Tabletop Tower Defense

Tabletop Tower Defense is a set of rules for running physical tower defense games. This can be a minigame in an ongoing campaign, or a one-shot standalone game. The rules here are complete, yet flexible enough to be implemented in any system or setting. The game is played in phases with gameplay happening in rounds. The base is ideally represented by a physical tower of blocks, otherwise base damage can be tracked on paper.

You can use these rules as published, or use them as a system reference document (SRD) to create something new. The rules are purposefully stripped of any narrative elements so you can play this in any setting or context.

You're welcome to use and adapt these rules in any project of your own, even commercial ones. If you do, please provide attribution to Hugh Lashbrooke and a link back to this page with the following text:

Tabletop Tower Defense rules by Hugh Lashbrooke - hughlashbrooke.com

You can also comment on here with a link to your game and I'll add it to this page as a reference. 

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While I have published this ruleset for the Minimalist TTRPG Jam 2, it is something I have had on the back burner that I have been wanting to finalise and publish for a while.

This ruleset reaches Nightmare Mode for the Minimalist TTRPG Jam in all four areas:

• It doesn't use any tables, ordered lists, or unordered lists
• There is no expository or narrative writing
• This is an all-new ruleset that does not rely on any other supplement or SRD
• It is less than 1,000 words (960 total)

Tabletop Tower Defense is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyright © Hugh Lashbrooke 2024. You may use, copy, share, and modify for any use, so long as you provide attribution to Hugh Lashbrooke.