Solo RPGs as a creative practice

Overcoming my inhibition to storytelling

• How I discovered solo TTRPGs
• What I found
• Did it work? We shall see…

Today, a very different topic: solo tabletop role-playing games (a.k.a. TTRPGs). Normally I write about programming here, but recently with the arrival of my first baby, this blog is suddenly unfocused eclectic and fun. But seriously, I wanted to write about solo RPGs because they’re helping me become more creative and less paralyzed by perfectionism.

How I discovered solo TTRPGs

I enjoy reading fiction, but I feel like I’m terrible at making it. And since making up silly stories on the fly is a handy skill for a parent, I thought it was a perfect time to confront my creative inhibitions.

But how should I start, if it’s those very inhibitions that make any kind of practice routine impossible? It only takes a minute of staring at a blank page (or, worse, the beginning of a story I’ve written) for me to lose my enthusiasm and run to a more familiar pastime, by which I mean coding.

And yet… once you’ve realized your #1 hobby is the same thing that you do all day at work, and you contemplate the fact that your kid might not end up sharing that interest (at least in the next, let’s say, ten years), you become highly motivated to put your eggs in more baskets.

So, how to make creative writing more approachable? I wondered if making it into a game might help.

I recalled the handful of Dungeons & Dragons sessions that I played a few years ago. That was a story-making game, sort of. There was too much standing around trading blows with trolls for my taste, but I enjoyed other moments when I was working together with my friends to improvise a story within a game.

Questions flooded into my brain:

• Is there a more narrative-focused TTRPG?
• All the TTRPG groups in my area are for D&D… could I instead play a TTRPG solo, just for the storytelling practice?
• Am I crazy for wanting to try this?

As it turns out, yes and yes and probably not!

What I found

UPDATE, September 2023: This post used to include a list of RPGs and tools to explore, but over time the list just kept growing, so I’ve moved it into a GitHub repo:

https://github.com/fpsvogel/solo-ttrpgs

Did it work? We shall see…

I’ll add an update here or write a sequel post in the future, when I’ve had a chance to see whether solo TTRPGs really do help me in my quest for creative freedom. The worst-case scenario is that they’ll become yet another form of practice that didn’t stick, but at least I’ll have given it a try. And who knows? Maybe you, dear reader, will be inspired to give it a try too.