D&D is a worldwide phenomenon and recently, as of 2020, 50 million people have played the game since it first launched. It is a game built on cooperation and sociability and with this many players you would find it hard to imagine that sometimes you just can’t get a D&D group together, but it can happen. Another key trope of D&D is that it is a game that stretches as far as one’s own imagination and that is what makes Solo D&D possible.
Table of Contents
- Can you play D&D alone by yourself?
- The Basics of Solo D&D
- D&D Solo Adventure Books
- What About a Quick Solo D&D experience?
- Where to Play D&D Online Alone
- Single Player D&D apps
- Online Tools for D&D Solo Play
- Solo D&D: Is it worth it?
Can you play D&D alone by yourself?
Yes, of course! We would not have gone through the trouble of telling you how if it was not possible!
What situations would you play D&D Alone?
Well, there are a couple of situations:
- You and your friends work shift patterns, making it hard to meet up. Most D&D campaigns require a lot of regular attention, it is sometimes not possible if you work random shifts, like say the police.
- D&D is not particularly popular in your country. The game does have a global reach with over 50 million people having played, but a good 20 million of those were in the US, so sometimes it is harder to get a group together.
There are, of course other reasons of wanting to play solo, but these are just a few examples.
What are the Benefits of playing D&D Alone?
It is not all bad, there are actually some benefits of solo play, these might include:
- Trying out a new role – Maybe you never have been a DM before, getting some practical experience alone can be a great way to hone your skills for you first campaign and let you test out some campaign concepts.
- Trying out a new character – It is nice to experiment and doing this alone stops you slowing down the pace of campaign with other people.
- Learn a deeper understanding of the rules – a lot of people learn by doing, as much as you can just read the rule book and try to understand it, sometimes it is a lot better to learn practically. Also, you might experience some edge cases and so you will have the benefit of knowing which way the ruling should go during a cooperative campaign.
- Play anytime – playing solo means that you are not restricted to other people’s schedules. If you fancy playing D&D Friday evening, just do it; it requires less planning.
The Basics of Solo D&D
This section will help you understand and plan the core sections of a solo dungeons and dragons experience.
Adventure Selection
For a truly random experience you can try using DMG random campaign tables. It significantly reduces the necessary preparation time for any DM giving you ideas for government types, world-shaking events, discoveries, and dungeon goals. In addition, you can find an online fantasy map generator to build your world.
Alternatively, you could check out some D&D solo adventure books where the story is already pre-determined. There is two schools of thoughts when playing with published adventures. First, read the entire story before you start your adventure – sometimes this is helpful when playing by yourself because you have no one to help you when you get lost. Second, learn the story as you are playing, this is a little more immersive and more regular to a normal D&D experience, when a DM is narrating the story. The downside of this method is that it requires you to have a good, deep rooted understanding of D&D narrative themes so you do not get lost, so it might not be best for beginners.
Character Creation
Character creation can be one of the most important things in solo D&D, indeed in D&D in general. If you do not already have a character in mind, one of the best places to look is the D&D beyond character creator which is a tool incredibly well received in the community. It also has suggestions for solo builds which is right up our street!
Typically we would recommend Warlocks, Paladins, Fighters, and Rogues for the most straightforward experience, but you can make it as easy or as complicated as you want. It very much is your adventure when it comes to solo D&D.
The Benefit of NPCs
It is often fun to have a companion on your D&D campaign and some quests or tasks might require you to partner up with someone. In this case you can get an NPC to join your party for certain stretches of the adventure. How much involvement they have is up to you. Maybe you will iron out their motivations, dreams, and let them level with the player character for the entire campaign. In other cases, it might be easier to stat block them. This is recommended if you only see the NPC as a temporary character in the adventure because it takes less management on your side.
D&D Solo Adventure Books
Preparation for a D&D campaign is probably the longest part of setting up a solo game. Using solo adventure books can speed up this process dramatically. We will split it up into two subsections. First, gameplay books – which help you understand solo D&D mechanics a bit better. Second, narrative and story books which help build a world and set you and your campaign goals.
Gameplay Books
- DM Yourself – This book teaches you the modifications to play a game of dungeons and dragons by yourself. It works much better with a linear type story, but thankfully that is the nature of the narrative books that we will discuss later, so they go well hand in hand.
- Solo Adventurers Guide – This one has some helpful tables at the back that help you make the decisions a DM would normally make, but from a third party perspective.
- The Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox – A one stop shop for dungeons and dragons 5E tools. It contains guidance on encounters, modes of travel, camping, generation of NPCs and more.
- Players Guide to Solo Roleplay – This is not specifically a D&D book, but explains how to build adventures. It walks you through plot hooks, encounters, showdowns and resolutions. This is best if you want to build your own world from scratch, rather than using a pre-published book.
- The Monsters Know What They’re Doing – A great resource to help DMs get idea for monster tactics and allow you to create clever monsters. This comes as a series of four core books by the author Keith Ammann.
Narrative and Story Books
The following books can be found at DMsguild and can help lay the foundations for your new D&D campaign’s world.
- To Hell and Back Again
- The Test of High Sorcery
- The Death Knight’s Squire
- Drums at Daggerford
- Caught In A Wizard’s Web
What About a Quick Solo D&D experience?
Sometimes you don’t want to be committed to a whole book or published campaign. These can takes weeks or even months to finish, especially when you are having to squeeze in and find time to play. For a quicker, more dungeon crawl experience, we’d recommend the 5E random dungeon generator, by donjon.
There’s a great deal of customizability, from dungeon size, dungeon layouts, door type and more. a The site sees around 3000-4000 dungeons generated per day, so it is certainly well used.
Where to Play D&D Online Alone
We have given some published narrative books above, but there are also some online options out there. Most come in the form of gamebooks and these are the best solo D&D experience, but there are also a couple of surprises that we found while researching.
Artemis Games
This website has a series of Story driven solo RPG game books in their catalogue that you can check out. It is a small team, but it is free and worth checking out. A lot of people in the D&D community do these kind of things as a passion project, so it is not exactly a professional endeavour, but provides helpful tools nonetheless.
Project Aon
Project Aon is an online resource for free gamebooks that authors have generously allowed to be published for free. Most notably, the Lone Wolf series have been published detailing the tales of a warrior-monk seeking vengeance for his clan’s defeat. A great feature about playing through a series of gamebooks is that in this case, you are able to take skills and items gained in one book to another and progress the adventure.
DnD.Chromesphere
DnD.Chromesphere is a great individual effort into creating an online single-player D&D experience. It offers a full Dragonshore campaign, the creator’s own world, as well as smaller dungeon crawls. There are, however, 2 key comments. First, the site is mostly based on 4E rules, so you need to watch out for that. Second, you will need all your own equipment such as dice and dungeon tiles.
Dungeon Hack
Dungeon hack is actually a bit of a blast from the past, published in 1993 it is role playing video game based on the Forgotten Realms. It might not quite be a true D&D tabletop experience, but certainly worth looking at if you are looking for an video game solo experience. It can be found at numerous sources online.
Single Player D&D apps
Random Dungeon Generator 5e/pf – Paid
Random Dungeon Generator is a paid for app costing $1.99 at the time of writing – a relatively cheap sum for the rare single player dungeons and dragons experience. There is a great deal of customizability in the app. It allows you to pick the CR level; the environment, like dungeons, caves, ruins and more; enemy types, such as orcs, undead and demons. The app functions relatively similarly to the random dungeon generator by donjon, but with a couple of extra features on top and slightly more visually appealing.
One Page Solo Engine – Free
One Page Solo Engine is a super simplistic stand in GM. Ironically, it actually has better reviews than the paid for Random Dungeon Generator we just discussed. The app is able to generate quests, NPCs and dungeon locations, but will give all of this in text. It is not incredibly intuitive, but its free and certainly does the job.
Dungeon Dice – Free
This app is just the dice, but we wanted to include it as it is helpful. The app also lets you throw multiples of any dice
Online Tools for D&D Solo Play
In this section we will just quickly detail the best place to find dice rollers, character sheets and more.
- Rolladie – This site really is what it says on the tin, lets you roll any dice. In our case we want a d20.
- Character Creator – This character creator by DND beyond is one of the best out there.
- Character Sheets – Used to track adventures and upgrade characters.
- Fantasy Map Generator – Aazgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator is great – it is pretty heavy on your browser though!
Solo D&D: Is it worth it?
It is actually pretty hard to find good, solid information on Solo D&D. There is two key reasons. First, the game is designed as a cooperative experience with social interaction, it is almost always more fun to play Dungeons and Dragons with other people, but there is also no reason you can’t play alone if you want to. Second, much of the work around it are passion projects, the authors are not always getting paid for the gamebooks they are working on. It means there are often less around and unfortunately, real life can get in the way of passion projects. Overall though, Solo D&D can be great fun, you get to try new characters, experiment with new campaign concepts and a lot of the time, you can do it from the comfort of your own sofa!
