The Tabletop RPG Products I'm Most Excited to Use in 2026

2025 was a year filled with role-playing games for me. I was a game master for two different campaigns with two different groups of friends, and I absolutely loved it.

I also had a lot of fun with a bunch of products—some I've gotten to use in games, some I can't wait to try. Since we're starting a new year, I wanted to sum up the stuff that has me most excited about the hobby right now.

Daggerheart (Core Rulebook)

I haven't run Daggerheart yet. Haven't even gotten to play it. But I've been reading the book, watching actual-play sessions, keeping track of the buzz around it, and it's got me pretty thrilled.

What draws me in is the idea that players aren't just along for the ride—they're actively shaping the story. Not just their characters' choices, but the dramatic beats, the themes, the world itself. The GM and players collaborating on authorship in a way that feels built into the system rather than something you have to negotiate around the rules.

The Duality Dice, the tension between Hope and Fear, the collaborative worldbuilding at the start of a campaign—it all feels thoughtfully designed to support improvised, collaborative storytelling. It's an invitation, not just a ruleset.

I'm hopeful that this year I'll actually get it to the table with people who want to explore that kind of play with me.

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set (2025): Heroes of the Borderlands

I've run two full D&D campaigns as a dungeon master now. One was a year-and-a-half-long Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign—dozens of NPCs, multiple factions, complicated political intrigue. Before that, I ran the previous starter set, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle.

Even with mostly the same group across both campaigns, some players were still struggling with core D&D mechanics. What counts as an action versus a bonus action. How turns work. How the rules fit together at a basic level.

Heroes of the Borderlands looks like it solves this problem in a really fun way.

From everything I've read and watched, it deliberately borrows familiar conventions from board games and uses them as teaching tools. It guides players through early-level D&D in a way that feels tactile and intuitive rather than instructional. Fun rather than lecture-like.

Compared to Stormwreck Isle—which had a few booklets, some character sheets, dice—this new set is packed. Tokens, dozens of maps, multiple booklets, a DM guide, player boards, hundreds of cards.

The adventures themselves look simpler than Dragon Heist, but simple in a way that feels intentional and joyful.

I'm leaving it up to my players, but I'm really hoping they'll be interested in running a few sessions—not as a downgrade from where we've been, but as a way to internalize D&D fundamentals through exciting play rather than rules explanation.

Shadowdark — Cursed Scrolls Volumes 1–3

We got the beginnings of a Shadowdark campaign going in 2025—a modified version of Curse of Strahd with a new group of players—but scheduling pulled us apart for a while. Still, the more I've read the Cursed Scrolls and the more I've watched to the Glass Cannon podcast's Shadowdark campaign, the more something has clicked for me.

Through these supplements, I've started to really understand hex crawling, sandbox play, and a style of adventure that's even less linear than what I've been running. One that leans heavily on random encounters and emergent play.

What I love about the Cursed Scrolls is how little they give you—but how effective that restraint is. Each one has just enough information to spark ideas. Just enough keyed locations to make the world feel real. But not so much that it feels like homework every time you sit down to prep.

For the first time, I genuinely understand why exploration—supposedly one of the three pillars of D&D—is fun and dramatic, rather than just something to get through between combat encounters.

I backed the Western Reaches Kickstarter, which collects Cursed Scrolls 1–3, adds volumes 4–6, and includes two massive new books. That means waiting until late spring, but I'm more than happy to wait.

Shadowdark — Quickstart Set

One important thing: the Shadowdark campaign we've been running has been done entirely using the Quickstart Set, which is free to download.

The quickstart includes all the rules and spells needed for characters from levels 1–3. We've easily run half a dozen sessions using only that material. While I'm a huge fan of the print versions—and fully intend to buy more—I genuinely love the quickstart as an onboarding tool.

I'm also going to pitch this to my D&D group, fresh off Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, to see if they'd like to give Shadowdark a shot.

Shadowdark books are concise. So free of cruft that they can sometimes feel dense to read. I found it tough to internalize it all at first. The Quickstart Set solves that beautifully. It's focused, readable, a pleasure to flip through.

Honestly, even if you never intend to run Shadowdark, I recommend downloading it and paging through it.

Dungeons & Dragons Core Rulebooks (2024–2025)

One of my favorite TTRPG experiences last year didn't happen at the table at all.

My girlfriend and I took our new electric car on a road trip around Oregon. Campgrounds, lodges, hotels, Airbnbs. We visited Crater Lake and a bunch of other incredible spots. While she went paddleboarding, I brought along the new D&D core rulebooks: the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual.

I would sit by lakeshores and in forests, flipping through the books. I'd find a monster I didn't recognize in the DMG and cross-reference it in the Monster Manual. I'd discover feats in the Player's Handbook I hadn't paid attention to and play them out step by step in my head.

I've never been an active D&D player during the release of a new edition, so having these beautifully bound books—especially the game-store editions—with their artwork and history and deeply intertwined rules was a puzzle my brain could happily explore.

Even though only the Monster Manual technically released in 2025—I bought the other two at the end of 2024—I'm counting this as one of the highlights of my TTRPG year.

Tales of the Valiant — Game Master's Guide

There's plenty of solid general GM advice in here, which is valuable even if it's stuff I've absorbed from years of videos and reading. What really stood out were the edge-case solutions.

This book has thoughtful answers to questions like:

• How do you plan a boss battle that actually feels epic?
• How do you run a siege?
• What do you do if you want a thousand low-level NPCs attacking the party in a cinematic, movie-style fight?

Again and again, when I hit a snag during game prep, I'd check to see if this guide had guidance—and it usually did.

I've only been using it for a few months, but it's already earned a permanent place on my shelf. I'm genuinely excited to keep turning to it.

That's what has me excited heading into 2026. More games to run, more books to read, more time at the table—or at least, that's the hope