Modern
The modern genre focuses on telling stories grounded in the present day. It explores immediately relevant social issues, technology, and politics in a way its audience finds instantly familiar. Because the modern day is also a setting, the modern genre combines easily with others, like modern fantasy, modern horror, or modern crime drama. Modern tabletop roleplaying games take advantage of the fact that players and game masters are already familiar with how the world works, and build on that shared understanding. They don't need to spend time acclimating players to fantastical cultures, economies, or worlds; players already grasp the setting. They might introduce a twist from there; maybe this world has secret magic, or monsters are real, but it's still fundamentally our world.
Popular Modern RPGs
Hunter: The Reckoning
A Storytelling Game of Desperate Measures. You saw what you shouldn’t have, the veil pulled back from the secret world and the monsters who prowl it. You chronicled the tragedies they wrought, these monsters, and the victims upon whom they preyed. You grasped the extent of their influence and witnessed the corruption of the organizations formed to keep them in check. And you vowed to do something about it. Tonight, you act. It’s time for a Reckoning.
Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition
Vampire: The Masquerade presents a more dramatic, contemplative world than most tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). While the average TTRPG experience is a Dungeons & Dragons inspired one (fighting monsters and getting treasure), Vampire is about simply surviving and keeping a piece of yourself intact. Players in Vampire become the titular mythological figure in a version of our modern world. And while near-immortality and superpowers seems cool, they come at the cost of existing in a secret society where hunters and other clans are out to get you. And there’s also the whole hungering for blood thing. In a typical Vampire game, holding onto humanity is just as tough as fending off foes.
Masks: A New Generation
A giant robot is smashing down Main Street. Your best friend tried to kiss you. Your mom thinks your grades need work. Your mentor thinks your team is bringing you down. Oh, and your costume is ripped. Just another day in Halcyon City... Masks: A New Generation is a superhero roleplaying game in which a team of young heroes fights villains, saves lives, and tries to figure out who they are—noble paragons? Dark avengers? Or regular kids? All against the backdrop of Halcyon City, the greatest city in the world.
Alice is Missing
Alice is Missing is a silent role-playing game about the disappearance of Alice Briarwood, a high school junior in the small town of Silent Falls. The game is played live and without verbal communication. Players inhabit their character for the entirety of the 90-minute play session, and instead of speaking, send text messages back and forth to the other characters in a group chat, as well as individually, as though they aren’t in the same place together.
Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game
Take on the roles of Marvel's most famous Super Heroes—or create your own—to fight some of the most dangerous Super Villains in the Marvel Universe! Featuring the All-New, All-Different d616 System, the MARVEL MULTIVERSE ROLE-PLAYING GAME gives players the chance to explore their own corner of the multiverse. All you need is the book, three six-sided dice, and a group of friends. What're you waiting for? Start your adventure today!
City of Mist
Here's the lowdown: City of Mist is set in a modern city where legends are real people. Heroes, tricksters, and monsters are reborn inside ordinary people, regular Joes and Janes, who gain supernatural powers connected to their legendary alter-egos. Someone is running the show in this City, and it's up to you to find out who. Hit the streets. Collect the clues. Face small-time villains and demi-gods in epic showdowns. Solve not just the case, but also your own personal mystery and the secrets at the core of this very City. This is your City: gritty, corrupt, and rife with magic and mystery.
Tales From the Loop
Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was: In 1954, the Swedish government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was complete in 1969, located deep below the pastoral countryside of Mälaröarna. The local population called this marvel of technology The Loop. In this roleplaying game, you play teenagers in the late 1980s, solving Mysteries connected to the Loop. Choose between character Types such as the Bookworm, the Troublemaker, the Popular Kid and the Weirdo. Everyday Life is full of nagging parents, never-ending homework and classmates bullying and being bullied. Explore the secrets of the Loop in two main game settings – one based on the Swedish Mälaren Islands, the other on Boulder City, Nevada. The Mysteries let the characters encounter the strange machines and weird creatures that have come to haunt the countryside after the Loop was built. The kids get to escape their everyday problems and be part of something meaningful and magical – but also dangerous.
Monsterhearts 2
By the time they hit adolescence, most people have gotten over their fear of the dark. They spend their midnight hour on gushy phone calls, diary ramblings, and wet dreams. They fall asleep peacefully, assured that the shadows hold no monsters. But the shadows do hold monsters. You know because you’re one of them. Wickedness dwells within your heart, hunger courses through your veins. High school weighs on you and teen drama puts you on edge, but you have power. What do you do next? Monsterhearts 2 lets you and your friends create stories about sexy monsters, teenage angst, personal horror, and secret love triangles. When you play, you explore the terror and confusion of having a body that is changing without your permission.
Power Rangers Roleplaying Game
Become a Power Ranger and protect Angel Grove and the Earth against the evil forces of Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd, Master Vile, and more in the epic world of Power Rangers! Whether you interrupt Rita’s monster attacks in her attempt of world domination or defeat the forces of the Machine Empire from invading Earth, there is no limit to the heroic stories you will tell. In the Power Rangers Roleplaying Game, create your ultimate Power Ranger persona by combining personal traits, childhood influences, and your chosen Ranger color to make a hero worthy of the Power!
Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition
Gaia is dying. The ices melt, while the seas swell. The heat rises, while the forests wither. Extinction threatens millions, in favor of the few. The Garou — warlike shapeshifters torn between Rage and spirit, between Wolf and Man, and champions of the earth-mother — have failed. The Apocalypse is here. Yet, a new generation of Garou now call upon their Rage to confront the forces of destruction, avarice, and greed ravaging the earth-mother. With tooth and claw the Garou will wrest her from the brink of death — or follow her enemies to the grave. Will you answer their howl? What legends will the Garou sing of you? When will you Rage? In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, you play as the Garou, a creature of flesh and spirit, blessed and cursed with primal rage. Born to fight and die in a desperate war to protect Gaia — the very living earth — you engage in an unequal battle against the greed and power-hunger of human civilization that has trapped the world in a choking web of technology and corruption.
Cypher System
Cypher System is a groundbreaking tabletop game engine that allows for incredible flexibility to play any type of campaign, in any genre. One can play in the system’s flagship setting “Numenera” or in the worlds of popular podcasts such as “The Magnus Archives” and “Old Gods of Appalachia”. Additional settings can include Post-apocalyptic, sci fi, fantasy, cyberpunk, horror– if you can name it the Cypher System has it! Regardless of the genre, Cypher System games feature a narrative forward play experience that emphasizes discovery, problem solving, character growth, and meaningful roleplay over defeating monsters and getting XP. Character creation is simple yet elegant, as players make a three-part sentence describing who they are going to play. The rules are simple enough for beginners to learn quickly, and sophisticated and deep enough for veterans to unleash their creativity in surprising new ways.
Brindlewood Bay
Brindlewood Bay is a tabletop roleplaying game that combines Murder, She Wrote with H.P. Lovecraft. In it, you play a group of elderly women, members of the local Murder Mavens Mystery Book Club, who help the authorities solve murder cases in a picturesque New England Town. Over the course of their investigations, they become aware of a dark occult conspiracy that connects the cases, and will eventually have to face that conspiracy in order to save their community. The game is low-prep and easy to play no matter your experience with tabletop roleplaying games.
Monster of the Week
Monster of the Week (MotW) is a tabletop roleplaying game, or TTRPG, about a group of monster hunters taking on the terrors that prey on humanity. Inspired by media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Supernatural, players create characters based on archetypes. They might take on the Chosen, a hero with a grand destiny; the Divine, an angel or holy warrior here to protect humanity; the Monstrous, fighting against their own evil nature; the Professional “man-in-black”; and many more! One player, the Keeper or Game Master (GM), takes on the role of the world those characters inhabit. They’ll create the mysteries the hunters must investigate, the environments they’ll explore, and the victims, meddling authorities, and of course, monsters they’ll face.
Kids on Bikes
Kids on Bikes is a Collaborative Storytelling RPG set in small towns with big adventure! In Kids on Bikes, you take on the roles of everyday people grappling with strange, terrifying, and very, very powerful forces that they cannot defeat, control, or even fully understand. Kids on Bikes even allows you to create a communally controlled Powered Character to add another dimension of gameplay to your games! Jump right into the action quick and create your own band of rag-tag mystery solvers today!
Delta Green
Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green opposes the forces of darkness with honor but without glory. Delta Green agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors—often at a shattering personal cost. In Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, the players are those agents. They fight to keep terrors from beyond space and time from infecting the world and claiming human lives and sanity. The Handler is the game moderator who creates and interprets their world, presents the unnatural horror that they investigate, and describes the awful aftermath of their sacrifices.
Frequently asked questions about Modern
Blog links about Modern
Modern Reviews and Actual Plays
Dimension 20 Presents: Fantasy High
This ongoing comedy actual play series sets Dungeons & Dragons at a modern fantasy high school.
SU&SD Reviews Alice is Missing
Quinns of Shut Up & Sit Down reviews Alice is Missing, a harrowing game of modern horror played via text message.
Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
Glass Cannon Network plays Delta Green, a realistic modern setting with a twist of horror.