The best solo rpg for most people is a solo journaling game: a small book of prompts and tables you answer in a notebook of your own. Nobody else has to be free that evening. Eight of them are below, ordered from the shortest first evening to the longest, with what each one costs, what it asks you to write, and who it is wrong for.
All of our own games are on one page: solo journaling RPGs you print at home.
Table of Contents
How I judged the best solo rpg for one evening
Four things decide whether a game survives its first night on a real kitchen table. What it costs. What you have to go and find before you can start. How much writing it expects. And the kind of evening it actually produces.
Every price and every component list below comes off the publisher’s own page, read today. Where a publisher says nothing about how long a session runs, I have left the number out rather than guessed at one.
The craft side of this hobby calls these games RPJ, short for role playing journal, a word the YouTuber Journals4breakfast coined for her own channel. If you want the longer explanation of what an RPJ is before you spend anything, that is covered here.
What you need before you pick one
A book to write in, and a pen. That is the floor for every best solo rpg here, and the book is meant to be one already sitting in your stash rather than something new.
Past that, three of them want an ordinary deck of playing cards, four want six-sided or ten-sided dice, and one wants a tarot deck alongside a stack of dice. If your book is a made one rather than a bought one, this is what a junk journal is, and this covers printing papers at home.
Before you spend anything, it is worth watching somebody turn the pages of a finished one. Andrea’s flip through of the chronicles of Alva shows what a stack of those evenings looks like as an object:
The 8 best solo rpg picks, ordered for a first evening
1. Alone Among the Stars, the smallest one here
You fly between planets and write down what you find on each one. Takuma Okada’s page asks for a standard 52-card deck, one six-sided die and a small journal, and it is name-your-own-price, so you can pay nothing.
The die tells you how many cards a planet holds; each card you turn over is a discovery, and you write a few sentences about it before turning the next. Its own listing puts an average session at a few minutes, which makes it the best solo rpg to try if you suspect you will hate the whole idea.
Wrong for you if you want a story that builds. There is no plot waiting at the end, only places. Alone Among the Stars on itch.io.
2. Last Tea Shop Classic, free and one page long
You keep a tea shop on the border between the living and the dead, and the recently deceased stop in for one last hot drink. Spring Villager asks for an hour or so of quiet time, pen and paper, one or two six-sided dice, and tea, which the page marks optional but recommended.
Dice send you a visitor and set the weather. You brew something from what is in the cupboard, ask about their life, write down what they tell you, and the game ends when a figure called the Veiled One arrives. The classic edition, in the publisher’s own words, will always remain free, which makes it the best solo rpg to hand somebody who does not want to spend a penny.
Wrong for you if death as a subject is not something you want in a journal this month. The page carries that warning itself. Last Tea Shop Classic, with a 16-page expanded edition at $5.00 or more.
Shannon Green went looking for the free end of this shelf and came back with twelve of them, plus the printer settings that turn a download into a little booklet:
3. Apothecaria, the best solo rpg the crafters found first
You are the village witch of High Rannoc, mixing potions for whoever turns up at the door with Fairy Fever or Yeti Chest. Anna Blackwell asks for a deck of cards with the jokers left in, a journal, and something to write with. No dice.
It is $13.00 or more on itch, with a printed copy from her own shop, and the listing puts an average sitting at about half an hour. She describes it as a long-term game and says outright that rushing it is the worse way to play. That is why it has taken hold with people who spend a fortnight decorating a book before they answer a single prompt, and why it is the best solo rpg for a slow winter.
Wrong for you if you want an ending soon. This one is a slow accumulation. Apothecaria on itch.io, and our longer walk through it.
4. Artefact, where you play the object
You are not a person in this one. You are a magical item, and you follow the hands it passes through over centuries while its keepers live and die around it.
Jack Harrison’s page at Mousehole Press puts it at $14.00 or more and calls it a great way to spend an hour sketching, world-building and storytelling in your own company. You pick from nine kinds of object, from a weapon to a deck of worn cards, then answer questions about each keeper and decide how much time passes while the item rests in the dark. If you would rather draw than plot, this is the best solo rpg on the page for you.
Wrong for you if you want to be the hero. Playing furniture is the entire point, and some people find that cold. Artefact on itch.io, with more on how it plays.
5. Colostle, a deck of cards and no dice
The whole world is the inside of one enormous castle, and you explore it, on foot or in a giant suit of armour. Nich Angell asks for the book, a standard deck of playing cards and a notebook, and he calls it super simple and easy to play, for all ages.
Cards throw prompts and moments at you, you decide how your character reacts, and you write the result up as an adventure log. The digital edition is £12.00 and the 170-page hardback is £35.00 from his own shop, which makes it the priciest way onto this best solo rpg list if you want the paper one.
Wrong for you if you want to start tonight for nothing. It is a real book with real rules to read first. Colostle.com, and our first-journal guide.
6. Koriko, a year in six sittings
A young witch moves to a seaside city for her training year, and you write that year. Jack Harrison again: you need the book, a tarot deck and a stack of dice, plus a journal.
Cards deal you the events of the year, and when something risky happens you add a die to a tower that gets less stable as you go. It is $18.00 or more digitally, and the story runs in six volumes at an hour or two each, with every volume closing on a letter home to your witch’s mentor. As a best solo rpg to carry through a long autumn, nothing else here comes close.
Wrong for you if you do not own a tarot deck and do not want to buy one. Harrison says an ordinary deck covers most prompts, but the characters are named for the major arcana. Koriko on itch.io, and how to actually finish it.
7. Notorious, the best solo rpg pick if you want less writing
You are a bounty hunter taking a contract from one of six factions, and the job is to bring the target back. Jason Price asks for two six-sided dice and a character sheet, both supplied, and the sheet alone is a free download.
It is $10.00 or more, and it ships with two ways to play: a fast mode for people who want the chase, and a story mode for people who want to write it up. That second mode is why it keeps getting recommended to anyone who says the journaling half feels like homework.
Wrong for you if you came here for something cosy. The setting is hard and dusty and people get shot. Notorious on itch.io, and our walk through a bounty hunt.
8. Ironsworn, free and the deepest here
Shawn Tomkin’s game is the one a tabletop player would recognise, and the full digital edition is free from his own site. You need one six-sided die and two ten-sided dice, and you can play it alone, with friends, or with somebody running it.
You swear a vow, then every risky action is a roll of those three dice against your character’s strengths, and the result tells you whether the story bends your way. It won a Gold ENNIE for best free game, and it is the deepest game on this best solo rpg list by a distance.
Wrong for you if you want to be writing within ten minutes. There is a lot to read first, and it is the one place on this list where a rulebook really does feel like a rulebook. Ironsworn at Tomkin Press, and our step-by-step first session.
Two more that get called the best solo rpg
Thousand Year Old Vampire comes up in every one of these conversations. Tim Hutchings has the digital edition at $15.00 or more, with free copies for anyone who cannot pay, and you play a vampire across centuries. The reason people talk about it is that your vampire holds five memories, so remembering one thing means losing another. It is superb and it is bleak, so it is a strange place to start.
The Wretched, by Chris Bissette, is the other one. You are the last survivor on a salvage ship, and it is played with a deck of cards, a tumbling block tower and a microphone, because you speak your log aloud rather than writing it. Wonderful, and not what most people on this page came looking for.
If you want the tabletop framing of all this rather than the craft one, the solo ttrpg version of this shelf is here, and if you are still deciding whether any of it is for you, start here instead.
What one evening actually leaves behind
A page. Usually one spread with a card or a scrap stuck down and a few paragraphs in your own hand, plus a note of where you got to so the next evening has somewhere to start.
That is the whole return, and it is why the cheapest best solo rpg here is not the lesser one. If you want to see seven of those evenings in a row before you commit, this is what the first week looked like, and the full beginner’s guide is here.
Best solo rpg questions people keep asking
Which is the best solo rpg if I have never done this before?
The best solo rpg for a complete beginner is Alone Among the Stars, and you can pay nothing for it. It takes a few minutes, it needs only a pack of cards and one die, and by the end of it you will know whether writing to a prompt is something you enjoy. If it is, Apothecaria is the one most people move to next.
Are any of them really free?
Three of the eight are. Alone Among the Stars and Last Tea Shop Classic are name-your-own-price and you can set that to nothing, and Ironsworn’s full digital edition is free from the publisher. The other five run from $10.00 to £35.00 depending on whether you want paper.
Do I need dice, or can I use cards?
It depends on which best solo rpg you pick, and both are common. Apothecaria and Colostle use a deck of playing cards with no dice at all, Last Tea Shop and Notorious use six-sided dice, Alone Among the Stars uses both, and Koriko wants a tarot deck alongside its dice.
What if I do not want to write very much?
Then the best solo rpg for you is Notorious in its faster mode, or Alone Among the Stars, where a few sentences per card is the whole instruction. Nothing on this list checks your word count, and several people in this hobby draw far more than they write.
Is there a cosy one, and is there a creepy one?
Apothecaria and Koriko sit at the cosy end of this best solo rpg list, both witchy and slow in a way people like. Last Tea Shop is quiet but it is about dying, Notorious is dusty and violent, and The Wretched is outright horror, so there is a good spread if you want the lights on or off.
I bought one months ago and never started. What now?
Open the best solo rpg you already own at its first prompt and write three sentences tonight, badly. The most common thing in this hobby is a printed game and an empty journal, usually because the first page feels like it has to be good. It does not have to be, and the second page is always easier than the first.
Pick a best solo rpg and give it an evening
The shortest way through this page is to take a free one, use the book already sitting in your stash, and see whether you want a second evening. Whichever of the eight you land on, the writing is only half of what ends up on the page. The papers you stick down are the other half, and ours live in The Faded Conservatory.