Jessica's Top 3 Solo Journaling RPGs

0:00 hey everyone I'm Jessica and I usually talk about solo board games but today I wanted to dive into a different sort of topic adjacent I promise and that is about getting into solo RPGs through solo journaling RPGs and when I say Journal don't run off because these can take on a lot of different um ways that you actually put it together this does not mean you're writing a book this does not mean that you are keeping a very detailed Journal as you're going through it is just a way of creating prompts without a lot of mechanics to allow you as a solo player to get into the story of a certain RPG so I wanted to go through a couple of ones that really got me interested in this genre I have a huge collection of board games as you can see all over the place but probably I have more solo RPGs or RPGs that I plan to play solo which may be plan slash hope because there are a lot of different options out there and not all of them have to do with fighting or combat there's a lot of cool themes out there and I found that starting off with solo journaling is actually a great way to kind of get into the genre without having to worry about how do I emulate a game master or dungeon master or GM or whatever because as a solo player there's a lot of things to keep in mind but solo RPGs can be great but let's

1:31 take a look at some journaling RPGs so the one that really got me started in this is actually thousand year old vampire which is a I have the really nice print book it's awesome it has like illustrations and it kind of looks like an old style book this one though puts you in the shoes of a vampire um but it does a lot of interesting things so first of all you go back to your origin because before you were a vampire you were a human we assume so in this book and it is about a journey through up to a thousand years and what's significant about that is that when you play RPGs you know time is usually measured in oh we you know we played I've had sessions of RPGs go for hours and we've played for like 30 minutes of in-game time so those are measured usually in small time periods of like up to a week maybe or a couple of months um getting into the years takes a lot this though really does a great job of prompting you in order to actually Advance your character through all these years there's a whole system where you're going to keep track of things like traits and marks characters in the world and most importantly memories and it's a really cool thing here because you can actually lose memories as you go along think about our own lives uh I don't

3:03 remember things from 10 20 30 years ago you don't remember those details that kind of Fade with time and that is what happens with thousand-year-old vampire which is really interesting to see how you can use a memory to sort of help you out with some of these prompts but then over time you may have forgotten how did you become a vampire why am I connected to this character I don't know and it's just a really cool evolution of seeing a character and also seeing a vampire from The Not So vampire side I guess because this is again kind of taking a look at what you would be dealing with as a vampire who was transformed and there's a whole you know it goes through a whole sequence over the years it's really cool because you can also set it within a time period that you want to research a little bit so you can set it within a historical time period bring in pieces that you research and kind of make it your own and that's another thing with solo journaling RPGs they are really there to create somewhat of a framework but you are more than welcome to break rules most of these will say if it works for you just go with it just forget this rule don't use this do whatever I don't find that there's a lot of rules with thousand-year-old vampire that one is more just get into character have some fun see what happens and I had I've played it only once need to play it

4:33 again but I had a really interesting character who developed and who died a terrible death after a good three or four hundred years but it was a very interesting story along the way the next one that really just grabbed me right away was apothecaria which is I think the subtitle I got a ton of extra postcards and other stuff in there surprises abound within this fairly small book uh what is this is a solo potion making RPG in apothecaria you are actually a witch but a good witch who is actually collecting reagents and creating potions and other things to help the townsfolk or adventurers who stopped by who have strange ailments that pop up there's a little bit of humor there and a lot of exploration but what really got me this completely drew me in literally from the first two sentences which I am just going to read real quickly just as the introduction to show you why this drew me in and made me want to jump into this world if you're reading this I'm probably missing or dead let's hope just missing I wish I could be there to explain all this in person but life takes unexpected paths hopefully this journal will be enough to guide you awesome introduction I I was like yes throw me into this immediately and this

6:04 is a very you know this is a great book that has a lot of areas to explore and you are drawing from a deck of cards in order to explore and sort of find what's out there and collect different reagents and ingredients create these potions for villagers it drew me in right away and then the really interesting thing about apothecaria is that it is written in the sense that it's it's a journal that someone put together there's a table of contents so you can locate everything but it's a little bit disjointed but I mean that in a positive sense it does not feel mechanical it does not feel like do this do this do this it's very much it feels like that opening paragraph that someone put this together in the event that they went missing or died and some other witch had to take over what they were doing but there's all different tools that you can pick up along the way you can find a familiar um and that is actually what I had been diving into when I paused indefinitely I'm terrible at continuing on but just as an idea I got so into this I am no artist but I actually yes this is what I started doing I had a blast actually creating the different reagents and attempting to sketch them I'm no artist can you tell but I had so much fun putting this

7:34 together um and actually starting to figure out what I was doing my issue is that if you give me a page this size I'm going to fill it and that takes a lot of work so I am excited to get back into that I had a my last um not victim my last patient um had something going on with metallic fingers and he was I think he was like a blacksmith so this was like really not working for him and it was pretty dangerous so I fixed that and it came up with a potion for that and it's just fun to kind of create this world a little bit but then have some prompts that actually help you get into that um I have not tried it yet so this is not quite a different entry but there is the similar Apothic area that's that's correct that is with a p a w and what this is it's built off of that system in apothecaria but you are playing as a woodland creature who is tending to everybody in the forest and in the region I am super excited to try this one out as well it is a slightly different system though so that's great and in a completely different setting and it's just it's another gorgeous book with all types of illustrations and ideas and just again there's all ailments and let's do that the cool thing about

9:05 apothecary is that it also comes with a map which again may or may not be used break the rules but look at this now look at that map there are so many places to go and it's just all about creating your own story and having a good time Let's Fold that back up correctly but I hope it kind of shows like why I am so excited about these things journaling you can just Dive Right In and again you don't have to write as much as I did this is how I solve that because again I have problems filling in full Pages you put that in front of me and I think I have to fill up that full page during a session so how do you solve that with another Soul journaling RPG be like a crow and then be like a crow that's exactly what you are you are going to choose there are a couple different species to choose from here there's a jack Daw carrion crow Magpie all different types that have different abilities and you are exploring the world around you and kind of growing up as you go uh there's an optional map making system I decided not to do that but to kind of keep it very generic although I have it in my head of you know where certain things were there's the bridge where I got to be careful of because there's a seagull hanging around there causing some problems I don't need to go near there

10:36 there's the playground where there's always some food or some other stuff to find in town and there's cool stuff like that so the biggest thing though that I did with be like a crow is I bought myself a very very tiny journal and what this is is this helps me because I write literally one page for each session or whatever I'm doing so that kept things going I mean this this one probably continued on apparently Nightshade that's the name of my Crow but there's a lot in here I I definitely kept this one going and really had a nice time of having my Crow just kind of travel around as I wrote all these random things down and up next I know what I have to do I need to create a nest because my Crow is starting to grow up and get into the next life stage where they need their own nest cool stuff solo journaling RPGs in general though there are a ton of different themes out there these were the ones that kind of grabbed me and got me really interested in the genre and from that point I have now started again just starting to plan how to get more into solo RPGs in general it's a very fun experience very different from playing multiplayer obviously it's you don't have that collaborative storytelling but you do have a story that can evolve and throw surprises at you and random challenges

12:08 that you didn't expect to come across and I'm going way off the path here but with soul of RPGs I also like to look at those as am I controlling a single character is that like me in the game or am I kind of rooting for a group of characters either one works in the solo journaling space you really just have your own character that you're building up and having those adventures and lots of cool stuff happening but I am continuing to be really excited just seeing these in front of me especially this one this really really was just something that grabbed me um and again I don't know if it's that opening paragraph or if it was just everything combined I found out the other day there's a couple of supplements for this so guess what's on its way to me now and yeah I am excited to keep trying some more of these out um I have no idea if it would be of interest but I have so many other solo RPGs and journaling RPGs I might just bring them on here and just show off what's in my collection and what I hope to do someday because there's just there's so many possibilities especially if you want to get into the genre and you want to tell a story so feel free if you have any recommendations or cool solo RPGs solo journaling RPGs share them in the comments I will definitely take a look because I'm always on the look for more stuff but that is it for now thank you so much

13:39 for watching and I hope you get a chance to play some solo RPGs slash journaling games at some point soon take care bye