Ironsworn is pretty damn great

 I've been losing the battle with insomnia lately, and so filling the late hours with various solitaire games.  The most recent of which is Ironsworn, a solitaire RPG. 

I've tried a few solitaire RPGs before, and never really liked them. Your typical solo-RPG (or at least the onces I've bought) is a $10 PDF that's only 16 pages. Usually a 2-page name-generator that I didn't need, and 14 pages that can be best summarized as "flip a coin, dummy".  Every time I've bought one, I regretted it by the 4th page. 

I guess that's not technically true, I did get three or four sessions out of "Thousand Year Old Vampire" (and probably have another 1 or 2 sessions in me somewhere down the road)...  but mostly 1kV works for me because it's not actually an RPG and is instead more of a randomized tool for procedurally-generated fiction, with a defined end-point that it's building towards. I just find that a solitaire-miniatures-game like Five Parsecs From Home, or Shadows of Brimstone, generally works better for me than any solitaire RPG ever has, largely because they focus on the tactical combat aspect to engage my thinky bits, with some emergent narrative qualities as icing on top.

I play RPGs mostly to socialize, and to collaborate, so solitaire RPGs don't usually scratch the itches involved in that process. If I'm gonna just write a story, I'd usually rather write a story and have control over it. If I'm gonna gamify that story, I'd rather it be something that throws actual surprises at me, and actual puzzles I need to solve, not just a random coin-flip wrecking my story structure for the hell of it, and being given the overly-generous puffed-up name of a "GM emulator". Most things with that sales pitch have disappointed me.

Then I tried Ironsworn. This game is sweet. It's scratching an itch that no other solitaire-RPG has ever even reached adjacent to. It's got a fun vaguely-viking setting that's easy to riff off, but not so deeply defined that you're ever afraid to make it your own. The best part, though, is actually the mechanics. It's got a specific "playbook" of "moves", kind of like Apocalypse World, but they're better-geared for solitaire play, and really flexible. It does a great job of putting the fiction first, feeding you actual surprises and occasional puzzles, and facilitating adventure and narrative without getting in the way of story cohesion. I can't sing it's praises loudly enough. It's just damn good. Obviously, it's not socializing (I'm sitting here writing in an empty room in the middle of the night), but it feels like I'm collaborating on a story with someone, which is kind of awesome and weird. I can use terms like "GM Emulator" and "Oracle" when talking about Ironsworn, and not just feel like their pretentious and misleading terms. It's powerful stuff.

Best of all, it's not $10 for 16 pages you instantly regret. It's literally free at www.ironswornrpg.com, and it's over 200 pages, and just packed full of great ideas that you'll want to think about and play with for dozens of hours at least. I really think you should go check it out.

EDIT: I should also mention that if you're going to give it a try, you should consider running it on Roll20. There's a free Ironsworn character sheet available on Roll20 that has all the Moves, Oracles, Assets and Progress Tracks built into it. It makes keeping track of everything easy, and speeds up the process so you don't have to reference the rulebook during play at all.