Top 6 Underappreciated Tabletop RPGs

I’ve been writing several posts about underappreciated video games on various consoles in the past several week. I began thinking, aren’t there underappreciated tabletop RPGs too? Those that are very well-made, creative, innovative, fun, but slid under the radar? There must be. So I did some research…okay I did a lost of research to find these ‘hidden gem’ TTRPGs. I’ve divided them into tiers, as is my norm.

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Tier S – Criminal Underappreciation

New Game:  Part Time Gods (Third Eye Games)

Part-Time Gods doesn’t just ask what if mortals could become gods, it asks what happens when divinity comes with human complications–like paying rent. This criminally underappreciated gem from Eloy Lasanta and Third Eye Games forces players to juggle divine duties and mortal responsibilities. Defend mystical Territories, but also maintain day jobs and relationships—connections that literally anchor their humanity.

The Second Edition streamlined the original’s DGS-Lite system into elegant d10 pools, adding smart mechanical touches like Bonds that fray when neglected and neighborhood-scale conflicts that feel personal. Players claim divine Dominions, align with secret Theologies, and face the constant tension between godhood and grocery bills.

The Kickstarter funded in seven hours, but this RPG is buried beneath D&D’s shadow. Part-Time Gods was ahead of its time: it modeled work-life-divinity balance with actual mechanical consequences. Unfortunately, its take on modern mythology never achieved mainstream recognition. That represents one of the TTRPG industry’s greatest oversights, maximum underappreciation for a game that deserved so much better.

Best for: players who like moral gray zones and messy, small-scale stakes — the kind who’d rather argue over what being a god means than just blast things.
Skip if: your group wants clear goals, big battles, or traditional hero arcs.

Try it with:  Wrath of Purity, if you like prewritten adventures. There is also a New Gods Bundle that includes lots of great content at a better price.

The Strange (Monte Cook Games)

The Strange drops you into a reality-bending universe where your character transforms when traveling between dimensions. As operatives of a secret organization called The Estate, players investigate recursions: pocket dimensions created from humanity’s myths, legends, and fiction. One day you’re a hacker in modern-day Seattle; step through a portal, and you become an elven archer in a fantasy realm, gaining abilities suited to that world.

This translation mechanic is the first of its kind in character progression, adapting player abilities to different genres while preserving identity. Built on Monte Cook Games’ award-winning Cypher System, The Strange won three Silver ENnie Awards in 2015, including Best Game, but few these days have heard of it. The premise allows for limitless genre-hopping campaigns, from cyberpunk dystopias to Lovecraftian nightmares.

The Strange has seen minimal retrospective coverage over the last decade since it came out. It exemplifies the most striking form of underappreciation: exceptional innovation that goes unrecognized and unacknowledged.

Best for: groups who like cracking puzzles and rolling with weird shifts in genre and rules.
Skip if: your table hates changing gears or wants one consistent vibe all campaign.

Try it with:  The Dark Spiral, a multi-part adventure. The company has released a YouTube video on how to play it, and it takes you through a session.

Tier A – Deep Underappreciation

Triangle Agency (Haunted Table Games)

Triple Gold ENnie winner for Best Game, Best Rules, and Best Writing—Triangle Agency turned progression into actual mystery by locking rules you can’t read until you’ve earned them. Polygon called it “one of the best-written tabletop games ever,” yet it’s still criminally underplayed.

You’re an Agent in shadowy corporate reality where the ARC system creates 700+ possible builds. The innovation: over 100 pages of abilities, lore, and mechanics sealed behind “playwalls” that crack open only when you hit specific milestones. Discovery is the progression system. The d4 dice pool feeds every roll into Chaos the GM spends on Anomalies, escalating tension naturally as reality warps around your growing power.

Despite great success on Kickstarter and sweeping the ENnies, Triangle Agency fights for mainstream attention when games with half its innovation dominate tables. This is mechanical revolution meeting horror-comedy genius.

Best for: players who like mission-driven play with workplace satire and creeping horror. Groups that enjoy slow-burn tension, messy moral choices, and chairs that push players into conflict.
Skip if: your table avoids friction, wants a wide open sandbox, or can’t handle swinging from deadpan comedy to genuine dread.

Try it with:  download some free demos here. Go for The Vault if you want to dive in with full adventures.

Electric Bastionland (Bastionland Press)

Electric Bastionland asks: what if character creation was your story’s starting point, not just a stat roll?

Finalist for Best Writing at the 2020 ENnies, it replaces the usual “roll stats, pick class” model with over 100 Failed Careers: fully formed identities with built-in motivation, gear, and backstory that define who you were before debt forced you into desperate treasure hunting.

You play residents of Bastion, an ever-shifting city where locations and oddities grow through player and GM collaboration, making each campaign a unique sandbox. The rules are minimal—roll under ability scores, attacks auto-hit, armor absorbs damage—and the system prioritizes storytelling over mechanical complexity. Advancement follows the same path. Instead of leveling up, your character’s story unfolds through strange encounters and impossible discoveries, emphasizing story progression over stats.

Beautifully produced and focused on mutual storytelling, EB enjoys strong OSR and indie acclaim but remains overshadowed by Into the Odd, making it a design gem ripe for broader discovery.

Best for: groups that love brutal, improvisational dungeon runs. Players who enjoy clever tricks, weird loot, and black-humor chaos rather than long-term power growth.
Skip if: your table wants safe, slow-burn campaigns with persistent PCs, low lethality, or players who hate lots of random, chaotic outcome

Try it with:  for free as a demo. Then get a free adventure here. There’s a Player’s Guide that’s short, cheap, and just for players.

ARC: Doom Tabletop RPG (momatoes)

ARC: Doom Tabletop RPG  is a brilliant, rules-light game that has a truly original twist, and it has not gotten the recognition it deserves. Designed by Filipino creator momatoes, ARC puts players into apocalyptic fantasy scenarios called “Dooms” and asks them to race the clock—literally. Its mechanic is a real-time Doomsday Clock that advances during your session (not just on turns), so every minute of debate or downtime pushes the world closer to catastrophe. The result is instant tension, faster decisions, and high-stakes play.

Beyond the clock, ARC shines with clean, expressive rules that invite creativity. Players combine flexible approaches (Creative, Careful, Concerted) with their abilities to tackle problems, while an initiative where players declare their intended actions before knowing when they’ll act in the turn order, encourages teamwork. Rest and recovery tie to real breaks, blending table rhythm with in-world pacing. The art draws inspiration from Southeast Asia, giving ARC a unique look.

ARC is available in both hardcover and PDF, making it easy to learn and perfect for groups that want rules-light, tension-heavy storytelling.

Best for: groups that thrive on pressure and emotion. Players who like racing a literal clock, making desperate choices, and treating doom as a storytelling engine.
Skip if: your crew prefers chill pacing, long campaigns, or tactical optimization over gut-punch drama.

Try it with:  the free Quickstart Adventure.

Dreams & Machines (Modiphius Entertainment)

Dreams & Machines carves out a rare niche: a post-post-apocalypse where survival isn’t the endgame, rebuilding is. On Evera Prime players explore the hulks of ancient mechs while founding new communities, trading grimdark despair for a hopeful, collaborative future. It’s called hopepunk.

The mechanics push just as hard as the setting. Spirit works as both your lifeblood and your story fuel, while “Truths” replace XP charts with moments of real character growth. These aren’t just 2d20 tweaks, they’re shifts that make exploring ruins and rebuilding cities feel personal and meaningful.

So why haven’t you heard more about it? Despite glowing reviews, D&M hasn’t caught much buzz in forums, streams, or tables. For a game that makes hopepunk sci-fi actually playable and welcoming to newcomers, that silence feels like a missed opportunity.

If you want to explore machine-haunted ruins while shaping a world worth saving, Dreams & Machines deserves a seat at your table, and way more attention than it’s getting.

Best for: groups that like vibe-heavy, character-first stories. Players who dig strange worlds, emotional beats, and a little mystery over min-maxing.
Skip if: your crew wants clear quests, crunchy fights, or gets antsy when things get abstract.

Try it with:  The Starter Set. It has everything you need to get going.

There are, no doubt, other underappreciated TTRPGs out there. I may post more on this topic later as I find some hidden gems, but for now these are some excellent games that ought to be played and discussed a lot more than they currently are.

What did I miss? Let me know in the comments below and I will check them out.

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