TTRPGs to JUMP INTO with FREE pdf files from Vault Games and Bits and Mortar!

Ever bought an RPG and wondered how long it might take you to scan all the pages to create a digital copy for yourself? Ever considered buying the digital PDF on top of already owning your physical copy? Or are you simply weighed down, lugging your vast DM library from table to table, sharing these resources with your delighted players? Well, worry no more of back breaking book labour TTRPG lovers, Vault Games has partnered with Bits and Mortar to ensure your favourite games are always but a PDF away! The purchase of eligible physical books at a Vault Games store entitles you to a PDF download of that book.

So lets take a look at five TTRPG’s that have Bits and Mortar PDF’s you can score in store, today!

Imperium Maledictum

Imperium Maledictum is set in the grim, grimey world of the Warhammer 40k Universe e.g. In the Forty First Millenium, after the fall and subsequent rise of the human empire. Worry not - you don’t have to be a Warhammer player to enjoy this gritty, grimdark fantasy, but it can be a great starting point to familiarize yourself with the lore of the miniature war game setting!

An interesting mechanic of the system has all the player characters creating a ‘patron’ for their missions. This is done almost entirely by the players, allowing them to decide the faction, alignment and even temperament of the arbiter of their missions - it's a great way to get players invested and establish the tone and setting of the world they are about to jump into. After all, a patron who is a Tech-Priest (a scientist and maintainer of the advanced tech and weaponry of the empire) or an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos (inquisitors focussed on the rooting out and destroying of alien forces) would give very different missions!

Combat gets deadly fast, and if players take too many wounds, they may be critically injured resulting in a continued injury and loss of limbs (don’t worry - implants and cybernetic augmentation exist for a reason!). While this makes combat dangerous, a careful and industrious party can explore the terrain and gather intelligence to increase the parties combined superiority over their enemy - a stat shared by the whole party. Enemies can even become so overwhelmed by these odds that they may act irrationally, attempt hazardous retreats, or even beg a party to parley with them to avoid combat entirely. This makes encounters matter and gives player numerous ways to approach a deadly situation - there's plenty of space for heroic guns blazing action, while also rewarding inventive solutions.

Blades in the Dark & Deep Cuts

Crafty, edgy, punchy and rules light, Blades in the Dark cuts a fine and incredibly immersive figure in the TTRPG world. While this game has been out for a fair few years now, (published in 2017!) its gained a rather prolific cult following, and for good reason. The game play has you and your players take the roles of regency style criminals in the grimey city of Doskvol - similar in flavour to videogames like Thief, Dishonored, Sunless Sea or Fallen London. And sets you loose - fighting turf wars, smuggling goods throughout the city, and relying and levelling the crew you work with are all core mechanics of the game.

What is the most exciting about Blades in the Dark is the way these heists are layed out; in a usual TTRPG game planning a heist might be an arduous affair where players discuss tactics and shoot ideas back and forth for an hour or so. BitD sets you immediately at the location of your score, pushing you to action immediately. Rather than planning an arduous route, players can narrate this work through flashbacks; I know how to unlock the door as my crew and I stole the key the night before. We’ve building plans which we stole from the mayor’s house a week ago. And on and on… This means the action is continuous and flowing forward, getting players to think on their feet and utilise their crew as well. And recently, an expansion has been added, bringing new life to this beloved game!

Blade in the Dark: Deep Cuts is a 128 page expansion that brings a treasure trove of lore, setting material, and alternative mechanics John Harper developed over the years for use in Blades campaigns.

Alien RPG

Looking for a little tension in your game night? Horror RPG’s excel at shorter scale campaigns and one shots(as characters can often die… a staple of the genre), and the Alien RPG has recently debuted a new starter set alongside a refreshed core rulebook! So there's no time like the present to get you into the haunting, high stakes of abandoned space stations, experiments gone wrong, and lonely research facilities. The Alien RPG: Evolved Edition has simplified a few rules, streamlined elements of gameplay, and the Starter Set comes with the Hope’s Last Day starter adventure, giving you a neat 3 - 4 hour one shot to get a feel for the setting. This also contains delightfully detailed in-game hand outs, maps, and pre-generated characters to get you into the action immediately - after all, who wants to wait around for the jumpscare?

The Alien RPG builds on the familiar base of the movie franchise, taking settings that players will immediately recognise, but adding fun twists to movie plots to create new and unique adventures.

I like that the Alien RPG shows immediately its genre savvy, and a system that understands horror aesthetics; as it supports two styles of play cinematic play, and campaign play. Cinematic play usually lasts for a session or 2, has intensive description that is action packed, with scripted character death as agreed by player and GM. In campaign play, the format is more familiar to ttrpg players - the players will play multiple sessions, advancing their characters story where death lurks around every corner and within every air duct. And the characters you create in Alien RPG will feel that threat - you take on the role of security officers and scientists, normal people attempting to survive impossible odds. The game brings tension through its stress mechanic - allowing players to re-roll dice to attain more success, at the expense of also gaining stress. Too much stress upon your character can make them do the unthinkable; scream in terror, alerting all the monsters looming in the shadows, firing their weaponry erratically, or become overwhelmed with fear. The constant push and pull as the stakes of the game rises, and the aliens close in is half the fun - do you risk the reward of pushing yourself and gaining stress, and can your party survive when the terror is pushing them to their breaking point?

Avatar Legends: The Role Playing Game

Avatar fans looking to truly blend seamlessly into their favourite series will enjoy Avatar Legends: The Role Playing Game. Using a mix of the Powered By the Apocalypse game system (and a little of the Masks: A New Generation system, essentially a super hero edition of PBtA) combat, mechanics and narrative are blended together in the way characters use their bending. So often fights in Avatar: The Last Airbender are a mix of both the emotionality of the moment, the stakes with the combatant, and the characters individual growth, that capturing the nuance to bending could have been quite difficult. PBtA allows a player expound on the emotional weight of a bending technique, while it isn’t bogged down in whether fire bending is technically throwing a fire ball, or casting burning hands, for a Dungeons and Dragons style comparison.

Avatar Legends supports playing in distinct time periods as well, with material for players wanting to explore Avatar Kyoshi’s more ancient time, to the shimmering lights of Republic City under the protection of Avatar Korra! Sorting time by the Avatar living during it opens up exciting blank space that players can fill with their own adventures and stories, or bring their characters alongside the Gang as well.

Call of Cthulu

In Call of Cthulu, players take on the roles of investigators drawn together to solve horrific mysteries beyond the ken of mortal men - often leading to their own demise or derangement, whichever comes first. In this d100 system, players characters will have almost 70 different skills - from shooting to driving, charming or intimidating opponents - allowing for unique character builds. All a player has to do to succeed is roll a d100 below the amount of points in the chosen skill they utilise, stream lining the need for modifiers or other clunky mechanics.

CoC is a great system for players who want to explore old fishing villages where wall eyed residents might look on at them with suspicion, or investigate ancient relatives to find their mansions sprawled with ancient tomes and cryptic notes, and blood splattered down the basement staircase. Investigation and exploration are key in CoC, as monsters and cults can wear down the sanity of investigators and leave them open to become pawns of the ancient gods themselves.  With plenty of haunting material to get stuck into, Call of Cthulu is a great system to test out!