Solo Role Playing Games: Three Ways to Play Alone

25 September 2026

Solo role playing games let you play a tabletop-style RPG with nobody else at the table. Something has to replace the game master, and there are three ways to do it. You can answer your own questions with dice and an oracle table. You can play a system written for one player, such as Ironsworn. Or you can hand the game master’s chair to an AI that narrates the world while you play your character. All three are real hobbies with real players, and each one suits a different kind of evening.

This guide walks through how a solo session actually runs, what each approach asks of you, and when the plain paper method is all you need.

What makes a role playing game “solo”

In a group game the game master holds the secrets. They know what is behind the door, what the villain wants and how the town reacts when you insult the mayor. The players find out by acting.

Solo play has to recreate that surprise without a second person. That is the whole problem, and every solo method is an answer to one question: who decides what happens next, if it is not me?

• Chance decides. You ask a yes or no question and roll against a table.
• The rules decide. A solo system gives you moves, outcomes and prompts that push the story somewhere you did not plan.
• Another narrator decides. A program, or an AI game master, plays the world and you play only your character.

You still keep a record of some kind, whether that is a notebook, a journal app or a log the game keeps for you, because the record is what turns a string of rolls into a story you can come back to.

How to play a solo RPG with dice and a journal

This is the oldest way, and it costs nothing but paper and a few dice. Here is a full session, start to finish.

1. Pick a setting and a character. Borrow one from a book or film you love, or sketch your own in three lines: who they are, what they want, what is in their way.
2. Write an opening scene. One paragraph. Where are they, and what is about to go wrong?
3. Ask the oracle. When you do not know what happens, phrase it as a yes or no question (“Is the gate guarded?”) and roll. A common homemade table on a d6: 1 is “no, and it gets worse”, 2 is “no”, 3 is “no, but”, 4 is “yes, but”, 5 is “yes”, 6 is “yes, and”.
4. Interpret. “Yes, but” might mean the gate is guarded by someone who owes you a favour and resents it. The interpretation is where the fun lives.
5. Roll for complications. Every few scenes, roll for a random event so the world moves without you. Word tables (“betrayal”, “storm”, “old debt”) are enough to start.
6. Journal it. Write down what happened in a sentence or two. Keep a short list of the people and places you met, because you will forget them otherwise.
7. End on a question. Stop the session with something unresolved, so you want to come back.

The best-known toolkit for this style is the Mythic Game Master Emulator from Word Mill Games, which formalises the oracle and the random events into a system you can use with any RPG rules you already own. Plenty of players start with a homemade table like the one above and only pick up a toolkit once they know they enjoy it.

Solo role playing games built for one player

The second approach uses a game designed for solo play from the first page. These give you structure: moves that resolve an action, a track that fills up as your quest advances, and prompts that inject trouble at the right moment.

Ironsworn is the usual recommendation. As of September 2026 its own site describes it like this:

“Designed for solo, co-op, and guided play, this award-winning game is free to download.”

It is a dark fantasy game in which you swear iron vows and pursue them across a harsh frontier, and it has a science fiction follow-up, Ironsworn: Starforged, built on the same ideas.

Games in this family are excellent if you like rules. They take a little learning, and you are still the one writing every line of the fiction, which is precisely what their fans love about them.

Solo role playing with an AI game master

The third approach replaces the oracle with a narrator. You say what your character does, and the game master describes what happens, voices the other characters and keeps the world moving.

General chatbots can do a version of this, and many people try that first. The weakness shows up a few hours in: a chatbot has no fixed world, so a character changes their name, a city moves, and a death you witnessed gets quietly undone. For solo play, where there is no second player to catch the slip, consistency is the thing you actually need.

LLM RPG is built around that problem, and it is aimed at one particular kind of solo player: someone who has finished a novel and wants to keep living in its world. You upload the book as a .txt or .epub file. The game reads it and builds an atlas of its characters, factions, places, items and events. Then you create your own character and play turn by turn, with a game master that grounds each scene in that atlas and remembers what happened earlier in your run.

If you do not have a book to hand, there are ready-made worlds with their lore already built, across fantasy, wuxia, cyberpunk, horror and more, so you can start in seconds from the worlds list.

A few things worth knowing before you try it:

• The dice stay behind the screen. Whether a risky action succeeds is settled by a hidden roll weighed against your character’s ability and the situation, so failure is real. You never see the roll, though: the result comes back as story. If handling the dice and the character sheet yourself is what you enjoy, the first two approaches will suit you better.
• You play one character inside someone else’s world. The world’s people and places come from the book, and your character is the new arrival.
• It is free to start. A new account gets a one-time grant of credits, enough for about fifty turns, with paid plans for longer play. The pricing page has the details.

Comparing the three ways to play solo

Which approach fits you

Choose dice and an oracle if you enjoy inventing things and want complete control. The surprise is small but real, and nothing can go wrong because nothing is fixed until you write it.

Choose a solo-designed game like Ironsworn if you want the satisfaction of rules: the tension of a bad roll, the progress track filling, a vow that might break. It is the closest thing to sitting at a table with a good game master who happens to be a rulebook.

Choose an AI game master if writing every line yourself is the part you do not enjoy, or if you want to play inside a world you already love. You make decisions as your character and let the narrator carry the rest. We have a longer piece on what the game master role actually requires if you want to compare tools in that space, and one on stepping inside a book as opposed to writing fan fiction about it.

When the manual way is enough

Plenty of solo players never need anything past a notebook, and it is worth being honest about when that is you.

• You play in short bursts. Ten minutes on a train is perfect for a few oracle rolls and two journal lines.
• You want to be offline. Paper works in a tent, on a plane and during a power cut.
• The writing is the point. If journaling is what you look forward to, an AI narrator takes away the part you enjoy.
• You already own a system you love. Mythic-style oracles work with any rule set, so you do not need to learn anything new.

A good reason to try something else is when you notice you are losing track of your own world, or when you want a story to surprise you more than a d6 can.

Tips for a better solo session, whichever way you play

• Give your character a want and a flaw. Solo stories stall when the hero is simply competent. A flaw gives every scene somewhere to go.
• Say yes to complications. When a result could go either way, pick the more interesting one. Nobody else is at the table to be disappointed.
• Keep a cast list. Names and one-line notes for everyone you meet. It is the single habit that keeps a long campaign coherent.
• Stop mid-scene. Ending on a cliffhanger makes the next session start itself.
• Borrow a world you know. A favourite novel gives you a cast, a map and a tone for free, and that is true on paper as much as with an AI narrator.

Getting started tonight

If you have dice, a notebook and half an hour, write a three-line character and ask your first oracle question. If you want rules, download Ironsworn. And if you have just finished a book and are not ready to leave it, start playing free and walk into it as your own character.