The Surprising History of Solo TTRPG Play

When I first sat down to write about using AI for solo play, I thought I’d just throw in a little background. Quick context, nothing major. Instead I got lost in the steam tunnels of TTRPG history with a treasure trove of nostalgic memories. Although people tend to view solo friendly systems as a new thing in the hobby, the truth is, it has been here since the beginning.

For sure, people have always been a little suspicious of solo play. Some call it a lesser experience, as if rolling dice alone is like drinking flat Mountain Dew. That's always been a bit of TTRPG hipsterism. It is not inferior, just different. Every game already happens in our heads. We read novels alone, binge shows alone, and imagine epic battles in the shower. Playing an RPG solo is not that strange when you think about it.

Yes, the social spark is missing. That will always be true. But solo play had one unbeatable advantage in the pre-internet days. It was available when your friends were not. Sometimes it was just you, a handful of dice, and whatever book you had on the shelf. That was enough to keep the fire going.

From Wargames to Dungeons#

Even before Dungeons & Dragons hit tables in 1974, solo play was part of the DNA. Donald Featherstone published Solo Wargaming in 1973 and showed how to take the battlefield into your own hands. Gary Gygax picked up the thread with “Solo Dungeon Adventures” in The Strategic Review in 1975. Those rules grew into the random dungeon tables of the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Not long after, Tunnels & Trolls took the idea further with Buffalo Castle in 1976. Structured in numbered paragraphs, it was basically the great-grandparent of the choose-your-own-adventure gamebook. It was goofy, it was fun, and it proved that solo play was not just filler. It was a real market.

My First Solos#

My TTRPG gateway drug around 1980 was was not D&D, which was just another game at that time. It was The Fantasy Trip, one of Steve Jackson's first TTRPGs and a precursor to GURPS. I started with the Melee and Wizard microgames and later found solo modules like Treasure of the Silver Dragon. Which were numbered text style adventures designed to be played without a GM, and were often played solo.

I can still picture myself cross-legged on the floor, rolling dice and flipping through those slim booklets. Every turn of the page felt like discovering a hidden door in the dungeon of the hobby. I was not only playing a character. I was tinkering with the game itself. That sense of practice and discovery is what hooked me, and going through that solo play made deciding to GM a lot easier later on.

The Gamebook Explosion#

By the early 80s, solo play broke into the mainstream. The Choose Your Own Adventure books were everywhere. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone added dice and character sheets to the mix with the Fighting Fantasy series. TSR even published their own numbered-paragraph modules, betting that players already understood the format.

The Underappreciated Value of Solo Play#

This is the part of solo play that often gets overlooked. Players complain now that “nobody knows the rules.” That was always a little true, but solo play helped fix it. Running through encounters alone gave you space to learn without the pressure of a live table.

It is like practicing guitar by yourself before joining a band. You are not performing for an audience yet. You are figuring out chords and scales so you don’t embarrass yourself at rehearsal. Solo RPG play worked the same way. It let players learn the rules in a safe space and it gave young DMs a chance to run a game without fear of failing in front of friends. That quiet practice made the big jam sessions at the table that much better.

Oracles and Emergent Stories#

For a long time, solo modules meant following a set path someone else had written. Fun, but finite. In the 2000s, the Mythic Game Master Emulator changed everything. It let you ask questions and resolve them with dice. Was the door locked? Did the villain betray you? Suddenly you were co-creating a story instead of following a script. More importantly, having an oracle meant you could play any RPG solo, not just ones with prewritten adventures. Having a simple system served as a bit of a check on your imagination, keeping things from going off the rails, inspiring players to be more creative, and offered a way to play alone but still be surprised by some outcomes.

That shift opened the door to games like Ironsworn, Starforged, Four Against Darkness, and journaling experiences like Thousand Year Old Vampire. Each of them explored a different slice of solo play, whether tactical exploration, narrative storytelling, or personal reflection.

My personal favorite at the moment is Solodark, a solo oracle subsystem for the Shadowdark TTRPG everyone is rightfully enthusiatic about. It uses a simple d6 resolution system and an oracle to keep things unpredictable. The rules are easy to learn, making it perfect for quick sessions when you just want to dive into a story without fussing over mechanics.

Why It Matters Now#

Looking back, solo play is not an odd alleyway of the hobby. It is part of the TTRPG tradition. It has been there from the beginning, it gave us gamebooks, and it continues to shape design. Today, entire communities thrive around it.

And now AI is knocking. That opens questions and possibilities we have never faced before. Some people do not even want to have the conversation, but whether you are excited or skeptical, understanding how AI might fit into solo play is worth the time. Solo has always adapted. I think we are about to see it adapt again.

In my next post, I will dive into how I have been experimenting with AI in my solo sessions using the Solodark rules. I will share what worked, what did not, and how you can set up your own AI powered solo play sessions.

Until then, I am curious. Have you ever practiced with solo play like a guitarist learning scales? Or is it still the weird cousin at the family reunion of TTRPGs?

Drop a comment on X and let me know your thoughts!