Each month we spotlight different themes and highlight the amazing designers behind the games we love. As we curate collections for this upcoming fall season, we decided to spotlight our Top 20 Best Selling Games and RPGs from August 2021 to now! 

With so many people from all over the world joining our community and connecting with our long time regulars, we thought this was a perfect time to discuss why these Top 20 Games and RPGs are so popular amongst 20siders!

TOP 20 GAMES

After Dinner Games

My quick go-to After Dinner games in the Top 20 collection are Azul, Cat Lady, and Splendor. They are simple to set up and quick to play, but have tons of strategy and complexity to keep us coming back again and again. 

If it is just the two of us, Hive, The Fox in the Forest, and The Mind are perfect, providing both competitive and cooperative options depending on what mood we are in. 

For a slightly more challenging 2-player game, 7 Wonders is the best. 

Game Night Games

Game Nights require games with a bit more immersion like Mansions of Madness and Betrayal at the House on the Hill. In these games you take on a character with special abilities and work together to overcome obstacles. We get really into it – playing by candlelight, hooking up the background music to the nice stereo speakers, and roleplaying our characters – but it is totally not required if that is not your thing. 

For more of a resource management game, Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Wingspan are our top picks.

Party Games

Dixit, Ramen Fury, Coup, Codenames, and Wavelength round out the Party Game collection perfectly. All of these games can be played with just a few people to get the night started, and scale up smoothly as more people arrive fashionably late. Coup and Ramen Furry cap at five players, but Dixit, Codenames, and Wavelength can accommodate plenty more especially when played as teams.

Weekend Games

Root and The Initiative are games that I save for the weekend. 

Root has a bit of a learning curve, so if I have new players I want to take my time setting up the game and going over the rules so I don’t cause anyone to feel overwhelmed or rushed. 

The Initiative is a campaign, each game plays in about an hour but the entire story is told through a 48-page comic book that spans multiple games. It can be played weekly, as a Game Night game, but I like the idea of taking up to a cabin and playing the campaign over the weekend as an epic adventure. I personally haven’t gotten the chance to weekend in a cabin in the woods yet, and I am so jealous of all of our customers who do this – I imagine taking lots of long breaks in between games to cook meals and go for hikes… soon, very soon. I am ready!

TOP 20 RPGs 

Solo & 2 Player Roleplaying Games

When Luis and I first opened the store there were hardly, if any, roleplaying games you could play solo or two player. Now there are so many, and each of them are wildly unique. 

Thousand Year Vampire is a solo journaling game where you play out your existence. 

In Wanderhome, you play traveling animal-folk discovering the beauty of nature as you travel from village to village. 

Star Crossed Lovers holds the emotions of a couple in exhilarating tension using a stacking block tower to determine whether or not the temptation to act on your feelings for the other person can be resisted. 

The Quiet Year is a post-apocalyptic map making game that uses cards to trigger events that get played out over each passing season of a quiet year before the Frost Shepherds arrive, ending the game. 

Light Rules & GM-less Systems

Microscope can be played with two, but I think it is better when you have a few people to bounce ideas off of as you create the events in the timeline of your world. 

Sign and Dialect are about creating languages and exploring what it feels like to be understood.

Sleepaway is besieged by a strange and ominous cryptid. As a camp counselor you are determined to keep this camp safe and provide a refuge from the alienating outside world. 

In Ryuutama, you travel and journey far from home, but you are protected by the half-dragon Ryujin as you explore the unknowns of the world ahead of you.

Fiasco is played over three acts. In the first act you learn about yourself and others as you develop the objective of the plot. Act two builds up to the penultimate scene where everything goes awry. Act three closes with the epilogue. Each playset offers a totally different genre and tone to suit your mood.

The first time I played Kids on Bikes was with Luis at the 2018 GAMA trade show. I don’t think the game had officially been released then. Ivan B. Van Norman was guiding our game and it was truly epic! Had there not been a line of people waiting, we would have kept roleplaying kids in a small suburban town, getting in way over our heads, for hours. If you like Stranger Things and the X-Files, you will love this game! Kids on Bikes uses the full set of dice which I love, and is simple enough for a quick one-shot, but has enough mechanics for an ongoing campaign. 

Apocalypse World and Powerd by the Apolcolypse games –  Monster of the Week, Monsterhearts, Thirsty Swords and Lesbians, Punk's Been Dead Since '79 are amoungst our favorites! They all have a tight theme or genre, and like Kids on Bikes they come with customizable pre-generated characters that have very satisfying choices and leveling-up system for keeping the game focused on facilitating a style of game play that really enhances the themes of each game. Monster of the Week is about slaying monsters, Buffy-style. Monsterhearts is Heathers with vampires and werewolves. Thirsty Sword and Lesbians conquers all and Punk’s Been Dead Since ‘79 is litterly roleplaying my teenage years.  

I remember I was hanging out with Lucian Kahn at Full Circle Bar after playing D&D at the store when he first told me about his concept for a roleplaying game that was a dating sim, set in a mall full of goth kids!!! My first reaction was –  this game is gonna be amazing!!! Visigoths vs Mall Goths is now one of our Top 20 best selling RPGs at Twenty Sided Store.

Blades in the Dark is a d6 system like Powered by the Apocalypse games, but like Visgoths vs Mall Goths, it features a unique rules system. The system introduces a mechanic using progress clocks, which work great for facilitating heists and intrigue heavy games.   

Campaign Systems & Settings

It is no surprise that the D&D 5e Player's Handbook and Critical Role Tal'dorei Campaign Setting book would be on the list of best sellers. 

If it weren’t for Dungeons & Dragons, roleplaying games might have ceased to exist. Somehow playing characters inspired by Tolkien, worked its way into the basements of storytellers all over the world. As people wanted to explore other worlds and different styles of game play, more game systems and worlds to go with them were created. As gamers came out of the basement, tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) became more mainstream and when a bunch of video game voice over actors started playing D&D on Geek & Sundry, everyone instantly fell in love with Critical Role and the world of Tal’dorei.