On July 17, virtual tabletop Roll20 announced the ‘Christmas in July’ Roll20 sale. This means a huge range of tabletop RPGs and their VTT supplements are discounted with 25% off across the board. With big names and indie titles on offer until July 31, we thought we’d make shopping a little easier by showcasing the best RPG starter sets available in the Roll20 sale.
Here are the best starter sets and beginner bundles to pick up for cheap:
Call of Cthulhu
Price: $18.74 (£14.33)
Always a Fhtagn time, Call of Cthulhu is one of our favorite tabletop RPGs ever. It’s an investigation-driven horror RPG where your complex (but distinctly mortal) characters must uncover an eldritch mystery. Whether you’re playing in 1920s Germany or 19th-century London, Lovecraftian monstrosities – as well as plenty of tension – always get involved.
Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game
Price: $22.49 (£17.21)
Published by Free League, Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game is a recent title with a very strong starter set. As we mentioned in our Blade Runner RPG review, ‘Electric Dreams’ is a faithful yet fresh starter adventure that tasks you with solving the mystery of a Replicant’s murder. One for lovers of sci-fi and a bit of Sherlock Holmes.
Alien: The Roleplaying Game
Price: $22.49 (£17.21)
Another Free League game, Alien: The Roleplaying Game recreates the nail-biting terror of the Alien franchise. Between the corrupt corporations and the literal Xenomorphs, there are plenty of things to scream about. The price isn’t one of them, though – Roll20 has combined the official starter set with the Alien RPG’s ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ adventure for maximum value.
Coyote & Crow
Price: $37.49 (£28.71)
Nebula Award nominee Coyote & Crow takes players to a sci-fi future where American colonization never happened and Indigenous cultures thrived. It’s an innovative and well-loved RPG that’s worth exploring. It also doesn’t have an official starter set, but Roll20 has combined the core rulebook with the ‘Encounter at Station 54’ adventure that gives beginner players all they need to get started.
Fiasco
Price: $14.99 (£11.48)
Fiasco isn’t your typical, crunchy tabletop RPG. It’s a GM-less, cinematic storytelling game that creates heist-like capers (and catastrophes). We’ve cheated a bit by recommending the core game over Roll20’s actual starter bundle. This costs over $20 more – and while it offers a huge range of scenarios to play with, you only really need those in the core game to start playing.
Mothership
Price: $11.24 (£8.61)
Another solid sci-fi horror is Mothership, a simple-yet-harsh RPG game that fully expects your characters to die. All the great (read: terrifying) parts of space come included: abandoned spaceships, unknowable worlds, and hostile creatures. The Roll20 bundle nabs you the Player’s Survival Guide and an adventure module, ‘The Haunting of Ypsilon 14’
These discounted titles can be found on the Roll20 marketplace and DM’s Guild.
For more July discounts, check out this Kobold Press sale for third-party DnD monster books. Need more beginner advice for RPGs? We can teach you how to play Dungeons and Dragons, regardless of what DnD classes or DnD races you want to play. We also chat about the other side of the screen in our guide to how to be a DM.