The BEST Way To Play Solo RPGs (Part 1)

Tips and tricks for satisfying solo play

art by Maxime Desmettre

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I’ve been playing a lot of solo lately.

This has been for a few reasons, which some of you can probably relate to:

1) my usual gaming group has been having major issues getting together even once or twice a month, and for me - that ain’t enough dice chuckin’!

I guess everyone experiences this from time to time - one of many terrible side effects of “growing up,” is that it seems the art of group storytelling drops to a low priority level…for me, it’s more important than ever!

2) I’ve actually just been really enjoying it. Weird, right? I was definitely one of those people who thought: “solo roleplaying? Well that seems a bit depressing!” But…I love doing things by myself. I’m married and have a little one, and time to myself, quiet, with my own thoughts and pencil going skritch skratch on a little fantasy world and story of my own with some dungeonsynth or epic metal playing is very satisfying. 

I like walking in the woods alone, going to the theater by myself, and a bunch of other things that I think are better solo, so why the hell not gaming too?

For many, this creates a serious difficulty:

Just how the hell do I have a fulfilling TTRPG experience…alone? In my head. Or in a notebook, or whatever. 

I’m gonna do my best to help you out if you are someone interested in solo roleplaying but haven’t sorted it out, or if you already do, maybe something here will give you a good idea or two to throw at your own solo games.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe and share this with anyone you think might be interested in either solo gaming or any of the other stuff I write about here! You spending your valuable time here means a lot to me, so I’ll do my best not to waste it, ever, on the boring stuff!

Alrighty - first things first -

my article title was a little bit clickbait-y. I know. Fact is, there is no “BEST” way to solo. There’s just…ways. Whatever you ultimately enjoy is the “best” for YOU, because…that’s who solo play is all about. Let’s proceed!

WHAT SYSTEM SHOULD I USE?

This question seems really important, and in a way it is, in a way it’s not.

You can solo pretty much any TTRPG but some definitely lend themselves better to your experience than others. Which ones?

THE ONES YOU LIKE.

A no-brainer, I know, but I’ll keep saying it - this is all about YOU.

You don’t have to share this with anybody, so you can be as greedy as you want with the limelight and what happens during your game.

There is no “perfect system” for solo or anything else. 

Do ya like a blood-soaked hack-fest? Awesome. Me too. Pick a game that has satisfying combat, as crunchy as you like and spend all the time you want turning enemies into ribbons!

I’ve even gone as far as using Forbidden Psalm, Chainmail, and a few other “lite” miniature skirmish games as the “combat base” for my games and done all my solo roleplay in between fights, almost like a Final Fantasy Tactics kind of feel. It was super enjoyable, and the “in between” allowed me to create a narrative that I didn’t know in advance, while still centering around what I wanted to do:

Use cool miniatures to kill stuff every single session. It was awesome.

I’ve run solo games using Cyberpunk 2020 from R. Talsorian and had epic gunfights and TPKs galore.

I’ve also played games with a more exploratory hexcrawl feel and gone multiple sessions without combat because that’s just what I felt like.

I will say that I lean more toward the simpler games for my own solo, like Mork Borg (with some house rules to speed things up even more), Whitebox FMAG, and the like. Although I grew up with the “crunchier” ADnD 2e, and even used Combat and Tactics alongside it, I just find myself happier soloing when I consult the books less.

This brings me to my first recommendation:

Do whatever you can to “go analog.” This is obviously my own bias, but I find that my imagination kicks in much harder when I’m using all physical stuff, pens, notebooks, reference cards/screens and the like, instead of my phone. The phone and PC really kill my immersion.

I like to pick some good synth or soundtrack music (maybe some heavy metal depending on the flavor), and grab my dice, my notebook, and as little “reference material” as I can get away with. Playing lighter systems really helps with this.

Speaking of reference material…

WHAT ORACLE SHOULD I USE?

Really, this should be plural, since we will usually need more than one table to roll on during gameplay for the variety of situations that might arise. How do we do this without having to have endless tomes and PDFs?

There’s a few things I like to use to keep things fast and loose at my solo table.

First, no matter what game I play, I use the Yes/No oracle from One Page Mythic. In fact, I have this copied out by hand on a piece of cardstock that is stuck in my solo notebook as a bookmark. I consult it frequently, so it's always on hand without having to go searching for it.

The yes/no oracle is very handy and does a good job of solving a great deal of questions for your game.

Is the village more than 50 people?

Do I find the merchant here?

Is the door locked?

Is this fighter well armored?

And on and on.

However, you’ll still need a bit more than that.

How will you develop quests/adventures, settlements, NPCs and the like?

There’s two ways to go about this - one: you make your own tables. If you think about it, a set of “Quest Tables” (like the excellent one on this resource from the always amazing Perplexing Ruins) isn’t *that* much work, and then it’s tailored towards and away from the sort of thing you like doing, while still allowing for random combinations to keep things unexpected.

Basically, make a few tables - how many depends on your desire for variety and which dice you want to use. First roll for the quest’s theme, and then you’ll roll again for more specificity.

For example, let’s say you have four tables:

THEME:

1 Kill/Attack
2 Explore/Discover/Find
3 Deliver/Capture
4 Investigate/Learn

Then roll d4 for *which* list, and another d4 for which *specific entry.*

1 Settlement

2 Monster

3 NPC

4 Organization

1 Ruin
2 Passage/Road

3 Individual
4 Area/Region

1 Message
2 Dangerous Item
3 Individual
4 Cargo

1 Noble
2 Merchant
3 Cult
4 City/Settlement

You can roll 2d4 and come up with something.

Also, in many cases you can mix and match. Rolling once for theme, and then roll again next for the specific.
Using this, you might get something like 3 for theme:

Deliver/Capture

Then you roll 3, 2. We check the third d4 chart, second entry:

Dangerous Item.

We infer the quest is either about delivering or capturing a dangerous item. We can then use the standard Y/N oracle to determine other pieces of information about it.

The second method is just using existing supplements to take the work out, and these can be wonderful for running a standard solo session - however!

You know you better than anyone. If you want to have fun building your own setting, don’t be afraid to create your own charts for adventures, encounters, and so on like this, using heavily flavored ideas and so on. World building and down time stuff like this definitely counts as “solo play,” and is one of my favorite parts.

Plus, when I *do* get to play with other people, I can re-use all these tables and lists to share the fun!

BEST SUPPLEMENTS

For my money, the two best things I’ve ever used in my own solo play are Perplexing Ruins “solo sheets” (linked above) and the Tome of Adventure Design by Matt Finch which can be found in PDF on DriveThru RPG.

(I got a used hardcopy so I didn’t have to use the PDF…I know, I know, I am a troglodyte Luddite troll and need to get with the times. I refuse!)

I use the TOAD mostly as a jumping off point - messing around with results and shaping them for my own setting and so on, when I’m stuck or a little creatively lazy.

That Perplexing Ruins solo supplement is hands down excellent and you can literally grab it and go, having a very satisfying hex crawl that turns into a dungeon crawl, that turns into something else…and its only a couple pages. Amazing supplement.

One I’ve not used but would like to is the “Tables For One” solo DM screen, but can’t vouch yet cause I have not actually put it to work.

I’ve heard great things about “Table Fables” and the “Solo GM’s Guide” from Geek Gamers (GG is an excellent wealth of resources on solo play.)

Another terrific resource if you’re looking to go by the book, old school is this playlist from Joy of Wargaming, which is just an amazing (and for me, fascinating) look at ADnD 1e “by the books,” and just how useful (and insanely, crazily, possibly overly comprehensive) the DMG really is.

I thought it was a great watch.

HOW TO GET STARTED (The TL;DR)

Let’s recap this first part of the series so far:

Pick a system you like.

Grab the oracle and a supplement from the above links (or two)

Get your dice and a pencil and notebook.

Make a character (or two. Or three. Whatever you want)

At this point I like to dive right in with a quest generator and say “ok, my PC or party or whatever is already actively engaged in this situation - they’re already *on* this quest.

I like to start in the action so I don’t get bogged down in too many details that don’t really matter. 

Because I enjoy hex exploration, dungeon crawling, and combat the most, my games lean towards the procedural - in other words, I have a sort of set order of operations I go through for overland travel, and another for dungeon generation and crawling.

We’ll get into what those look like on the next installment, and I’ll give you a couple of options for your own procedures, and even a few tables for your own game. Stay tunes, and keep your blades sharp!

- Castle Grief