Tabletop role playing games are mostly associated with classic fantasy. Medieval worlds of monsters and magic, where knights and sorcerers battle ancient evils and powerful dragons. However, the Middle Ages alone are far, far, far from the extent of what the fantasy genre has to offer. Many wonderful stories center on fantastical versions of our modern world, where magic and mystery lurk just out of sight, hidden from ordinary people, but capable of rewriting the lives of those who come across them.
If you’re looking to recreate stories about hidden magic and strange, supernatural secrets, where little is what it seems and most don’t have a clue what’s going on, these games will give you what you’re looking for.
Updated July 7, 2024 by Davis Collins: Urban Fantasy is a broad genre. Depending on what definitions one uses and how strictly one applies them, a lot of games that one wouldn’t usually think of as Urban Fantasy can technically count as that. The original version of this list did an okay job at reflecting that diversity, but was still missing some interesting areas of the genre. We’ve come back to add a few things the first version of this list was missing.
Vampire stories are among the most popular kinds of Urban Fantasy titles, and many of the best vampire stories out there came together to inspire this classic. Part of the legendary World of Darkness line of games, Vampire: The Masquerade has existed in various forms for decades, and, though it was replaced for a while by the also-great Vampire: The Requiem, this modern edition of the original game brings a classic title back to the shelves and tables of gamers everywhere.
If you want to be a vampire, this is the definitive game with which to do so. Its lore, its clans, its powers, and its vampiric society are all extremely well-developed.
Perhaps you like the extensive lore and universe of Vampire: The Masquerade, but can’t help but find your sympathies turning against the vampires. An understandable sentiment, considering the awful things those creatures of the night get up to.
Well, if that is how you feel, then this is the book for you, because it allows you to take to the night and stalk the things that stalk the dark. Casting you as a human hunter doing what you have to do to protect humanity in a dark and brutal world, this game gives the humans of the World of Darkness as much depth as its many monsters enjoy.
Urban Fantasy is often quite dark. It’s been said that the purpose of darkness in storytelling isn’t to bring depression and despair in and of themselves, but, rather, to allow the bright heroism of those who oppose the darkness to shine more clearly. Though many dark settings do not embody that idea, this is one that absolutely does.
Girl By Moonlight is a Magical Girl TTRPG, based on the anime subgenre where colorful teen and preteen superheroines fight various forms of darkness. The genre is known for big, melodramatic good vs evil action, but it’s also incredibly diverse, to the point where subversions have become as common as straightforward examples. This game uses a set of common mechanics to bring to life four different settings, each based on a different strain of magical girl stories, with the common theme of good fighting evil.
Designed from the ground up to facilitate the kinds of monster-hunting and mystery-solving adventures found in TV shows like Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Monster of the Week is a game that effortlessly balances simplicity and character customization, resulting in a game which newcomers to tabletop RPGs can easily understand while still allowing you to play exactly the character you want.
It also gives the GM all the tools they’ll need to create strange new monsters for every adventure. Vampire The Reckonning is excellent, but it takes place in a specific universe and has a distinct tone. Monster of the Week is broader, allowing for a wider variety of tones. Importantly, while this game is geared toward monster hunting, and will involve a rotating menagerie of monsters to fight against, it is also good at facilitating long-term storylines which explore the characters and their relationships with one another and the campaign’s biggest villains.
Built on simple mechanics designed to be easy to play, and to keep the story in focus, Sigil & Shadow is an occult urban fantasy horror game about dark mysteries and darker realities. The game includes an extensive toolkit designed to keep the monsters as diverse and customizable as the players.
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As any fan of fantasy and folklore knows, every story’s version of vampires, ghosts, or other monsters is a bit different. Sigil & Shadow allows you to express that in your game. Because you’ll customize your monsters anew for each campaign, your players won’t know from the outset how the monsters in your game work no matter how much experience they have with this game, preserving the danger of mystery and thrill of discovery.
Another entry in the World of Darkness, this game carries its signature flare while still being unique and interesting in the ways that count most. In this game, you play as a werewolf, a creature who is both man and beast.
You and your packmates are inherently tied to nature, and you serve as champions of mother earth herself, fighting against the damage human greed is doing to nature. That’s what this game’s name refers to. From a werewolf’s perspective, the world is currently being destroyed, and they are the proud few fighting to defend it. The moral complexity of their actions is one of the best parts of this game.
From the creators of the also-excellent Urban Fantasy Roleplaying game Kids on Bikes, Kids on Brooms is a rules-lite, story-focused RPG designed to facilitate magical adventures in a magical school of your own creation. Your characters will craft potions, deal with mythical creatures, and learn to cast powerful spells.
The system is incredibly simple, being described in less than a hundred pages, and yet it can be used to create an enormous variety of custom-designed spells, monsters, and magical artifacts. So, if you’ve ever felt the urge to attend a magical academy, get ready to receive your acceptance letter and take off on a fantasy adventure, because Kids on Brooms is the game for you.
The SCP Tabletop RPG is a Roleplaying game set in the universe of the SCP Wiki, an enormous collaborative creative writing project centered around the SCP Foundation, an organization dedicated to locking away everything supernatural. The Wiki catalogs the Foundation’s database of thousands of anomalies (and yes, there really are thousands of articles).
Though the setting is best-known for horror, the SCP Universe is among the most diverse and varied Urban Fantasy settings ever created, containing everything from night-stalking monsters to toasters that make you talk funny and orange blobs that want to be your friend. Be it terrible or wonderful, anything strange can and will happen in this world, and those finding themselves inside it will never know what to expect.
FAQ
Is there a tabletop RPG like Supernatural?
If you’re a big fan of Supernatural and want an experience along those lines, the best games on this list for you are Monster of the Week and Hunter: The Reckoning. Hunter’s tone is relatively close to Supernatural’s, and Monster is designed to be able to replicate a wide variety of similar stories.
Which of these games is best for beginners?
Monster of the Week is an extremely elegant and simple game. Kids on Brooms is even simpler, by far the least complicated game on this list. If you’re a beginner to tabletop role-playing as a whole and looking to play an Urban Fantasy game, they might be your best bet.
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Take your gaming from the TV screen to the tabletop, reliving and experiencing dark fantasy with friends in these epic board game adventures.