Review: Free RPG Day
Free RPG Day is an annual event where publishers distribute TTRPG adventures, supplements and other items to be distributed by game stores to fans for free. The 20th annual event happened on Saturday June 27, 2026. This year over 700 stores worldwide participated in the event. Unfortunately customs issues (out of the control of free RPG day) delayed delivery of products to the UK, requiring the event to be rescheduled in the UK.
Free RPG Day History
The first Free RPG day event occurred in 2007, created by game marketer Aldo Ghiozzi and publisher Joseph Goodman. Inspired by the hugely successful Free Comic Book Day, the event is an attempt to help game stores bring more gamers in by distributing free products, many (now all) created specifically for the event.
Free RPG Day became such a success that in 2019 the event was acquired by Gaming Days LLC, an organization run by dedicated gaming retailers, and it continues to grow. Many publishers participate, and the details of the events are decided by each game store. Many products are available for free, and many stores schedule demos or games. At my local game store, Jetpack Comics and Games, we scheduled six different 3 hour games, each running a different adventure available at the event.
For more history of Free RPG Day, check out the article from Goodman Games.
Participating Companies
You can check out all the products that were available this year here: Free RPG Day.
Many publishers produced short adventures for the event.
Ninth Level Games published an anthology of indie games.
- Legend of Avantris published The Crooked House Quickstart, a folk horror adventure for 5e.
- Brotherwise Games published Law and Obligation, a 5e adventure in the Cosmere setting.
- Catalyst Game Labs published Wizard Riders, an apocalyptic magic and motorcycles adventure.
- Chaosium published The Age of Vikings Quickstart.
- Creature Curation Presents #1 is a brand new adventure anthology featuring Vast Grimm, Raptor Ruckus, and Neon Bastardz.
- Darrington Press published a new adventure for their Daggerheart system. The Dying Spire is a sequel to the Quickstart adventure released last year.
- Edge Studio released Quickstarts of Zombicide: Plaguebearer RPG, Dungeons & Kittens: An Afternoon Outing and Arkham Horror RPG: Three Days to the Big Easy.
- Evil Genius released Everyday Heroes: All Bets Are Off, a starter adventure for the Everyday Heroes game system.
- Exalted Funeral released a Quickstart adventure for Dolmenwood.
- Free League released a Quickstart adventure for the Vaesen nordic horror game.
- Goodman Games released Pretenders to the Rat King's Throne, an adventure for 5e.
- Knight Vision Creative released Creed Shadow Stalker—an all inclusive 5e adventure.
- Kobold Press released Runes of the World Tree Quickstart, an adventure for Tales of the Valiant.
- Limithron released Pirate Borg: Terror in Tortuga.
- Loke Battlemats published the 5e adventure Dungeon Beneath the Brightspire.
- Magpie Games published a six-pack of quickstart adventures for Avatar and Root.
- Marvel published The Secret Wars Expansion preview featuring a Battleworld adventure.
- Mythworks published ONIGAMI in KAGUYA PROTOCOL, a two-part scenario designed for CBR+PNK.
- Paizo published Things Go to Hell, a Pathfinder adventure and Rescue on Raxi, a Starfinder adventure.
- Talsorian Games published Fossilized Violence.
- Renegade Game Studios published Tradition of Destruction, a complete, stand-alone story for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition Roleplaying Game.
- Roll & Play Press published No Place Like Home homebrew sampler of options.
- Son of Oak published Legend in the Mist.
- Third Kingdom Games published From Here to There, a mini-hexcrawl through brigand infested, mysterious words.
More Cool Stuff
- Dispel released a new d20 for the event.
- QRAWL partnered with Paiso to hide goodies at game shops.
- Sirius Dice released “End of Session” Dungeons & Dragons Sticky Pads.
- The Story Engine released the Lore Master’s Deck.
- Wet Ink Games published a preview of House of Broken Promises
- WizKids released some exclusive D&D miniatures.
Running and Playing These Games
At my local game store, Jetpack Comics and Games, I ran the Daggerheart adventure The Dying Spire for four players. Each received a copy of the adventure, which is softbound book containing five pregen 2nd level characters, the adventure, character sidecars and one page GM and player cheat sheets. I had the Daggerheart core set, including the rulebook and cards. Three of the four players hadn’t played Daggerheart before and were excited to check out the game.
The adventure was good and everyone had a good time. We set up the day so that each game had a 3 hour limit. I knew that leaving time for a brief rules overview, the complete adventure likely wouldn’t complete in the time slot, so I started the adventure after the first scene, beginning as the action rises. I used flashback as needed to give the players a few bits of information they would have needed from the scene we skipped. This worked out well, with the adventure play taking up a little over 2 hours.
I asked a few of the players about their experience at the Free RPG Day event.
For one player it was their first time at the store and they had a lot of fun and felt welcomed. They played Daggerheart in the morning session and Dungeon Crawl Classics in the afternoon session and said they enjoyed both.
Here’s a few more quotes from players
I am a pretty shy person in general, but i pushed myself to attend for 2 sessions! I played Dolmewood & Legends in the Mist. The Dolmenwood module was a fun chaotic romp, the GM and table seemed there for that vibe! The game was simple to pick up being an OSR-like and I just picked through my pre-gen characters inventory to find fun ways to interact with the gameplay. Would play again 5/5 footlong spicy sausages! I had initially signed up for Raptor Ruckus, which for me was more of a comfortable play being a Mork-Hack but was shifted over to Legends in the Mist. I was initially disheartened not being able to pull out my Ian Malcolm impersonation today... but life, uhh, finds a way... hearing the game mechanics in LitM being so different than anything I'd have played, I quickly jumped on board to try something new! Learning the mechanics was pretty swift with the help of the GM who also helped suggest options and we worked together at the table to come up with creative efforts to push the narrative along. We made great use of our attributes and teamwork to make it through the module, and chatted about the other games in the system a bit more. Definitely something I will now check out, my wallet weeps... thanks for hosting a fun event, it was nice to meet people and learn some new stuff’
I am a pretty shy person in general, but i pushed myself to attend for 2 sessions! I played Dolmewood & Legends in the Mist. The Dolmenwood module was a fun chaotic romp, the GM and table seemed there for that vibe! The game was simple to pick up being an OSR-like and I just picked through my pre-gen characters inventory to find fun ways to interact with the gameplay. Would play again 5/5 footlong spicy sausages! I had initially signed up for Raptor Ruckus, which for me was more of a comfortable play being a Mork-Hack but was shifted over to Legends in the Mist. I was initially disheartened not being able to pull out my Ian Malcolm impersonation today... but life, uhh, finds a way... hearing the game mechanics in LitM being so different than anything I'd have played, I quickly jumped on board to try something new! Learning the mechanics was pretty swift with the help of the GM who also helped suggest options and we worked together at the table to come up with creative efforts to push the narrative along. We made great use of our attributes and teamwork to make it through the module, and chatted about the other games in the system a bit more. Definitely something I will now check out, my wallet weeps... thanks for hosting a fun event, it was nice to meet people and learn some new stuff’w4llp0tts
I was at the Legends in the Mist table, this was my first time gaming [at the store]. I've played narrative focused games before but I really did like the Mist system quite a bit. I've been a DM/GM for a long running home game that recently ended so starting to explore other avenues for gaming. [The GM] did a great job explaining the system in a short time and keeping the game flowing and everyone worked well together, I had a lot of fun. 🙂 hopefully looking forward to more gaming with everyone!
Ben Kerwin
Conclusion
Free RPG Day was a success locally and seems to be pretty popular at many game stores. I’ve heard that the concept of Free RPG Day is new to a lot of players and it would be great to get the word out. The folks at Game Days said that the exact date for 2027 wouldn’t be confirmed for a while, but that it was planned for the second half of June. See you then!
