first off i'm gonna copypaste relevant comments of mine from the thread this spun off from:

also for solo RPG recs, the first one that comes to mind is Over the Mountain by marchcrow! it's a slice of life about moving into a mountain town and getting to know the place and the people there.

it's got one of the best balances i've seen so far re: giving the player room to improvise without going 'now draw the rest of the owl,' and it's made specifically to let you play a campaign that's as long or short as you want. i've found a lot of solo rpgs tend to be either hyperspecific and really restrictive with the stories you can tell, or 'aight here's

a five-word prompt, now come up with your own premise and write 3k+ words from it. good luck,' and while i'm glad that works for some folks i get frustrated sometimes at how that seems to be the only kind of solo game i can find out there. OtM handles it really well imo, and so do marchcrow's other games that aren't hyperspecific ones. (and even then,

they're made to be widely applicable to stories you might want to tell with them, like the 'your character is Pissed and wrecks a room for catharsis' one. a lot of solo RPGs tend to kind of feel more like the author wrote a short story and you're just copypasting names into it, which again is fine if you enjoy it! but it's not what i'm looking for At All)

i also admire the hell out of the creator because they've made a point not to charge for any of their games, and to make games you can play without needing to spend a bunch of money on it, because they remember being too poor to have access to tabletop gaming; and while there's nothing wrong with being compensated for game dev work, i can respect that.

i think the main issue i've had with OtM so far is that because it's geared toward slice of life with fantasy elements, it's not as easy to tell stories with the kind of stakes and action i'd like to, which is why i keep making hacks of it and am slowly stitching them together into one system. I Need Otherworldly Murder Mysteries and Danger Squirtle

as mentioned their other games are cool too, including the one that's designed to fit on a business card, but OtM's my favorite so far

OKAY now that that's done public_trans_it: solo RPG stuff is neat as hell and tends to be really niche in tabletop circles i've orbited, and i always welcome discussion of it \o/

there's another DMless game i just now remembered that i found once which seemed really promising, but i was a bit daunted by trying to read into the more in-depth parts at the time- it starts simple but gets VERY in-depth; i've been meaning to go back and give it another look for a While, let me see if i can find it again

Solo RPG with a Virtual Game Master FOUND IT

ALSO BANGS HANDS ON TABLE.
GAME DEV! GAME DEV! GAME DEV!
I have a VERY NORMAL AMOUNT OF INTEREST in TTRPG dev. (lying)

I wanna start off by saying, I know you are in Naels server and aren’t super active in it, but if you haven’t seen we have a tabletop channel in there now. It’s 90% me ranting about TTRPG game dev.

I’ve desperately wanted to get more into solo ttrpgs but it’s so hard to find one that scratches the itch, without excessive bookkeeping. So many solo games I have seen fall into the trap of trying to offer the same experience as a group game and that’s not what I want! You will never emulate the feelings of inside jokes made alongside friends. Stop trying!

Honestly the solo RPGs I’ve found with the most potential actually advertise themselves as being for kids, with a parent reading/guiding them through it. Things that blur the line between TTRPG and a kids activity book, which is certainly a design space that I think has a lot of potential.

I think my personal ideal is something that straddles the middle ground between Gamebooks, and more ‘traditional’ solo RPGs. CYOA books as adventure modules, stuff like that. Haven’t yet found something that sits comfortably in that space though.

I have soooo many solo rpgs onDownload the latest indie gamesand I have got to make more time to play them. I have literally printed out No One Dies Alone In Revolution but still not goddamn played it. I have played The Wall That Keep On Growing and enjoyed it.

The Dungeon Hero mini zine games seem like they might be near what you're talking about?Dungeon Hero Volume 1: Starter Set by Lone Spelunker

(I have an Impratically Large list of solo ttrpgs on itch)Solo TTRPGs - Collection by Iselmyr