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Play Solo RPGs

by Mike on 9 March 2026

Solo RPGs are a fantastic way to engage in the tabletop RPG hobby. They stretch your imagination in ways you wouldn't expect, help you get better at improvisation for the games you run with your friends, and let you capture the joy of being a kid again.

I've been enamored with Dragonbane but I hadn’t played it when I first got it. I picked up the incredible boxed set which not only includes a full copy of the core book but a solo toolkit as well. In about an hour I built a character and ran a quick scenario all by myself.

And it was awesome.

I'm not a stranger to solo RPGs but I haven't played a lot of them — mostly Ironsworn and Thousand Year-Old Vampire. Shadowdark also has the free Solodark rules for playing Shadowdark by yourself but I haven't tried it myself yet. Though I don't play them often, I really love solo RPGs.

Playing solo RPGs also makes you a better game master and potentially a happier person.

Making Sense from Randomness

Games like Dragonbane and Ironsworn focus heavily on the idea of prompts and oracles. They don't spell out every potential outcome for you like a Choose Your Own Adventure book might. You roll dice and they seed ideas in your head – ideas you piece together into your own story. You wouldn't come up with this story just sitting and thinking about it, though. The story comes from your brain's desire to put pieces of a puzzle together and fill in blanks with a framework fueled by die rolls and random tables.

It's wild to experience when a solo RPG really comes together – piecing stories together in your brain from a few rolls on tables – but it's exactly the sort of thing we do when we GMs prep for our group games.

While we're playing our solo RPGs, we're improvising the entire session from a few dice rolls and some prompts in a book. This cross training can improve our improvisation skills at our group-focused RPGs – building cohesive stories out of a bunch of ideas, descriptions, and random dice rolls at the table.

Being a Kid Again

Children love to live in a world of imagination but we tend to lose that drive when we get older. We consume fiction, but we don’t often produce such fiction. Many of us enjoy the feeling of letting our imaginations wander when we're playing RPGs with a group but doing so by yourself is a different experience. We don't have to take in fiction from others – the fiction comes from us. It isn't a superior experience. It's just different. But it’s really fun to experience.

When I sat down to play Dragonbane by myself, I built a whole little adventure story in my head in 40 minutes – one in which my heroic scholar, Illyriana the Plump and Learned, convinced a harpy to let her go by giving her a bedroll, fighting a bunch of skeletons coming out of sarcophagi while looking for a secret entrance, stumbling through a bunch of fire traps face first, and eventually taking on some cultists attempting to summon a demon. Illyriana wasn't successful. She was captured by the cultists and put on the slab for sacrifice as the demon stepped into the world. But my sage had one more trick up her sleeve. With a well-placed Myths and Legends check, she spoke to the demon using the demon's true name and, with a successful persuasion check, swore her allegiance to the demon in exchange for her life. The demon made quick work of the cultists before disappearing into smoke that filled Illyriana's lungs. She saved her life but gave up her soul.

Quite dramatic for a 40 minute story mostly in my head but it reminded me exactly of the sort of fun games I played with myself in my earliest roleplaying memories in the late 80s.

It's a rare thing to capture your childhood like that.

No Substitute for a Group

Playing RPGs solo is a fantastic way to enjoy the hobby, stretch our imagination, improve our improvisation skills, and recapture the joy of playing by ourselves. It's no substitute for the critical importance of getting together with our friends. Instead, solo RPGs are a wonderful augment for this wonderful hobby – letting us enjoy the feeling of building fantastic stories in those quiet moments where playing with a group just isn't possible.

Play solo RPGs.

If you want to hear me talk more about solo RPGs, listen to my appearance on the Solo Roleplayers Podcast.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Lazy 5e and D&D Magic Item Crafting and Journey to Siwal – Dragon Empire Prep Session 58.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Let players flash back to town if they forgot to buy something they wanted last time they were there.
Keep the pacing moving in town sequences so it doesn’t end up being one conversation after another.
Consider non-combat alternatives to random encounters.
Build situations that can be approached with combat, subterfuge, or negotiation.
Wrap locations and encounters in the lore of your world.
Let players know when one of their special abilities might be a benefit to a given situation.
Understand the statistical relationship between characters and monsters. Tweak monsters to suit your group and game.

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