Best Roleplay Games With Dedicated Servers (2026)

The best roleplay games with dedicated servers are FiveM, Garry's Mod (DarkRP), Space Station 14, Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Path Of Titans, The Isle, Nova-Life: Amboise, SCP: Secret Laboratory and Conan Exiles. In each one the server is the community: the rules, the economy, the whitelist and the staff all live there, so owning it is the whole point. Server sizes run from 3 GB for Space Station 14 to 12 or 16 GB for a busy FiveM city.

Roleplay is a server first genre. A roleplay community needs its world online when members are, its characters and property saved, a whitelist to keep out people who will not follow the rules, and admins with real tools. The games below give you all four.

Roleplay games at a glance

1. FiveM

GTA V roleplay is the biggest roleplay scene in gaming. A FiveM city has jobs, a police department, EMS, gangs, businesses and a Discord with an application process. Frameworks like QBCore, Qbox and ESX give you inventory, money and jobs out of the box, and txAdmin handles whitelists, bans and scheduled restarts.

• RAM: 8 GB for a framework server with up to 32 players, 16 GB for a busy 48 slot city with a large resource pack.
• Start here: how to make a FiveM roleplay server. For other GTA platforms like RAGE MP and open.mp, see best GTA multiplayer mods to host a server.

2. Garry's Mod

DarkRP turned Garry's Mod into a city roleplay game years before FiveM existed, and it is still everywhere: mayors, police, gun dealers and a lot of improvised courtrooms. Beyond DarkRP, Workshop gamemodes cover military RP, Star Wars clone RP and school RP. Servers go up to 128 slots.

• RAM: 8 GB for DarkRP with a full Workshop collection, 16 GB for a 64+ slot community with heavy model and map packs.
• Read next: how to add DarkRP to a Garry's Mod server.

3. Space Station 14

A free, open source remake of Space Station 13. Every round is a shift on a station: chemist, security officer, janitor or captain, with a traitor somewhere in the crew. Rules and roleplay standards are what separate communities. Some run relaxed and chaotic, others strict medium or heavy roleplay with whitelisted command jobs. Because the game is free, new players can join your station the day they hear about it.

• RAM: 3 GB for a friends server of 10 to 20, 4 GB for public rounds of 40 to 60.

4. Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition

Twenty plus years of persistent worlds and DM run campaigns on D&D 3rd edition rules. A small server is a tabletop night with the dice rolled for you. A big one is a persistent world where characters live on the server and DMs drop in to run events. Builders create their own modules, and hak packs bring custom content.

• RAM: 2 GB for a DM campaign, 4 GB for a persistent world with custom content and 30 plus players.

5. Path Of Titans

You play one dinosaur from hatchling to adult. Realism roleplay servers enforce diet, pack size and behavior rules, and growth servers speed things up. Every platform plays together on community servers: PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, iOS and Android, which makes recruiting easy.

• RAM: 8 GB for a private group, 12 GB for about 100 players.

6. The Isle

The Isle Evrima is built on server culture: nesting, herds, realism rules and admin teams who enforce them. Owning the server lets you write those rules down and build a crowd that comes back every night.

• RAM: 8 GB for up to about 30 players, 12 GB for 50 or more.

Both dinosaur games are compared in detail in best dinosaur games with dedicated servers.

7. Nova-Life: Amboise

A free to play city life roleplay game set in a French town: jobs, promotions, cars and property. Most communities are French speaking with whitelists and staff teams, and the free price tag helps a young city grow.

• RAM: 4 GB for a new whitelist server, 6 GB for an established city of 25 plus.

8. SCP: Secret Laboratory

Free, round based and built around proximity voice. Most servers play it as a chaotic shooter, but a strong scene runs roleplay rounds where D-Class, scientists and guards act out the facility. The EXILED server type adds plugins for custom roles and events.

• RAM: 4 GB for vanilla around 20, 6 GB with EXILED and 30 plus players.

9. Conan Exiles

Conan has one of the most active survival roleplay scenes, usually built on mods for emotes, clothing and character sheets. In May 2026 Steam moved to Conan Exiles Enhanced on Unreal Engine 5, and our panel has both Enhanced and the older Legacy build, so match the one your community plays.

• RAM: 12 GB for 20 to 30 players or a modded PvE roleplay server.

What every roleplay server needs

1. A whitelist. Most serious roleplay servers run an application on Discord and whitelist accepted players. How to whitelist a FiveM server shows one way.
2. Saved data. Characters, money and property must survive restarts. On FiveM that means a database, and ours runs inside the server.
3. Staff tools. txAdmin, ULX, SCP:SL remote admin or in game DM tools.
4. Backups before updates. A broken script or mod update can wipe an economy. Back up first.
5. Uptime. Roleplay members play in shifts. If the city is down when the night shift logs on, they find another city.

Hosting your roleplay community

A GamezServers server gives your community a fixed address, always on DDoS protection (roleplay servers attract grudges), SFTP and a file manager for scripts and mods, a live console, and one click backups. You can move up a plan as the city grows, prorated, and split the bill between staff members so one person is not paying for everyone. See FiveM roleplay server hosting or browse all games.

FAQ

What is the most popular roleplay game?

GTA V roleplay through FiveM is the biggest scene, followed by Garry's Mod DarkRP.

What is a good free roleplay game to host?

Space Station 14, Nova-Life: Amboise and SCP: Secret Laboratory are free, so players only need to download them.

How much RAM does a roleplay server need?

A FiveM city needs 8 to 16 GB, Garry's Mod DarkRP 8 GB or more, while Space Station 14 and Neverwinter Nights run on 2 to 4 GB.

How do roleplay servers keep out trolls?

With a whitelist tied to an application, usually on Discord, plus staff with admin tools and clear written rules.