Wondering why you might want to try playing Dungeons & Dragons solo? Here are some of my top reasons you should try solo play:
With D&D Beyond and a dice roller on your phone, tablet, or laptop, or with pen and paper, you can play pretty much anywhere. And with session length totally under your control (I’ve had fun playing a single round of combat as a session) you can squeeze more D&D into your days.
Not only can sessions be short, you can fit more into each session. With social interaction and exploration mostly playing out in your imagination, and with fewer player characters in the encounters, the number of encounters per session goes way up.
Because of the dense action, you may find that you level up a lot more quickly than in group play. I estimate my 1-20 solo campaign set in Avernus took about 50 hours to complete over a couple of months.
If you find that you’re always a DM and never a player, or if you’re a player who would like to try out DMing, solo play can be a great complement to another, more traditional, campaign. In addition, if you find yourself often playing to a particular type, solo play can give you a way to try out a new archetype or class.
One of the downsides of solo play is that you don‘t have the benefit of the other folks at your table to improvise. Solo play really benefits from taking the time to really try immersing yourself in the characters, story, and environment.
When you’re playing both sides of the screen, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to learn and apply the rules, including lots of edge cases. Playing solo is a great opportunity to learn the rules without the pressure of group play.
Solo play is a different way to play D&D. It’s also an interesting, fun, and constructive way to be alone.
If you’d like to give it a shot, you might enjoy checking out my Solo D&D Guide.