The Dragonbane boxed set comes with a solo adventure.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on September 30, 2023, 06:06:32 AM...If you like Traveller, Zozer Games has a solo guide for Traveller in general (actually for Cepheus Engine, but it's basically the same) as well as one for the Hostile setting.

Zozer's resolution system is interesting.  Most GM emulators are geared towards answering a question with various degrees of yes/no with perhaps plot twists and such.  It can be about anything and tends to be on the fly.  Sometimes that introduces conflicting results or out of character behavior (for better or worse.)  Zozer Solo and Hostile Solo (a wonderful book if you like crew based sci-fi survival/horror) are angled towards scene resolution.  You front load all your mods, circumstances, and skills and make the roll, you then describe how the results came to be with descriptions, dialogue, actions, twists, environmental effects, etc.  If you're a hopeless day dreamer like me, this can actually create much better scenes.  Take something like the witty banter of the Princess Bride fight scene between Iñigo Montoya and Westley.  Rolling that out round by round would likely come across as just another dice slog with both sides ending up as bloody rags.  But, if the scene resolution roll was actually about information gathering flavored with sword play, you can get a very different picture.  Of course, this style is not for everyone, but it very much works for me if I'm in a journal writing mood.

Drifting back to rule systems.  It never hurts to check out IronSworn since it is a freebie and is a solid solo game built from the ground up for that. 

There are actually a ton of solo games on Itch.io and DriveThru, although finding them is still a hassle due to the way each of their search engine (do or do not) work.  If you like horror one-shots, look for hacks of the Wretched and Alone engine.

Of course, there's the grand daddy of them all Tunnels and Trolls.  While the basic game is not solo, there are a LOT of programmed solo adventures for it.  Paragraph based games are not everyone's cup of tea, and the super lethality of most of them can be extremely frustrating.  But, I tried something different this summer and had a bunch of fun.  Instead of playing it like a do or die RPG, I played it like a Souls-like video game with save points and such.  The difference was night and day, I could explore the adventure locations more freely, I could quickly advance through the areas and puzzles that I had cleared.  And most importantly, I actually had fun.  [I gave up on T&T back in the day due to the high character turn over.]

Classic Traveller actually solos pretty well because it's map based, has random encounter tables, and reaction rolls.  Roll a character and either hop on a ship or take your own if you got one.  It works best for the merchant ship going world to world but can handle other stuff with a little imagination.  What it really lacks is a rule for treasure and payouts.  Most versions of Traveller since then have dropped the random encounters and reaction rolls.

QuoteDrifting back to rule systems.  It never hurts to check out IronSworn since it is a freebie and is a solid solo game built from the ground up for that.

And now there's also Starforged - sci-fi variant of Ironsworn, according to system fans with way more polished rules and better oracular modes pushing solo play.
Now of course it's PBTA, alas very advanced and crunchy, so you've been warned. There are moves.

Storygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.

And I'm also very wary of calling "RPG" (which are a markedly group-oriented activity) something meant to be played alone.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on November 09, 2023, 10:31:01 AM
Storygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.

And I'm also very wary of calling "RPG" (which are a markedly group-oriented activity) something meant to be played alone.

You're entitled to your narrow definition.  I'm more flexible on systems if they are fun to play.  You can easily say that all solo sandbox gaming is creative writing with dice.  And, you would not be wrong.  There's still a game there, but some of it is more meta.  Is world building and prep playing?  Is witty word play playing?  Do these each these as well as the various characters have roles?  For me, all of the answers to those questions is yes.  I wear a lot of hats and love each one of them.

Solo gaming varies widely from person to person and some people get more out of it than others.

Quote from: zircher on November 09, 2023, 12:27:32 PM
You're entitled to your narrow definition.

There's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".

I second with David's recommendation for Classic Traveller - especially if you play it in the style of Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series, moving from planet to planet using the random tables. There was even the old printed adventure Marooned Alone (Double Adventure 4) that encouraged solo play.

QuoteStorygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.

Vehemently disagree. But you do you.

QuoteThere's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".

Industry wholeheartedly accepted PBTA, FITD and simmilar engines as RPGs. Deniers are small minority.
Using effective industry standard as argument was bad shot man.

Anyway solo RPGs are  old. Minority sure but present. Mythic RP most popular solo engine is 17 years old.
And I'm quite sure the RPGs where conflict/challenge resolution was interpreted in more wide narrative way, not simulationist one, also existed if you scratch around even way before AW.

Quote from: Wrath of God on November 09, 2023, 07:41:42 PM

QuoteStorygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.

Vehemently disagree. But you do you.

You are vehemently wrong, but it's not your fault.

Quote from: Wrath of God on November 09, 2023, 07:41:42 PM

QuoteThere's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".

Industry wholeheartedly accepted PBTA, FITD and simmilar engines as RPGs. Deniers are small minority.

On the contrary, the small minority (but extremely vocal and with a vast internet presence) are the companies that develop and sell these improv theater party games and their supporters. Evil Hat, the most successful storygame company by a wide margin, it's a tiny speck when compared to RPG publishers.
Same goes for the player base for these things: we're talking about 4, 5% at best when compared to the global scene. Of course, if you base your perception of adoption and acceptance for storygames on the average r/rpg or rpg.net response, they seem huge and the best next thing since the invention of dice. But the reality is different.

Quote from: David Johansen on September 30, 2023, 10:40:54 PM
Classic Traveller actually solos pretty well because it's map based, has random encounter tables, and reaction rolls.  Roll a character and either hop on a ship or take your own if you got one.  It works best for the merchant ship going world to world but can handle other stuff with a little imagination.  What it really lacks is a rule for treasure and payouts.  Most versions of Traveller since then have dropped the random encounters and reaction rolls.

The guy who wrote SOLO for Cepheus Engine (Paul Elliot) has a free download on his website for Solo using Classic Traveller and it does work pretty good (link below). I do solo play with Traveller and Cepheus Engine to flesh out my settings.

https://www.paulelliottbooks.com/traveller-freebies.html

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on November 09, 2023, 12:39:37 PM
There's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".

My understanding of how AI works is, it would scan the message board, see another recent thread on solo gaming where it's characterized as a new trend, and so without needing to actually know anything at all about the "40+ years of history and customs" assumes that tradition could not include solo gaming. After all, that's a new trend.

Of course the problem with AI, in this case, is that it is factually incorrect.

We can talk about how far back solo rules go. Almost to the beginning.

We can talk about how it is included in arguably the two key D&D books that I would argue are the most quintessential books of the hobby period, but at the very least were the two most important and influential books of Gary Gygax's TSR, those being the 1E DMG (the most enduringly useful RPG book of all time) and the Frank Mentzer red box (the best introduction to RPGs of all time).

But what I'd really go to is that, in my experience anyway, before 1990ish, I never met a single other kid who played RPGs. I had to recruit and teach my players. After 1990ish, it became increasingly more common that every time I found myself in a new social circle (new school, new job, etc), I could always find at least one other gamer. Part of this was surely time, part of it surely my age and how that naturally impacted the sorts, size, and scope of the different social circles I interacted with.

The point is, you go back far enough, there was a sufficient scarcity of players that the ability to play solo was desirable, practical, and sometimes the best or only option you had.

Sure. Maybe you didn't experience that if you grew up in a college town in the mid-west. Or maybe you were the guy that was recruited into an existing group. Maybe you were just lucky. If that's you, consider it a blessing.

For the rest of us that go that far back, this was a thing, and it was an important thing. There's a reason it was used as a tool in the Mentzer introduction to D&D. There is a reason it was the very first of many appendices in the 1E DMG. It's because it is an important part of the "prior art."

So if that's an argument you really take seriously, you have no choice but to accept solo-gaming. You don't have to like it, you don't have to do it. But you do have to acknowledge and admit it is part if real RPGs.

Just to do the history thing, I grew up in Arizona and due to my proximity to Flying Buffalo Inc., I was exposed to Tunnels and Trolls and solo adventures (of the programmed kind) even before AD&D.  That would have been like 1979.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 29, 2023, 09:41:26 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 29, 2023, 08:48:43 AM
Technically, any RPG can be played solo so long as you have a decent GM emulator book such as Mythic.

I've been eyeing Mythic, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Have you used it/looked through it? Any opinions?

I used it till they jumped to 2e.

It is a VERY robust system and it works. But the robustness can be a but of a learning curve. I feel like some of the procedure could have used better explanation. But once you grasp it, the system works. And it can and eventually will throw curveballs at you that have to adapt and react to.