12 Months of Solo RPGs
Dec. 18th, 2025 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solo_knightSo yes, I vanished for a while, am trying to finish and post the half-written posts I made earlier, and get back to blogging. I’m fine, everyone is fine, I just had zero capacity for anything that needed brain and concentration.
Anyway, I already had a large stack of things to look through. As of today, I have finished logging the last five years of resources. In the end, I just deleted the last obstacle, a huge pile of old school adventures (some for Pathfinder, some for Swords and Sorcery, some for DCC, some allegedly for 5e, but very much with an old school rocks-fall-everybody-dies feel, because I have looked at all of them in the past, attempted to run one, read several more, and found them, all in all, unplayable.
So now I am looking at the year ahead. I desperately want to play more solo games; I want to find the fun and explore more spaces and develop a practice that’s fun all the way through.
This isn't to say that I am not having fun already, but I struggle *a lot* with starting freeform play. I’m ok with journalling game that set me on a well-defined path. but I struggle with ‘here’s a character in a situation, what do you do?’
I’ve always struggled to bring my DnD characters alive, because ‘constructing characters’ is not how I think about them (this has been a problem in group play long before I started delving into solo). I’ve now spent more time with characters and finding ways to approach them (Colorful Characters has been exceedingly helpful), but I find it exceedingly easy to slip into story, where I know what will happen next and find it very challenging to stop myself from following the story. Which means I don't actually 'play' (using a randomiser of any kind and surprising myself). Right now, I'd say this is my greatest challengen because I would like to play my way through more freeform stories and can't.
That's not the hurdle I *thought* I'd face. I thought my challenge would be not being able to connect with characters, rather than connecting too well with them and delving too deep into their stories without giving the 'roleplay' aspect a fair chance.
On another note, right now I have the feeling I am spending more time investigating systems, reading samples, evaluating and logging them, and finding more resources than I spend actually playing; and that needs to stop, not in the least because the gratification that comes from finding and buying a game is short-lived and expensive compared to the gratification I feel after a successful game; but one has a much lower activation threshold than the other, Also, I’ve spent my discretionary income and am getting to the point where each new game adds to the piles of things I ought to deal with instead of being fun. (Part of that is depression talking, so I'm not taking it too seriously. This is something that could be an issue if I continue at the pace of the last few weeks; but these have been exceptional circumstances, and logging the materials I have works to prove to my brain that I don't need to throw more items onto the stack.)
I’m enjoying the casual format of this blog so far and intend to keep up this series; I love discovering new and weird games in bundles.
But I also want to be a bit more focused in my hunt for a solo practice that suits me, and thus I am going to try something new: every month in 2026 I want to focus on one play style/mechanism/type of game.
(This month, or what’s left of it, is reserved for generic Solo RPG resources).
I have no idea how long I will follow this plan, whether I'll get through all of it, and when I’ll abandon it (with the 20x24 I always seem to crash in July/August), but it’s better than no plan.
December: Principles & game loops
This is under way. I'm currently reading the Geek Gamers' Solo RPG Guide, and have a number of other resources lined up. So far, no great paradigm shifts, just clarification on a few things I am still struggling to articulate.
I did the thing; I focused on general books/articles/videos about solo play, and then I stopped.
January: Published Adventures
I did not do the thing. Instead, I read Scarlet Heroes and took oh so many notes.
February: Published Adventures
I have a number of dedicated solo adventures, and I am curious how they work out in reality. The main worry with this type of game is the potential low replayability; even if you can get other outcomes, they're probably one-and-done.
February: Mythic & Friends
I grabbed them, I should read them. There's a lot of good insights in the main book and the magazine (I scored several volumes on sale). I want to see whether I can make this system work for me (I have some doubts).
March: Vaesen
I love the framing of adventures as mysteries where you find clues to what's going on and how you can stop it, instead of immediately jumping to confrontation. This is a horror game at heart; I don't think horror is necessary, but I am aware of this and will remain cautious.
April: Dungeons
I want to make a concentrated effort of finding a dungeon crawler that works for me. I have gathered a fair few as well as random dungeon generators; and I want to spend one month focusing only on dungeons.
May: Cozy
I want to follow the hardcore orc-bothering with some cozy wandering around and smelling flowers.
June: Conversions
Another theory-heavy month; I want to look at the various ways of converting group rule sets into Solo play. While some people say that any game can be soloed, I don't think that is true. Some RPGs rely heavily on the exchange between players, or how player and GM shape a reality; you can't do the heavy consensus building when there's just one of you.
July: Hexcrawl
I want to compare and contrast multiple systems; right now, I've just used one/some homebrew.
August: Roll your own
Speaking of homebrew: I've got an idea for a short RPG, and I want to spend some time developing it, see whether it goes anywhere.
September: SF
I have a couple of SF adventures, and some SF rulesets; I want to see how exploration works in spaaaace.
October: Loner
This is another system for solo play. It uses a tag-based system and initially I found it fascinating, but could not get my head around it; I'm hoping that by the time I get to this again, I will have more understanding.
November: Mucklands/Land of Eem
I want to play in someone else's sandbox. This is a game with a whimsical feel to it, and a large hex map with plenty of story hooks. I want to work out how to have fun with this.
December: Ironsworn
This is a system many solo RPGers use and recommend. It will need some investment up front, and it comes with variants (SF/Swashbuckling). I'm curious whether I can worikwith this system and looking forward to spending time with it.
We'll see how it goes, and what, if anything, I will plan for 2027.
One thing I think will help is that I can pre-select resources; write down the ones that are most interesting to me and thus start each segment of the year right off the bat, instead of desperately around for resources on the day.
Anyway, I already had a large stack of things to look through. As of today, I have finished logging the last five years of resources. In the end, I just deleted the last obstacle, a huge pile of old school adventures (some for Pathfinder, some for Swords and Sorcery, some for DCC, some allegedly for 5e, but very much with an old school rocks-fall-everybody-dies feel, because I have looked at all of them in the past, attempted to run one, read several more, and found them, all in all, unplayable.
So now I am looking at the year ahead. I desperately want to play more solo games; I want to find the fun and explore more spaces and develop a practice that’s fun all the way through.
This isn't to say that I am not having fun already, but I struggle *a lot* with starting freeform play. I’m ok with journalling game that set me on a well-defined path. but I struggle with ‘here’s a character in a situation, what do you do?’
I’ve always struggled to bring my DnD characters alive, because ‘constructing characters’ is not how I think about them (this has been a problem in group play long before I started delving into solo). I’ve now spent more time with characters and finding ways to approach them (Colorful Characters has been exceedingly helpful), but I find it exceedingly easy to slip into story, where I know what will happen next and find it very challenging to stop myself from following the story. Which means I don't actually 'play' (using a randomiser of any kind and surprising myself). Right now, I'd say this is my greatest challengen because I would like to play my way through more freeform stories and can't.
That's not the hurdle I *thought* I'd face. I thought my challenge would be not being able to connect with characters, rather than connecting too well with them and delving too deep into their stories without giving the 'roleplay' aspect a fair chance.
On another note, right now I have the feeling I am spending more time investigating systems, reading samples, evaluating and logging them, and finding more resources than I spend actually playing; and that needs to stop, not in the least because the gratification that comes from finding and buying a game is short-lived and expensive compared to the gratification I feel after a successful game; but one has a much lower activation threshold than the other, Also, I’ve spent my discretionary income and am getting to the point where each new game adds to the piles of things I ought to deal with instead of being fun. (Part of that is depression talking, so I'm not taking it too seriously. This is something that could be an issue if I continue at the pace of the last few weeks; but these have been exceptional circumstances, and logging the materials I have works to prove to my brain that I don't need to throw more items onto the stack.)
I’m enjoying the casual format of this blog so far and intend to keep up this series; I love discovering new and weird games in bundles.
But I also want to be a bit more focused in my hunt for a solo practice that suits me, and thus I am going to try something new: every month in 2026 I want to focus on one play style/mechanism/type of game.
(This month, or what’s left of it, is reserved for generic Solo RPG resources).
I have no idea how long I will follow this plan, whether I'll get through all of it, and when I’ll abandon it (with the 20x24 I always seem to crash in July/August), but it’s better than no plan.
December: Principles & game loops
This is under way. I'm currently reading the Geek Gamers' Solo RPG Guide, and have a number of other resources lined up. So far, no great paradigm shifts, just clarification on a few things I am still struggling to articulate.
I did the thing; I focused on general books/articles/videos about solo play, and then I stopped.
January: Published Adventures
I did not do the thing. Instead, I read Scarlet Heroes and took oh so many notes.
February: Published Adventures
I have a number of dedicated solo adventures, and I am curious how they work out in reality. The main worry with this type of game is the potential low replayability; even if you can get other outcomes, they're probably one-and-done.
February: Mythic & Friends
I grabbed them, I should read them. There's a lot of good insights in the main book and the magazine (I scored several volumes on sale). I want to see whether I can make this system work for me (I have some doubts).
March: Vaesen
I love the framing of adventures as mysteries where you find clues to what's going on and how you can stop it, instead of immediately jumping to confrontation. This is a horror game at heart; I don't think horror is necessary, but I am aware of this and will remain cautious.
April: Dungeons
I want to make a concentrated effort of finding a dungeon crawler that works for me. I have gathered a fair few as well as random dungeon generators; and I want to spend one month focusing only on dungeons.
May: Cozy
I want to follow the hardcore orc-bothering with some cozy wandering around and smelling flowers.
June: Conversions
Another theory-heavy month; I want to look at the various ways of converting group rule sets into Solo play. While some people say that any game can be soloed, I don't think that is true. Some RPGs rely heavily on the exchange between players, or how player and GM shape a reality; you can't do the heavy consensus building when there's just one of you.
July: Hexcrawl
I want to compare and contrast multiple systems; right now, I've just used one/some homebrew.
August: Roll your own
Speaking of homebrew: I've got an idea for a short RPG, and I want to spend some time developing it, see whether it goes anywhere.
September: SF
I have a couple of SF adventures, and some SF rulesets; I want to see how exploration works in spaaaace.
October: Loner
This is another system for solo play. It uses a tag-based system and initially I found it fascinating, but could not get my head around it; I'm hoping that by the time I get to this again, I will have more understanding.
November: Mucklands/Land of Eem
I want to play in someone else's sandbox. This is a game with a whimsical feel to it, and a large hex map with plenty of story hooks. I want to work out how to have fun with this.
December: Ironsworn
This is a system many solo RPGers use and recommend. It will need some investment up front, and it comes with variants (SF/Swashbuckling). I'm curious whether I can worikwith this system and looking forward to spending time with it.
We'll see how it goes, and what, if anything, I will plan for 2027.
One thing I think will help is that I can pre-select resources; write down the ones that are most interesting to me and thus start each segment of the year right off the bat, instead of desperately around for resources on the day.
