Here They Are! Your 10 Most Anticipated TTRPGs For 2024!

The nominations were nominated, and the votes were voted, and now we have the final results: this year's official most anticipated TTRPGs--as voted by you! Well, a few thousand of you.

Just like we do every year, the EN World community votes on the games they are looking forward to. Here is last year's Top 10 (spoiler: the winner was Chaosium's Pendragon 6E). Previous winners include 13th Age (2013), Star Wars Force & Destiny (2015), Rifts for Savage Worlds (2016), Trudvang Chronicles (2017), Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition (2018), Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (2019), Dune (2020 & 2021), and Twilight 2000 (2021), Blade Runner (2022), and Pendragon 6E (2023). What will be the most anticipated RPG of 2024?

Let's find out!

10 Tales of the Valiant (Kobold Press)
1st appearance
Kobold Press joins the 'alternate 5E' club with this rewritten, non-OGL version of the game! A million dollar Kickstarter last year, and a new one for the GM's book going on right now, Kobold Press announced this as 'Project Black Flag' during the OGL crisis of 2023, but being unable to trademark that name opted for Tales of the Valiant instead. The system, however, is still called the Black Flag Roleplaying System.

9. Mothership 1E (Tuesday Night Games)
3rd appearance
On this list three years running, the boxed Mothership 1E game should be coming out this year! This is sci-fi horror at its best -- you can play scientists, teamsters, androids, and marines using the d100 'Panic Engine'. Yep, it's Alien(s), pretty much.

8. Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Program (Exalted Funeral)
2nd Appearance
Exalted Funeral made quite a splash when they announced this game last year, which went on to make neary $2M on Kickstarter. And how could they not? It's Monty Python fergoodnessake! A rules-lite gaming system, spam, a minigame with catapults, spam, coconut dice rollers, spam, and an irrepressible Python-eque sense of humour. Did I mention the spam? It was at #10 on this list last year, but it's claimed to #8 this year.

7. Daggerheart (Darrington Press)
1st appearance
From the Critical Role folks, Daggerheart is a new fantasy TTRPG with its own original system coming out this year with "A fresh take on fantasy RPGs, designed for long-term campaign play and rich character progression."

6. Cohors Cthulhu (Modiphius)
1st appearance
It's Ancient Rome. It's Cthulhu. It uses Modiphius' in-house 2d20 System. You can be a gladiator, a centurion, or a Germanic hero. Did I mention Cthulhu?

5. Dolmenwood (Necrotic Gnome)
1st appearance
The British Isles, a ton of folklore, and a giant Kickstarter--Dolmenwood is a dark, whimsical fantasy TTRPG drawing from fairy tales and lets you "journey through tangled woods and mossy bowers, forage for magical mushrooms and herbs, discover rune-carved standing stones and hidden fairy roads, venture into fungal grottoes and forsaken ruins, battle oozing monstrosities, haggle with goblin merchants, and drink tea with fairies."

4. Pendragon 6E (Chaosium)
4th appearance
Last year's winner was on this list waaaaay back in 425 AD, and it's still here! Well, maybe not that far back, but it's shown up in 2021 at #4, 2022 at #3, 2023 at #1, and now 2024 at #4! What can we say? People are clearly anticipating it... still.

3. 13th Age 2nd Edition (Pelgrane Press)
2nd appearance
13th Age is over a decade old now, and was our most anticipated game way back in 2013. Now the new edition is coming! It's compatible with the original, but revised and with a ton more... stuff! 13th Age 2E was #3 in last year's list!

2. The Electric State Roleplaying Game (Free League)
1st appearance
Free League is always on these lists, and for good reason. This gorgeous looking game is described as "A road trip on the verge of reality in visual artist and author Simon Stålenhag's vision of an apocalyptic alternate 1990s".

1. Shadow of the Weird Wizard (Schwalb Entertainment)
3rd appearance
First announced by Rob Schwalb a couple of years ago, this is a more family-friendly version of his acclaimed RPG, Shadow of the Demon Lord. SHADOW OF THE WEIRD WIZARD is a fantasy roleplaying game in which you and your friends assume the roles of characters who explore the borderlands and make them safe for the refugees escaping the doom that has befallen the old country. Unsafe are these lands: the Weird Wizard released monsters to roam the countryside, cruel faeries haunt the shadows, undead drag themselves free from their tombs, and old, ancient evils stir once more. If the displaced people would rebuild their lives, they need heroes to protect them. Finally at the top of the list after being #7 in 2022, and #6 in 2023!

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PREVIOUS WINNERS OF THE ANNUAL EN WORLD MOST ANTICIPATED TABLETOP RPG OF THE YEAR

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#​	2013​	2015​	2016​	2017​	2018​	2019​	2020​	2021​	2022​	2023​
1​	13th Age​	Star Wars Force & Destiny​	Rifts for Savage Worlds​	Trudvang Chronicles​	Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition​	Savage Worlds Adventure Edition​	Dune​	Dune/ Twilight2000 (joint)​	Blade Runner​	King Arthur Pandragon 6E​
2​	Numenera​	Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition​	Mutant Crawl Classics​	Tales from the Loop​	Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Fourth Edition​	Pathfinder 2nd Edition​	Vaesen - Nordic Horror Roleplaying​	-​	Broken Tales​	Dragonbane​
3​	Star Wars Edge of the Empire​	Unified Rolemaster​	7th Sea 2nd Edition​	Kult: Divinity Lost​	Kult: Divinity Lost​	Lex Arcana​	Cyberpunk Red​	The One Ring (2nd Edition)​	Pendragon 6E​	13th Age 2nd Edition​
4​	Shadowrun 5th Edition​	Conan Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of​	Conan Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of​	Star Trek Adventures​	Forbidden Lands: Retro Open-World Survival Fantasy RPG​	The Expanse​	Fallout​	King Arthur Pendragon 6th Edition​	Avatar Legends​	Household​
5​	Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition​	Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls​	DCC Lankhmar​	Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of​	RuneQuest: Role-playing in Glorantha​	Eclipse Phase 2nd Edition​	Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Soulbound​	Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition (A5E)​	Mothership 1E​	Mothership 1E​
6​	Firefly​	Barbarians of Lemuria: Mythic Edition​	RuneQuest 4​	Starfinder​	The Witcher Roleplaying Game​	Dune RPG​	Swords of the Serpentine​	Rivers of London​	Rivers of London​	Shadow of the Weird Wizard​
7​	Fate Core​	Feng Shui 2​	Torg: Eternity​	The Witcher Roleplaying Game​	Warhammer 40,000 Wrath & Glory​	John Carter of Mars​	Rivers of London​	Pathfinder for Savage Worlds​	Shadow of the Weird Wizard​	The Walking Dead Universe​
8​	Hillfolk​	Fantasy AGE​	Blue Rose AGE​	Coriolis​	The Expanse​	Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition​	Stargate​	Brancalonia - The Spaghetti Fantasy RPG​	Cy-Borg​	Warhammer 4Ok Imperium Maledictum​
9​	Torchbearer​	Paranoia​	Paranoia​	Delta Green Roleplaying Game​	Legend of the Five Rings 5th Edition​	Things from the Flood​	Fading Suns 4E​	Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition​	Swords of the Serpentine​	Old Gods of Appalachia​
10​	-​	Shadows of the Demon Lord​	Delta Green​	Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea 2E​	Numenera 2: Discovery & Destiny​	Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD​	Cortex Prime​	SLA Industries, 2nd Edition​	Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5e​	Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme​

 

[mamba]

Looking forward to the people who insist Critical Role's Daggerheart will be the death knell for WotC D&D looking at it being outside of the top 3 here.

easy: we are not the target audience, it will do much better with that… no idea how accurate that is though

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

First of all, you should probably multiply the 50k by four or five to get the number of players, not DMs. Second, the 50M D&D number is all time players, not current active ones.

Either way it is a few % of D&D players at best

Sure, but in total that is approximately 50,000 books (for all 3 systems). That would be about half the sales of the worst selling 5e D&D book.

 

[mamba]

Sure, but in total that is approximately 50,000 books (for all 3 systems). That would be about half the sales of the worst selling 5e D&D book.

agreed, my point was that you were comparing two different things to arrive at your ratio of 1/1000, not that they make up a significant share of the market

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guess you could be correct. However, TotV, MCDM rpg, & shadowdark had about 50,000 backers combined. That is about 1/1000 of the D&D market (maybe). I am not sure that is much of a dent (at least yet).

Yeah, the only real dent that might happen, and even that isn't likely to mean anyone at Hasbro would need to get a second job, is if Critical Role switches away from D&D. While there are definitely reasons to guess that might happen in the future, as far as I know, the actual CR team hasn't given any indication that it actually is happening.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's how I feel about Stonetop. But the main difference is that the game is about 80% done, and backers already have access to a more than functional playable game.

I have some sort of PDF for Deathmatch Island, as a backer, but I think it's still supposed to need several more editing passes. I've got too full of a plate to engage with it before it's all done. I expect to go nuts with it this summer, though.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I guess you could be correct. However, TotV, MCDM rpg, & shadowdark had about 50,000 backers combined. That is about 1/1000 of the D&D market (maybe). I am not sure that is much of a dent (at least yet).

Not to mention I bet a nontrivial number of those same backers still buy the next edition of D&D as well.

 

[Jer]

Not to mention I bet a nontrivial number of those same backers still buy the next edition of D&D as well.

Yes - just because I buy and mostly play 13th Age as my fantasy game of choice it doesn't mean that I don't also have a number of 5e books as well. Games aren't cars - people can usually afford to own more than one.

 

[humble minion]

We are nowhere near peak Jane Austen saturation. There is a vast, vast appetite for Regency content, in a largely underserved segment of the RPG market.

Next to anime or Studio Ghibli-inflected fantasy games and settings, I'd say a Regency RPG or game -- important caveat: word of which has to reach that underserved RPG audience -- is probably the genre with the most growth potential.

Reaching the audience is the key, as you say.

There's been a few attempts in that direction. Good Society is probably the most successful, and that's entirely designed around telling Austenian stories. It's still very niche as a seller though - they had to run a second kickstarter a couple of years back just to get the funds together to do a reprint of the core books. How do you get this sort of product in front of the Regency-romance-reading audience, the bulk of which (I suspect) does not have a lot of crossover with the D&D- or other RPG-playing audience? It'd be like trying to sell an RPG to sports fans (which is ANOTHER vast untouched potential RPG market by the way - just look at the success of the MyCareer option in the EA NBA games, or the enthusiasm for fantasy sports games). We've got an RPG marketing machine that's entirely aimed at the geek/genre market segment, and hasn't ever quite managed to break out of it.

Dandies and Dandyzettes was another successful kickstarter in this space a year or two back, although it seems to be largely a one-person effort and is running heavily behind schedule as a result. And there was another big colour hardback called Regency around the same time, which sadly failed to meet its funding goal. There's a vast amount of people reading or watching fiction set in this time period - mostly romances, but Aubrey/Maturin, Sharpe etc are also very successful lines set in the same era - but that audience hasn't translated into RPG success.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For people who aren't into Austen or Regency stuff, that community is largely invisible, but it has places it congregates.

I would rely on good old fashioned advertising.

Put ads for your Regency RPG on the ads-tier streamers showing Austen adaptations (especially the well-liked ones) and Bridgerton, etc. Put targeted ads on Jane Austen/Regency YouTube, which is also huge. Ditto reddit. If it's possible to target ads on Tiktok, do the same there.

Just telling existing RPG audiences about the games will miss the bulk of the potential audience who, as you say, @humble minion, aren't people who think of themselves as RPG players at all.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I think I have always remembered the time period for the Regency Era wrong. I somehow never realized the War of 1812 was during that time. so yeah, that is a very underexplored time period for TTRPGs.