[Free RPG Day 2026] No Place Like Homebrew

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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No Place Like Homebrew is a sampler for No Place Like Homebrew, a supplement from Roll & Play Press, which provides the Game Master with hundreds of settlements, factions, NPCs, monsters, countries, and more. Everything is clearly laid out and colour-coded—purple for characters, brown for factions, green for locations, and red for creatures—such that the Game Master can consult the supplement and find something that she wants in the right section. Further, where needed it has stats. In the supplement, these are for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, making it compatible with the world’s number one roleplaying game, but these are neatly compartmentalised such that a Game Master could easily ignore them and develop the content using the system and stats of her choice. The No Place Like Homebrew sampler has no such stats, but is colour-coded and thus everything is easy to find and identify what category each falls into.

The No Place Like Homebrew sampler opens with a handful of countries, leading with a description of Theotalis, ‘Opulent country rich in silver.’, known for Castle Theotalis and its gleaming spire as well as the fact silver views run in abundance across the county. The citizens are wealthy and silver is held as sacred though the mines are now mechanised. Dotted across the country are old silver statues which may be a source of riddles, advice, or snippets of lost history depending upon who you ask. Conversely, ‘Fozanzia’, a ‘Magical, smog filled-wasteland’, was once a centre of arcane research, but was reduced to an unhabitable wasteland following a failed attempt to artificially recreate dragon’s breath as a weapon. It is now shrouded in thick, draconic fog, scorching golden yellow by day, freezing grey by night. Except for the dragons and wyverns that roam the sky, the only things that live under the pall of magical fallout are hardy, but have mutated. However, if a creature survives long breathing in the miasma, it develops its own dragon breath… All six entries are categorised ‘Setting’ and ‘Country’, but also fall into a combination of the ‘Exploration’, ‘Safe’, ‘Magic’, ‘Horror’, ‘Dangerous’, and other categories. 

Under ‘Realms and Leaders’, the sampler details three different dragons. ‘The Winged Terror’ is a wounded wyvern, recently escaped from a gladiatorial arena and clumsily trying to adapt to outside world; ‘Precept Regent’ are father, mother, and son Gold Dragons travel the world learning and giving lectures on all manner of different subjects; and ‘The Underking’ claims dominion over all that lies under the ground and sees mining efforts as invasions! Thus, we have a creature that is wild new threat to the countryside, a trio that might be the very sages that the Player Characters are looking for, and a would-be ruler of the Underworld.

The centre part of the sampler is devoted to the widest selection of interesting options to import into the Game Master’s campaign—people, organisations, and the occasional monster. Unfortunately, whether it is the ‘Syphapods’, translucent underground octopi that drop on people and suffocate and constrict them or the ‘Duneshredders’, landsharks that swim in the desert sands, the monsters in the sampler manage to be uninspired and uninspiring. Much, much better are the NPCs. ‘Cerulea Prim’ is a Stone Giant renowned for cave paintings, occasionally takes commissions to paint murals, but lets others add to the paintings in her cave and now wants to find an inspiring band of heroes to feature in her next work. The ‘Shardpick Syndicate’ is a band of Dwarves known for their diamond-tipped picks which enable them to rework old mines and dig out previously inaccessible seams of ore and gems, but this is all a front for its leader’s true aim—finding a lost city! ‘Nym’ is a Nothic fascinated by the surface world and tortures those it captures for their knowledge and secrets, but giving up the knowledge beforehand might prevent her from attacking you. Other entries include a  popular author looking for inspiration in the wilderness, a high priest to a sun god wanting donations to restore his remote temple whilst pining for the love that his faith denies him, and an assassin who uses scorpion venom, but who has lost his favourite and mostly deadly scorpion! Overall, it is a nice range and there is definitely something or someone that the Game Master can add to her campaign.

Pride of place goes to ‘The Copperpot Arms’, an inn so large it has capacity for five hundred guests. It is fully detailed and ready to use, and even though the map is too small, it gets across a sense of its layout. Lastly, the No Place Like Homebrew sampler gives an idea of its ‘Campaign Primers’. These include tone, inspiration, and pitch, as well as campaign overview, lore and mechanics, key locations, important characters, and inciting incident. Lastly, there are some Session Zero questions to put to the players about their characters. The included ‘Pirate Campaign: King of the Blue’ is inspired by One Piece meets Monster Hunter and consists of a world of drifting island nations, one of which is Theotalis from earlier in the sampler (and the book), and the big hook is the hunt for a shipwreck said to be laden with pirate treasure. The primer comes with NPCs; lore and mechanics such as building crew reputation, upgrading ships, and using knock-off electrum coins in a world where the silver coin is the prime currency can get a pirate or a Player Character into trouble; and an inciting incident to get the campaign started. Overall, it is a good page of details, but still with room aplenty for the Game Master to add her own content.

Physically, the No Place Like Homebrew sampler is well presented. It readable and accessible and the artwork is decent.

The obvious problem with the No Place Like Homebrew sampler is that it it bitty, lots of little things rather than one whole that can be used as is. As a preview though, it does a good job of showcasing what is in the actual No Place Like Homebrew book and there is content in the sampler that the Game Master can take inspiration from. It is far from the best item published for Free RPG Day 2026, but where others might get immediately used, it might be something that the Game Master dips into at a later date.