AllDungeons and Dragonsfans know well the pain of organizing a game. Scheduling it around everyone’s lives, deciding what exactly to play, where to host their game, and who is willing to take on the role of Dungeon Master? These questions may never be answered, leaving some games completely lost in limbo.
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However, there are tabletop role-playing games that remove these questions from the equation by allowing people to experience them alone. They require a single person, dice sets or cards, a notepad, and a healthy imagination to bring their solo experience to life—no scheduling required.
5Ironsworn
Althoughthis TTRPG of perilous questsis suitable for cooperative play for those that want to bring a friend, it’s also designed with the idea of solo players in mind, meaning players won’t need to worry about wrangling together a party, and instead can immediately jump into the fray.With supplements being released to expand upon its worlds, there are plenty of adventures for players to have inIronsworn.
Set in the fictional world of the same name,Ironswornchallenges players to delve into the dangers of the world and embark on perilous quests. The dark fantasy theme will no doubt appeal to those who prefer theirD&Da touch on the dark side, as seen in campaigns such asCurse of Strahd. The free adventure book comes with plenty of story hooks that eliminate the need for a GM, and detailed character creation tools allowing players to create a character with depth.
4Call To Adventure
Call to Adventuremay fall in the board game category more so than a tabletop RPG, but it’s not to be said it’s without the creativity, imagination, and chance that comes with the latter. It’s a game designed with co-op play in mind, but the game can also be experienced as a solo player. With creative input from fantasy writers Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson,Call to Adventureis acreative, impressive fantasy world.
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Players must compete to create the hero that holds the greatest destiny with the use of the card collection that can bolster their hero with cards that add adventure, experience, villainy, and adversaries. For solo play, gamers could put themselves against the clock, or create two heroes to see which one comes out on top.
3Journey
While most of the other entries on this list are praised for the creative worlds and lore already implemented,Journeyis in a completely different realm as it encourages the players to flex their creative muscles andcraft their own world, similar to how some DMs utilizeDungeons and Dragonstohomebrew their own campaigns. It contains some very bare-bones prewritten content, though most of the content pushes for creativity and the use of imagination.
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The guide includes tips that will aid the players to create their own world and the adventures that could be had within, including prewritten gameplay mechanics that players can make use of, though the real charm inJourneyis the chance tocreate something new and unique.Journeygives the writers the tools to strike inspiration, but the rest is up to the player’s creativity.
2Mythic
WhileJourneyfocuses on creating new worlds, new stories and handing over complete creative freedom into the hands of its user,Mythicis slightly different in this regard. It’s a tool that allows players to convert any system they are using to solo play, complete with extensive guides on how to run TTRPGs without the need for a DM.
As such, people could convertChronicles of Darknessgames,Dungeons and Dragons,Pathfinder, or whatever their TTRPG of choice is into theMythicsystem to explore the worlds and lore on their own, substituting the normal dice-rolling mechanics for an oracle-based yes or no game.
This way, the mechanics of luck are still in play but simplified, so players can focus more on combat and exploration, and less on number-crunching, which would be particularly beneficial to math-heavy games such asPathfinder.
1Rangers Of Shadow Deep
A tabletop game that uses miniatures and maps similar toD&D,Rangers of Shadow Deepis the perfect substitute for those in the market for solo-play.Players create their own rangers, as the title suggests, the strongest warriors in the fictional realm of Shadow Deep, saddling the players ofRangers of Shadow Deepwith the similar responsibility of the player characters inD&D—to be the heroes of the world.
Rangers must journey into monster-ridden darkness to collect information, ambush the supply lines of foes, and free prisoners the evil creatures kidnapped. As such, players have clear objectives they must complete, eliminating the need for a Games Master or other players so they can enjoy it alone. What’s more, players can recruit other rangers on their travels, which in solo play can help even the odds, especially in later missions when the evil grows increasingly more powerful.
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