[INTERVIEW] - Paul Bimler & The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox

Oct 21, 2026

Paul Bimler, the New Zealand designer behind The Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox and acclaimed solo RPG adventures, discusses discovering roleplaying, designing branching gamebooks, and building rich worlds without a game master. They explore Mythic-inspired generators, balancing randomness with imagination, meaningful choices, long-term solo campaigns, and upcoming material for Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, and beyond.

55:45

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ANECDOTE

The Red Box Solo Adventure That Started Everything

Paul Bimler’s first role-playing experience was a solo adventure in the 1980s D&D Red Box, before he ever joined a group.
Years later, he searched for a 5e solo adventure, found none, and wrote Death Knight’s Squire in roughly a week.

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INSIGHT

Solo Adventures Make RPGs Immediately Accessible

Solo adventures can serve as practical entry points for people who lack groups, live remotely, or struggle to coordinate schedules.
They also teach a game’s rules while giving new players an immediate playable experience.

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INSIGHT

Balance Random Tables With Player Expectations

Paul Bimler combined random tables with player judgment to create broad, branching adventures without dictating every detail.
His travel example asks players what they expect to see, hear, and smell, then challenges those expectations with rolls.

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From Redbox Adventures to Solo 5e

01:14 • 8min

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Solo Adventures as First RPG Experiences

09:23 • 4min

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Mythic and Generative Quest Design

13:23 • 4min

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Balancing Randomness with Player Imagination

17:36 • 4min

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Writing Branching Solo Gamebooks

21:16 • 7min

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Building The Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox

27:47 • 6min

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Crafting Meaningful Choices and Payoffs

33:52 • 7min

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Paul’s Long-Term Solo Campaign

40:30 • 4min

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Paul’s Expanding Solo RPG Pipeline

44:08 • 1min

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Starting Solo Roleplaying Simply

45:35 • 8min

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Finding Paul’s Solo Adventures

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Steve Jackson

Ian Livingstone

The first book in the Fighting Fantasy series, this adventure combines branching storytelling with role-playing mechanics. Readers choose routes, battle monsters, and use dice, skill, luck, and stamina to explore the dangerous caverns beneath Firetop Mountain and attempt to defeat the powerful Warlock Zagor.

Solo Investigators Handbook

Paul Bimler

The Solo Investigators Handbook adapts Call of Cthulhu’s investigative horror experience for solo play. It provides procedures and tools intended to support exploration, investigation, uncertainty, and the unfolding of supernatural threats. Paul Bimler mentions using it alongside Curse of Strahd as inspiration for a future horror-oriented solo toolbox. The handbook is aimed at players who want to create and resolve mysteries while managing investigators independently. Its emphasis is on generating atmospheric, surprising investigations rather than following a fixed adventure path.

Please Play and Learn

Paul Bimler

Please Play and Learn combines a guided solo adventure with an introduction to Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition rules. Players take the role of a fighter and learn core mechanics through encounters and decisions in a gamebook format. The design follows the educational spirit of introductory solo adventures included in earlier boxed RPG sets. It provides a way for newcomers to learn by playing rather than studying the rules in isolation. Paul Bimler presents it as an accessible entry point for people who want to begin playing without a group.

Flight to Undermountain

Paul Bimler

Flight to Undermountain is a solo Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition adventure by Paul Bimler. Its narrative follows characters pursuing a deceptive mage through the many levels of Undermountain. The adventure is divided into sections based on locations and dungeon levels, creating a structured progression toward a final encounter. Along the way, it provides side quests and opportunities for different character abilities and backgrounds to matter. Bimler describes designing its rewards and clues so earlier choices can produce satisfying consequences later in the story.

The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox

Paul Bimler

The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox adapts and expands traditional tabletop adventure-generation techniques for solo Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition play. It includes generators for dungeons, wilderness environments, urban locations, quests, encounters, rooms, and other adventure details. The tools are intended to provide structure while leaving room for the player’s imagination and authorship. Paul Bimler discusses balancing random tables with personal input, including the option to choose or reroll results. The book offers a flexible alternative to fixed branching gamebooks for players who want a more sandbox-oriented experience.

Death Knights Squire

Paul Bimler

Death Knights Squire is an early solo Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition adventure by Paul Bimler. It presents a branching, gamebook-style narrative in which the player makes choices and resolves encounters using a character and the game’s rules. The adventure helped demonstrate that modern tabletop roleplaying systems could support structured solo play without a traditional game master. Its reception encouraged Bimler to continue writing additional solo adventures. The work is regarded within the solo-RPG community as an influential early example of contemporary solo 5e gamebooks.

Court in the Wizard's Web

Paul Bimler

Court in the Wizard's Web is a solo Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition adventure by Paul Bimler. It belongs to the narrative line of his published solo adventures set in the Forgotten Realms. The book uses a branching gamebook structure, presenting choices, encounters, and consequences for a single player to resolve. Bimler recommends it as an accessible starting point for people exploring his adventure series. Like his other works, it combines character-based decision-making with the rules and combat of 5e.

• Mentioned in 5 episodes

Curse of Strahd

Wizards RPG Team

Hello and Welcome Back to The Solo RolePlayers Podcast.

Today on the show I am humbled to bring you on of the original creators of modern solorpg gamebooks and toolkits, Paul Bimler of The Solo Adventurer's Toolbox and a swathe of solo 5e adventures.

You can find Paul's work over on DM's Guild

SHOWNOTES:

You can get in touch with me on:

[email protected], PJSack on Reddit/Bluesky or better yet join the SoloRolePlayers Patreon where a free membership will get you access to the community chat and my public newsletters

At the SoloRolePlayers Tier you get at least 1 (usually its 2) bonus episodes a month where I continue playing through the games introduced on the show, a regular bookclub/gameclub meet-up, access to the discord, and connect with celebrity guests.

You can leave me a voice mail with questions, ideas, experiences or just to say g’day at https://www.speakpipe.com/SoloRolePlayers

Links & Recs

If you like this show you might like to check out the podcast that started it all, my Fallout Narrative Solo-RPG Audio Drama A Wasteland Story

Creators that helped me discover this weird and wonderful hobby:

Man Alone

Boardgames with Thomas - Fallout Series

Geek Gamers

The Dungeon Dive

Lords of the Dungeon (The Secret Cabal)

Girls Who Don’t DnD

Me Myself & Die

Reading Materials that helped me figure out what the hell I am doing:

Mythic GM Emulator 2E

Solo Game Masters Guide - geekgamer

Music and Sound Effects in this series are credited to:

Epidemic Sound

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