Summery Tabletop RPGs To Play Until Fall
Whether you’re looking for a summer adventure that’s light, spooky, or just completely nostalgia fuel, there’s an adventure for you.
Summer is right around the corner. And for you that may mean vacations, pool days, kids home from school… Or just the same work day but with hotter weather. But I’d like to think it’s the perfect opportunity to switch up the game night to something that feels a little summery. Maybe it has a vacation vibe, maybe a dark summer camp game, maybe we’re just looking for some of that playing-until-the-streetlights-come-on nostalgia. But these tabletop RPGs will hit those marks.
Kids on Bikes
Kids on Bikes is the RPG that brings the feel of The Goonies to your game table. Players take on the role of small-town tweens, riding their bikes around and solving the mysteries that the adults can’t. The game focuses on collaborative storytelling in a system that makes everything feel like that specific brand of nostalgia and adventure. Maybe your childhood summer didn’t actually feel like this, but I’d bet you imagined that it did sometimes.
Fever Knights
Another game with nostalgia baked into the system, Fever Knights takes you adventuring through a land of the 90s that never quite was. You’ll play as a teen grappling with their impending adulthood and newly developed magical powers while fighting to protect humanity against evil. The rules are relatively lite, making this a great game to pick up and run with, even if just for a few months.
Sleepaway
Of course, it wouldn’t be summer without a campfire, s’mores, and a few ghost stories. In Sleepaway you play as a camp counselor at a not-so-ordinary summer camp. But a strange cryptid is lurking about, and sometimes things get weird with even the normal people. This game is a little spooky, but not in a ‘scary movie’ way as much as a ‘that one Goosebumps book where they’re at a summer camp’ sort of way.
Who am I kidding, of course I remember the book’s name was Welcome to Camp Nightmare; I met the man who played Uncle Al in that TV episode once on a camping trip. He was incredibly nice and it was a very surreal experience.
Camp Blood
But what if you want the full summer camp horror movie game? Camp Blood is the grindhouse-style horror TTRPG that will bring all of that slasher-movie goodness to your imaginary summer camp. While some of the other summery games keep things pretty light and fun, this one does not. But if you know and love that genre, that’s probably exactly what you want.
Two Summers
Two Summers is an RPG that has you take on the role of the same character in two very different times in their life. First as a teen in the 1990’s, getting into trouble and living a wild summer adventure. And then coming back to the same place thirty years later as adults to finish the adventure and tie up the loose ends. “Like they did in It?” you may say. Yes, exactly like that. Only this isn’t meant to be a horror story as much as light, dunny drama-adventure. There are mysteries to uncover, but none of them will haunt your nightmares or eat your siblings
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