Guides

Solo roleplaying, honestly documented

Markbound is a solo roleplaying game with an AI narrator that can't cheat — the dice roll in your browser, the rules are real Ironsworn, and the story remembers what you did. These are the notes behind that sentence: what breaks when a chatbot runs your game, and what to do instead.

• Field reportI played D&D with ChatGPT for a month. Here's exactly where it broke.Four failure modes — fudged dice, drifting state, the yes-and spiral, and the vanishing stakes — with the turn number each one showed up.
• ExplainerWhy an AI can't roll dice (and what that costs your game)A language model predicts plausible numbers. It does not sample a distribution. Here's the difference, and why it quietly removes every stake.
• How toHow to play solo D&D: a beginner's guide that doesn't need a groupOracles, GM emulators, journaling — the three ways people actually run a campaign alone, and which one to start with.
• ComparisonMarkbound vs ChatGPT for solo roleplayingAn honest split: where the general chatbot wins, and where a real rules engine wins.
• How toSolo Ironsworn with an AI narratorVows, moves and momentum — running the Ironlands alone without losing the thread.