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Fabula

Solo journaling games and solo RPGs to play in your browser

The story is yours, from beginning to end.

Want to play, but no group available, no free evening, nothing prepared? Fabula’s games are solo RPGs and journaling games played on your own, right in your browser: cards or dice decide what happens, and you write down what your character makes of it. A game runs a few hours, in one sitting or in small doses, and it waits for you in between.

  • Free
  • No account
  • In your browser
  • At your own pace

What is a solo role-playing game?

A solo role-playing game is a story you build with no game master and no group, guided by simple rules and a measure of chance. The game offers you situations and questions; you answer them by keeping your character’s journal. When that journal is the whole game, the genre has a name of its own, the journaling game: a deck of cards or a handful of dice hands you a prompt, and what you write in answer is the story. Every session produces one unique story, yours, which you can keep, print, or start over differently.

Looking for a long branching adventure book instead, or to write one? Discover Fatum, or first read what an interactive adventure book is.

How it works

  1. Choose a story.

    Each Fabula game is a complete experience, with its own setting and its rules built in.

  2. Let chance guide you.

    Depending on the story, cards or dice bring out the events, the places and the encounters; the game keeps track of the state of play for you.

  3. Write your journal.

    You write at your own pace. Your game is saved in your browser, and your journal prints or downloads as a PDF.

The stories

Contemplative

The Tea Road

You are a travelling tea merchant. Card by card, keep your journal: the landscapes you cross, the customers who come back changed by their stop at the stall, the ups and downs of trade. A contemplative game by Dominik Marchand.

Length: 2 to 3 hours, in one or more sittings.

Dominik Marchand

Discover The Tea Road
Dark fantasy

The Witch’s Way

You are a witch, and your gift is a terrible one: you grant what people believe they want, in exchange for what they hold dearest. Card by card, keep your journal: the petitioners who reach your lair, the price agreed, what it undoes afterwards. A dark variant of The Tea Road, by Dominik Marchand.

Length: 2 to 3 hours, in one or more sittings.

Dominik Marchand

Discover The Witch’s Way

More stories will be added over time.

About Fabula

A solo role-playing game is played on your own, with no game master and no group: the game draws what happens to you at random, and you decide what comes next. A journaling game is the form of it where you play by writing: cards or dice hand you a prompt, you answer it in your character’s journal, and the journal is the story (a game with rules, chance and an ending, not a diary). Fabula is JDR Ninja’s solo role-playing area: free journaling games and solo RPGs, no account, playable right in the browser. If Thousand Year Old Vampire or Ironsworn ring a bell, this is that family.

Frequently asked questions

What is a solo role-playing game?
A story you build on your own, with no game master and no other players. The game supplies the rules and a measure of chance, often a deck of cards or dice; you answer the questions it asks you, most often by writing your character’s journal. The story it produces is yours and exists only once.
What is a journaling game?
A solo role-playing game you play by writing. Cards or dice hand you a prompt; you answer it in your character’s journal, and that journal is the story. It is a game rather than a diary: there are rules, a measure of chance and an ending. The card-driven games on Fabula are played this way, and each game’s page says how it is played.
Do I need a group, or someone to run it?
No, and that is the point. A Fabula game is played by one person, whenever you want, in one sitting or several. There is nobody to gather and nothing to prepare.
Do I need role-playing experience?
None. The game asks the questions, does the arithmetic and explains every result: there are no rules to memorise. The games that need a character build it with you before you begin. If you can read a result and make a choice, you can play.
Does it cost anything?
No. Fabula’s games are free, require no sign-up and carry no advertising. You need a browser, and nothing else.
Where is my game saved?
In your browser, on your device, and nowhere else. It is never sent to a server and it does not follow you from one device to another. What you produce there, a journal or a plan, prints and downloads as a PDF whenever you want.

The full credits of each game are on its own page.