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Most tabletop roleplaying games, from Dungeons & Dragons to Apocalypse World, are designed to be cooperative, multiplayer experiences – games where friends and family can gather around the table, put their heads together to solve problems, and have fun portraying fictional characters. Tabletop gaming fans unable to meet with fellow gamers in person or online need not despair, however: With innovative RPG systems like Ironsworn and Expedition, solo gamers can engage in one-player tabletop RPG campaigns and overcome challenging perils with their own imagination.
Normally, when someone wants to engage in a single-player RPG experience, they’ll fire up a computer RPG, like Pillars Of Eternity or The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. There are several reasons, however, why a tabletop gamer might want to “go analog” and play the single-player mode of a tabletop RPG.
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Single-player tabletop RPGs give players a break from the computer and are less restrictive than video games, as they let players improvise and create their own solutions to problems. They also let players flex their creative muscles, channeling their imagination through the rules of the game to create new epic stories.
Single-Player Tabletop RPGs – Ironsworn
The world of Ironsworn: A Tabletop RPG Of Perilous Quests is a dark, dangerous place, where the scattered, isolated settlements of the Ironlands struggle to survive against wild beasts, fey beings, raiding bandits, and brutal weather. In this land, grim adventurers called Ironsworn fight to uphold their oaths or perish trying. The gameplay mechanics of Ironsworn draw inspiration from narrative RPGs like FATE Core and Apocalypse World, with special gameplay rules called Moves guiding the resolutions of player actions. By rolling d100 “Oracle Dice” and consulting tables in the core rulebook, a solo player can generate randomized events, perils, and world-building details to encounter in the game world, challenges that will test the Iron Vows their characters have sworn to uphold.
Single-Player Tabletop RPGs – Expedition
Expedition: The RPG Card Game, true to its name, is a fantasy RPG built around decks of cards. These consist of decks of character abilities divided into the categories of Magic, Melee, Music, and Magic; loot decks with different tiers of useful treasures; and enemy decks with Undead, Fae, Bandits, and Beasts to challenge players. The basic Expedition box contains all these cards and a single d20 die. The main gameplay rules, available on the free-to-download Expedition mobile app, also contain a selection of digital Choose Your Own Adventure-style campaigns made by contributors on the Expedition website. Some of these pre-made adventure campaigns are designed for in-person or online group play, while many others can be tackled by a single player.
Single-Player Tabletop RPGs – Alone Among The Stars
Alone Among The Stars is a solo science-fiction RPG published by game designer Takuma Okada on itch.io. It’s a “journal game” about a solitary space traveler exploring the stars, encountering different worlds, and describing the sights they encounter in their ship’s log. To play Alone Among The Stars, players roll a six-sided die, then draw cards from a standard 52-card deck equal to the numbers rolled. Each suit of cards corresponds to a discovery found on a new planet: diamonds for new forms of animal life, clubs for new forms of plant or fungal life, hearts for ancient ruins and wreckage, and spades for natural phenomena and geological marvels. The player then writes brief but detailed descriptions of the discoveries they’ve made in a journal, cataloguing a list of fictional wonders until their character decides to turn around and return home.
Single-Player Tabletop RPGs – Map Maker Adventures
In Map Maker Adventures, an upcoming RPG recently funded on Kickstarter, one to four players role-play as cartographers from the Imperial Expeditionary Force, charged with exploring strange lands and dungeons on the empire’s border, slaying monsters, and – most importantly – creating intricate maps. The gameplay of this RPG will hearken back to early Dungeons & Dragons and games in the Old School Revival genre, with highly detailed character sheets, image tiles players can assemble into grid-based dungeons, and detailed adventure books containing monsters, bosses, quests, dungeons, and NPCs players won’t need a Dungeon Master to interact with.
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