Catagorising Solo RPGs is a Fools Game
And I am that Fool. | This is Ribbiting Adventures
There comes a point in every Solo RPG blogger’s life when they feel the pull of categorising the solo RPG ecosystem. I’ve ignored that call for a long while, but it still calls to me like Sirens upon the rocks. And I’m going to finally steer my ship directly into those rocks.
Categorising Solo RPGs is Kinda Pointless
I’m not sure categorising solo RPGs is worth anything. RPGs aren’t so cut and dry where you can draw lines and put everything into their own neat little category.
Plus, how somebody plays a game is completely different than how someone else does. Hell,
took Zorg! and turned it into a journaling game, something the designer (me) didn’t really intend for or support in the game.But…
Categorising RPGS is also Kinda Fun and Helpful
There are a lot of Solo RPGs out there, and considering you can technically play ANY RPG solo with an emulator, there are thousands of options to choose from. People are often overwhelmed by this choice, falling back on RPGs that are the most popular or just not engaging with Solo RPGs at all.
Organizing RPGs into broad buckets helps me determine what kind of game I want and what kind of games I should recommend.
So, without further ado, here is my attempt at creating a solo RPG category system.
I’d love to hear how badly I fluffed this up. So make sure to put your comments down below!
Categorising Solo RPGs
The first thing we need to do is create large buckets of games and list what we will ignore and not worry about. We will not focus on genre, dice types, the engine, or the age of the game.
However, I am going to take my +1 Sword of Arbitrary Decisions and slice Solo RPGs into two huge groups.
One for Solo RPGs.
And One for Emulators, which helps you play traditional RPGs solo.
There will be more on this later because it isn’t as straightforward as my brain likes. But let’s start with Games
The Mechanics Tell the Story, or don’t they.
I’ve broken the RPG section into three buckets based on how the mechanics and the storytelling work together. On one side are Mechanics-based Solo RPGs, on the other side are Narrative-based Solo RPGs, and in the middle are traditional-style games.
Mechanics-Based Solo RPGs
These games have heavy mechanic-based aspects to them that drive the story forward. In many ways, they are closely related to other types of non-RPG table top games such as War games or board games. In fact, many of these games are also considered board games or war games in their own right.
For these games, the dice, the rules, the board you are playing on and the stats of the character tell the story. They are heavily influenced by these mechanics and are often used to tell self-contained stories or work through certain situations.
This isn’t to say the game won’t contain narrative elements, but mostly, it’s the mechanics of the game that drive the story forward.
Examples are:
Four Against Darkness by Ganesah Games
Dark Fort (I’m not sure where the Dark Fort official PDF link has gone. Can someone point me in the right direction? I think it’s gone missing from the official sites)
Dead Belt - A Couple of Drakes
Marching Order by Crumbling Keep
Traditional Games
Moving from Mechanics-based Solo RPGs, you get Traditional-Style Solo RPGs. These are traditional in that they aim to replicate the feeling of playing an RPG with a group. They use any number of mechanics and storytelling systems to achieve this, but the unifying factor is that they meld the two together, like a traditional RPG.
This is probably the biggest and blobbliest of the three groups.
Examples are:
Ironsworn games (Ironsworn, Starforged, Sundered Isles) by Tomkin Press
Notorious by
(Always Checkers)Kal-Arath by
Narrative-based Games
Going further into the narrative side, you’ll get to Narrative-based games. These games help the player create deep stories using mechanics to help prompt or inspire. This bucket covers the many fantastic journaling games out there and includes a smattering of drawing RPGs also.
Examples are:
Thousand Year Vampire by Tim Hutchings
Untitled Moth Game by S. Kaiya J.
On To Emulators!
An emulator helps you play traditional RPGs solo by using a huge variety of tools. I’ll quickly go through these categories.
Universal Emulators - These help you play RPGs by giving you a suite of universal tools. Examples are Mythic Game Master Emulator and PUM Companion.
Game-specific emulators - These help you play specific RPGs solo. An example is Solitary Defilement.
Built-in Emulators - These are built-in Solo tools for traditional RPGs. Usually, they are located in the back of the core book or added as extras. Free Leagues does a good job with these. Examples are Twilight 2000 4th Edition and Dragonbane.
But what about…
Yes, I know it isn’t a perfect system, and I’m not sure you could create a system where all Solo RPGs are perfectly and clearly categorised. I have aimed for a Good Enough, Vibes-based system. I reckon I can say with pretty good accuracy what category a Solo RPG is based on a quick overview of the game.
What Can You Use This For?
I see the question of ‘I want to play a solo RPG, but I just can’t get into it’ come up quite often. I think when people struggle with a solo RPG, it’s because they’ve picked one that isn’t right for them. Maybe they love gritty, grid-based dungeon combat but picked Ironsworn to try out. Something like Four Against Darkness would probably be a better fit.
If someone says, ‘Hey, I like dramatic stories but don’t like a lot of mechanics and rolling dice, ’ you can point them to a narrative-based journaling game. And if someone says they want something to take the place of their RPG group when that is cancelled, you can recommend them a Traditional game, like Ironsworn.
Croaker RPGs Work in Progress
Yes, I don’t just write this amazing newsletter. I also make RPGs!
Star Strider - A Starforged scenario
I’ve released a playtest version on Sneak Leaps! Check it out and let me know if you have any suggestions before I move on to the full version.
Other RPG Stuff
- starts up his Wings of Rot Actual play. Some dark mystery vibes going on.
The Lone Toad (me) starts up a solo Five Parsecs from Home campaign.
- has us saving all sorts of time with our prep by cutting things down to five simple steps, Who. What. Where. When. Why.
What RPG or solo RPG news do you think we should all be talking about?
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Up Next for The Lone Toad
Ever been interested in that whole solo narrative war game thing but not keen on painting and building all this stuff? Well, in the next newsletter, I go into how to play solo narrative war games without breaking the bank or starting up a whole new type of hobby.
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Interesting discussion! Folks I've talked to and I about this exact same concept break things down a bit differently. In my mind all of these games have the potential to be the "traditional RPG", they just emphasize different components for telling stories. We usually break it down as three main mechanics that are used currently in solo roleplaying for story generation:
1) Self-journaling/self-authoring
2) Random Table event generation
3) Choose Your Own Adventure pre-written narrative
Most Solo RPGs use one or all of these. Random table generation can include Oracles, to event tables, but there's some element of "roll on a table, which gives you a prompt that you react to and continue playing". Self-Journaling/authoring is any time the game expects you, in order to progress, to provide the content of what happens in the game world. And Choose Your Own Adventure is where the narrative is fleshed out and pre-written and you are more just choosing paths.
We as a group are not as big a fan of "self-authoring" games as we play RPGs to explore worlds and yet, because asking the player to make up what happens next (perhaps with prompts), is the most straightforward and flexible way to do it (popularized by the Mythic GM Emulator), it's done everywhere. But there are a number of examples that are narratively rich, but don't require players to invent the world and narrative, from Solo RPG gamebooks to board games that approach a Solo RPG experience like Hexplore It or 7th Citadel. Or you have very random table generation heavy approaches, but which are very thematically rich such as Alex T's games from Black Oath Entertainment or perhaps Five Leagues from the Borderlands by Ivan Sorenson. The division for me is more about the way the narrative is achieved than simply how complex/gamey the mechanics are (which is more where 4AD lands for me).
Appreciate the thought process and discussion though!
I since I have more game pdfs than I'll ever reasonably play, I find categorizing them to be beneficial for me. I tend to keep my pdfs categorized for ease skimming and picking one out based on vibes.
Folder tree:
Dungeon Crawlers
> roll and write
> skirmish game (5 parsecs, Hametsu)
> simple dive (korg, RIG/RUNE, Notorious) (mostly just rolling dice and keeping score but not as restrictive as roll and writes)
Dedicated Solo:
> journal games (Thousand Year Vampire, Apothecaria, Lost and Found games, Wretched and Alone)
> RPGs (Ironsworn, Ion Heart, Citizen Sleeper)(more free form or similar to tradition group RPGs compared to journal games)
Social RPGs
> Dedicated Solo modules (Dragonbane, Stoneburner)
> GMEs (basically just Mythic GME plus a LOT of randomn tables I've collected over the years because I honestly don't like 90% of GMEs. I find them too restrictive. I like pulling tarot/oracle cards to the point that I have a this Frankensteined deck that takes the place of fate rolls. But I do like harvesting idea from Mythic and their magazines.)