1️⃣ Why We Play Solo RPGs

“Aren’t tabletop roleplaying games inherently multiplayer?” It’s a question I get from gamers who haven’t played solo. And fair enough, most popular RPGs are built for groups.

Understanding why people play solo helps us think and talk about these games more clearly. It gives creators insight into the motivations of their audience. It gives players a broader sense of what solo RPGs offer. And it gives us all the language to advocate for a style of play that’s personal, flexible, and rewarding.

Everyone has their own reasons for playing solo. Here are some of mine.

Most solo players I know are also group players, but coordinating a game night can be hard. Solo play fills the gaps. You can play for as long or as little as you like whenever the mood strikes.

A good RPG group supports each other’s stories and builds cool worlds together, but compromise is part of collaboration. Solo play frees you to chase your strangest ideas, follow detours that would derail a group campaign, and write scenes that might not make sense to anyone but you.

Some of my favorite solo “games” are GM tools: random setting generators and worldbuilding systems designed for campaigns that may never be played. Prep is play!

Solo RPGs are a fantastic way to learn a new system. If you’re a GM preparing to run a game, solo play lets you get a feel for the mechanics, pacing, and tone before sitting down at the table. As a player, running through a game solo can help you understand the rules and lore of a new system.

In group play, the story revolves around a party of characters. In solo play, the story can follow one character in depth. And no one else is waiting for their time in the spotlight.

Solo games invite you to bring your experiences, emotions, and questions into a game in a way you might not be comfortable with in a group. Solo games can become a form of self-reflection, where the line between character and player blurs.

In The Ink That Bleeds, Paul Czege writes about playing a slighlty altered version of yourself. Czege believes that when you bring something of yourself into your game, something from the game follows you back out to your real life.

Ironically, solo play can be quite social. The solo RPG community is huge and growing, with players writing play reports, sharing character journals, and posting their stories online. Those artifacts create conversations, inspire tools, and connect players. My sense is that solo RPG stories are documented and shared more than stories from group RPGs.

We don’t play solo games instead of playing with others. We play solo because there are stories that only we can tell at our own pace, in our own voice, and sometimes, for no one else but ourselves. And maybe the next time someone asks us why we play solo, we’ll have a better answer than just, “Well… sometimes I like playing alone.”

Elliot Davis, the creator of Project ECCO and Rom Com Drama Bomb (and The Soloist’s first subscriber) has just released The Time We Have, a two-player storytelling game about the last conversation between brothers as one begins to turn into a zombie.

I received the physical edition this week, and it’s beautifully produced: thick tarot-sized cards, solid packaging, and clear instruction cards for out-of-the-box play. I especially liked the 13 “Door Cards,” each illustrated by a different artist and depicting a unique origin for the apocalypse.

Fire in the Spires is Michael Elliott’s follow-up to his popular solo RPG, A Torch in the Dark. Using the same Blades in the Dark-inspired system, it trades dungeon delving for tower climbing. In each session, you pick a crew of 3 rebels to climb one of the five spires of Kyneburgh. You choose a route up the spire and move up level-by-level, fighting enemies and gathering treasure.

Single Player Mode is a solo supplement for the popular cyberpunk RPG, Cyberpunk RED. It includes new “quick and dirty” rules for combat, guidelines for running solo play investigations, mission builders, and over 100 lists, tables, and random encounter charts. It’s been the top title on DriveThruRPG for a few weeks, and I plan to feature a Solo Session on it soon.

The Inquiracle is The Soloist’s self-interview microgame where creators roll a 20-sided die to determine a “theme” and a “subject” to make a question they answer.

Nate designs and publishes RPGs like Dungeoneering and writes the spectacular Substack Grinning Rat. He’s just launched a crowdfunding campaign for Certain Fathoms, a Mothership module.

🎲 Theme: (18) Influental| Subject: (19) Experience
Q: What’s the most influential experience you’ve had related to designing or writing for games?

A: “I downloaded Caves of Qud over the summer of 2020 when everyone was in lockdown. I was obsessed for the rest of the year. It was such a weird game with so much humor and emergent depth. It felt like the closest thing to tabletop games I had experienced by that point. There’s no doubt in my mind that without having played that, I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I’m at today with my design and writing.”

Paweł is a RPG designer, writer, and publisher of CORP BORG, Kill Your Necromancer, Heretic’s Guide to Dying Lands, and more. His solo game Odyssey of the Giant is coming soon.

🎲 Theme: (14) Personal | Subject: (5) Decision
Q: What was the most difficult personal decision you made?

A: “Funny enough, if I’d picked a different order for the dice roll, so 5 and then 12, I’d have landed on “Inspirational & Career” and still arrived at the same answer. My most difficult, most personal decision (in the sense of “only I could make it for myself”) was going full-time into TTRPG design. After spending seven years in corporate roles and ultimately losing my job, I was drained and depressed. I chose to build something of my own - my first game, CORP BORG. Two and a half years - and several games and modules - later, I haven’t looked back.”

Explore The Inquiracle Index for links to self-interviews from over 25 creators.

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Last weekend I attended Design Day hosted by Stonemaier Games. They’ve been running these gatherings for 12 years to bring together designers, playtesters, and creators to share ideas, test games, and spark inspiration. I played six prototypes that all showed promise. There was an auction party game called Guesstimates by Pete Wissinger that I’d have bought on the spot to play with family. I loved how engaged and open the designers were during feedback sessions. You can read more about the event on Stonemaier’s blog.

I’m listening to The Butcher’s Masquerade, book five of Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series. It’s probably the best-produced audiobook series I’ve ever heard, with multiple narrators giving each character real personality. It’s bordering on audiodrama. The humor can be a bit juvenile at times, but the story is funny, well written, and oddly heartfelt. This one is my favorite since the first. The series is now being turned into a tabletop RPG by Renegade Game Studio..

The Lowdown is a noir crime story set in Tulsa, with Ethan Hawke perfectly cast as a down-on-his-luck writer/truthstorian following a conspiracy. Slow Horses continues to be one of the best spy shows on TV, even if season five feels a little looser than earlier ones.