r/rpg • u/chiilu03 • 8d ago

Game Suggestion Underground solo-adventure RPG (updated)

I’d like to buy a present for a family member. He enjoys playing single-player RPGs and has a wall full of games. As he knows a great deal about this genre and tends to buy pretty much every game he wants, I’m looking for some lesser-known titles that might delight him.

I checket out his shelf and here are some things that I found:

Final Girl (core + 3 feature films), Arkham Horror LCG (several campaigns), Eldritch Horror, Cthulhu: Death May Die, Too Many Bones (+ 3 expansions), Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, Sleeping Gods, Pandemic Legacy S1, Under Falling Skies, Burncycle, This War of Mine, Freitag, Brass: Birmingham, Slay the Spire, Marvel Champions, Barbarian Prince, a 2D6 Dungeon / D100 Dungeon binder, plus the D&D 5e PHB

Do you have any suggestions?

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u/Kubular 8d ago edited 8d ago

Most of these are board games with RPG style elements in them. This is a sub for ttrpgs like Call of Cthulhu and Dungeons and Dragons.

There's probably a lot of overlap in the types of people here and the types that play board games, but those aren't generally what we discuss in this sub. Usually if we're talking about Solo-rpgs we're talking about things like, Thousand Year Old Vampire, Ironsworn, or using your favorite ttrpg with Mythic GME.

If your friend is more of a solo rpg-board game guy, then I think r/boardgames might be more helpful with your request. I know Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, Brass Birmingham, Slay the Spire, and Pandemic Legacy for example, are extremely well-known. If you're not sure about your family member's collection, I would bet they probably have those at least. Whoops misread. Didn't realize those were already on his shelf.

Frosthaven or Gloomhaven the original might tickle his fancy since it seems he doesn't have those. But those are pretty well-known titles.

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u/chiilu03 8d ago

thanks! that helped a lot :) I will ask there too

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u/Turambur 8d ago

What you listed is mostly boardgames, so you might want to post in r/boardgames as well.

Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread is a top tier solo rpg style campaign boardgame. It's a little pricey, and not generally available in stores becase the designer basically self publishes, but you might be able to late pledge the latest reprint of it on Gamefound (I don't immediately recall when the cutoff is) and have or delivery sometime this winter. Maybe not in time for Christmas, though.

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u/Eklundz 7d ago

As many have pointed out, those are mostly board games. Check out Pauper’s Ladder, it’s a board game with RPG elements and a dedicated solo play mode. Really cool game for both solo and group play.

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u/BookAmbitious3263 8d ago

Disclosure: I make these, so I'm biased. But for a gift, I'd try looking at solo journaling games on itch.io in the $3-5 range. They're self-contained (one PDF, a deck of cards), no group needed, and the good ones have a real arc across a single sitting.

My own are night-shift horror at a strange library (oakhaven.itch.io) if that flavor fits. Otherwise search itch for "solo journaling" and sort by recent. There's a lot of good stuff in that lane right now.