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Playing tabletop RPGs has always been something of an act of catharsis for me. By this point, we all know tabletop RPGs and board games can do wonders for our cognitive health. The therapeutic benefits of TRPGs have been widely documented.
Some of the best tabletop RPGs around are recognised as great teaching and skill building aids, in fact, and board games are even being used to combat dementia over in Japan right now. But what happens when you distill the cognitively empowering world of tabletop gaming into something a little more self-reflective? Something that'll let you explore your beliefs, your ideals, even your trauma if you decide to take it that far. Solo RPGs are made for this kind of existential exploration.
Nowadays, you can find everything from cozy solo RPGs, to the bizarrely erotic, all the way to the existential dread-inducing journaling game. You're not constrained to donning your armor and swinging your sword, either. You might pick up a solo journaling game to design a whimsical world of your own imagining as an escape from a stressful stretch of life, though you can just as easily find a solo RPG that snuffles around your subconsious to uncover your deepest, darkest desires.
When did solo roleplaying become a thing?
The Solo RPG legacy goes back far beyond what is generally considered the dawn of TRPGs. What, you thought it all started popping off in the '70s? Turns out, the Bronte sisters were playing journaling games as far back as the 1800s – albeit in a slightly different form than we usually see today.
As children they would design personas for their brother's toy soldiers, much like tabletop roleplaying with minis today, and have them adventure in worlds of their own creation. Though much of these narratives were captured in miniature, shared journals in between play sessions. In fact, their antics were more akin to a phenomenon known as Bluebooking – a method of storytelling that lets players explore their characters outside of actual play, as outlined by designer Aaron Allston in his 1988 supplement for the Champions RPG, Strike Force.
Since the Bronte sisters' journals, we've seen every kind of solo RPG and journaling game you can think of, with more pouring in by the day. From choose-your-own-adventure style games like Fighting Fantasy, to game master emulators also known as oracles.
While many of the more well-known solo RPGs from the early days were solo mods of multiplayer TRPGs, or were designed around established settings such as Ironsworn and Starforged, oracles like the renowned Mythic Emulator were made to be system-agnostic. By allowing players to replace any TRPGs resolution systems, as well as the need for a GM, with Yes/No cards, roll tables, and highly interpretable prompts, you could play pretty much any RPG you could think of by yourself.
While some solo RPGs were dice-based, and others utilised playing cards or Tarot cards, the goal was ostensibly the same – to find a way to adventure without the need for game master, or campaign group. But it was never just that. For many it was also a breather from multiplayer nonsense, a place to explore their wants and needs, or even a way to get themselves off.
How do you play a solo RPG or journaling game?
In the early days of solo roleplaying, you would generally be found sitting at a table with dice and/or cards, a character sheet, and a hex map from your chosen tabletop RPG to wander through. You'd draw cards or roll some dice to determine whether there's an encounter, how it plays out, and anything else that might occur as you explore the world. You'd keep track of your stats just as you would in a non-solo TRPG, and although play might involve the keeping of some form of journal to track the story, these were far less introspective than the kind we often see today.
In fact, the lines between simple solo RPG systems and journaling games have become far more blurred over the years, as players and designers cotton onto the fact that there's no correct output for a game you play by and for yourself. As such, you often see players do away with a solo game's expected output and replace it with their own – be that a hand-drawn map of your encounters, a flowchart, a comic, a captain's log-style recording, or a full-blown novel outlining the events of play.
The solo RPG genre has evolved profoundly over the years, with many now being far more narrative-focussed endeavors. They might encourage you to worldbuild as you play, or ask you questions that help you reflect on your experiences in-game. Koriko: A magical year has the player write letters home to their mentor as a little witch, using prompts that ask how different places feel to your hometown as you explore, or about a "lingering fear or doubt [that] you feel unable to share".
Many solo journaling systems today are not only subversions of the standard pen-and-paper model, but include their own unique and even far-flung mechanics to help cement the theme. Touching Grass is a solo RPG that encourages you to go outside and "act like a giggling dumbass who talks to plants." Its resolution mechanics involve counting a random thing for 30 seconds, finding the digital root of their total, and using that number to check if the plant is "rizzed up" on a little table.
You are now besties with a daffodil, congratulations.
Chris Bissette's dark, reflective journaling game The Wretched, while in thematic contrast to Touching Grass, has players use similarly uncommon mechanics such as its method of progress tracking. Players pull blocks from a tumbling tower (think Jenga) to represent the growing precariousness of their situation as they journal as the sole survivor on an intergalactic salvage ship. After a day's work is complete, and random events have been resolved, the player documents what happened paying close attention to how they're feeling about it.
While there are countless more whimsical examples at the far end of the spectrum, some solo RPG experiences push the genre to its absolute limits. They seek to scrape the darker corners of players' minds, encouraging them to look deep within and question their very nature.
The Beast, for example, is an erotic solo fantasy about making love to an inhuman creature… Stick with me on this. It's one of the oldest solo roleplaying games to have hit us after Gary Gygax outlined the rules for Solo Dungeon Adventures back in the Spring 1975 issue of The Strategic Review, because of course it is.
Alongside rolling for weird sex over a period of 21 days, players are encouraged to note down their fears and anxieties around the whole situation. The takeaway being that journaling games aren't all fun little solo adventures; some are uncomfortable, even horrifying journeys into the subconscious meant to push our moral boundaries to their limits. As my pal James Wallis notes in his Sex in a Box talk, "It's not really about sex. It's about stories, and about us and our relationship to the world."
How does all this help me?
Roleplay in general is not just a tool for fun, that much has been proven time and time again. I've found that attempting to embody someone in an unfamiliar situation to your own can have a way of grounding you, giving insight I wouldn't otherwise have a chance to glean. By taking that full-on experience and giving you the tools to go it alone, you're offered a chance to feel your way through events and encounters at your own pace, and explore themes in as much depth as you you need to.
Bluebooking, when it was conceived, was in part a way to explore deeper connections between players that might have been laughed off the table. So too, journaling is the perfect outlet for feelings you might not feel comfortable sharing aloud. Sure, TRPGs let us blow off steam and get a hit of dopamine, but for the curious they can also open a window into the soul; solo journaling games doubly so, since there's no judgement to contest with but your own. If you let them, solo RPGs can be a fantastically introspective experience, without all the distractions that come along with group play.
Journaling games in particular can not only deliver we introverts from a bustling world that's always grasping for our attention, but also bring us closer to ourselves for a little bit of healing. And while there's no one-size-fits-all for confronting your shadow self (or whatever you want to call it), I highly recommend solo journaling games if you're looking to delve a little deeper than your average dungeon crawler, and get in some much needed self-care.
For more recommendations, why not check out the best D&D books or a collection of solo RPGs to play in 2025.
