It’s strange to think how many of the best, most memorable video games out there started as pen-and-paper campaigns around someone’s kitchen table. Before they became cinematic, controller-clutching experiences, they were dice rolls, character sheets, and fueled by nothing but pure imaginations.
Vampire – The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 is the latest to remind us of that lineage. It’s a story-driven RPG soaked in atmosphere and choice, but it’s far from the only game that has taken tabletop DNA and turned it into a fantastic digitized experience worth remembering.
Baldur’s Gate 3 – Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms
This is the definitive modern D&D experience
If Bloodlines 2 is about immersion through world-building, Baldur’s Gate 3 is about freedom through consequence. There’s no shortage of Dungeons & Dragons adaptations in gaming and film media, but with BG3, Larian Studios digitized the very essence of sitting around a table with your friends, dice in hand, and nothing but chaos in your heart. Every decision in the game, from the relationships to the complex moral choices, feels handcrafted, with every spell and dialog branching into unique outcomes.
As someone who isn’t a fan of turn-based combat, and definitely struggled to like sprawling RPGs (this was before Elden Ring), Baldur’s Gate 3 felt like an evolution of the tabletop gaming format, the branching narratives, the natural improvisation of player choice, and the way you can shove enemies off cliffs in the middle of conversation. It all felt like the spirit of a dungeon master guiding you through an unhinged session gone right, in all the wrong ways. This game captures what makes tabletop games magical. It’s the sense that your imagination is the limit, and definitely not the game itself. Its 2023 Game of the Year award was absolutely deserving.
- Released
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August 3, 2023
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Larian Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Larian Studios
- Engine
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Divinity 4.0
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
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Full cross-platform play.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 — Warhammer
The tabletop warfare turned into visceral digital action
The Warhammer universe has always been massive, grim, and gloriously over-the-top. Here, gods, machines, and zealots wage eternal war, but very few adaptations have truly been able to capture the brutal tone of this war. Among them, 2024’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 stands tall. The original game has always been a cult favorite, with world-building so dense and action so bloody that it felt biblical at times. Its sequel doubled down on everything we loved about the first, and the scale only got grander.
Now, Space Marine 2 is a far cry from just rolling dice across a tabletop, sure, but the DNA here is unmistakable. Every swing of a chainsword in the game channels the spirit of the original miniatures, and the thrill of commanding an army feels monumental and personal at the same time, somehow. Space Marine 2 trades dice for a controller brilliantly, but makes sure that the soul of the 42-year-old tabletop game pumps through its heavy steel veins.
- Released
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September 9, 2024
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence
- Developer(s)
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Saber Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Focus Entertainment
- Engine
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Swarm Engine
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Neverwinter Nights — D&D Forgotten Realms
This is when D&D truly came alive on PC
Before Baldur’s Gate or the slew of great (and middling) D&D-based games flooded stores and our libraries, it was Neverwinter Nights that gave a lot of people their first taste of what a digital D&D campaign could feel like. It came out 23 years ago, and it was powered by BioWare’s Aurora engine, which let players create entire campaigns, design dungeons, and even play online with a real human “Dungeon Master” guiding events in real time.
Of course, all the way back in 2002, it was only hardware and internet infrastructure that held back these lofty ambitions, but even then, the kind of flexibility that Neverwinter Nights provided was revolutionary. It brought tabletop storytelling into the early age of online gaming, long before “user-generated content” became a staple in massive online games. I don’t think the base campaign was much to write home about, but the modding community turned Neverwinter Nights into something that felt truly alive, and it became a shared, evolving world that mirrored the collaborative spirit of rolling dice with friends.
- Released
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July 15, 2025
- ESRB
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Teen / Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Aspyr Media
- Publisher(s)
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Aspyr Media
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
Cyberpunk 2077 – Cyberpunk 2020
A digital child of dice, chaos, and ambition
No conversation about tabletop-game-based video games could ever be complete without mentioning Cyberpunk 2077 and giving it its due flowers. Before concluding The Witcher games’ original trilogy, CD Projekt Red took the rights to digitize Cyberpunk 2020 from creator Mike Pondsmith, carrying over the entire philosophy and mature themes of transhumanism, corporate control, and income disparity, inequality, and social decay. Now, Cyberpunk 2077 may have taken a while to get through development hell, and even stumbled gloriously at launch, but soon after, it managed to turn itself into one of the most immersive and thematically faithful reimaginings of any tabletop property ever, period.
Every corner of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 feels authored by a Game Master with a flair for drama and tragedy. Here, every mission feels like a journey you’ve chosen to embark on, and every plan will go wrong in the best way possible. It’s a messy, beautiful representation of what tabletop RPGs can be, and have always been about: player-driven chaos that somehow makes perfect sense in retrospect. Cyberpunk 2077 is proof that even when ambition spirals out of control, the tabletop spirit survives.
- Released
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December 10, 2020
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
- Developer(s)
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CD Projekt Red
- Publisher(s)
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CD Projekt Red
The dice may change, but the spirit won’t
This tradition of tabletop games making their way to our consoles is decades old.
What connects these games isn’t just their roots in tabletop designs, but the way they celebrate imagination over restriction. This medium blends an incredible amount of storytelling and world-building with a sense of scale that can often dwarf other media, and when it all comes together brilliantly in gaming? There’s just nothing like it.
Choice, consequence, and collaboration are core principles of tabletop-RPG design, and they’re never going to go out of style, especially in gaming as a medium. Vampire – The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 may just be carrying that torch next, but it’s definitely not going to be the last, because this tradition of tabletop games making their way to our consoles, PCs, and controllers, is decades-old now. These immensely unforgettable RPGs remind us that the best stories are lived, shaped, and shared, quite like those late-night tabletop sessions where it all began.