An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published by individuals or small press publishers, in contrast to games published by large corporations. Indie tabletop role-playing game designers participate in various game distribution networks, development communities, and gaming conventions, both in person and online. Indie game designer committees grant annual awards for excellence.
A deck-building game is a card game or board game where construction of a deck of cards is a main element of gameplay. Deck-building games are similar to collectible card games (CCGs) in that each player has their own deck. However, unlike CCGs, the cards are not sold in randomized packs, and the majority of the deck is built during the game, instead of before the game.
Planetarium is a strategy board game designed by Stéphane Vachon. The theme of the game is planetary formation and the birth of a new solar system.
Blades in the Dark is a tabletop fantasy role-playing game by John Harper, set in a fictional city of Doskvol, inspired by Victorian London and Gothic fiction. The game was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2015 and published at the start of 2017.
Sushi Go! is a card game designed by Phil Walker-Harding and published by Gamewright Games in 2013. It involves two to five players collecting cards representing sushi or associated items.
Sagrada is a dice-drafting board game designed by Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews and published in 2017 by Floodgate Games. Each player constructs a stained-glass window using dice on a personal 4×5 game board board with restrictions on the types of dice that can be played on each space. Players gain points by completing public and secret objectives for dice placements, and the one with the most after ten rounds is the winner.
Lucian Kahn is an American role-playing game writer/designer and musician based in Brooklyn. His work focuses on LGBT, Jewish, and subcultural themes, typically utilizing satire and farce. His games include Visigoths vs. Mall Goths,If I Were a Lich, Man, and Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy, and his music includes Schmekel.
Alex Roberts is a Canadian tabletop role-playing game designer. Her games typically lack a gamemaster (GM) and include romantic themes. Her games include For the Queen and Star Crossed.
Field Guide to Memory is a one-player, narrative, pen-and-paper journaling, indie role-playing game by Shing Yin Khor and Jeeyon Shim about the mentee of a missing cryptozoologist traveling across the United States in search of information about their missing mentor.
Honey & Hot Wax is an anthology of live action role-playing games on the theme of sex and sexuality, published by Pelgrane Press in 2020. It includes games by Sharang Biswas (co-editor), Yeonsoo Julian Kim, Julia Bond Ellingboe, Kat Jones, Lucian Kahn (co-editor), Jonaya Kemper, Will Morningstar, Alex Roberts, and Susanne. It also has a foreword by Naomi Clark, academic chair of NYU Game Center and designer of the board game Consentacle, as well as a chapter on consent by Maury Brown.
Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall is a tabletop role-playing game about Chinese immigrants to North America managing a family restaurant while battling Jiangshi, legendary hopping vampires. The game was designed by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim, who are both Chinese immigrants. It was published independently in 2021 after a Kickstarter campaign raised over US$100,000. The instructions focus heavily on authentic portrayals of Chinese history and immigrant experiences. The game's tone can range from serious to comedy horror. Themes include fighting racism, exploring intergenerational knowledge and relationships, coping with economic hardship, and working together as a family.
Brindlewood Bay is a murder mystery tabletop role-playing game about elderly women amateur detectives, inspired by Murder, She Wrote and H. P. Lovecraft. It was designed by Jason Cordova and was published by Gauntlet Publishing after a 2022 Kickstarter campaign raised $477,518 from 7,748 backers.
Flamecraft is a card game designed by Manny Vega which was fundraised via Kickstarter and published in 2022 by Cardboard Alchemy featuring illustrations by Sandara Tang. Players act as "Flamekeepers", assisting shops in town with dragons and enchantments in order to have the best reputation by the end of the game.
Apiary is a tile-based strategy game designed by Connie Vogelmann and published in 2023 by Stonemaier Games. Players control a faction of spacefaring bees as they explore, gather resources, and advance their hive before hibernation.
If I Were a Lich, Man is a boxed set of three comedic, Jewish tabletop role-playing games about creative resistance against authoritarianism. The games were written by Lucian Kahn and illustrated by Ezra Rose. The box contains three games: "If I Were a Lich, Man," "Same Bat Time, Same Bat Mitzvah," and "Grandma's Drinking Song." It was published by Hit Point Press in 2023 after the publisher's kickstarter campaign raised $84,590 in two weeks. It won an ENNIE Award and an Indie Game Developer Network award.
For the Queen is a tabletop role-playing game by Alex Roberts about the dangerous journey of a queen's servants. The first edition was published by Evil Hat Productions in 2019, and the second edition was published by Darrington Press in 2024. The game features themes of power, authority, femininity, love, loyalty, and betrayal. For the Queen has inspired indie role-playing games with similar game mechanics.
Dialect, subtitled "A Game About Language And How It Dies", is a tabletop role-playing game published by indie role-playing game publisher Thorny Games in 2016 that uses cards and collaborative storytelling to create a new jargon or pseudolanguage that develops, evolves and eventually dies.
Sharang Biswas is an Indian American designer/writer of tabletop role-playing games and interactive media, a writer of speculative fiction, an adjunct professor of game studies at NYU Game Center, and a freelance games journalist. His work focuses on LGBTQ and science fiction and fantasy themes. Biswas has won multiple awards for his game writing work as both a solo designer and a collaborator: one IndieCade award, four ENNIE Awards, and two Indie Game Developer Network awards. He was an Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Moving Image.
Naomi Clark is a Japanese American game designer, writer, and professor who currently serves as the departmental chair of NYU Game Center at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. During Clark's term as chair of the department, NYU Game Center has been ranked by The Princeton Review as the top school for game design. Her games often address LGBTQ themes. She designed Consentacle, a science fiction cooperative board game, which raised $154,609 on Kickstarter and won the IndieCade Impact Award. Clark co-wrote the book A Game Design Vocabulary with Anna Anthropy. Clark is a member of New York City's Game Development Industry Council.
Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy is a ritualistic storytelling game by Lucian Kahn. Throughout the game, two players act out a ceremony in which one resurrects the other from the dead. Dead Friend was nominated for the 2019 Indie Game Developer Network "Most Innovative" award.
