How to Play a Solo Tabletop RPG (Complete Step-by-Step Tutorial for Beginners)

Playing a tabletop roleplaying game by yourself without a Game Master is a growing development of the TTRPG hobby. How do we do it? It's easier than you might think, especially if you have the right tools to help you ask the right questions. This process can work for any game system, such as Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder.

My video on How to Make Realistic and Randomly Generated Fantasy Maps for FREE with no drawing required:

Get Ironsworn RPG for FREE: (Not a Paid Promotion)

#HowTo #RPG #StoryGaming

00:00 Introduction
00:30 What do you need to get started with Solo Roleplaying?
03:34 How do you prepare for your first Solo RPG session?
12:15 What are rules to follow when playing a Solo RPG?
15:19 How do you play a Solo RPG session?
18:13 What tips should you apply to improve your Solo RPG experience?
20:00 What is an example of a Solo RPG session?
25:28 What are some ways that you can continue a Solo RPG campaign?

[TheWoodlandFellowship]

Have you ever tried solo roleplaying? If you have, what would you recommend to make it work the best?

[Worthless-one]

We all have those games on our shelves that we've always wanted to play, but don't have enough friends to meet the player requirements. This solves that problem!

[jessquinn]

I was solo gaming back in the early 1980's. Made my own charts and everything. Oddly I still have them all. Nothing elaborate, just 5-6 pages with essential charts. And they worked for almost any genre game I wanted to play out. And hey, it entertained me for YEARS. Lots of great stories and quests. I am shocked that its only now this has become a thing.

[greegeree]

Awesome thanks for the video. I used to tell my d&d friends about solo d&d and their responses were either "cant be done" or "that sounds lonely and depressing, why not just play a video game?" Im very introverted and dont mind doing things alone so this is very informative for me going foreward

[Tetrumo]

14:57 no one thought that old man made any sense, until you saw for yourself the dreaded Land Shark.

[tafkaga]

I've probably watched 100 videos on solo trpg but this is the only one I've watched 5 times. Great job of organizing the information and a very clear and concise presentation.

[midnight]

This is a bit of an older video now, so I'm not sure if you still read the comments, but I really appreciate you making this! I've been really wanting to play DnD for awhile now but so far my experience with tabletop roleplaying games (specifically Warhammer) hasn't been... great. So discovering that it is actually possible to play solo has been exciting. Finding info on how to do it properly without being told to "just write a book" or other various snarky comments has been really difficult, though.

Finding strangers on the Internet to play with doesn't appeal to me right now, and the idea that I want to try to play out probably wouldn't interest many people since it would be one race specific gameplay for quite awhile. So having a video like this to reference is going to be so incredibly helpful as I muddle my way through figuring out how to play solo AND play DnD for the first time lol

[ALoonwolf]

I think a standard deck of cards would make for a good world and story creator. You lay them out randomly face down to generate your map, and each suit and value can represent different things which are discovered as you enter the area and turn over the card. And then you might also have smaller scale maps within each location where the remaining cards are reshuffled each time and the suits and values have completely different meanings to determine what happens.

[bizzy]

This is about as clear a procedure as any I've seen on youtube for solo rp. Great job dude! Subbed just because of this video

[suburbohemian]

Oh wow, that is the best explanation I've seen yet! You make it so very clear regardless of game being played. This is just what I needed!

[PhilipDudley]

This is exactly what I do when I get a new system and want to try it out. Index Card RPG first hinted at the idea when they had the sample scenarios to get the hang of the game. Then I started looking for Solo-RPG and found this. Great for trying out other systems when everyone at your main table sticks to the same system all the time and you want to try out something like Cypher System, or Chasoium Basic Role-Playing.

[gstaff]

Your ideas are great for solo OR basic home-brew world building

[AlbertoRodriguez-zbiu]

Your ideas are very interesting indeed.
I'm trying to develop a DMless system (because, yeah...I'm the forever DM) to run in an experimental group game and this has elements that are extremely valuable for that purpose.

[elizabethrowe]

Listens to complete video, then breaks out Athos the triton paladin and starts again from the beginning, taking notes....

Well done, dude, well done!

[mayanightstar]

These may possibly be the best tips for solo RPG I've come across so far, at least when it comes to my own personal style

[lostcharge]

This was really good and extremely helpful! I have a world I want to explore and a vague idea for a story, but I have no idea what the insides would be - a solo RPG would actually be a wonderful way to fill it out! I don’t have many deep plans for what I would do with the story other than just have it written down for my own benefit, but even that is worth doing if just so it can stop bouncing around in my head :)

[jcraigwilliams]

I stopped gaming several years ago, partly because my group all started to have other commitments, but any hopes of playing again were dashed when I moved to a new city. I really missed it.
When I learned that solo gaming was a thing (I forget how I heard about it) I was *thrilled*.but also disappointed that I hadn't learned about it 10 years earlier.

I love the idea of it. I have Ironsworn and I backed the Starforged Kickstarter. I have the Game Master's Apprentice deck and both the Mythic GME book and deck. All of these tools are great and I love the idea of playing... but I have a hard time with it.

As a writer and the GM of my old group for many years, I feel weird playing by myself. I always feel that I should be sharing the story with someone, so it feels-- for lack of a better way of saying it-- like a waste of time. I have managed to play about 4 sessions of Ironsworn, writing it out as if I was writing a novel, but that makes it very slow. And then I find myself asking "who am I writing this FOR?"

But I keep wanting to play. Hopefully, it will click one day.

In terms of visualization, I always played TotM with my group but thought that miniatures might help with playing solo. They're just so expensive...

I picked up Dungeon Craft, but then found it inconvenient to have to build the map because I didn't always have much time or space. I then tried some VTTs, but none were as quick and simple as I wanted, though Runehammer VTT and Owlbear Rodeo come close. What I finally settled on (and really love) is TaleSpire. It has that cool look of classic miniatures but is quick and easy to use. You don't even need to make your own maps (though you can) because there is so much content that has been made by the community.

Wow, I am really rambling.

All this to say that this is a great vid and hopefully it'll give me a bit of a push so that I can overcome my mental blocks and start playing.

[juanma]

thanks! i was so lost and now i feel prepared to start my solo campaign!

[Greg_M]

Thanks for this video. It's one of the best I've watched for getting a solid overview of playing an RPG. Seriously, quite organized and well explained. Subscribed. Liked.

[WhiskeyPatriot]

Thank Tyr, being forever DM is a blessing and a curse.