[Free RPG Day 2026] Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne

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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The Rat King Returns! For Free RPG Day 2026, Goodman Games published an adventure that was special in three ways. Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is a scenario that celebrates Goodman Games’ twenty-fifth anniversary by bringing back a villain first seen in 2003 with Dungeon Crawl Classics #1: Idylls of the Rat King, the first adventure it published for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. Second it celebrates the twenty or so years of Free RPG Day that tells the story of its genesis. Third it celebrates the contributions of Goodman Games to Free Free RPG over the years, with a gallery of every cover of every title donated to Free RPG Day in that time on the inside front and back covers. Sadly, they are presented in black and white, but nevertheless, it is still see them good in one place.

The scenario, Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne, is written to be systems neutral, but includes stats and write-ups for its NPCs and monsters for the publisher’s own Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. With the inclusion of the latter, the scenario works well with the recent Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King, but with the inclusion of the former, Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne marks the first time that the Rat King saga has been written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. It is designed for a party of First and Second Level Player Characters and can primarily be used in one of two ways. The first is as a sequel to the events of Fifth Edition Fantasy #31: Idylls of the Rat King, taking place a few weeks or months later, using the same Player Characters. The second is as sequel as sequel to Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, the saga of as a whole, taking place decades later. Of course, it can also be used as a standalone scenario, but either way the scenario can be played through in a single session.

The scenario opens with the Player Characters once again in the village of Silverton, the site of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’. Of late, there has been no merchant traffic along the road to the north to the city of Soulgrave and the village’s constable has not returned after having gone to investigate. (Oh, how the village has suffered.) A dwarven merchant claims that Lawrence Gannu, the Wererat and Rat King that threatened the village as an act of revenge that played out in ‘Idylls of the Rat King’. There are numerous rumours to gather, but quickly the local miner’s guild offers a reward and the Player Characters are on the road to the Silverton Mines (once again).

What the Player Characters discover is a much changed mine. It is smaller, no longer infested with either Goblins, Wererats, or Goblin-Wererats, let alone a vampire. That vampire though, Serrenna Valuois, who was long buried deep below the Silverton Mine, and who may or may not have been killed at the end of ‘Idylls of the Rat King’, has direct influence upon the mines as they are now and the scenario. Her hatred and her thirst, long left unslaked in the centuries of her imprisonment has been reflected and manifest in the Unslaked, a horror that has instilled occupants of the mines and creatures nearby with increasingly debilitating thirst that can only be quenched by fresh blood. There are several encounters throughout the mine where the Player Characters encounter victims of the Unslaked, who will attack randomly upon sight and several where they will be touched by the Unslaked and influenced by its thirst, as well as the possibility that, they too, might be influenced. Magical healing will definitely lift the effects of the Unslaked, but there are means of resisting the effect, the exact details of which are left to the Dungeon Master or Judge to decide.

The scenario packs a lot into a short space. There are the constable and his colleagues to rescue, plenty of call-backs to ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ to discover, and not one showdown, but two! The last one is with the Rat King himself—and that actually might set up a sequel. Of course, there already is a sequel in the form of Dungeon Crawl Classics #27: Revenge of the Rat King and Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Rat King, but there is potential for the Rat King to be revisited in future scenarios.

Rounding out Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is ‘The Secret History of Free RPG’. This is a two-page interview conducted by Stu Horvath—author of Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership—with Joseph Goodman and the Aldo Ghiozzi. It is a pleasing little read that captures the beginnings of an annual fixture of our hobby.

Physically, Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is well presented. Both the artwork and the cartography are decent too.

Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne is a short, horror scenario that fleshes out more of the Rat King and his saga, whether that is as part of the saga, or as a sequel. Players who have played the previous scenarios will enjoy the call-backs, whilst for those new to it, it could be their introduction to the saga with ‘Idylls of the Rat King’ run as a flashback. Or it could be simply run as a one-shot. In whatever way the Dungeon Master or the Judge decides to run Pretenders to the Rat King’s Throne, it shows that there are yet more stories to be told in the fight against the Rat King.