Exploring Solo TTRPGs

By trying to transition this year into a full-time career as a writer, my “for fun” hobbies transformed into work. Now, I enjoy that work, but I’ve discovered that does mean it’s hard to treat “for fun” hobbies as… for fun. So I’ve been playing a lot of games instead!

One type of game I’ve been enjoying enough I think it merits discussion is solo tabletop gaming. Usually the dynamic with a solo tabletop RPG requires a group of players, plus a gamemaster to facilitate play. These experiences are great, but real life often gets in the way. Scheduling, figuring out who will host, who is working, etc. The effort is worth it, but does mean that it’s difficult to just pick up and play an RPG the way you might a board game or video game.

From my experience, there’s two basic “modes” of solo tabletop gaming: soloquesting, and oracle gaming.

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Soloquests

Soloquests are like the old-school “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, but utilizing rules based on their intended game. I’m using the term “soloquest” in particular because I’m familiar with the genre from Chaosium’s book of soloquests for RuneQuest Classic, and the introductory soloquest included in the RuneQuest Starter Set. (Chaosium hosts that one online for free!) To my knowledge, soloquests can be found in a number of starter sets as a fun way to learn a game’s rules and narrative expectations.

During a soloquest, you’re generally locked into playing through a particular experience, although more complex publications can have greater variety of outcome. Just like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book you have options to choose from, but how your choice plays out is typically impacted by dice rolls, too. I’d not say soloquests railroad the player’s choices, but by nature of the form there are tracks you can’t deviate from.

Personally, I’m a bit underwhelmed by soloquests. A lot of people like them, and it’s not like I hate them. They’re just not for me; I’d rather spend an evening reading or playing a video game.

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Oracle gaming

Oracle gaming is a type of solo gaming where you use a randomized element—such as dice rolls or a deck of cards—to partially fill the role of the gamemaster. It’s closer to a method of playing published content, rather than a separate type of book to go pick up. I’ve been aware of this method of play for some years, but I tried it for myself just recently after reading the solo rules Free League published in their supplement Book of Beasts. This work is for their sandbox fantasy game Forbidden Lands—which has been sitting on my Kink Shelf for years—and so I was excited to take the system for a test drive.

The basic system of Forbidden Lands’ solo gaming rules is to use a deck of cards to generate yes/no answers, helpful/harmful answers, general themes, or indicate when to make a dice roll on the game’s encounter tables. Somehow I have thousands of Magic: the Gathering cards laying around but no actual playing cards, so I’ve been using Roll20‘s virtual tabletop for the game instead. There’s a Forbidden Lands community character sheet, plus a deck of cards, dice rollers, and I really should get more familiar with Roll20’s tools, anyway. Because Forbidden Lands uses a day-by-day structure while exploring the hexes of the map, the solo gaming rules have been easy to figure out and follow. Basically, each turn during a day I decide what I’m doing, roll dice to see how well I do it, and draw a card to figure out if there’s a complication.

Complications are where the player has to get creative. Forbidden Lands‘ rules have tables for provoking ideas—such as drawing a card to determine a theme, or a character trait—but much of the imaginative aspect is still left to the player. Honestly, the process feels pretty similar to writing, or maybe dreaming, but with less control over what’s going on. The randomized elements keep the game pretty engaging. The analogue to group play is that you never know what crazy idea another player will come up with. I’ve played around 15 or so hours of my solo Forbidden Lands campaign—14 in-game days, including 1 randomized dungeon and parts of published adventure sites—and I’m enjoying it quite a lot. Play is pretty slow, but I find it satisfying.

A major element to why Forbidden Lands‘ solo rules work well is that the game relies heavily on exploration and randomization. There are published adventure sites to play (and I do plan to play through Raven’s Purge), but much of the game leans on discovery. This meshes well with a willingness to engage in guided invention through “reading” what the randomization results portend.

Having specific solo rules, of course, helps, but there are also publications for multi-system rules like Mythic Game Master Emulator. Fair warning, I haven’t tried these out, because there’s only so many hours in the day. I suspect their oracles aren’t dissimilar to my experience with Forbidden Lands, and could overlap well if you’re looking to play through your own favorite game or campaign independently.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’ve been having a really good time experimenting with solo gaming. If I get bored of Forbidden Lands (or finish the first campaign), I might pick up Mythic and try out playing it with RuneQuest. After all, there’s way more content coming out for the game than I could ever play through with groups. I’ll also admit, I kind of wonder if this “oracle” style of play could work well with a set of custom cards, based on the Runes. Sort of like a tarot…

Food for thought, until next time!

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