🍂 The Cozy RPG Issue
Seven comfy GM-less & solo RPGs, interview with Alone series and Stewpot creator Takuma Okada, and more.
1. Seven Cozy Solo & GM-less RPGs
In the Northern Hemisphere, it's getting darker, colder, wetter — ideal for settling in with a hot drink, a warm blanket, and a comforting game. Here are a few recommendations.
🏞️ Wanderhome
In this award-winning GM-less game, you and a group of animal-folk travel through tranquil settings and changing seasons. Each player creates a character with the help of one of 15 playbooks, making choices about their personality, animal-form, look, and passions. There is no combat or dice in Wanderhome. Instead, you can inconvenience yourself or step outside your comfort zone in order to get tokens, and then turn around and spend them to tackle larger problems. Wanderhome was created by Jay Dragon and Possum Creek Press. Explore the Unofficial Wanderhome Discord Server for jams, playbooks, story sharing, and more.
🍃 Iron Valley
In this solo or GM-less RPG based on Ironsworn, you take on the role of a resident starting a new life in a small rural community. Maybe you’ll explore the mysterious forest beyond town or fix up your family’s farm. Recent rules updates have simplified moves and added more oracle tables, an Animal Crossing-like gifting system, and more options for raising livestock. Iron Valley was created by M. Kirin.
♻️ Scraps
As a Scrapper combing the ruins of an ancient civilization, you hunt for unique ingredients for crafting a better world. Scraps is focused on harmony with nature, sharing, and exploration without combat. Gameplay unfolds in phases, from planning your expedition to gathering resources, and finally crafting your inventions. The game uses tables for random events and moves that guide your actions. Scraps is by Cezar Capacle.
👨🌾 Grandpa’s Farm
You’ve inherited a long-neglected farm and will spend the next four years getting it running again. Each turn, you’ll draw from a deck of playing cards and interpret them to determine the progress made on your farm during a season. You’ll then chronicle your efforts by writing a letter to a loved one. Optional mechanics allow you to alter your deck by trading or competing at local festivals. For one or more players, Grandpa’s Farm by Tyler Crumrine is beautifully illustrated by Evlyn Moreau.
🧙♀️ The Magical Year of a Teenage Witch
You are a young witch navigating a transformative year. Through answering prompts, you create stories that explore friendships, magical experiences, and evolving powers. As the seasons pass, your character gains and modifies traits. The Magical Year has a low-conflict, optimistic tone, focused on warm relationships and everyday moments sprinkled with magic. Playable solo or with a group, it also supports asynchronous play-by-post, where one player mentors others. The Magical Year was created by Sky Latshaw.
🍳 My Mother’s Kitchen
You play as the author of your family’s original cookbook, robbed of memory and trapped as a spirit. Guide your inheritors through centuries and generations. Every time someone makes a recipe from your book, you’ll draw tarot cards and roll dice to remember who you are and why you’re trapped. Hopefully one of your decendants will help you finally rest in peace. My Mother’s Kitchen is by Fleet Detrik.
Coming soon:
🍲 Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern
With your days of exploring dungeons and fighting monsters behind you, your adventuring party has settled down and opened a tavern. You will scramble to cook something edible with random ingredients, bartend for troubled souls, calm down tavern brawls, go shopping supplies, and much more in this GM-less collection of mini-games for three or more players. Stewpot by Takuma Okada will soon be published by Evil Hat Productions. See the latest production status update here.
2. Takuma Okada: Creator of Stewpot
Meet Takuma. a musician and game designer best known for the pioneering journaling game Alone Among the Stars. They are also the creator of Stewpot, the co-op game about running a fantasy tavern, which completed its playtest last year and is in the final stages of publishing development at Evil Hat Productions.
Your "Alone" games are some of the most recommended and well known solo RPGs. What makes them so popular?
They're exploration games! At their core, I wanted to throw the traits of a specific environment in and combine them to make cool new things. I've always liked exploring, whether it was hiking or wandering through an old city like Venice. I think they also tend to have a meditative mood, probably because I first wrote Alone Among the Stars after some late night sessions of No Man's Sky.
I think the major selling point for a lot of people is how easy it is to jump into playing. Because there's very little setup and the rules are simple, you can start playing in just a few minutes. I've heard a lot of people describe it as a good writing exercise, or getting them into a flow state. It's approachable, and how much you want to describe is up to you. I personally like seeing how evocative and moody I can get with as few words as possible, and I generally don't play for more than 15-30 minutes at a time. I used to really enjoy playing the Twitter bot version that Matthew R.F. Balousek created, and fitting a journal entry into 280 characters was a great challenge.
How does Stewpot compare to your other projects?
It's my longest game by far, both in size and the time I've spent working on it. I would say that while it's still intended for a one-shot like a lot of my other games, it has much more in its toolbox. While I usually design games based on a specific experience I'm trying to evoke, Stewpot goes one layer further and splits that specific experience into even smaller fragments, with a mini-game designed for each one. I think it's a great GM-less game for players of all experience levels for that reason.
Evil Hat is in the process of publishing a print version. Can you describe how that is different from the version available online now?
So the new version of Stewpot will look completely different. The text is basically done. It's been through several passes with an editor and design consultants since the most recent published version. It'll also have a new layout and tons of art. I'm really excited to share more about it with everyone, and anyone who bought the game on Itch.io previously will be able to download the new final PDF version at the end of the process.
What would people who play your games find surprising about you?
I'm an online gamer! Even before the pandemic, from the start of my game design career I've been playing and designing TTRPGs for online play, and I haven't played a campaign in person since I started making games. I think playing and making and talking about TTRPGs with people all over the world has been one of the best parts of being involved in games.
Go Deeper
The short running Tavern Hunter podcast interviewed Takuma about why they started writing games and the origins of Stewpot.
Play a free online version of Alone Among the Stars.
3. 🎲 Last roll
Solotober
This month
, the creator of the beautiful MIRU solo hex crawling RPGs, has launched The Atopia Post substack. Check out the current “Solotober” series focused on solo boardgames. Also, be on the lookout for Hinokodo’s upcoming Kickstarter for Pondus.
Dicebreakers’s 10 wholesome RPGs
This video is a year old but is a great round-up of mostly traditional RPGs, but includes the solo game Apawthecaria and GM-less Felt, Friendship, and Feelings.
Stardew Iron Valley
Thomas, from Board Games with Thomas, uses Iron Valley to play the video game Stardew Valley as a tabletop RPG.
Cozy crowdfunding
Wondrous Creatures is an innovative worker placement tabletop board game for 1 - 4 players where you collect fantastic creatures to create the best nature reserve. Funding on Kickstarter through Nov. 13.
Our Woodland Gods is a GM-less tabletop RPG where you explore ancient horrors via the safe, cozy lens of a "mostly-innocent" animal-folk village. Funding on Kicstarter through Nov. 13.
Nonbinary Tabletop Award
Cozy game creator Snowbright Studio has launched a new award program celebrating works that uplift nonbinary gender representation and advocacy in tabletop games. Submissions close Nov. 17. Get more information here.
Meet me at PAX Unplugged
I will be heading to PAX: Unplugged for the first time and would love to meet up with creators and readers of The Soloist. I’d esspecially like to talk to designers of solo and co-op tabletop boardgames and RPGs about upcoming projects so I can cover them in future issues of the newsletter. Leave a note in the comments below or send me a DM through Discord or X, both @beekzor.
I'll be at PAX! Unless something changes, I should be at the Plus One EXP booth most of it.
I released a solo rpg last week. It’s called Plight. It is free. It’s at qstmkr.itch.io. Hardbacks on Lulu coming soon.