Step into worlds unknown and adventures untold with the best new tabletop RPG books of 2023. From innovative mechanics to richly crafted settings, this year’s releases promise to ignite your imagination and transform your gaming table into a gateway for epic storytelling. Whether you’re a seasoned game master or a curious newcomer, these standout guides and adventures are your ticket to unforgettable campaigns and fresh role-playing experiences.
The January leak of Wizards of the Coast’s plans to amend the Open Gaming License rocked the tabletop role-playing game industry in ways that have been felt throughout 2023. Wizards’ misstep was good for the hobby overall, turbocharging the sales of other games and exposing players to a wide variety of different systems, settings, and styles of gaming. But Dungeons & Dragons continues to dominate the market, riding the success of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Baldur’s Gate 3 to introduce new players to the game and reassure existing ones, many of whom were happy to go back to business as usual once Wizards backed down.
This list of the best tabletop gaming books of 2023 reflects the shifting status quo, including a mix of D&D books and excellent alternatives that allow players to explore original worlds and ones based on hit TV shows, video games, and even podcasts. Third-party publishers continue to put out rich supplements that prove why the OGL is so powerful, even as some companies have focused on developing new rules to fully disentangle themselves from Wizards’ shenanigans.
2024 is sure to be tumultuous as well, as several of those new systems are set for release along with revised versions of the D&D core ruleset. Hopefully this alphabetical list will provide a starting place for anyone interested in trying something new or improving your existing game as the hobby continues to rapidly grow and change.
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game is a fantasy tabletop RPG set in the world of the acclaimed animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Published by Magpie Games and built on the Powered by the Apocalypse system, it allows players to create characters who are benders, martial artists, or technological experts, exploring five different eras of the Avatar universe. The game emphasizes storytelling, character growth, and the struggle for balance, reflected in its innovative mechanics like the balance track and dynamic combat system. It was a Kickstarter sensation, raising over $9.5 million, and won the 2023 Gold ENNIE Awards for Best Rules and Best Family Game/Product. Praised for capturing the spirit and themes of the series, it offers an accessible yet richly immersive experience for both fans and newcomers to tabletop RPGs.
Publisher: Magpie Games
Magpie Games understands that what made Avatar: The Last Airbender so good isn’t just its amazing fights but the depths of its characters and their emotional arcs. Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game uses the accessible Powered by the Apocalypse ruleset for a book that avoids getting into the minutiae of different bending techniques and instead focuses on how characters approach problems together and grow over time to achieve balance in themselves and the world. Drawing on the original series, The Legend of Korra, and the associated books and comics, the game offers opportunities to explore very different versions of the same rich setting.
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game Core Book
$48$504% off $48 $50 at Magpie Games$48 at Amazon
Barkeep on the Borderlands
Barkeep on the Borderlands is a standout tabletop RPG supplement that transforms the classic tavern trope into a full-fledged adventure. Set during Mardi Gras-like festivities in the Keep, players embark on a pubcrawl in search of a missing antidote, navigating 20 richly detailed taverns filled with unique characters and factions. This barhopping fantasy adventure blends humor, social intrigue, and dynamic drinking mechanics, offering a fresh and highly engaging experience akin to a dungeon crawl but through streets and bars. Celebrated for its creativity and execution, it won the 2023 Gold ENnie Award for Best Supplement and was a finalist in the Dicebreaker Tabletop Awards, also earning recognition as Polygon’s Best New Tabletop RPG Book of 2023.
Publisher: Prismatic Wasteland
Taverns are a classic place for fantasy adventures to begin, but Barkeep on the Borderlands makes them the center of the story. Filled with charmingly silly art and ideas, the setting-agnostic book details an adventure where players go on a pub crawl in search of a lost antidote for a poisoned monarch. Of course, staying on mission is a challenge when you’re drinking heavily – running the risk of handing over control of your character to another player if you get too drunk – and there are endless strange happenings to sidetrack you, from striking fire elementals to a black dragon wearing a trench coat demanding free beer. The many bars can also easily be ported into other adventures for some goofy fun.
Barkeep on the Borderlands
$10 $10 $25 at Prismatic Wasteland$10 at DriveThruRPG (PDF)
Fabula Ultima
Fabula Ultima is a tabletop roleplaying game that masterfully captures the spirit of classic Japanese RPGs (JRPGs) like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, bringing their iconic storytelling, magic, and adventurous spirit to the tabletop. Designed by Emanuele Galletto and published by Need Games, it offers a simple yet deep ruleset that encourages players to create epic tales of heroes and villains in richly imagined fantasy worlds. With 15 character classes to mix and match, a comprehensive bestiary, and tools for game masters to craft dramatic and engaging adventures, Fabula Ultima is both a nostalgic homage to beloved JRPGs and an accessible entry point for new tabletop players. Its vibrant art and intuitive mechanics make it a standout among 2023’s tabletop RPG releases, perfect for fans seeking a blend of classic JRPG charm and collaborative storytelling.
Publisher: Need Games
Inspired by JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Bravely Default and the Japanese TTRPG Ryuutama, Fabula Ultima offers players the chance to build their own party of quirky heroes trying to achieve their destiny and protect the world from nefarious villains. Jam-packed with genre tropes and charming art, the book nails its theme by making a character’s motivation and emotional bonds as core to the gameplay as the weapons they wield. It’s a lighthearted game where you’ll explore the wilderness with a magic tent to rest in but also offers satisfying mechanics for its numerous classes that are meant to shine over the course of a long campaign.
Fabula Ultima TTJRPG Core Rulebook
$18 $18 $30 at Studio 2 Publishing$18 at DriveThruRPG (PDF)
Flee, Mortals!
“Flee, Mortals!” stands out as one of the most opinionated and innovative RPG books of 2023, offering a fresh take on monster design and combat for 5th edition D&D players. With unique and action-oriented monsters, this bestiary goes beyond traditional entries by introducing creatures with distinct mechanics that can replace or complement standard foes. Its focus on dynamic encounters and memorable villains makes it an excellent resource for groups looking to invigorate their gameplay with challenging and creative adversaries. Praised for its design and successful Kickstarter, “Flee, Mortals!” is a must-have for game masters aiming to spice up their campaigns with thrilling new threats.
Publisher: MCDM
MCDM reaches back to the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons to reinvent the 5th edition Monster Manual. Flee, Mortals! makes planning complex combats easy on a Dungeon Master by grouping creatures into encounters where the combatants have their own distinct roles, powers, and tactics. The book also contains plenty of bosses and even entire rival parties you can build a campaign around, with special actions for the villain and their lairs to make the climactic fights even more memorable. Add in gorgeous art and this book is sure to provide plenty of inspiration when planning adventures of every level.
Flee, Mortals!
$40 $40 $40 at MCDM (PDF)$70 at MCDM (PDF hardcover)$40 at DriveThruRPG (PDF)
Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting
Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting is a standout 5th Edition D&D supplement that transforms your game into an epic monster hunting experience inspired by the Monster Hunter series. This massive tome offers 11 detailed monster hunt adventures, each with multiple difficulty levels, alongside robust rules for tracking, harvesting, crafting, and even cooking with monster parts. Players can enjoy new spells, weapons, subclasses-including the unique Monster Tamer class-and over 100 illustrated magic items. With its rich storytelling, challenging multi-stage boss battles, and a deep crafting system, Heliana’s Guide elevates monster hunting to a thrilling, immersive campaign that can span hundreds of hours.
Publisher: Loot Tavern
Filled with puns, quirky characters, and epic boss fights that can be modified for multiple levels of play, Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting works well as both a book of one-shots or a lighthearted campaign well suited to a rotating cast. There are wild adventures – like a mimic that’s become so large it imitates a tavern complete with patrons – and the book also offers a rich crafting system for turning the powerful foes you defeat into unique magic items. The character options are equally fun, including a warlock based on Venom and a new class that lets you collect and fight with familiars like a Pokémon trainer.
Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting
$35 $35 $35 at Loot Tavern (PDF)
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Dungeon Delver’s Guide
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Dungeon Delver’s Guide is a comprehensive toolkit designed for both narrators and players who want to immerse themselves in intricate dungeon adventures. Compatible with both 5th Edition and Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, this guide offers hundreds of new tricks, traps, treasures, and monsters, alongside a unique NODES system for crafting tightly-themed dungeon stories. It includes new character options such as archetypes, heritages, and cultures, allowing players to create distinctive dungeon-dwelling characters. For game masters, it provides practical advice on dungeon design, eight unique random dungeon generators, fully mapped mini-dungeons, and a fresh approach to traps that challenge players with puzzles rather than mere damage. Additionally, the book explores the vast subterranean realm of Underland, enriching campaigns with haunted cities and mysterious underground seas. Recognized as one of the best tabletop RPG books of 2023, it enhances the dungeon-crawling experience with depth and creativity.
Publisher: EN Publishing
Continuing EN Publishing’s excellent Level Up 5th Edition line, the Dungeon Delver’s Guide provides a bounty of resources for both game masters and players in search of a more complex dungeon crawl. There are fun and flavorful new ancestries, archetypes, and backgrounds if you want to play a mushroom person with an ooze familiar riding a giant spider, plus lots of advice for designing subterranean realms filled with traps, monsters, and treasure. Game runners will get plenty of example adventures, from a witch lurking in the sewers below the city to a submarine controlled by an aboleth, plus tables for rolling up your own dungeon on the fly.
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition – Dungeon Delver’s Guide
$25 $25 $65 at EN Publishing$25 at DriveThruRPG (PDF)
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying 5e
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying 5e is a faithful and exciting adaptation of Middle-earth using the familiar 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons ruleset, developed by Free League Publishing. It modifies key mechanics such as capping character levels at 10, reworking armor classes, and replacing traditional races and feats with culture-specific virtues to better capture the grounded and perilous tone of Tolkien’s world. The game introduces new rules for traveling across Middle-earth and interacting with its personalities, alongside detailed guidance for the Loremaster. It offers a great entry point for D&D players eager to immerse themselves in Tolkien’s universe, blending the depth of The One Ring RPG with the accessibility of 5e mechanics, making it an ideal choice for fans wanting to experience Middle-earth through tabletop roleplaying.
Publisher: Free League
Rather than feeling like a concession to players who don’t want to learn a new system, the adaptation of The One Ring to 5th edition transforms Dungeons & Dragons into a fundamentally different experience. With advancement capped at level 10 and an entirely new set of classes dubbed heroic callings, the book offers rules for a low-magic adventure where flawed heroes fight their inner demons and the encroaching darkness. Drawing lovingly on the source material, the ruleset offers plenty of opportunities for epic battles but also provides clever mechanics for long horseback rides, asking favors from stubborn kings, and enjoying a bit of pipeweed.
The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Core Rules for 5th edition D&D
$25 $25 $54 at Free League$25 at DriveThruRPG (PDF)
Old Gods of Appalachia
Based on the award-winning horror podcast, Old Gods of Appalachia is a standalone tabletop RPG that plunges players into a dark, alternate version of 1920s-30s Appalachia, where ancient evils stir beneath the mountains. Powered by the Cypher System, it offers a fluid, narrative-driven experience with a concept-based character creation system and rich lore filled with sinister creatures, cults, and supernatural forces. The game excels in delivering intimate, atmospheric folk horror, challenging players to protect their communities against creeping cosmic terrors while weaving stories of hardship, sacrifice, and hope in a deeply immersive setting.
Publisher: Monte Cook Games
A great introduction to the Cypher System, Old Gods of Appalachia provides all the resources needed to tell stories in the dark alternative version of early 1900s Appalachia presented by the podcast of the same name. It’s a rich setting where digging too deep for the treasures hidden in the mountains has unleashed ancient terrors that prey on fear and greed. Players battle the corrupted agents of these dark forces using a mix of folk magic and their connection to their community and the land itself. While the Cypher Core Rulebook offers ideas for using the versatile system to run horror games, Old Gods of Appalachia builds on the base mechanics for a game of creeping dread and questionable dealings.
Old Gods of Appalachia
$23 $23 $70 at Monte Cook Games$23 at DriveThruRPG (PDF)
Pathfinder Player Core
The Pathfinder Player Core is an excellent entry point for new players to Pathfinder Second Edition, providing everything needed to learn and play the game effectively. The remastered 2023 edition organizes core rules and lore in a clear, intuitive format, making character creation and gameplay accessible while maintaining the depth that longtime fans appreciate. It serves as a solid foundation for both new players and GMs, with easy-to-follow guidance on planning sessions, running encounters, and exploring the game world. The book’s clean design and comprehensive content make it a standout core rulebook in the tabletop RPG landscape of 2023.
Publisher: Paizo
Embodying the idea that you should never let a good crisis go to waste, Paizo opted to strip all traces of D&D from its Pathfinder 2nd edition core books after the OGL fiasco and used the opportunity to improve the product. The result is more approachable to new players, splitting the imposing original tome in two by giving game masters their own book and shunting off some of the game’s most complex classes to later books so they can get deeper overhauls. The Pathfinder Player Core also ditches several legacy elements, like ability scores and alignment, gives the fan-favorite witch class some much-needed love, and provides compelling fresh character options with the leshy, nephilim, and changeling ancestries.
Pathfinder Player Core rulebook
$40 $40 $54 at Amazon (hardcover)$40 at Amazon (paperback)$60 at Paizo (hardcover)
Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk
Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk revitalizes the classic Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure by expanding it into a 200-page epic that plunges players from the familiar town of Phandalin into a dark, cosmic horror-infused journey beneath the surface. This campaign blends investigation, dungeon crawling, and high-stakes combat against a malevolent cult and mind flayer fanatics, culminating in a confrontation with a godlet from the Far Realm. With updated content, new creatures, and integration for digital play on platforms like Foundry Virtual Tabletop, it offers both nostalgia and fresh challenges, making it a standout addition to the 2023 tabletop RPG lineup.
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
An expansion on the campaign first published in the 2014 Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set, Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk provides a great way for new Dungeon Masters and players to ease into the full game. Having a strong base of operations for your adventuring means it’s easy to swap out players – useful since scheduling ends far more games than boss fights – and there are plenty of tools for keeping track of what’s happening as the players uncover the nefarious plots afoot. Its story and approach make it a nice transition into both other popular published adventures and the new rules being released next year.
Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk
$54$6010% off $54 $54 at Amazon
What makes the 2023 tabletop RPG books stand out for new players
The 2023 tabletop RPG books stand out for new players primarily due to their accessibility and streamlined mechanics that reduce complexity without sacrificing depth. Many of the best releases focus on clear, easy-to-understand rules and engaging gameplay that welcomes beginners. For example, games like Index Card RPG feature conversational writing and flexible systems that allow newcomers to jump in quickly and enjoy diverse settings without getting bogged down by excessive rules. Similarly, The One Ring RPG offers elegant mechanics with straightforward target numbers, making it approachable even for those who have never played a tabletop RPG before. Other titles like Blades in the Dark emphasize fast-paced, improvisational play with simple dice mechanics, helping new players stay engaged and think on their feet without overwhelming preparation. Additionally, some 2023 RPGs provide robust tools for solo play and modular approaches that ease new players into roleplaying at their own pace. Overall, these books prioritize user-friendly design, narrative focus, and flexibility, making them ideal entry points for new players in the hobby.
How do 2023 RPG books simplify rules for new players
The 2023 tabletop RPG books simplify rules for new players by focusing on streamlined mechanics, clear character creation, and gradual learning curves. Many use redesigned, easy-to-understand character sheets and step-by-step guides to help players create characters quickly and confidently. Rules-light systems reduce the number of actions and dice rolls players must track, emphasizing core mechanics like attacks, ability checks, and saving throws to avoid overwhelming beginners. Some variants, like D&D Story Mode, replace complex spellcasting with straightforward spell point systems and provide cinematic storytelling elements to keep gameplay engaging without heavy rule interpretation. Additionally, tutorials and modular rules allow new players to learn by doing, introducing concepts slowly during play rather than all at once. This approach encourages creativity and roleplaying over rule memorization, making the games more accessible and enjoyable for newcomers.
