🎁 The Soloist Gift Guide

Games for every persona recommended by 30+ indie designers & players

Dec 13, 2023

Welcome to The Soloist, a newsletter about solo and cooperative tabletop gaming. The Soloist’s Gift Guide is curated by over 30 indie creators and players, with games and gaming gear for everyone (including yourself). Dive into the community-built collection and feel free to add your favorite picks in the comments below!

Our guide primarily includes online merchants, but when you can, shop locally and support small businesses!

1. Persona Picks: Games for Every Player

For the 🏰 Dungeon Delver

Four Against the Darkness — Classic solo dungeon exploration with a focus on fighting monsters, following quests, and finding treasure. For fans of the system, the 400-page city supplement Treacheries of the Troublesome Towns was released this month.
Spire’s End — A narrative-first 'choose your path' horror adventure with an intense combat mechanic played with 128 oversized playing cards.

For the⌛ Time Traveller

Project ECCO — Time travel across the pages of a planner, writing in and marking up the dates based on prompts as you go. Perfect for the New Year!
The Loop — A quirky cooperative game where everyone must unite to battle the evil Dr. Faux. Players are Temporal Agents tasked with gathering powerful artifacts, defying the Doctor's clones, and sabotaging his maniacal machine.

For the 🚀 Space Explorer

Dungeon Discoveries: Sci-Fi Searches — This deck of cards offers system-agnostic worldbuilding ideas for solo and cooperative sci-fi adventures.
Five Parsecs from Home — A solo miniatures wargame adventure that blends sci-fi combat with crew progression and exploration. Perfect for the sci-fi mini collector. For the experienced Five Parsecs player, consider the recently released third expansion, Fixer’s Guidebook.

For the ☕ Cozy Gamer

Dragon Dowser — Rescue and raise dragons in this journaling game. Available in print December 15 (or as a digital download now).
You are a Muffin — Play as a pastry in a cozy café. Each customer will place an order and perhaps take a seat to stay a while. There’s a chance that they might choose you as their snack (which is better than getting stale).

For the 🔍 Mystery Solver

Curios: Albrecht Manor — An immersive horror mystery that unfolds through a series of beautifully detailed letters and clues. Perfect for the paranormal fan.

For the 🌍 World Builder

An Altogether Different River — A GM-less RPG where 2 to 4 players collaboratively create and map out a town's past and present, developing characters who either left and returned or never left at all.
Hexcrawl Toolbox — A deluxe worldbuilding accessory for use with fantasy RPGs. It contains 150 physical hex tiles for eight biomes, a guidebook on how to set-up and run a hexcrawl, and a ton of fun extras.

For the 👻 Horror Fan

Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa — In this new 340-page (PDF-only) solo campaign, you procedurally generate your own version of the mysterious city of Carcosa and explore it with your investigator.
The Last Voyage of the Barcosa — In this creepy journaling game, you are on the crew of a doomed trading ship sailing across the Atlantic in 1802.

For the 🧙‍♀️ Witch or Wizard

Tangled Blessings — A solo journaling or two-player RPG inspired by dark academia media, ghost stories, and graduate school. Featuring a wizarding college, wandering specters, assigned houses, curses, and more supernatural flavor.
Village Witch — In this solo journaling game, you have just completed your training to become a village witch. You have a year to find a place in which to make your life.

2. Gifts for Better Gaming

RPG Zine Club — Plus One Exp offers a subscription service providing monthly zines, an online community for discussion and play, and membership options catering to different genres.
DriveThruRPG Gift Certificate — Why settle for a generic Amazon Gift Card when you can give a shoping spree at the largest RPG download store?
Blackwing Pencils — These are my go-to pencils (and sharpeners) for work, drawing, gaming, and journaling. I even have a Volumes subscription where I get a surprise set of pencils every three months.

Creator Recommendations

The Green Man deck from **Jocu Playing Cards**

“I'm a big fan of Jocu Playing Cards. 🃏 They sent me a couple of decks when we were discussing a collaboration and they are just so beautiful and well made.” — Anna Blackwell, Blackwell Games“

An A5 traveler's journal is on my wishlist this year. 📖 Basically a single place where I can store a solo zine and a notebook.” — Cassi Mothwin, The Sticker Game

“Crimson Eye Tarot!” — Samantha Leigh, Blinking Birch Games

“I made my girlfriend a solo game travel-kit! 🧳 I put a mini tarot deck and a mini deck of playing cards, a small journal, a small pencil and a couple dice inside a vending machine capsule.” — Justin Vandermeer, Shouting Crow Games

“Bullet Journaling for Gamemasters by Berin Kinsman. ✍️ Although not written with the soloist in mind, I found this book to be the key that unlocked physical journaling for me.” — Peter Rudin-Burgess, Parts per Million

“I have an oil diffuser that I like to use while I’m playing, to aid the atmosphere. 🪔 Candles work well too!” — Jack Harrison, Mousehole Press

“Blackwing Pencils and pencil supplies!” ✏️ — Eric Reitz, Reaction Rolls

“I have so much fun using rub-on or transfer letters when creating my journal entries or even my own zine. 🔠 A great analog way of creating nice headers & weird art!” — Peter Eijk, Monster Mind

3. Year End Bundles

Solo RPG Library — Discover solo RPG adventures for various systems, including indie hits and OSR classics, in Parts Per Million's pay-what-you-want bundle. Available through December 16.
Games and Mental Health Bundle — Three games for mental well-being are on sale from Peregrine Coast Press.
Ind of the Year Bundle — This bundle includes indie games released in 2023 and is available on itchio until the end of the year.
Gila RPGs End of 2023 Sale — The creator of solo-favorite RUNE has 23 games and supplements for 25% off through December — grab the entire collection for $50.

4. 🎲 Last Roll

The folks at the My First Dungeon podcast are celebrating the season with an improv Hallmark movie available on Christmas. Using Hometown Holiday, the tabletop RPG of holiday romance by Nick Tourville, the crew is promissing “The best, worst holiday movie you’ve yet to see!”
The Lost Bay Studio is wrapping up Corpse Snatchers XMAS, a solo survival adventure set in a mall. It’s releasing in preview right before Christmas.

Please share your own gift recommendations in the comments.