🎁 The Soloist's 2024 Gift Guide
Gifts for tabletop gamers recommended by 20 indie designers
You’re reading The Soloist, a newsletter about solo and cooperative tabletop gaming. The Soloist’s 2024 Gift Guide is curated by 20 indie creators.
Most of the selections include a quote from the creator who recommended them. Click on their names to check out their work too!
View the 2023 Gift Guide which includes picks that still make great gifts.
Remember to support your Friendly Local Game Store, online indie game retailers, and the online shops of individual creators when you have the opportunity!
1. Persona Picks
For the 🏹 Solo Survivor
Rangers of Shadow Deep: “Rangers of Shadow Deep is a great solo tabletop skirmish game that allows players to experience a heroic story. It’s a wonderful introduction to both the miniature skirmish and solo roleplaying game hobby. It has easy to understand rules and a solid system for ‘monster’ actions.” — Christian Lindke
For the ⚔️ Wild Wanderer
Kal-Arath: A stand-alone solo and co-op TTRPG with Conan vibes. “Evocative swords and sorcery flavour, with a bunch of expansions recently released! Castle Grief makes quality stuff.” — Brandon Yu (Chaoclypse)
For the 🧵 Creative Crafter
A Mending: A solo story-building and keepsake game about two separated friends. “We love a game that leaves you with a physical artifact of play after the fact, and in how many games do you get to embroider that physical artifact during play? A Mending is a gorgeous solo game from one of the original designers of keepsake games.” — Sam Dunnewold
For the 🍂 Cozy Gamer
Koriko: A Magical Year: “A cozy solo journaling game about discovering a new city as a teenage witch. The game uses Tarot cards and creative writing prompts to help you build a diary of your travels and magical encounters.” — Camila (Crescent Chimera).
For the 🚀 Space Explorer
The World We Left Behind: In this GMless worldbuilding game, 1-5 players are astronauts exploring an alien planet. “The World We Left Behind ignites the thrill of sense of wonder by its true cooperative discovery. A real treat for space lovers.” — Chris Airiau
For the 🎲 Board Gamer
Undaunted 2200 Callisto: “This has been my most anticipated solo board game for quite some time. While the Undaunted series is known for its WWII focus, Callisto takes the action into a gripping sci-fi setting while preserving the core mechanics that made the originals shine. The solo campaign is outstanding with a satisfying experience whether you're playing either side. Absolutely 5 stars! — Jim (The Tabletop Engineer)
For the 👻 Horror Fan
Dwelling Expanded: “This is the definitive version of the award-winning solo roleplaying game and short story by Seb Pines! This rich horror experience invites the reader into a strange new home and asks them to investigate it and themselves. The night is long and the house is strange, find yourself and find your ghosts in the pages of Dwelling.” — Will Jobst
For the 🤔 Path Chooser
To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure: “This one’s almost a decade old, but it’s rare that I can give a ‘basically everyone I know will enjoy this’ recommendation for a solo gamebook. It’s a (very funny) choose-your-own-adventure based on Hamlet written by Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics, lots of other great stuff). I keep it on my workspace shelf for midday breaks!” — ROLLINKUNZ!
For the ✉️ Letter Writer
On the Way to Chrysopoeia: “This two-player epistolary game is both thought-provoking and visually stunning. Play as a master alchemist and their disciple, exchanging letters as they try to complete their great work. One of the most compelling letter-writing games I've come across.” — Samantha Leigh
For the 🌍 World Builder
Auspex: “This is a game that takes a now commonplace tool for solo gaming, the Tarot deck, and asks you to truly divine with it. It features strange and esoteric new spreads, combined with dramatic and desperate characters, you can’t help but cold read them! This is the game for those curious about Tarot reading, and for those who want to use their powers of divination for good... and evil.” — Will Jobst
2. Gift a Subscription
Tumulus: A quarterly compendium of analog gaming inspiration, tools, design theory, and playable content launching soon. Each issue will include articles, games, tables, and art inspired by a specific theme. “Skeleton Code Machine is amazing, and their new quarterly magazine promises more cool game design insights, as well as playable content.” — M. Allen Hall
Wyrd Science: The Soloist’s top pick for tabletop magazines, Wyrd Science spotlights indie games and their creators. Each issue is packed with great content and beautiful artwork. The print edition is a must-have.
3. Accessories for Better Gaming
Pelikan K24 Watercolor Set: “This is the set that taught me to paint, and more importantly, to let go of fine control, and allow the watercolor flow to show me what the page would look like.” — Galen Pejeau
Hexbooks: These physical book and zines of empty hexes are ready for worldbuilding and hexcrawling.
Dungeon Year Design Journal: A perfect companion for solo players and worldbuilders, chock full of rolling tables, space for journaling, sketching.
Baron Smell Bones Scented Dice Baron Smelly Bones Scented Dice: “Everyone (that I know) likes dice, and dice that smell pleasantly of various themed materials are novel enough to make a great gift. They’re not too expensive, but they’re substantial enough that one might hesitate to impulse purchase them for oneself. I really like the choices of scents: dirt/fresh grass, burnt wood, old books... they're thematic, but not overpowering.” — ROLLINKUNZ!
Hobonichi Planners: “Sean McCoy (of Mothership fame) is to blame for this one, I think. He was using a Hobonichi for his D23 project, and I'll be buying one for every year from here on out. They’re just neat!” — Galen Pejeau
Muji Notebooks: “Every RPG-er needs good notebooks. Muji make a fantastic range of them that many writers and artists swear by. I know I'm hoping to get some this holiday season!” — Murkdice
Hightide’s Nahe General Purpose Case: “Store your notebook, nice pens and dice, ready to game at any moment. Stylish and infinitely useful.” — Alfred Valley
Regional Playing Cards from TaroBear’s Lair: I’ve spent a lot of time lately learning traditional card games on pagat.com, and many of them require special suited decks of cards. My personal favorite is the Tarock deck, but I'd also recommend the Lombarde 6 if you’re looking for a standard French-suited deck to play your favorite solo games with. Other good ones are the Spanish-suited Baraja Española and the German-suited Salzburger.” — Adam Bell
Hierofante: This is a Spanish language system for using Tarot for playing tabletop RPGs. “I am a big fan of Hierofante. The way it encourages the use of the Tarot as an oracle for solo play has opened up unimaginable possibilities for me.” — Mario | La esquina del rol
Pagan Otherworlds Tarot: “This gorgeous, high-quality Tarot deck is one of my absolute favourites. The beautiful images used for the cards were all hand-painted using traditional oils, and the copy hand-lettered. The deck combines themes of nature, folklore, philosophical spiritualism and art into a wonderfully inspirational tool for tarot-based RPGs and readings alike.” — Emma Grier
Strike Gently’s Pins and Blankets: I came across Strike Gently when I was searching for images of frog-folk warriors (I’m playing an amphibian paladin in a campaign). Their enamel pins and cotton blankets have funny and awesome designs — and yes, froggy heroes.
4. Last Roll 🎲
I’ve abandoned my X account and have moved to Bluesky. There is already a huge community of indie tabletop creators and players on the platform and it seems to be growing fast. I created a Solo TTRPG Starter Pack to make it easy to find and follow your favorite designers and artists. Let me know if you have any additions to recommend!
Every single one of these sounds rad as hell.
Hey, thanks for the Tumulus mention! Great guide, as always!