Dawn of the Orcs

2025 ENnie nominee for Best Rules

You are sages, wizards, scholars, geniuses, charlatans, and assorted other meddlers. Your nation faces destruction at the hands of an overwhelming foe. To save your homeland, you have put your occult learning, secret arts, and esoteric skills to use to build an army of new soldiers, who you call the Orcs. Each battle of the war buys you time to improve and modify your Orcs. Can you repel the invaders with a combination of sorcery and strategy? What will you have created when the fighting is over?

Dawn of the Orcs is a GMless dark fantasy worldbuilding and roleplaying game. You play as the magical technocrats who create the first Orcs as weapons of war, modify and improve them over time, and tell the story of how the Orcs become their own people. It plays in around 90-120 minutes; by the end, you will have created a unique Orc people, perhaps even one you feel like using in the setting of other roleplaying games. Dawn of the Orcs can be played solo or with up to 8 players. Maybe even more - 8 is as far as I've tested it! Dawn of the Orcs is beginner friendly but has plenty to offer jaded roleplayers; it can be played as dark comedy or high-concept speculative fiction.