If you can’t shop locally this holiday season at a friendly local game store, your friendly virtual independent TTRPG seller is happy to help — and might have a few more options. While itch.io and Drivethru RPG are the go-to spots for tabletop designers and players to find their new favorite game, independent distributors are offering discounted physical copies this Black Friday. Polygon has rounded up some of the best indie tabletop deals and bundles that these virtual stores have to offer.
A one-person store that opened in December 2023, Tabletop Bookshelf has quickly earned its spot as a trusted seller of great indie and small press TTRPGs. Among the games currently on sale are gems like Evil Hat’s Deathmatch Island (a Squid Games meets Survivor style RPG) and SoulMuppet’s Orbital Blues, a game about sad space cowboys — though the original Cowboy Bepop RPG is also on sale. It also carries classic games like the satirical Paranoia and games by up-and-coming designers like Elliot Davis’ Project Ecco, a solo RPG about a rogue time traveler avoiding a mysterious Agency and an evil Entity, that’s played on a yearly planner.
Knave of Cups is another online outfit run by a team of two. They stock games by prominent indie designers like Sam Leigh, Ken Lowery, and Cassi Mothwin. Knave of Cups also stocks everything you need like dice, tarot cards, journals, and puzzles. Through November 27, they’re running a sale on their collection of indie board games from designers like the Japanese game design studio, Oink Games, which creates pocket-sized games perfect for holiday gatherings.
Exalted Funeral is the go-to publisher and distributor for fans of Old School Renaissance games. It carries a massive catalog brimming with original games and settings like the Redwall-esque Mausritter or the psychedelic Ultraviolet Grasslands. Exalted Funeral also sells experimental supplements for over 30 systems including Dungeons and Dragons, Mork Bork, Mothership, and Old School Essentials. From November 29 to December 2, there will be a 30% discount site-wide, with up to 50% off books and zines published through Exalted Funeral.
A staple of the indie tabletop scene, Indie Press Revolution carries maybe the widest array of tabletop games and adjacent materials on this list. Operating since 2004, IPR is a common presence at gaming conventions in the US. It sells staples of the medium like John Harper’s Blades in the Dark and Tim Hutching’s Thousand Year Old Vampire, alongside newer games and supplements like Quinn Murphy’s Welcome To Nightvale-inspired Community Radio and watt’s Cloud Empress. Currently, IPR only has a handful of games on sale, like Signal to Noise and Onyx Path’s Chronicles of Darkness.
Last but certainly not least on this list is Plus One Exp, a tabletop publisher and distributor with the slogan, “Weird Indie Games”, a sentiment we should all get behind. Plus One Exp has been distributing tabletop games with truly fascinating concepts like Alexi Sargeant’s The Great Soul Train Robbery, a low-prep game about robbing a train to hell, Navaar Jackson’s The Corrupted, an intimate zombie apocalypse game in the vein of The Last of Us, and Longsword, a d100-based twist on Arthurian legends and knightly virtues by Viditya Voleti and Sam Tung. Many of the games on the Plus One site are the product of their RPG Zine Club, a monthly subscription where members pay a flat rate for monthly games from designers all over the world. While not technically a Black Friday deal, Zine Club subscribers get these games at a discounted rate.
