TabletopRoleplaying is about choice. The key, defining advantage of the medium over all other forms of storytelling is the absolute autonomy of the player. As a result, Tabletop Roleplaying thrives in environments where players need to make tough choices. The ability to come up with creative solutions and take unanticipated actions gives players the autonomy to navigate moral dilemmas and logistical quagmires on their own terms, and there’s no genre richer with both of those things than post-apocalyptic fiction. If you’re looking to take advantage of this unique strength of Tabletop Roleplaying, here are some recommendations for the best post-apocalyptic games you may play.
Dead of Winter
An amazing roleplay experience right out of the box
This finely crafted and tense board game casts its players as survivors struggling to help their community survive in a zombie-tarnished wasteland, all while balancing their own personal goals against those of the group.
Dead of Winter is an intricate and tense game where playerswork togetherto manage a colony of survivors duringa zombie apocalypse. Players must scavenge for resources, accomplish goals, and hold off the zombie threat. What makes this game brilliant and cements its place as a wonderful role-playing experience is the way it handles its victory.
The entire group has a shared objective they must achieve to win, but each individual player also has their own objectives, which must be accomplished for them to be considered victorious. This forces players to balance their needs against those of the group. On top of that, there is a high chance one player will secretly be a defector whose personal objective requires the group’s main objective to fail. This means everyone has to balance all those conflicting goals with the need to keep the rest of the group’s trust.
Fallout: The Roleplaying Game
A wonderful recreation of the Fallout Experience
This officially licensed Tabletop RPG based on the Fallout video game franchise has everything you need to bring the post-nuclear wasteland to life on your table. With lovingly crafted character creation and combat, you’ll find yourself ready to leave your vault in no time.
For our next few entries, we have a classic in post-apocalyptic gaming, albeit one you might not be used to seeing on your tabletop. The original Fallout was based on its creator’s post-apocalyptic tabletop campaign, and this game will give you everything you need to recreate that experience at your own table.
This game is relatively combat-focused, with a damage system that heavily incorporates injuries and preserves the ability, present in some Fallout games, to injure specific parts of the body to handicap your enemies. The core book is specifically geared toward the Commonwealth (from Fallout 4) and its surroundings, but the entire Fallout setting and timeline are available to you, so draw your energy guns and get ready to leave your vault because you’ve got a wasteland to explore.
Fallout The Board Game
Another amazing recreation
This board game is a shockingly successful recreation of the Fallout videogames’ core mechanics in a 1-3 hour package, with rich RPG elements and a well-fleshed-out mixture of cooperative and competitive elements.
Perhaps you want a tabletopFallout experiencethat doesn’t go all the way to being a full-on TTRPG campaign. If that’s the case, this game is probably right for you. Fallout The Board Game is an exploration game with heavyRPG elementsthat has players uncovering a map, discovering items, unlocking perks, and leveling up just like they would in a Fallout video game. Map exploration in this game feels a lot like exploring and uncovering the map in a classic Fallout title. There are a lot of interesting things to discover as you travel, from cities to vaults to environmental hazards.
Unlike the previous entries, this isn’t a cooperative game. The players here are competing against each other. However, they’re also working together to keep the enemy factions from consolidating power and taking the victory away from all of them.
Zombicide Chronicles
Ridiculous and full of chainsaws
This action-focused tabletop RPG gives you everything you need for a campaign full of zombie-killing fun with awesome weapons and badass characters.
Perhaps you’re not looking for an apocalypse that’s so satirical and contemplative. Perhaps you just want to kill some zombies in a post-apocalyptic hellscape gloriously free of the societal restraints that are currently holding you back from spraying guts everywhere. If that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, this is the game for you.
Based on the hit Zombicide board game, this RPG recreates its action-focused experience and high-violence splatterpunk tone in a Tabletop RPG setting. It’s not as gritty and grounded as other post-apocalyptic games, but that’s not what it’s for. It’s for reveling in mass zombicide with big, cool, weapons. You’re not just trying to survive in this game. You’re out for revenge on zombiekind, and your shotguns and chainsaws will be the tools by which you take it.
Journey Roleplaying Game
For a grim and gritty experience
The Journey Roleplaying Game is a zombie apocalypse survival TTRPG with a gritty and realistic tone. This game is designed to bring the full horror of the zombie apocalypse to life, with mechanics to represent all aspects of survival for both your character and the settlement of survivors you’re trying to protect.
Maybe you don’t want something that silly. Maybe you want something that will communicate the raw horror of the zombie apocalypse and place your character on a real journey of survival against impossible odds. If that’s the case, Journey is probably right for you. This is a gritty and brutal game, as realistic as a zombie apocalypse RPG can be.
It’s designed to put character and story first, and it contains systems for settlement management, warfare with other groups of survivors, and even pet ownership, all designed to keep the experience as real and raw as possible and to maximize player investment. This game is designed with the zombie apocalypse in mind, but it’s adaptable for other post-apocalyptic scenarios. If you’re looking for a grounded survival experience in a post-apocalyptic world, this is probably the game for you.
Other Dust: Roleplaying After the End
A strange world that met a strange end
Adapted from, and fully compatible with, the Stars Without Number Space-Opera TTRPG, Other Dust is a post-apocalyptic game about a broken world full of mutants, omnicidal psychics and rampaging war machines. Full of moral ambiguity and mystical terror, this is a dark and incredibly unique world is ready for you to explore.
The world of Other Dust was strange even before the end. Back then, its elites used the power of the world’s psychics to control and govern it. Then, one day, there came a great psionic “Scream” that drove all the psychics mad and led them to turn their power upon the world. Portals opened, meteors fell, and children were born with ghastly mutations. The world’s access to the stars has been cut off, and those that remain on the broken earth are now stranded in a world ruined by madmen with tremendous psychic power.
To survive, they have nothing but their own skill and determination, plus whatever strange, often magical assets they can scavenge from the old world. This game’s unique premise makes for a great post-apocalyptic experience. If you’re looking for something more inventive than a zombie or nuclear apocalypse, this might be the game for you.
Twilight: 2000
Rebuilding in the aftermath of a war to end them all
Set in the aftermath of an alternate history of World War Three, this militaristic post-apocalyptic survival game is a revamp of a decades-old system. This game strikes a wonderful balance between bleakness and hope. Things are grim and gritty, but there is a chance to triumph and rebuild if you’re smart, resourceful, and hold fast to your hope.
In this alternate-historyworld, the Soviet Union never fell. The Cold War sparked into something hot and left the world in ruins. Now, a decade and a half later, you and your group of survivors must navigate the resulting waste and find a way to rebuild.
In some ways, this game and its apocalypse are less severe than the ones in Journey or Other Dust. There’s nothing supernatural here, just a world devastated by human weaponry. Your characters aren’t just out to survive but to overcome and rebuild. The darkness here exists to make your light shine brighter rather than to drown it out. This game also has a heavy military emphasis, with lots of guns and weapons. The war that destroyed the world has already ended, butwaris still at this game’s heart, and you’ll have to navigate it if your characters are going to triumph.
APOCTHULHU
There are so many ways for the world to end
With elaborate systems designed to customize your post-apocalyptic wasteland, this wonderful game allows you to finally make good on the ultimate promise of the Cthulhu mythos: a world that has been ruined by its dark and mighty powers!
Cthulhu Mythos games have always been about the end of the world. One of the key driving forces is the enormous collection of cults worshiping and the world-ending threat of their eldritch worship. MostCthulhu Mythos gamesare about preventing those various cults from ending the world, but what if one of them succeeded? That is the premise of APOCTHULHU. This starter set contains a pre-made apocalypse where a cult of Shub-Nigguroth triumphed.
The Core Rulebook includes several more pre-made scenarios centered around different eldritch powers, like Cthulhu, the King in Yellow, or Nyarlathotep. It also contains extensive rules allowing you to custom-build your own apocalyptic world based on the eldritch entity of your choice, along with the sanity and madness rules you’d expect from any Cthulhu game. This game’s sanity-shattering threats don’t just drive you mad. They can also harden you, causing you to adapt to them at the cost of your character’s humanity.
FAQ
What’s the best system to play a zombie apocalypse?
There’s no single catch-all answer to this question. It really depends on what you want. This list recommends three games: Zombicide Chronicles, for those who want something focused on zombie-fighting action with awesome weapons, Journey, for those who want something more focused on the gritty realities of surviving in a ruined world, and Dead of Winter, for those seeking a hidden identity survival game full of zombies. Which of those systems is better for you depends on what your table is looking for.
What is the difference between apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic?
In popular culture, the word “apocalypse” has come to be a general term for the end of the world. Things are “apocalyptic” if they cause or have to do with the end of the world, while “post-apocalyptic” describes a world that has already ended.
What is the difference between post-apocalyptic and dystopian?
Generally, people use the word “post-apocalyptic” to describe worlds where large-scale society has collapsed, while “dystopias” generallydohave large scale society that is deeply corrupt and evil. However, the line between these two things is blurry. Many dystopian societies are surrounded by a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and many of the biggest enclaves of civilization within post-apocalyptic worlds are dystopias.
