The SCP Foundationis a major element of modern internet culture. This vast collaborative creative writing project catalogs the thousands of “anomalous” items and creatures contained by the eponymous SCP Foundation, a secret organization with world-controlling power. The wiki consists mostly of the Foundation’s documents regarding the thousands (and there really are thousands of articles) of objects they have in containment, along with a vast library of supplemental stories fleshing out the SCP universe. Though there is a wide variety of content on the site, it’s best known for itshorror stories.
But you probably already knew all of that. You’re already an SCP fan, and you’re looking for some ways to enjoy the SCP vibe with your friends. If that’s the case, here are some games that, in various ways, channel the vibe of that wonderful wiki for your tabletop.
SCP: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game
The best way to place yourself inside the SCP Universe
Based directly on the wiki’s universe and made by and for SCP fans, this tabletop RPG places you and your friends in the role of SCP Agents, tasked with securing, containing, and protecting both recognizable and brand new anomalies.
When recommending games for SCP Fans, it’s hard not to start with the fact that there’s already a Tabletop RPG based on the SCP Foundation. Created by 26 Letter Publishing, this tabletop roleplaying game gives you everything you need to take on the role of a Foundation agent, be it a researcher, guard, or mobile task force operative. Many of the most iconic anomalies on the wiki are detailed in this book, and it has all the rules you’ll need to write up the rest, or even make your own anomalies just for your table. If you’re looking to play as an SCP Agent, or otherwise role play in the SCP universe, this is definitely the game for you.
Delta Green: Agent’s Handbook
It’s incomprehensibly fun!
Based in H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which is, in many ways, a spiritual predecessor to the SCP Foundation, Delta Green places you in the role of an agent working for Delta Green, a highly secret paramilitary group that works to protect the public from Cthulhu Mythos threats.
Another tabletop RPG about being a quasi-government agent within a special organization tasked with managing supernatural threats, this RPG places you inside the Delta Green organization, whose job it is to deal with all the strange and eldritch monstrosities inhabiting theCthulhu Mythos.
This organization used to have the official backing of the US government, but, unfortunately, lost it after an operation went disastrously south. Now it operates independently. Its agents are still recruited from the FBI and CIA, but they must hide from the very government whose citizens they’re protecting.
Carnival Of Monsters
Gather a collection of strange magical creatures
From the creator of Magic the Gathering, this deck-building game casts the players as the managers of monstrous menageries, and tasks them with traveling the realm and collecting strange beasts.
Our last two entries are the games which best embody the SCP mythos and its entirety. The remaining items on this list deviate from that a bit and have been selected because they embody specific elements of the mythos. For instance, do you like the idea of gathering and cataloguing magical creatures? If so, this is the game for you.
From the creator ofMagic: The Gathering, this deckbuilding game has each of its players journeying around the land tohunt down and capture monstersin hopes of obtaining the most impressive collection to present to the Royal Monstrological Society. If you love stories with a lot of interesting monsters, and love the process of collecting such creatures, this game might be for you.
Clue Conspiracy
Work with your comrades to protect or assassinate the VIP
Designed to be a more complicated and mature version of the classic board game, Clue Conspiracy is a hidden role game where two teams of spies face off against each other, one with the goal of protecting a VIP, the other with the goal of assassinating him!
The only game on this list to lack a paranormal element, this game is on this list for how well it captures the feeling of being a secret agent. This game is full of references to the original Clue, complete with classic color-coded characters like Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum, but it does a great job reframing those references to maintain its more serious tone. It plays very differently.
This is ahidden identity gamewhere some of the players are trying to protect the VIP and the others are conspiring to murder him. It’s one of the best espionage games out there, and packed with deception and secret-keeping. If you like the SCP wiki for its conspiratorial elements, or just want to feel like a secret agent, this game is for you.
Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage Game
A game of psychic detection
This hidden movement game casts one player as a recruiter for a secret organization trying to find new members, and the rest as rogue agents trying to catch him as he does so or trick him into accidentally recruiting one of them.
Though it’s adapted from a bestselling series of graphic novels by Matt Kindt, this game brings a combination of covert operations and paranormal elements that SCP fans will love. It’s a one versus all hidden movement game, where one player takes the role of a recruiter seeking new agents, while the others play as potential infiltrators trying trick the recruiter into accidentally letting them in. The complicating factor is that the recruiter has psychic powers, allowing him to “mind slip” to spaces he otherwise couldn’t get to. There are a number of different recruiters, and both their basic abilities and psychic powers work differently, so the rogue agents won’t initially know how the recruiter moves.
It’s easy to imagine events like this playing out between a Foundation recruiter and a group of Chaos Insurgents, or, given that it’s the recruiter with supernatural powers, a Serpent’s Hand recruiter and a group of Foundation Agents.
Bureau of Investigation: Investigations in Arkham & Elsewhere
Solve paranormal mysteries in the Cthulhu Mythos
This wonderful cooperative mystery game casts players as agents of the Bureau of Investigation, and charges them with solving paranormal cases inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
Believe it or not, we’ve tried to keep Cthulhu Mythos games to a minimum on this list. However, the fact is that the Cthulhu and SCP Mythos are very similar, and there are a lot of board games about the former.
Here, we have a game of paranormal mystery set in the Cthulhu mythos, where your agents, on behalf of the Bureau of Investigation, take on a series of strange, paranormal cases within the Cthulhu Mythos. Modeled after Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, this game has you looking over a wide variety of documents and even interrogating suspects, all without the need for a game master. This is probably the closest you can get to the average session of the SCP TTRPG without a GM. If that sounds like your kind of time, this game is for you.
Pandemic: Reign Of Cthulhu
Close the portals that are threatening to destroy the world
Based on Pandemic, one of the most beloved and challenging cooperative board games on the market, this game charges you and your friends with running around Lovecraft Country closing portals and putting down the apocalyptic threats they spew forth.
A spin-off of Pandemic, a beloved cooperative board game that nearly made this list because it’s about institutionally trained professionals trying to control a world-ending crisis, Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu takes that idea and adds aparanormal twistthat makes the whole thing feel even more SCP-ish.
Once again, this game has you running around Lovecraft Country working to thwart evil cults and close portals to other worlds. Much like the original Pandemic, Pandemic Reign of Cthulhu can be a brutally difficult game, and, on its higher difficulty settings, you and your friends are going to need to bring your best if you’re going to triumph, but if the desperate struggle against overwhelming odds didn’t appeal to you, you wouldn’t be here.
Eldritch Horror
A world-spanning adventure
Eldrich Horror is a world-trotting supernatural adventure where a team of investigators works to prevent the emergence of an eldritch power, once again set in the Cthulhu mythos, but this time based on fully original mechanics.
As stated earlier, there are a lot of Cthulhu mythos games. In narrowing them down to the most SCP-esque, we considered a number of factors. In the end, we chose this game over similar titles like Arkham Horror and Elder Sign because of something it has in common with the SCP-wiki, its global scope. This game isn’t just about traveling around Lovecraft Country. It has its players trotting the entire world working to counteract the world-threatening machinations of mythos entities. That scope very much reflects the global reach of the SCP Foundation.
FAQ
Are SCP games legal?
The SCP Wiki and all of its associated intellectual properties are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. Unlike some similar projects, its license contains no “Non-Commercial” clause. This means creators may monetize their SCP-related creations. Because of this, games like the SCP Tabletop RPG, SCP Containment Breach, and the forthcoming SCP Fragmented Minds are totally legal.
Is there a real SCP game?
Because the SCP Wiki’s Creative Commons license allows anyone to create and monetize derivative materials, there is no distinction between official and unofficial derivative works. Other intellectual properties are owned by specific companies and works created without their permission are unofficial and technically illegal. No one owns the rights to the SCP wiki in the same way, so everyone can make derivative works and they will be equally “official.”
