[generic] Solo RPGs

Newt

Rune Priest
I've not dived into this particular aspect of RPGs, so can any one recommend a good Solo RPG so I can get an idea?
 
It might help to know what type of experience you are looking for?

Scarlet Heroes excels at the core fantasy elements (dungeon crawling, wilderness exploration) but also has an interesting urban adventure mini-game.

Ironsworn/Starforged are curious games, extremely well-written but without prior experience with fiction-first play (Blades in the Dark, Powered by the Apocalypse, Fate) I would hesitate to recommend to someone experienced with RPGs but new to solo. (Where as if you have never played RPG before and are starting out solo, I think it is an excellent starting point.)

Zozer's SOLO & HOSTILE: SOLO take the core solitaire experience already built into Traveller and expand it to troupe play. HOSTILE: SOLO is a complete game in a single book where as the original SOLO requires some prior knowledge of Traveller solitaire play.

Two Hour Wargames' RPG title (5150 New Beginnings, Larger than Life, All Things Zombie) do an impressive job of procedurally generating just about everything you might need. Unfortunately the rules are a bit unusual compared to other RPGs and may require multiple readings/actual play to understand. (With that said, these games have produce my most successful and enjoyable solitaire play.)

The all new Mythic Gamemaster Emulator Second Edition is an amazing book with many, many, many examples covering the entirety of topics one might need to consider in GM-less play but it is not necessarily a game. It could be... but you can also pair it with an RPG of your choice. The original Mythic ("Blue Book") excelled at Sandbox adventures but was a bit iffy on others. The 2nd Edition does a much better job of letting you dial between full on Sandbox and Quest-driven adventure.

This is just like... a sampling out of titles. The Drifter/StarDrifter, d100 Dungeon/d100 Space, Calpyso, NoteQuest, Four Against Darkness, Thousand Year Vampire, The Wretched, and 100s of other titles are out there but they all cater to different genres and styles of play (as well games that more or less can be played GM-less out of the box like Freeform Universal.)

It is hard for me to recommend _just one_ without any knowledge. If you are holding your hand shaped like a finger gun to my head ... then I'll say this: If you wanted to read about and understand what GM-less play _means_ from a philosophical level than I'd say the Mythic Gamemaser Emulator 2nd Edition or the Solo Gamemaster's Guide (Modiphius Press) might be your best bet. If you wanted a complete game that is free and of a very high quality, Ironsworn is hard to beat (though it has some nuance and you'll read conflicting accounts of how to play it. I will strongly suggest that contrary to a lot of actual plays, Ironsworn is _not_ a "solo journaling" game. It is a fairly gamist game with a quite a bit of mechanical widgets to interact with.)
 
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I've not dived into this particular aspect of RPGs, so can any one recommend a good Solo RPG so I can get an idea?
Myself, Soypunk and Sablemage all run solo Games which are posted on here and our own blogs - often we post the breakdown of how or why something happened in terms of game mechanics.
I use Mythic mainly but also ran The Currents of Space using Hostile and Solo for three years (2019-2022.)
As Soypunk said, Mythic is the solo Engine - you pair it with any RPG you like. So far I haven't found and RPG it doesn't work with. On the other hand, d100 Dungeon is a (very good) solo Game, but it is self-contained and just works with itself.
Ironsworn and Starforged are very good but confusing at first and it really helps to watch some YouTube games first (recommend "Me, Myself, Die - that's where I learnt Ironsworn.)
 
I enjoy crawling through procedurally generated dungeons in Four Against Darkness.
MGE might work well with all your RPGs @Newt
 
@Newt - if you're dipping your toe into this for the first time, it's hard to beat the combination of your favourite RPG (whatever that is) and Mythic. The Me, Myself and Die YouTube Channel is a good place to see this in action - look at seasons one and three, season two doesn't use Mythic.

Other than that:
  • Any version of Traveller plus Zozer Games' Solo is a good combination.
  • Old School games like D&D, EPT, Classic Traveller work pretty well for solo play in general, the sandbox approach of first generation RPGs is very close to what you need to play solo; the Tale of the Manticore podcast shows someone playing B/X D&D solo. (Scarlet Heroes is based on B/X D&D.)
  • All of Two Hour Wargames' products are design for solo or co-op play, and do a really good job of AI tactics and emergent campaign worlds; they do have a unique design philosophy though and it can take a while to acclimatise.
  • People rave about Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged, but I can't get my head round them personally.
This is a style of play that has exploded since the pandemic lockdowns, there are loads of GM Emulators now and a lot of new games are backed up with a solo play supplement - The One Ring has Strider Mode, for example, though I haven't tried it.

@soypunk is right though; we could offer more targeted advice if we knew what kind of game you'd like to play.
 
For your first foray, I'd recommend Rune or 4 Against Darkness or Ironsworn - something baked in. Mythic is a bit too much like sitting on your hand first so it feels like someone else is doing it, for me. The solo journalling games are ace too, although a bit deep and self-exploratory.
 
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