Solo role-playing game

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Type of role-playing games

Solo role-playing games are tabletop and live-action role-playing games^[1] that can be played by a single person, without the participation of other players or a gamemaster. The term typically does not include single-player computer role-playing games. Solo role-playing games may be either designed from the ground-up to be played by a single person, or they may exist as modes or supplements for role-playing games otherwise requiring multiple people for play. Solo role-playing games are part of a wider range of single-person game-like activities, such as solo board and card games or solo wargames.

Even though role-playing games are typically thought of as exclusively social activities, the practice of solo role-playing has existed since the earliest years of the hobby, with a solo ruleset for original Dungeons & Dragons first appearing in 1975. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the imposed restrictions cut down opportunities for social recreation in many parts of the world, which sparked a renewed interest in solo role-playing. Many indie games designed for solo play have subsequently been published on platforms such as itch.io.

Role-playing games are often considered predominantly or exclusively social activities.^[2] Studies on solo board-gaming, a similar activity, have showed that it is associated with social stigma, despite other kinds of solitary recreation, such as motion pictures or single-player video games being generally normalized. People are typically introduced to board games and role-playing games in social contexts, creating an assumption that they necessitate social presence.^[3]: 138

Despite this, solo role-playing games have been around since the earliest years of the hobby. There are multiple reasons why someone would play, or even prefer solo role-playing games. The difficulty of recruiting both a gamemaster and several other players was one of the early pushes for the development of the genre, leading to first experiments with solo role-playing soon after tabletop role-playing's first emergence.^[4]: 151

Aside from the fact that solo role-playing games are more flexible with regards to one's schedule, people may play them because they permit additional flexibility with regards to what kind of story one wants to experience. The player being the only participant reduces the need for compromise and allows them to play games they otherwise could have had difficulty bringing to the table. Alternatively, solo role-playing can serve as rehearsal for later group play. A player or a gamemaster may play a game solo to learn the system and get a feel for it to either later bring it to the table or form an opinion on it.^[5][6]

Some players may want to experience solo role-playing games on their own terms, not simply as a replacement or enhancement of the traditional role-playing experience. They may be interested in the gameplay mechanics and style unique to a solo role-playing game, or the more introspective and therapeutic experience of playing alone.^[7] Brendan Hesse of Lifehacker highlighted that solo TTRPGs "run the gamut of settings and playstyles" and while it is a "different experience", solo games combine "the tactile feel of dice rolls and imagination-driven approach of group-based tabletop gaming, with the pick-up-and-play nature of single-player video games".^[8]

Despite not appearing as social activities, solo role-playing games, like other kinds of one-player games, are not completely devoid of a social element.^{[9]: 84 [3]: 139} People interested in solo role-playing games are able to participate in communities of like-minded individuals, sharing their knowledge and experiences.

The use of solo role-playing games has been explored as a tool for teaching literature^[10][11] and family business management,^[12] as well a supportive space for identity exploration.^[13]

There exist a wide variety of activities that can be considered solo role-playing games, suitable for different preferences. Just like with other kinds of role-playing games, they express a wide variety in structure and game mechanics.^[14] However, there are some elements that are particularly characteristic of solo role-playing games.

An oracle, also called a gamemaster emulator, is a mechanism used to answer questions about the game world through randomness, for example with dice rolls or card draws. Typically, oracles operate by providing an answer to a yes-no question posed by the player, much like the Magic 8 Ball and similar methods of divination.^[15] Oracles can range in sophistication from simple coin tosses to systems of random tables adjusting probabilities based on previous game states.^[16] Software implementations of oracle systems exist.^[17]

While oracles are frequently an integral part of a solo role-playing game's ruleset, they can also be sold as stand-alone products aimed at facilitating GM-less gameplay in role-playing games that may otherwise need a gamemaster to run the game or for providing additional assistance to gamemasters running such games.^[15]

A paragraph-based game is a kind of game in which interactions with text constitute the main or the only form of gameplay. If the narrative fragments provided by the game interact with other game elements in some way, the game can be said to be paragraph-enhanced.^[18]: 193 "Pre-loading" the story in this manner is a common way for solo role-playing games to enhance the narrative in addition to letting it emerge from gameplay or the player's imagination.

Solo role-playing games featuring paragraph-based gameplay exist on a spectrum from being entirely paragraph-based to only being slightly paragraph-enhanced. For example, the solo journaling game Thousand Year Old Vampire provides the player with dozens of short narrative prompts. Randomly receiving these prompts and answering them in a satisfying manner is the core of Thousand Year Old Vampire's gameplay.^[19] This makes it almost entirely a paragraph-based game. A game like Four Against Darkness can instead be called paragraph-enhanced.^[18]: 194 While it does provide some narrative elements through its random tables, most gameplay interactions involve rolling dice to navigate the map or engage in combat.^[20]

Gamebooks are a prominent category of paragraph-based games.^[6]

Journaling is the act of writing things down in a journal. While a player may choose to write things down while playing any kind of solo role-playing game, some games place particular focus on the act of writing, often referred to as "journaling games".^[7] Journaling games are a significant subset of solo role-playing games: as of 2023 there were 1,092 journaling games downloadable on the itch.io platform.^[21]: 171

Journaling is in many ways similar to creative writing. However, there are several differences that set journaling as part of a solo role-playing experience apart from pure creative writing.^{[13]: 34–35} The core structure of a journaling game involves the game prompting the player (for example, to answer a question, or interpret some imagery) and the player producing a response, typically written.^[21]: 171

While "journaling" typically refers to the literal recording of game events in a journal or a notebook, some games experiment with the concept. Some games might require the player to record real events alongside fictional ones, or blend them together. A "journal" may also take a variety of forms, from textual entries on a paper or digital medium, to marks on the player's skin.^[22] While journaling games typically prompt written responses, they may also incorporate other creative practices such as drawing, embroidery or others.^[21]: 171

Map addition is the process of adding to the map as it is explored. This mechanic introduces uncertainty into exploration.^[23]: 465 This mechanic has been used in solo role-playing since its earliest days, particularly in dungeon-crawlers. For example, a 1975 issue of TSR's The Strategic Review, a precursor to the Dragon magazine, contained the feature "Solo Dungeon Adventures", describing the rules for using dice to randomly generate underground passages, chambers, traps, adversaries, and plunder as the player explored a dungeon.^[4]: 151 While these rules allow the player to map-out a location with a high level of detail, games with less focus on tactical combat, such as Ironsworn, may provide rules for "lower-resolution" map exploration, adding locations to a bigger map, but only providing general descriptions of the locations themselves.^[24]

Some solo role-playing rulesets with this mechanic are Dungeons & Dragons,^[4]: 151 Shadowdark, Ironsworn, Cartograph,^[25] Four Against Darkness,^[26] Delve,^[27] Map Drawing Adventures.^[28]

Solo role-playing games can be traced back to the emergence of tabletop role-playing in the 1970s United States. The original Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game, published in 1974, already anticipated the possibility of solo role-playing in some respects. The game contained rules for playing on the map that came with the board game Outdoor Survival, as well as charts for determining encounters, which effectively eliminated the need for a gamemaster's oversight. A year later TSR, Inc., the original publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, published the feature "Solo Dungeon Adventures" by Gary Gygax in the first issue of The Strategic Review, a precursor to the Dragon magazine.^[4]: 151 The article acknowledged the possibility of playing Dungeons & Dragons solo using the Outdoor Survival map, but pointed out that there was no uniform method for dungeon exploration. To fix this, the article provided tables for random dungeon generation.^[29]

The next year, in 1976, the Buffalo Castle dungeon adventure was published for the Tunnels & Trolls role-playing game, which was the first stand-alone solo role-playing product on the market.^[30] Buffalo Castle's innovation was combining a dungeon description with a gamebook format. This helped provide a more directed experience to those players, who felt that randomly generated dungeons were too chaotic.^{[4]: 152–153} Steve Jackson reviewed Buffalo Castle in The Space Gamer No. 9, writing "If you're into role-playing, you'll enjoy Buffalo Castle. If you're into solo role-playing, buy it."^[31] Together with Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson would go on to create and publish Fighting Fantasy starting in 1982. Much like Buffalo Castle, Fighting Fantasy books combined the gamebook format with tabletop role-playing game mechanics. The books soon proved to be very popular, holding the top three spots of The Sunday Times bestseller list in March 1983.^[32] Many other similar role-playing gamebook series, such as Lone Wolf, would start being published around the same period.^[4]: 153

Tabletop role-playing as a whole experienced a huge surge in popularity in the mid-2010s, evolving from a niche hobby to a massively popular pastime.^[33] One of the reasons for the increased popularity of role-playing games in the 2010s was the rise of actual play content.^[34] Among these, series centering around solo role-playing games appeared as well, one popular example being Me, Myself and Die.^[35]

The COVID-19 pandemic that began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and spread globally resulted in social distancing measures being instituted nearly worldwide.^[36] Due to the inability to pursue social recreation during this period, many people had to seek comparable alternatives or new hobbies that can be enjoyed within the imposed restrictions.^[37] While many people found online video games or virtual tabletops, many chose solo role-playing.^[38] This led to a significant increase in popularity of solo role-playing games, as did the rise of digital distribution platforms like itch.io.^[13]

Games also got more experimental with mechanics and themes. For solo role-playing games this meant the rise of the journaling game genre. Katie Wickens of GamesRadar+ noted that many of the earliest games were "solo mods of multiplayer TRPGs", typically involving "dice and/or cards, a character sheet, and a hex map from your chosen tabletop RPG to wander through".^[7] Similar to non-solo games, they often required stat tracking; however, Wickens observed that the journaling elements and story tracking requirements "were far less introspective than the kind we often see" in the 2020s.^[7] Rowan Zeoli, for Polygon, explained that solo tabletop games "started in earnest with wargames in the [1980s]" and slowly rose "in prominence for the next few decades until the quarantine period of the ongoing COVID pandemic offered a perfect moment for board games and TTRPGs".^[39] Wickens commented that the "genre has evolved profoundly", with many including a narrative focus – "the lines between simple solo RPG systems and journaling games have become far more blurred over the years".^[7] Additionally, she noted that "many solo journaling systems today are not only subversions of the standard pen-and-paper model" but also introduce "their own unique and even far-flung mechanics to help cement the theme".^[7]

Tabletop role-playing games share a close lineage with board games and tabletop wargames.^[40] Some games, such as Gloomhaven, blur the line between card, board, and role-playing games.^[23]: 541 Some of these role-playing-style games can be played solo or were designed primarily with this style of play in mind. Gloomhaven and The Witcher: Old World are some examples of role-playing-style board games that support solo play.^[41]

• Buffalo Castle. 1976.
• Ironsworn. 2018.
• Thousand Year Old Vampire. 2019.
• Apothecaria. 2021.
• Field Guide to Memory. 2021.
• The One Ring Strider Mode. 2022.
• Ironsworn: Starforged. 2022.
• Koriko: A Magical Year. 2023.
• Star Trek Adventures: Captain's Log Solo Roleplaying Game. 2023.
• SoloDark: Solo Rules for Shadowdark RPG. 2024.
• Cyberpunk RED: Single Player Mode. 2025.
• Fallout: Wasteland Wanderer. 2026.

• Solo Play Resource category on RPGGeek