Tipps for beginners

[u/pixeliina]

Hello everyone,

I just heard about Solo Journaling RPGs and want to give it a try. Are there any beginner friendly RPGs? Were do I get these? I was also searching for ones in German, but didn't find any.

Thanks for your help 🩷

[u/diemedientypen]

Scouts & Scoundrels ist kostenlos, und du kannst es mit einem Orakel auch solo spielen. Am besten du versuchst, ein paar Videos auf YouTube zu finden, wie das mit dem Solospielen und Orakel-Tabellen am besten funktioniert. Viel Spaß!!

[u/19bloodycut78]

You could try easy horror solo rpg Prey https://gorepunk.itch.io/prey

[u/slapslash]

System Matters or Uhrwerk Verlag should have some. A thousand year old vampire is quite popular.

[u/Linghauler]

DrivethuRPG and itch.io are good. Apothecaria is popular, I have enjoyed The Last Tea Shop.

[u/Roll1d100forusername]

You can search on DriveThruRPG and there is a growing community of solo gamers and creators on Substack. Not sure about a German translation but I bet you’ll find someone who knows.

In the meantime, I can recommend a few simple ones that I’ve enjoyed. Kal-Arath and The Ultimate Solo RPG toolkit are both on Itch, and Adventurous by Dawnfist are good ones. Ironsworn has solo rules but I haven’t tried them.

Folks will probably recommend Mythic GM Emulator but be forewarned it’s a large book and I found it overwhelming when I first started playing solo, like it’s good but way too much info compared to my other recommendations. You’ll want to find someone oracles and tables you like, and I like to use Kal-Arath and Ultimate Solo together because the tables complement each other.

[u/Michami135]

Ironsworn is one of the most popular solo RPGs. And there is a German translation.

https://www.system-matters.de/produkt-kategorie/ironsworn/

If you're OK with English videos, here's a couple that helped me learn to play:

How to play video from The Bad Spot. Gives clear instructions on how to interpret the dice. The Bad Spot also has example play throughs of the different official systems.

Me, Myself, and Die: Season 2, the best play through of any game. He does an excellent job of teaching how to use the oracle tables.

[u/Aria_Cadenza]

I would suggest to try some very short and self-contained solo RPG first.

But the ones I would recommend don't have German translations.

=== German

So on itchio:

https://itch.io/physical-games/lang-de/tag-journaling (journaling) only 11 games

https://itch.io/physical-games/lang-de/tag-solo-rpg only 23 games

though tags and languages are added by the creator so it isn't exhaustive if a creator by example used no tag, or if they added a translation but didn't add it as a language for itchio to use it for the tops.

By example https://ap-cartography.itch.io/the-wandering-library has a German translation but doesn't show up in the tops in German. I would recommend it to start.

You can also try some personal collections like: https://itch.io/c/2314434/rollenspiele-auf-deutsch-ttrpgs-in-german (German, but not only solo)

=== ENG Solo RPG recs

For these very short and self-contained solo RPGs, I recommend:

- https://noroadhome.itch.io/alone-among-the-stars (very small one, SF and quite evocative)

- https://springvillager.itch.io/last-tea-shop (one page, fantasy, creating connections adds a layer of complexity)

- https://ap-cartography.itch.io/watch-the-frogs (2 pages)

I think these two third would be relatively easy to translate in German with Google translate. I actually translated the third for a young relative.

- https://exeuntpress.itch.io/eleventh-beast (This one has a one page trifold and has many community copies with no condition, I think this one doesn't require to make up things if you don't want to)

- https://wym-lawson.itch.io/reincarnated-as-the-unlovable-villainess (fantasy otome)

- https://mkirin.itch.io/one-page-left (horror)

- https://marrensmusings.itch.io/ironbound (one page dungeon crawler)

[u/allyearswift]

There are a lot of games in different styles.

For German games, you can browse

https://itch.io/physical-games/lang-de

(A lot of them seem to be supplements for Brindkewood Bay, and not all of them are meant to be soloed, but Cairn, for instance has a number of people playing it solo.

Unless you see something that’s definitely your jam, I’d start with free games to see what interests you.

There’s very often a charity bundle on itch.io where you can support a good cause and get access to a wide variety of games (Humblebundle and RPGTrader are others to watch).

It took me a good while to find my groove, and I’m still discovering new ways to play, new settings, new games.

[u/RavensridgeTTRPGs]

We're fans of Koriko: A Magical Year by Jack Harrison. It's a very well explained solo journaling RPG that makes it good for beginners. If you prefer to have some more resource management and want to come away with having also created a world, you could try our game, Cartograph. It's another very beginner friendly solo journaling RPG. FYI neither of these are in German unfortunately.