Solo Tabletop RPGs To Play When You Need Some Alone Time
You want to go on an adventure, but your friends aren’t around or you just want some alone time? It’s time for a solo tabletop RPG!
Getting together a whole group to play TTRPGs on a regular basis is notoriously difficult. My groups usually meet every two weeks, but one of them has been on hiatus for a month or so as a few party members are moving and the other game… I’m not sure if that game will ever be finished. It’s fine, everyone is living happily ever after in my mind.
So, for those times when you want to play through a story or build a beautiful world but don’t want to deal with the hassle of scheduling or different time zones, there are solo tabletop RPGs.
Thousand Year Old Vampire
Thousand Year Old Vampire is an RPG designed to be played solo – not an RPG with a solo mode. And it leans into the loneliness. Through writing prompts and exercises, players journal as if they are a thousand-year-old vampire whose memories sometimes slip away and betray them. After all, you are a very old vampire. It’s a tragic, but very thoughtful take on the genre.
A creaking hunter among dust and cobwebs, you prowl the night places, seeking the souls on which you feed. You have done this since time immemorial, or so you believe, you have no memories of living as a man-thing like those you catch and eat. But human traces linger, your fingers trace clever arabesques in the dirt of your grave-place and with the flourishes come whispered songs in a language you’ve forgotten. Far away, in a museum, hangs your portrait in oil by a master five hundred years dead – – you might have been lovers but the diary you kept then is long lost.
Deify
Deify is a creative writing based solo RPG about mythology from around the world. Players will create their own deity, manage resources, and pick prompts using a deck of tarot cards. The game follows four phases; birth, prime, decline, and death, and follows along with the life, followers, and abilities of your newly minted deity.
For lovers of mythology, Percy Jackson, and Lore! Deify is a creative writing role-play game based on mythology, featuring 4 gods. Players can create gods and follow their journey from creation to demise using tarot cards. Immerse yourself in the mythical world of Deify!
Call of Cthulhu: Alone Against the Frost
Alone Against the Frost is a Call of Cthulhu solo adventure in the Canadian wilds. You are on a research mission in the Northwest Territories in the 1920s. But the environment is hostile, and there might be something horrible out there. Try to return with your reputation and wits intact. Or don’t.
Alone Against the Frost is a solo horror adventure for one player, set during a research expedition to Canada’s Northwest Territories during the 1920s. Here, you choose your own path as you navigate through the story—your choices will determine whether you find success or failure!
Loner: Paranormal Files
In Paranormal Files, you use the super streamlined ‘Loner’ system to work as an agent, investigating all of the creepiest things to come across your desk. The minimalist system means that the only things you’re bringing into the game and your investigation are what you need. Unravel secrets, explore the darkness, and find things you were never meant to see. And remember, you’re all on your own.
You are the only line of defense between reality and what leaks through the cracks.
In Paranormal Files, you play an agent—freelance or embedded—tasked with investigating the strange, the unexplained, and the deeply classified. One case leads to another, threads fray and converge, and soon the line between fact and fiction begins to dissolve. Who controls the narrative? Who controls the truth?
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The One Ring
The One Ring is usually a TTRPG for groups. But with the Strider Mode extension, you can play as a solo adventurer, traveling through Middle Earth. Usually I wouldn’t tell you to go find multiple books to make your solo game work. But The One Ring and Strider Mode are both hugely popular for a reason.
Enter the world of Middle-earth with The One Ring, the official tabletop roleplaying game based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Designed specifically to evoke the atmosphere of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the game contains rules for creating heroes and sending them off on adventures in a land threatened by the growing Shadow. This beautifully illustrated, full-color hardcover manual presents Middle-earth as it was twenty years after Bilbo Baggins’ remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The great events narrated in The Lord of the Rings are still fifty years away, leaving plenty of room to narrate stories worthy of an epic.
Dragonbane
Another game usually designed for parties, Dragonbane is another system with really good solo-play rules. This is more of the classic fantasy-adventure game. But where Dragonbane shines is how it combining difficult fights with genuine laughs and levity.
Dragonbane is a classic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game full of magic, mystery, and adventure. It is designed from the ground up to facilitate fast and furious play, with very little prep time and adventures that are a breeze to run. Dragonbane is a game with room for laughs at the table, while still offering brutal challenges for the adventurers.
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