psychological torment. In Eldritch Automata, you play one of humanity’s last defenders, facing down eldritch abominations that want to eat you, controlled by visually perfect angelic beings that want to control you, while piloting a massive monstrosity of a mech, the titular Automata, that’s slowly killing you.
Link: DrivethruRPG (Quickstart)
Year Zero Mini
Creators: Matt Kay
Genre: Generic
Description: Like other rules-light games, Year Zero Mini (YZM) is designed to provide a light framework to allow you to quickly jump into your favourite setting. Where other rules-light games might emphasise action or heroics, YZM is a little more down to earth – telling stories of a more gritty and relatable nature. Using the Year Zero Engine, this game uses a pool of standard six-sided dice, and success is measured by any 6s showing up in a roll. You won’t find target numbers, complicated mechanics, or funky dice here. This game is designed to be as accessible as possible!
