Solo TTRPGs timeline

A few years ago, we tried to write a "History of solo RPGs". It was first for a French TTRPGs magazine, but also by curiosity. Here is the resulting timeline.

Thanks to all the people who helped complete this timeline. Please let us know if you see any changes to be made. And let me know if I made big English mistakes. (And also if you know how to use CSS in a ZIP folder uploaded on itchio, because it should look like the picture below but… well.) Thanks!

1. 1970-75

   First solo rules (for wargames)

   1. 1973 • First guide to play as a singleplayer to wargames

      Solo Wargaming seems to be the first published guide to play as a singleplayer to wargames. This guide (192 pages) writen by Donald Featherson, which is --according to this Wikipedia page-- a prolific author of wargames and history books. You can read the table of contents on dougssoldiers.blogspot.com.

      1973 • The first solo-only wargame (?)

      The Fall of Rome seems to be the first wargame fully designed to be played as singleplayer. Writen by John Young, this game is described on BoardgameGeek.com

   2. 1975 • Solo rules for D&D

      First version of D&D, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargame was published in 1974 January. The following year was published the first issue of The Strategic Review, featuring "Solo Dungeon Adventures", solo rules to explore dungeon.

      • You can download this first issue of The Strategic Review on RPGGeek.com (or direct link: annarchive.com/files/Strv101.pdf).
      • Watch this video showing these pages about solo rules:

   3. 1975 • First interactive fictions and roleplaying videogames

      Based on the tabletop one, the DND videogame was made by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood, two computer-science students. ^{[Wikipédia source]}

      On the same year are made the first interactive fictions (or text-adventures) : Adventure and Castle. Made possible thanks to programs of the late 1960s ^{[Wikipédia source]}

      Though these were solo computer games, they were influenced by --and probably have influenced-- solo TTRPGs.

2. 1976-79

   First appearance of the 'role playing' term, in Bunnies & Burrows.

   1. 1976 • First solo adventures, the gamebooks before gamebooks

      First singleplayers' adventures were published the year the 'role playing' word first appeared in a published book!

      Buffalo Castle, seems to be the first singleplayer adventure published for a roleplaying game. It was an adventure for Tunnels & Trolls from Flying Buffalo. It was an introduction adventure similar to gamebooks but a few years before gamebooks. It was writen by Ken St Andre. To learn more, check RPGGeek.com and T&T Wikipedia.

   1. 1976 • Wargamers are opening solo clubs

      Solo wargaming seems to grow alongside TTPRGs:

      • solo adventures published as 'introductions' to games (such as Imperium Romanum, by Al Nofi)
      • and the founding of The Solo Wargamers Association, followed by various guides and magazines in the 1980s (e.g. Military Modeling: Guide to solo wargaming and the Lone Warriors magazine).

      For more about solo wargaming history, check CreativeTwilight.com/solo-wargaming

   2. 1979 • The first singleplayer-only roleplaying game

      January, 79, Games Publications published Kandroc Keep : a Solitaire Dungeon, a 52-pages game writen by Brian K. Asbury and fully playable as a singleplayer.

3. 1980-1999

   Plethora of English-writen solo adventures. And first French-writen translations and creations.

   1. 1980 • The "first French roleplaying game" is a GM-less game for 1 to 7 player(s)

      Le Château des sortilèges, advertised as the "first French roleplaying game" is published in the summer issue of Jeux et Stratégies magazine. We can read on this ad: "You'll be able to play alone, in duet, three or even up to six or seven players. There won't be a Dungeon Master." You can freely read this French magazine at abandonware-magazines.org.

   2. 1980 • First solo mini-adventures

      Circle of Ice and The Abyss are the first solo mini-adventures published for the T&T game. Writen by Paul Creelman, edited by Michael Stackpole. It was published in the "Pocket Adventures" series by Flying Buffalo.

   3. 1984 • French translation for Tunnels & Trolls, advertised as "The first singleplayer roleplaying game"

      We can find a bilingual ad in Runes magazine, issue 7, advertising the newly French translation of Tunnels & Trolls. This ad tells « le premier jeu de rôle en solitaire. Jouez sans meneur ni partenaires. Égoïstement ! » which means "the first singleplayer roleplaying game. Play with no guide nor partners. Selfishly!"

      You can check this magazine on runes-le-magazine.com/runes-07

      

   4. Late 1980s • French translation of numerous adventures

      We found that the 80s was a time of numerous translations of solo adventures and rules (Tunnels & Trolls, L'Œil Noir, RuneQuest, D&D, Call of Cthulhu, GURPS…) Many of these adventures seems to be linear, branching scenarios, similar to gamebooks --which seems logical given that many publishing houses published both TTRPGs and gamebooks.

4. 2000-2019

   Growing avaibility of the Internet: everyone can now discuss online and share their creations.

   1. 2006 • Mythic Game Master Emulator

      Mythic Game Master Emulator, is published, writen by T. Pigeon. It's a tool to emulate a Game Master for any game so you can play solo to any group game, using probabilities with dice rolls and closed questions (questions which can only be answered by Yes or No). It seems to be the first published GM emulator.

   2. 2008 • How to Host a Dungeon

      First version of How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler. It's a drawing game, to retrace the genesis of a dungeon as you draw it.

      2009 • Sweet Agatha

      Release of Sweet Agatha, an investigation game by Kevin Allen Jr.

   3. 2011 • Solo Gaming Appreciation Day

      November, the 11 (11.11.2011) was declared the "Solo Gaming Appreciation Day" by John Fior on his Solo Nexus blog and Google+ community. The aim was to celebrate by creating and sharing random tables, game reports, anecdotes, etc. on social media and personal blogs.

      For this occasion, the RPG Solitaire Challenge was launched by Emily Care Boss, to encourage people to create. This online event contributed to the visibility of singleplayer roleplaying.

      • Check the website : RPG SolitaireChallenge.blogspot.com

   4. 2013 • Ruins of the Undercity

      The dungeon-crawling game Ruins of the Undercity, is published, writen by Patrice 'Kabuki Kaiser' Crespy.

   5. 2014• Founding of the Lone Wolf Roleplaying community (?)

      According to the forum archives, Alex Yari created the Lone Wolf Roleplaying G+ community back in 2014, which became a leading place to speak (in English) about solo TTRPGs. This community is still active but has now migrated to Reddit and Discord.

      • Archives Google+ on tapatalk.com

   6. 2015 • The Lone Wolf Roleplaying launches the Solo Gaming Appreciation Month

      Though John Fior thought the Solo Appreciation Day would be a one-time event in 2011, the Lone Wolf Roleplaying community decided to relaunch the concept in 2015 for whole November month. And make it an annual event. This event still takes place on social media each year on November.

      • Check the first website : SoloGamingMonth.com

   7. 2015 • Generic guides to solo roleplaying

      In the 2010s, several guides were published about how to adapt group games to solo play. Following GM emulators (such as the Mythic Game Master Emulator from 2006), these guides use random tables, open and closed questions, etc., simplifying these techniques or adding tips.

      We don't know what was the first published guide, so I decided to use the year 2015 matching the Guide to Playing Alone by Cabbage Games. It may not the first guide, please tell us if you know a formerly published guide.

   8. 2015-2016 • The first French-writen solo TTRPGs

      Before 2015, there seemed to only have been translations. Now there are French-writen creations. Such as Happy, a conteplative-meditative game by Gaël Sacré, that could have been the first French creation to have been released in print. There were also other creations, mainly digital format such as: Apocalypse 1P by Pak Cormier (based on Apocalypse World, made for a "1-page games" forum challenge) ; the dungeon-crawling Seul dans les souterrains by Cyol ; the cards Muses & Oracles by Pierre Gavard-Colenny.

   9. 2016 • Quill, the first published epistolary game (?)

      Quill: a letter-writing roleplaying game for a single player, by Scott Malthouse, encourages players to write real letters to fictitious characters, in a medieval setting. Several supplements were then writen in other settings.

   10. 2016 • First dungeon-crawler without board to be succesfull (?)

       Four Against Darkness is a dungeon-crawler game writen by Andrea Sfiligoi.

   11. 2017 • Die Heart blog

       End of 2017, Sophia Brandt launches her DieHeart.net blog and maintains a page that will become popular amongst solo-players: the Solo RPG Resources listing numerous games and systems.

   12. 2018 • Growing popularity

       Several games seems to gain popularity, both in the English-speaking scene and the French one. Which gave more visibility to solo roleplaying.

       Ironsworn

       This game has been published in January by Shawn Tomkin. It was designed to be played according three ways: guided (GM) group, GMless cooperative group, and sngleplayer. It was the entry door into the solo-TTRPG scene for a lot of people, at least French ones since it was translated on the same year.

       • Website: ironswornRPG.com

       Alone Among the Stars

       This one-page game was writen and digitaly released in January by Takuma Okada. It became popular to the point of quickly being reskinned and hacked by a lot of Internet people. It has even been adapted in an audio format, a Twine interactive fiction and a Twitter bot.

       • Page gathering this game, plus its hacks and reskins : Alone at the Table on itch.io
       • The interactive version : Twine version

       Thousand Year Old Vampire

       Release of the digital version of Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings. A writing game to play a vampire evolving through centuries. The first printed version was crowdfunded the following year. This game was so successfull it has since been re-printed twice and received three ENnies prices in 2020 (an event where prices depends on thousands of internet users' votes). .

   13. 2018 • Opening the Solo Roleplaying Reddit group.

       In April is created this group on Reddit, gathering people from Google+ but also a growing number of new people discovering solo TTRPG. This group is used to share and talk but also gather a bunch of links and resources.

   14. 2019 • No more Google+

       Announced in 2018, the definitive closure of Google+ happened in 2019 April. It was a social media structured by hobbies groups. The Lone Wolf Roleplaying group migrated to other platforms such as Discord, Reddit, BoardGameGeek, MeWe, Tapatalk and itchio, with more or less loss of impetus for some.

   15. 2019 • Flood of projects on itchio

       A few roleplayers were already on itchio but 2019 is the year of the boom. This platform mainly dedicated to indie videogames allow anyone to share online their projects (games, comics, musics, etc.) Many TTRPGs game jams are also hosted on itchio since 2019.

       Seeing that a lot of people were uploading their games without tags such as "solo" or "singleplayer", a list gathering itchio games specifically designed to be played alone was created the same year: : The Hermits Club.

   16. 2019 • First daily writing game crowdfunded (?)

       The Wishing Sigil, writen by Banana Chan and Doug Levadowski, has been crowdfunded in November. It's based on mailing newsletters and Advent calendars: players receive a daily mail containing games informations ("prompts" and "story") you need to play. This principle is now used in other solo TTRPGs.

5. 2020+: Nowadays

   1. 2021 • A solo game ahead the whole ZineQuest

      The ZineQuest is an annual event encouraging people to create and publish TTRPGs zines, crowfunded on Kickstarter, since 2017.

      In 2021, Bucket of Bolts, a singleplayer zine, collected both the most backers and the most money: 3919 backers which is 1000 more than the runner-up, and $101k which is twice of the runner-up. Bucket of Bolds is a game writen by Jack Harrison, to play a spaceship and its captains over the years.

      Other singleplayers games were also top 10 of this "ZineQuest." There were, since this year, more and more solo games and tools uploaded on crowdfunding platforms.

      • Sources: BoneBoxChant.wordpress.com