How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying | Hacker News Reader

How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

dicebreaker.com

121 pointsbibliographer60 comments

Seems like a bad idea for anything other than a bit of testing. Back in university a gang of us played all the time and many of us were the prototypical nerds and somewhere on the socially awkward spectrum. But role playing gave us social interaction practice because we did it together. We knew one guy who was so introverted that he would sit in his room and run a dungeon by himself. He did not do that because he was shunned by others it was because he preferred to not interact with anyone else. It just reinforced unhealthy habits for him. In our society we need more person on person interaction, not less. Spending scores of hours running yourself through a dungeon seems unhelpful for the most part.

I feel it adds a lovely bit of variety to the experiences. Tried a journaling RPG for the first time recently — spending 4 hours imagining experiences, describing them, and guiding my creativity with the game's ruleset / prompts. The game allowed room for introspection, for overcoming internal obstacles, for writing / thinking carefully about how I phrase things.

That was a profoundly different experience from my Tuesday afternoon RPG campaign where the social aspect, on-the-fly improvisation, "yes, and"-ing and the collective storytelling dominate, but would not discard the solo game as a bad idea — it's just built for something else.

You started with a goal and you took notes so the only thing different between your experience and Exploratory Testing is the debrief session. Oh, but you've started that here already, too.

If all manual testers played games like you, there would be more respect for that profession. Likewise, if more game testers did . . . anywho . . .

What, may I ask, did you play?

As if I'll look back here again! Seriously, I'll try to remember. That sounds like the kind of exercise James (not the seagull son) Bach would do. ;-)

https://www.satisfice.com

Thousand Year Old Vampire is probably the best single player RPG.

https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/

Here's a gorgeous illustrated playthrough:

https://www.timdenee.com/A-Thousand-Years-of-Vampire

Ironic that in a thread about shaming how people should be permitted by others to have fun, the first page of that web page is a long rant about the author's demand to gatekeep his purchasers political views, dripping with hatred for his opponents.

"If you stand by quietly as Republicans take the power of the vote from African Americans in Alabama and compete to hurt trans people as badly as possible then you are part of this problem. You are lobbying for the death of my friends and relations, you are pushing for dangerous authoritarians to destroy the systems that let books like mine come to be. And this goes for equivalent groups outside the US–you know who you are."

Ie, don't be a fascist.

That is a generous reading of the paragraphs of rambling on that page. The author lumps half of all voters in with actual "extremists". It is just useless, divisive political vitriol.

One thing I have learned over the years is that politics is extraordinarily complex. Painting with wide strokes and making caricatures of the "others" isn't useful or accurate. Nuance is just too complex for our monkey brains, so tribalism reigns. We must demand better every time this kind of drivel appears, regardless of the level of agreement with anything being said.

Perhaps those who wish to remove rights from people and treat them as second class citizens simply because of their sexual orientation, religious belief or lack of belief, or socioeconomic status deserve to be treated the way that want others to be treated.

I see little wrong with letting people experience a bit of what they, if they could, would force others to experience.

Frankly, those that "have fun" by punching down the already-downtrodden deserve everything they get, especially when one side is a lone politically powerless nerd. Suggesting an equivalence between the entire political right, with its glorious machinery designed to disenfranchise, and some guy who writes simple RPGs, is a false equivalence at best. Remember that politics is the study of who gets what, where, when, why, and how they get it -- this lone nerd isn't even preventing anyone from anything, he's just spewing helpless vitriol. The grand array of the political right is actually actively taking, right now.

I don't see how saying, "have fun how you'd like to" and "dont buy my thing if you have different fundamental beliefs than I do" are the same. Feels like you're stretching a bit to try to make a point.

I had to google journaling rpg and the first thought I had is that this could be a big part of a creative writing class in high school for some kids.

When I was in high school, I despised the writing assignments and I believe I'm worse off now for never developing that skill.

Yep, I used to teach creative writing and the kids loved these. They can be cooperatively social, too -- I know one of my former colleagues is using a journaling RPG as a framework for a shared worldbuilding project that his students seem to find really engaging and generative.

If you wouldn’t mind sharing any teaching resources, I would really appreciate it! Email is in profile.

How is that different from playing single player computer games? Would you also say people should only play multiplayer computer games?

Computer games are more rigid. Tabletop RPGs are fun (IMO) because of the interactions between people, which more often than not involve modification of the rules. I'm not here to tell people what is fun them, but I'd guess that most people would very quickly (a) decide a computer might as well keep track of the rules - you've reinvented Final Fantasy - or b) look for some friends to enjoy the game you've experimented with by yourself.

It's not that different at all. Especially if you talk to a variety of people about what the game does for them. And not even just simulators. Most computer gameplay is easily modeled as solo role play with fancy tools.

It also makes me think about the huge variety of games that used D&D style stats, back in the day (many still do). I was reading the manual for Sea Rogue for DOS recently (treasure hunting scuba game) and mechanically it's transparently TTRPG behind the scenes for character actions.

Back the day I played a bit, the old Star Wars D6 (still my preferred system and universe, I'm a total EU nerd) and the German DSA. That being said, finding a group with a similar playing style is a challenge. RPGs do help a lot so when it comes to moderating and participating workshops and the like in professional life.

Without a group, and without the time, I ended becoming kind of a single player role player. More like developing stories for some character concepts and the corresponding world building. It is a distraction, after 8 hours plus clued in front of a screen watching a movie or gaming is not as interesting most of the time as it used to be. And it helps in developing story telling skills, which are helpful as well. And fun, not that I ever want to become an author (my ability to create unique worlds suck, I'm much better working with existing stuff), but I do like it a lot.

I agree that this is me balancing a solo, creative activity against social interactions. For someone struggling with social interactions in general I'd not advice it as a main activity.

Trying to force multiplayer RPG's to work solo is a stretch, I give you that.

On the other hand, there are good, well made, solo-rpgs, aven though many are more of a creative-writing exercise than the monster-smashing/dungeon-delving/hex-exploring many of us associate with the genre.

Gentleman Bandit is great! Thousand year old vampire made me feel things!

The introverted guy you mention maybe could use some more people in his life, but that seems orthogonal to the existence of this interesting genre. Maybe if he didn't run his dungouns, he would be writing schlocky fantasy fanfic, or solving infinite number of sudoku. And while I might still slightly judge him as an introverted weirdo, I wouldn't judge him more, or less.

> In our society we need more person on person interaction, not less.

perhaps, but if you can't find that interaction (sometimes not in fault of a lack of trying), you gotta do what entertains you.

I agree, and I'd add: Entertains or protects you and your health. Forcing one's introverted self to be extroverted is associated with psychological risk. Ethics courses in the field of personality type usually cover this emphatically, with regard to personality discovery. Just like in gaming, if you have high INT and low CHA for example, it's important to be careful with high CHA tasks and know your archetype.

Extroverted activities can be helpful at times but will naturally cause introverts stress; growth stress sure but it's still stress. It's silly to treat such a person as if they are broken, when they may be doing their best work by themselves. There are other ways of looking at such a situation that are more helpful.

And overlaying a simple "get out more" model on them is ethically questionable to say the least...

To most people RPGs are understood as CRPGs. Or as tabletop munchkin-ing - getting loot while leveling up. These are the times we live in.

I am curious about the online professional GM/DMs. But also afraid it would be more of that. Because that's what people expect.

Even with just board games, I've had groups who've been able to explore new ideas together. Historical, social, political. We've played out how to run counter-insurgency and how to be war profiteers and how to seize power and how to play Kingmaker (AH joke!). We've behaved in ways our work and school lives would not tolerate. Heck, we even spent some time exploring how games have evolved like the roots of MTG. And I'm planning some series on different takes on similar topics by game designers of different eras - just for the fans of design(ers). But we have been playing games. Together. To experiment and learn and grow. Individually, but also together.

I own some solo games, but I could easily write more challenging code than the game bots. On that topic, I've been wondering if there's anything chewy there - any reason to try to do code for those. What if I have 2 other people and we want to play Diplomacy? What kinds of game-stupid AIs are interesting for my favorite train games and how could they be balanced for difficulty? Can anyone build a truly challenging ASL bot? Etc.

I think is a bad idea as reading a book. If the only thing you do is that, a lonely solitary thing, it doesn't matter if it's a book, watch a series or play a solo RPG: the issue is not the activity, it's your relation with it.

I agree with you that social interaction is important, needed for a sane life, but at the same time, I consider this as not a bad option for those cases you cannot meet with friends.

Counterpoint. The "nerdy" hobbies are dominated by gatekeepers who have played the thing they're into (e.g. DND, MTG, Warhammer) for a long time, who don't actually want to get you into it as well, but who want to flex their experience and skills. They don't want people to play with, they want an audience.

You can be into social games but still be socially maladjusted. I prefer the single player experience over that.

If your goals, personalities or experience don't align, it will suck to play games with certain people. But that's the case for all social activities. But plenty of game groups exists with enough people that you don't have to play with the people you don't like playing with.

Just because you engage in solor roleplaying doesn't mean you shun communal roleplaying. Another comment asks what's the difference with sitting along in your room and playing a computer game. Well, yes.

Also, another comment in another thread reminded me of Choose Your Own Adventure games that were popular in the '90s and I suppose they were popular among the same crowd that played D&D with each other.

Single player RPGs are just constrained writing exercises, the same way single player DMimg is just writing a book. I actively play in my campaign as a player, but spend a lot of spare time writing campaign settings I never intend to play. It's a blend of creativity and fun which most good hobbies have.

Well... Not everyone plays table top games with the goal of expanding their social skills. Some play to relax. I don't see how this is different from reading a book or playing a solo video game.

I've done some solo roleplaying (1000 year vampire is a great system I played recently) and its fun. It's also easy to do while traveling instead of trying to coordinate an entire rpg group.

I always view 4 players as quorum. You can have fun with less, but it is a much choppier experience- sometimes flat, sometimes good. Ans 6 is my limit - just based on divided tabletime.

I have craved TTRPG experience when covid and living overseas prohibited it, and things like "solasta" were ok, for a day or 2, but, the social aspect is much better- there is more fun to be had in groups.

I am a bit disappointed that folks (@Cthulhu_52) feel old gamers to be exclusory- I guess it must be true, I hear it now and then, but I am running a game at work with 4/6 new -as in never played before, specifically because I think it is fun to get people in. "make new players"

I'm 49 and been playing/running games since I was 14. I have run games at clubs (thehitpoint), did conventions- where you GM for complete strangers and now I am just running a gygaxian campaign- that is- folks should be able to drop in with their character and not turn up next week, no problem.

Despite great strides in computing roll20 etc, the online is just not as snappy, nowhere near as much cross-table repartee. Maybe it's the way the audio is handled- can't distinguish 2 folks talking at the same time in most systems.

anyway, I'm back at it, in full swing, post covid, and nothing comes close to running a real campaign with interested players. Great fun. And I hope that's not because I want an audience. (although some great players treat it as performative, never mind GMing)

I'm curious why you think this method of social play has to exclude solo play, and can't exist alongside? Or am I reading this correctly as being mournful that people are turning to solo play? The thread is about solo play. It is starting, though, to seem like there's quite a bit of projection and look-how-social-things-can-be clouding out the fact that it's a perfectly great hobby to do this solo.

Social play is nice but solo RP is also nice...solo is also the underdog, as are many solo hobbies. So projecting the "that's too bad" onto it is not really looking very triumphant or self-secure or whatever it's supposed to be.

Could we even set aside space for considering the coolest things about solo that people aren't talking about, maybe out of embarrassment?

- One's imagined fantasy-self can help day-to-day self feel relief from the grind

- In solo RP there's no need to converge on a single best-self model in the same way social frameworks push people to do (sometimes dangerously so)

- Imaginary friends are cool, even awesome

- Playing with yourself is as fun as you make it

Any other embarrassing stuff to get out here?

I was trained by some awesome psychologists and made a career out of coaching extroverts and introverts--there's really no reason not to put this silly social-private dichotomy behind us.

(Some of the highest-CHA socialites you know are also dying to be more introverted...)

I'm not saying they can't, I just found my own exploration of solo play not as effective.

Perhaps this is my fault, but for someone who spent the last 2 years enforced solo, if I could have got solo rpgs to work, that would have been great.

And I think the reason is the same as why the online versions don't feel as good. Actual interaction is a part of most RPGs and to people like me, what makes them so good.

For my personal solo stuff, - I wanted a particular set of mechanics, I wanted the "crunch" part (character optimization)- which something like solasta can replicate, and I got it. It was "ok". It's just it didn't get a second play. It turned out, for me, that the crunch, exploring the fluff etc- even though you can replicate it solo, feels like a poor shadow.

I mean, for the last 2 years I would have been ecstatic to find a brain release /decompress mechanism that worked as well for me as in-person RPGs.

Not meaning to cast solo stuff as "not real" or lesser in any way. I did a bunch of solo dungeon runs in Adnd 30 years ago. But if someone is running solo and haven't tried groups, don't have the confidence to reach out to a group, I'm not sure what re-assurance can be given. RPG.net, enworld and other forums seem much more prickly than the folks I have met in RL gaming. Not sure how to help with that.

So more of a didn't work for you situation, that makes sense, thanks.

Check out Gather.town. It helps a bit with audio overlap.

FWIW, there is an active solo wargaming community as well - the historical toy miniatures crowd. Donald Featherstone and Lionel Tarr were writing about this back in the 1960s. I found it particularly appealing when my local wargaming club didn't really play the games that scratched my itch, or when the scheduling didn't work out. I had a standing table set up in my garage and would solo game battles on a Saturday with a six-pack of beer. It allowed me to 'practice' things like playing more/less aggressively, alternate lines of approach, changing up my unit composition, understanding how things would game out when I made certain mistakes like walking into an ambush, etc.

One of the parts I particularly enjoyed was developing strategies to compensate for the fact that I always knew what "the other guy" was going to do. I did quite a bit of research, liberally stole ideas from sharper eggs, and came up with some of my own. It actually turned out pretty satisfying. The system I used, "I Ain't Been Shot, Mum", incorporates a 'blind' mechanism that worked really well.

My wife called me the Patron Saint of Lonely Nerds.

Also, solo was always the majority of board wargamers (90% according to statistics from SPI).

Given the size, detail, the depth of the rules, the long playtime, the interest of reading or otherwise learning about the history as you play, etc., it works out well. Pretty much all wargames by the major publishers have listed a 'Solitaire Suitability' rating on the box for decades.

I love to see new solo add-ons for regular TTRPGs hit the market, seems like there's at least a handful every month. I have yet to try one that uses someone else's oracle deck, but they seem pretty convenient.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/359909

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125685

Plus the hobby is easily one of the best ways to write fiction I've found. Especially when one's typical writing session can sometimes end up producing one big metaphor for where the author's life is at, it's great to be able to produce something that's both true to a favorite genre and also really unique and open-ended.

Finally, working with world-building tools in this way also helps you create a well-organized framework that supports hundreds of novels without a problem, if that's what you want.

Not even a mention of Tunnels and Trolls?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_%26_Trolls

We used to joke that it was a gateway drug to making friends who played real games. Together.

Because we were geeks. Back when a game master with some recipe cards full of encounters was a better way to spend a Friday night than playing Zork.

T&T -> D&D -> nothing else, really, just D&D

Not even a mention of MSPE? :-)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenaries,_Spies_and_Priva...

It's a fun book to read and from what I understand the mechanic is awfully familiar to T&T players.

I wrote a couple oracle scripts I use with it, but the CYOA style adventures in the series are really fun as well.

T&T was awesome. A group of us in grade school / junior high played T&T and passed the solo dungeons around. A few of us lived within a bike ride of one of the few "gaming" stores that carried T&T and monitored the shelves for new (to us) arrivals.

It was great in a time/place where public transit wasn't a thing and the only way to "voice chat" was to monopolize the only land line.

I played some AD&D and up through 3.5, GURPS, and TMNT RPG (yes, it was a thing^) in my teens and 20s. I ended up playing solo quite often. In my experience, solo play was for me like brainstorming for writing fiction (kind of like the fictional journal from TFA). It turned out that I also liked writing fiction, so solo RPG was pretty fun for me in a sort of way. I did like playing with others better, most of the time.

I wasn't a loner or nerdy or anything. Solitaire is not just for loners, after all. I just liked rolling solo sometimes.

^ https://screenrant.com/tmnt-tabletop-rpg-bizarre-game-wrong-...

Did you get into After the Bomb at all? I'm curious because I understand it's TMNT with filed-off serial numbers, but I find it a lot of fun to read. The publisher recently released a new hardback edition with a really nice full-color spread inside.

The become-a-psychiatrist trope mentioned in the article is one I've heard from psychiatrist friends too, so it's funny to see that...

(BtS 1e also has some uncomfortable things inside...Still, I haven't come across as many TTRPGs with egregious issues as I have novels from the same era)

There's a several youtubers playing solo rpgs, including a channel called Geek Gamers[1] that focuses exclusively on it. She shows how to adapt many games for solo play.

I've also enjoyed Me, Myself and Die[2], where a voice actor plays Ironsworn, a game mentioned in the article.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/GeekGamers01/videos [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVxJ3exjfgI&list=PLDvunq75Uf...

I've been playing Four Against Darkness. It's not really a solo roleplaying game out of the box, because the 'role playing' aspects of it are extremely minimal. In fact, out of the box it's really more of a P&P roguelike. Having said that, a fair number of people have written additional source books, blog posts, etc. where they tack on role playing aspects to the game. I did come up with little backstories for my four intrepid adventures (Bernice, Elsie, Mildred, and Evelyn: four 1950s housewives who inexplicably find themselves exploring a dungeon), so when I play it there's at least a little veneer of role playing involved.

I've been meaning to try these types of games out. I don't really care for the roleplaying aspect or tabletop games or playing with other people, but still want to play an rpg. It seems reasonable that there'd be many kinds of "solitaire" but for table top rpgs.

Aren't the point of tabletop RPGs primarily the fact that they are a social experience though?

Wouldn't it be easier to just read a Choose Your Own Adventure, or play a solo text based adventure game? Or just log on to a roleplaying leaning MUD and still get the benefit of others?

The scope of what's considered a "table top RPG" these days is pretty large. A large number of them are more focussed on the creativity and drama aspects, rather than the tactical combat. I'm not surprised that a lot of them are able to be solo'd versus played collaboratively.

Hell, there are games like Microscope that would be incredibly fun playing solo.

Right, choose your own and MUDs and such are environments created for you with pre-determined options. I play those, sure, but the pull of tabletop games for me is the creative aspect. Creating a character (in the senses of 'fictional character' as much as a stats sheet) as a player, or a world and (npc) characters to inhabit it, as a GM. These more freeform approaches to solo play open up a lot of scope for individual creative exploration, and some GMs use them to help develop a setting they later go on to use in a group game.

>Right, choose your own and MUDs and such are environments created for you with pre-determined options

That's valid, I guess I never really thought of them that way.

A little confused by what you mean. TTRPGs were not originally about tactical combat (old RPGs were very lethal so combat was a fail state), and wouldn't tactical combat (rather than the RP) make the game more soloable (lots of video games are just the combat part of an RPG)?

Quite the contrary. D&D was originally a supplement for Chainmail, a skirmish wargame, in which they started adding characterization elements. Many/most of the early RPGs were very crunchy, and a lot of people played them focused on combat and stats. But it had started by adding story elements to a wargame, and over the years it continued adding more.

In the middle era, the trend was obvious with games like Vampire: The Masquerade and its Storyteller system, coupled with the LARPing fad and some diceless games.

Since that era, the trend has continued. Many games now have little or no crunch at all, and focus almost entirely on world-building, storytelling, and improv. Some games, like the mentioned Microscope, along with Ex Novo and The Quiet Year are almost entirely crunchless world-building and storytelling.

You can go quite far with just oracles and no system at all, and then if you need one, easily pull in something modern and light like FATE, Mythic, or Fu RPG that just adds a few die rolls to your otherwise creative campaign.

And it can be more soloable than crunchy games because you don't need tons of rules and stats and dice rolls. You instead have creative prompts and oracles and source material and can just go with it, reading, interpreting, writing wherever your imagination takes you.

I did also do a lot of solo wargaming, so crunch is not un-soloable, but less crunch is easier and can feel more rewarding.

I don't think so. Not anymore than playing a video game is a "social experience". Someone who enjoys a choose your own adventure would probably enjoy solo role playing.

Someone who enjoys solo role playing would probably enjoy role playing with others.

Why is solo role playing any different than playing a video game alone?

Even at the very beginning of the Choose Your Own Adventure era there were RPG experiences (and were labeled as such): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy

The boundaries have always been fuzzy between RPGs that are a "social experience" and ones that are not. "Social experience" isn't necessarily a part of the definition of what an RPG is, even if you restrict it to just table top RPGs and not the equally long history of CYOA RPGs and Computer RPGs.

Between indie developers on sites like itch.io and elsewhere there's been a lot of interesting exploration of solo RPG adaptation (playing existing RPGs with their sometimes decades of lore and tools) and new solo RPG development. Which yes, to partially answer your questions: an RPG designed for a solo experience is likely always "easier" to play than playing an RPG designed for a table full of people, especially if you have to also do the work adapting it for solo play. (That said, again, there's an interesting growing market for "professional" solo adaptations of well loved table-top settings.)

The DM Muse website appears hijacked or otherwise missing -- it was redirecting me to what I presume is a spyware site which attempted to get me to install a firefox addon.

I still remember playing D&D red box and blue box by myself. Party full of characters named after friends.

I used to enjoy playing chess against myself so sure, I can see this working, why not

This is the saddest title I've ever seen.

There are TTRPGs built for solo play.

Is Solitaire sad? Are single-player games? When did using your imagination become sad?

Solo TTRPGs have been a thing since TTRPGs have been a thing. You do realize that centuries before solo video games, there were solo table-top games? They fell out of fashion due to (1) solo video games became standard (2) table top ended up being associated with group play because video games were exclusively solo until very recently (thanks to the rise of cloud and streaming).

Every day it’s just more headlines of the modern dystopia we have created.

Plenty of people play video games by themselves for hours each day. I don't see how this is fundamentally worse.

When I play a video game an AI or another person’s programming is the other side. Imagine using a second controller to control the npcs and interact with your character.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com