The Solo FRPG

Electronic and Pencil & Paper
Gaming is a social thing for me. I love the face-to-face element of our hobby. To me there is nothing better in life than setting around a table with good friends playing a game we all enjoy. My best friends are gamers and they are the best part of my life. Reading is my preferred entertainment when I am not able to get together with friends. Sometimes I get the urge to play a game when no friends are about and that often means reading my way through a solo game module or gamebook. Occasionally I play a FRPG on the computer.
Dragon Quest games on the DDS are portable FRPG fun and can be taken most anywhere. They have the advantage of reminding me of some of the first FRPGs I played on a computer, example Ultima III. So there is a bit of a nostalgia factor. Oblivian and Skyrim are beautiful games that visually take me inside their open world set-up where I can explore and discover and I always come away from a session of playing with fresh adventure ideas for the tabletop FRPGs. I have played some of the MMORPGs (such as World of Warcraft) with friends and they can be fun as well. Not as much fun to me as physically sitting around the table with friends rolling dice, but not a bad experience.
When feeling the urge for some solo gaming I am more likely to grab one of the pencil and paper solo adventures and entertain myself with it. Over the years, I have accumulated several solo modules, most with good replayability. Historically speaking, as far as I know Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo Games wrote the first fantasy roleplaying game module for solo play. It is called Buffalo Castle and makes use of the Tunnels & Trolls rules. Buffalo Castle is a very fun module and I have played it dozens of times over the years. Flying Buffalo has published a number of other solo adventures for Tunnels & Trolls (now in a deluxe edition) and I have many of them. They are some of my most well used game products. 
The Tunnels & Trolls (T&T) solos use a numbered paragraph system offing the player various choices. Some choices lead to combat, which can be deadly and I have lost many characters in the T&T solos. An early project for Steve Jackson (who later founded Steve Jackson Games) was a T&T game called Monsters, Monsters where the players reversed the tables and played the monsters using T&T mechanics. Mr. Jackson must have liked the idea of the solo adventure because he has produced several of his own over the years. Starting with his days working with Metagaming, he wrote The Fantasy Trip Microgames Melee and Wizard and several Microquests including the excellent Death Test and Death Test 2 solos. The Death Test solos make use of a tactical display (paper map and counters) and the Melee/Wizard rules. The solos are designed for a single character or a party and can be played as a group game without a referee. The emphasis is on combat which in The Fantasy Trip system is both quick and intuitive and rewards strategy and coordination among characters. Replayability is very good.
Steve Jackson Games produced GURPS and an early sourcebook for Conan and the fantastic world of R.E. Howard. I have four pencil and paper solo books for GURPS set in the Conan milieu. GURPS carries forward many of the basic mechanics of The Fantasy Trip and therefore also lends itself well to the solo game. In the Conan solos, the player can play the part of Conan or substitute one of your own PCs as the main character. The settings of the solos are similar to stories R.E. Howard wrote, therefore seem consistent with the fictional tradition.
Across the Atlantic another Steve Jackson and his partner Ian Livingston wrote The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first of the long line of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks which have become immensely popular on both sides of the ocean. Before the improved graphic quality of consul gaming developed, the Fighting Fantasy and other single player adventure gamebooks introduced many new enthusiasts to the hobby and gave those of us already initiated additional solo outlets for our enjoyment.
The popularity of Death Test and The Fantasy Trip solo has spawned Dark City Games. Continued interest in the Melee/Wizard system and the successful release of several new solo products means Dark City Games can continue to produce for us new solo adventures in the Microquest style of Death Test. The Fantasy Trip rules, themselves long out of print, can be used to play the new solos or Dark City Games own free Legends of the Ancient World rules can be used. Either way one plays, the adventure mods are entertaining and offer tactical challenges and great replayability.
The modern gamer has many options for entertainment. While I personally prefer face-to-face play around a table, many hobbyists are finding the online virtual table to be their preferred method of gaming. Additionally, there are a number of MMORPGs and computer and consul games that offer good RPG entertainment. I see them as all connected to the original White Box which first introduced the RPG concept. Combining my love of reading, exercising my imagination and fantastic adventure gaming, the pen and paper solos are one of my favorite aspects of the hobby.