Edmund stood in front of Moulde Hall, dressed in the finest fitting suit he had been able to purchase in town, watching the carriage driver drive up the hill. Ung had been waiting in his room to help him dress. Edmund was no expert, but Ung had assured him that the suit was well made and a perfect fit. The collar was broad and tall, and the vest was a thin leathery gray with Plinkerton’s watch tucked neatly into the pocket.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is an RPG. No, it isn’t. I mean, it is, kinda, but it very much isn’t. Betrayal is a lovely little game where you create your own 80s horror flick, complete with traitor, campy villain, and spooky house. If you go looking to buy Betrayal you’ll find it on the shelf next to all the other board games, not an RPG to be seen.

Mörk Borg is grimdark, apocalyptic, and born from a mix of doom-metal album cover and fever dream. It is rust, rags, and rotten meat. It is rules-light, and tone-rich. First, let’s talk about violence. Combat in Mörk Borg is simple enough. It borrows heavily from the d20 systems you’re familiar with; roll a d20, add your bonuses, and if you roll over the difficulty rating, you succeed. The difficulty rating is 12.

World Ending Game is an RPG about what it says on the tin. It is, quote: “a falling-action game. Many existing game systems excel at climactic final battles or big-stakes adventures, but don’t allow you to sit in the aftermath, thinking about all that has come before and imagining what could come after. World Ending Game is a tool to let you do just this.” The game is mostly comprised of minigames, called Endings.

Edmund cast the lantern around the tomb, casting shadows over the rough stone. Plinkerton didn’t create this room; it was far too old. The long steps and secret door weren’t likely the original entrance either; people would notice if the crypt of the first Moulde was suddenly covered by a clock statue. There had to be another way out…the original way out. Edmund was beginning to realize the problem with trying to be three things at once; a person, a Moulde, and an Edmund.

Set in space, Mothership takes its cues from the horror sci-fi genre; everything from Aliens to Event Horizon. Players familiar with Call of Cthulhu will likely be comfortable with the game’s sanity and panic mechanics, while the addition of classes and a tiered skill tree round out the flexibility of character creation. Space is dangerous, death comes easy, and if your character is lucky enough, they might make it to second level.

So you may have noticed — I certainly have — that I’ve generally use Fantasy and Horror games for examples in this treatise. Of course there are more genres and styles than those two, but it does bring up a fascinating dichotomy in the hobby. Let’s look at the RPG Sins. Heavily based on the Storyteller System used in White Wolf games like Exalted or Werewolf, Sins casts your persona as an undead being recently wrenched back to some form of self-awareness.

Cairn is, according to its website, quote: “an adventure game about exploring a dark & mysterious Wood filled with strange folk, hidden treasure, and unspeakable monstrosities. Character generation is quick and random, classless, and relies on fictional advancement rather than through XP or level mechanics.” Aesthetically, Cairn is a fantasy D&D-like, with swords and spells and goblins galore. Mechanically, it’s an interesting mix of new and old-school rules. Random rolling of character stats is from the early era, when new characters’ long-term survival was neither expected nor reliable.

The Mansion struck ten in the evening, the deep boom rolling over Haggard Hill. The storm clouds continued their bubbling creep over the city, turning the warm velvety darkness of nighttime into the empty gray darkness of foreboding doom. Black rain fell fast and hard against the windows of Moulde Hall. Edmund raised his crank lantern higher against the gloom. He had found it in a storage-room filled with gardening supplies; a clever tool that somehow turned the rotation of a crank on its side into a dim reddish light.

Rules-light and focused on ordinary people, the center of Endure as a survival RPG is, quote: “Its Endurance economy. Endurance helps characters succeed and keeps them going, but is always depleting. If you are out of Endurance, you have to rely solely on your cunning and luck of the roll — and often it is not enough to survive. You need time and resources to recover Endurance, so the game ebbs and flows between tense action and quiet downtime.