When I make tabletop RPG bundle recommendations around here, normally you just have to trust my judgement (which is flawless, of course). But for Humble Bundle's latest offering, you don't have to take my word for it—every game in the deal is a former winner or nominee of the Ennie Tabletop RPG Awards.
That does make this new bundle a slightly scattershot selection of games, adventures, and supplements, but I still think it's well worth it for pen-and-paper enthusiasts. The full collection is $25 / £18.69 for 27 books worth £380.11 / $506 all together. That includes such standouts as:
- The One Ring, an atmospheric and beautiful Lord of the Rings RPG from renowned publisher Free League.
- One of the most enduring and versatile superhero games in the hobby, Mutants & Masterminds 3e.
- S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors is a brilliant resource for any fan of cosmic horror, and worth owning for its disturbing artwork alone.
- Ashen Stars, which brings the investigative mechanics of the Gumshoe system to a wonderfully unique sci-fi setting.
- The Dragon Age RPG, which lovingly translates the world of Thedas to the tabletop.
- Another great Free League game—Forbidden Lands is a dark fantasy sandbox campaign with a focus on survival and exploration.
- Timewatch, one of the few RPGs ambitious enough to tackle time travel head-on—and it does a really interesting job of it. You can also play a talking velociraptor.
There's definitely some books in there that are a bit on the niche side. The guys at Goodman Games do great work, but I'm not sure even they would recommend picking up two of their 20 year old D&D 3.5 adventures at this point (go get their excellent new stuff for Dungeon Crawl Classics instead). Equally I'm sure the Vampire: The Masquerade adventure Auld Sanguine or the Call of Cthulhu supplement Cults of Cthulhu are very good, but I'm not sure how much use they'll be if you're not already into those games.
Still, given the price it seems worth it even if you only want a few of the included books, and of the games I've read or played here, I'd certainly say those award nominations and wins were well-deserved—so the quality level is high.
It's the rare bundle as well where I'd say the lower tiers are also worth considering. At the $15 / £11.21 level you still get what I would consider most of the best picks of the bundle, including the majority of the standalone core books. At the lowest tier ($5 / £3.73) you do miss out on The One Ring which I think is probably the best book of the bunch, but even if you're not a Tolkien fan it might be the way to go, because it's a hell of a great price to get the Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, Ashen Stars, and Forbidden Lands, among other interesting games.
The books are redeemed via DriveThruRPG—a great and trustworthy platform for this sort of thing—and you'll be able to download them all as PDFs. If you're tempted, by my calculations you've got until August 21 to grab the bundle.
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