The coolest tabletop RPGs based on videogames, from Fallout to Dragon Age

Videogames have always taken inspiration from and adapted tabletop RPGs—from Vampire: The Masquerade to Cyberpunk to, of course, Dungeons & Dragons. Something most people don't realise, however, is how much the relationship flows both ways.

Whatever your favourite videogame is, chances are there's a great tabletop RPG adaptation out there. Some are official, directly based on the source material; others are inspired by it, and put their own spin on the idea (or simply file all the serial numbers off).

This list brings together some of the coolest ones you can play today—take a look, and before you know it you'll have a new campaign brewing.

Official adaptations

Fallout

If you're a fan of Bethesda's open world Fallout games (or the recent hit TV show), you're certainly well-served on the tabletop. The official TTRPG by Modiphius is mechanically straightforward but really shines in how authentic it feels to the series, from its evocative art to its quirky graphic design and countless faithful touches. You even use bottle caps as tokens in play.

The game has a substantial library of expansions and adventures, and if you like playing with miniatures, there's a full range available, because Modiphius also make two Fallout wargames: Wasteland Warfare and Factions.

The same publisher also has TTRPGs based on Dishonored and Homeworld, using the same system and with similarly lavish production values.

Dragon Age

First released back in 2010, Green Ronin's Dragon Age TTRPG never quite had the life and support you'd expect from such a big name, but it's still a lovely game. There's an old school charm to its take on fantasy adventure, with some clever new ideas thrown in to make it feel fresh and exciting. The stunt system is particularly good, a mechanic that means every roll to hit in combat has a chance to generate points you can spend on getting cool extra effects like disarming a foe or knocking them prone.

Though the range of supplements is small, successor Fantasy AGE uses the core rules, making it easy to adapt monsters, adventures, and more from that range into your Dragon Age campaign.

If you do fancy running a Dragon Age tabletop campaign, pick up Dark Horse's World of Thedas books too, if you can. They're not actually TTRPG books, but they're packed with all the setting lore and adventure inspiration a GM could ever want.

Mutant: Year Zero

I'm cheating a bit already—Mutant: Year Zero existed on tabletops first, and was then adapted into the videogame Road to Eden. But it's too good a TTRPG for me to not give it a nod.

Its quirky but deadly post-apocalypse is wonderfully atmospheric, brought to life both by elegant rules and gorgeous artwork. Different standalone books let you play as mutants, talking animals, or escaped robots, each with their own unique mechanics and complete campaign to experience. Don't expect the very tactical combat of the videogame—fights are quicker and nastier in the TTRPG—but if you played it and loved the idea of scavenging ancient ruins as a talking duck with a crossbow, Mutant: Year Zero has got what you're after.

Free League makes a whole range of really beautiful and smartly designed licensed RPGs—I particularly love The One Ring, and Alien: Isolation fans should check out the Alien RPG.

And more...

• Weirdly, Sea of Thieves has an official TTRPG—it comes in a big box full of luxurious books, maps, components, and dice. I suppose it makes sense given SoT is basically about play-acting as a pirate with your friends anyway.

• R Talsorian makes the official The Witcher TTRPG, as well as being the original creators of Cyberpunk, which Cyberpunk 2077 is based on. For me, though, their games feel a little stuck in the past—expect character sheets that look like Excel spreadsheets.

• Dark Souls received an adaptation to the D&D 5e rules—a bad fit in any circumstances, but it also just sounds like kind of a mess. Check the next section for a better recommendation.

• There's a Tomb Raider TTRPG currently in development that seems a lot cooler than you might expect.

• People keep telling me there's a Baldur's Gate 3 TTRPG but I can't find it…

Inspired by

Destiny

Light is a wonderfully clever take on bringing Destiny to the table, with fast but tactical gunfights and even randomly generated weapons replicating the loot drops from the videogame. Its sister game Nova combines elements of Destiny and Warframe into a slick post-apocalyptic setting where players pilot powerful combat suits. In both games, dice are almost entirely taken out of the equation during battles, putting the focus instead on cleverly comboing your attacks and abilities for maximum destruction—recreating the skill-based play of an FPS.

And if you enjoy the system—known as Lumen—you'll find lots of other TTRPGs that use it, many of them inspired by other videogames.

Dark Souls and Elden Ring

Runecairn: Wardensaga cleverly adapts the core ideas of Dark Souls—from its deadliness and difficulty, to specifics like bonfires and collecting souls—to the tabletop. It offers its own setting, a dark fantasy world inspired by Viking sagas, but it's easily used for the actual Dark Souls setting.

The videogames themselves were heavily inspired by the deadliness and horror of early D&D, and in turn Dark Souls has been a big influence on the OSR movement, a community of TTRPGs that hark back to those days. If what you're after is that sense of danger around every corner, players having to grab every advantage they can to survive, and dark, crumbling fantasy worlds, just pick up an OSR game like Old School Essentials and a cool dungeon (they all tend to be compatible—try the free Tomb of the Serpent Kings to get you started) and you'll be amazed how FromSoft it all feels without any adaptation needed.

For something lighter and more modern, Trophy Gold has a brilliantly grim and surreal atmosphere that specifically really evoked Elden Ring for me when I ran my campaign.

For more on OSR, Old School Essentials, and Trophy Gold, check out our list of alternatives to D&D. 

Persona

The Persona series' mix of slice-of-life drama and fantastical dungeon-crawling is a perfect formula for a tabletop campaign, and in the absence of an official TTRPG, Voidheart Symphony is a damn good substitute.

Based on the popular Powered by the Apocalypse system, it particularly channels the punk spirit of Persona 5, casting you as supernatural rebels fighting against a corrupt status quo. As you'd expect, your character uses wildly different abilities when they're in the shadow world versus the real world, and just like in Persona your powers are tied to your bonds with various NPCs.

Hollow Knight

The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG is as straightforwardly named as it is impressively exhaustive. Build pretty much any bug-person you can imagine as your character and set off on your own adventure through the ruins—you've probably still got time to get a whole campaign done before Silksong finally comes out.

For a free fan project the attention to detail here is really remarkable. It's wonderfully faithful, but also adds its own new ideas for what magic and mystery could lurk in the setting, and its mix of official art, sprites from the game, and fanart blends together seamlessly.

Also worth checking out is Beetle Knight, which was recently Kickstarted as part of popular crowdfunding event ZineQuest. While it's not quite so direct an adaptation, it still wears its inspiration firmly on its sleeve (exoskeleton?).

And more...

• Fight! is a wonderfully stylish TTRPG inspired by fighting games, particularly Street Fighter. Be warned though that, like a fighting game, it's very in-depth and can be difficult to get to grips with.

• Though still in the playtesting stage, Hollows is already an impressive and interesting take on Bloodborne-inspired adventure, with sharp and brutal tactical combat against huge, mutated beasts.

• Blades in the Dark has a brilliantly atmospheric setting directly inspired by Thief and Dishonored. Though the game is surprisingly dense for an improv-heavy, low-prep experience, if you can wrap your head around it it's an amazing toolkit for games of dark fantasy skullduggery.

• This one's a little more indirect, but if you want to recreate the feel of the Star Wars: Jedi games or the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws, Black Star nails it. I ran a campaign of this one for a group of my fellow PC Gamer writers, and they had a hell of a time fighting the Empire, making friends with GNK droids, and running terrified from Darth Vader.