The Toolkit Drawer — Solo RPG Friday, the Founding Episodes
A long flat case arrived at the indexing wing this week, lined with green baize the colour of a hex map. Eight folders rested in it, each in the hand of Daniel (@dungeondive), the cover sheet reading Solo RPG Friday — the foundations. Annexed to the Solo RPGs drawer, one shelf above the Hexcrawls (Solo) run.
The case covers Daniel’s 2022–2023 founding stretch: the first Friday tips column, the three starting-system recommendations that still get cited, and a sequence of tool-by-tool reviews. The catalogue below widens to include the beginner’s guide that preceded the wave, two later companion guides, and two Top 10 round-ups that book-end the period — thirteen entries chronologically.
Exhibit Catalogue
- A Beginner’s Guide to Solo Role Playing — the keyword taxonomy (sandbox, scripted, journalling, oracle-light) that everything afterwards is sorted against.
- A look at Cairn along with the Escape the City module — three stats, a Scars table at exactly zero HP, and a city crawl that punishes you for treating it as Four Against Darkness.
- Let’s Make a Sandbox (Realm Fables) — dropped d20s yield a dead god, a thieves’ market, and a patch of alien blue grass that ties them together by accident.
- 5 (+1) Tips for Starting a Solo RPG — episode one: start small, start in medias res, and when you’re stuck, cheat.
- Three Recommendations for Solo RPG Systems / Combos — Mörk Borg, D100 Dungeon, Scarlet Heroes, each capped at $30, plus Fabled Lands as the gateway gamebook.
- 2D6 Dungeon — for once I’m excited about the combat in a dungeon crawler — primary/secondary dice, Shift points that can’t push 1s or 6s past their edges, and an enemy Interrupt waiting for the wrong number.
- Sandbox Generator — a tool worth its weight in gold — 19-hex regions, up to six interconnecting dungeons per tile, and a tavern-signage generator that exists because of course it does.
- Cartograph — discover a land, draw a map, have an adventure — a map-making game whose output is itself the prep for the next game, with three ways for your cartographer to expire.
- Top 10 Solo RPG Things — a year on from the Three Recommendations, the toolkit reassessed at list length.
- Dragonbane RPG from the solo perspective — Free League’s box reviewed for soloists; bafflingly mundane loot, but Rally-from-zero saves it.
- A guide to solo, analog, dungeon crawls — the dungeon-only companion to the beginner’s guide, drilled into one form factor.
- A Guide to Solo Analog Horror — the second companion, drilled into one mood.
- It’s Fun to Go Alone — Top 10 Solo RPGs — the three-years-on reassessment, triangulated against everything since.
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– The Keeper
Notes the founding Friday column promised episodes, interviews, and let’s-plays in equal measure, and the drawer behind it confirms that all three promises were kept.