Not sure if this qualifies, but there’s smaller games such as… escape, exit…? Something like that which I believe are two player story driven board game things.

Good luck.

I’m drawing a blank for easily portable, non-solo, RPG-like boadgames. I’m sure they exist, but only the giant-box ones are coming to mind. Look for dungeon crawl or rogue-like cardgames.

For pen and paper RPGs, I have a couple of suggestions. None of these are guided stories (except for the first scenario in Runecairn). They are all emergent stories.

Runecairn: Wardensaga is a very well done duet ttRPG - one game master (the warden) and one player. It can also be played solo, or co-op. The delve system is excellent for creating random objectives. Some of the mechanics are explicitly designed for one player, but it’s easy to come up with a workaround that works. My one complaint is that there are some mistakes and oversights in the character creation example that ran me into a wall until I asked the designer on discord.

All of BlackOath Entertainment’s currently supported games (all but the two original ones he sold the rights to) are explicitly designed to be played with or without a GM. Don’t let the death-metal vibes of the website scare you off. Alex is a softy and most of his games don’t reflect the asthetic, beyond some of the art. My personal favorites are Broken Shores and Riftbreakers. Broken Shores leans hard into solo-survivalest vibes, but there’s nothing in the mechanics that forces that. I find it to be an extremely lethal system, but many others have had long running-games - YMMV. Riftbreakers, on the other hand, is the perfect my-first-RPG - you create your character as part of the game/tutorial. It’s meant to feel like a pen-and-paper MMORPG. Travel downsides of Alex’s games are you need all of the dice, and a stack of printed tracking sheets. Both of these have “what do do next” built into the system. Broken Shores is more dealing with the next thing situation you roll. In Riftbreakers, you pick from the mission board you generate when you visit the guildhall.

Then there are the stand-by’s of Ironsworn (definitely with the Delve expansion) or Starforged (Ironsworn in space). They are excellent for building world (or galaxy) and having epic adventures in it. I don’t like the way combat works, but many people do. And they are big books, with a lot to go through in order to get a handle on the games. There is less help for story here. Instead, you pick vows for your character and try to steer the narrative towards your goals, base on positive or negative dice rolls - but you have to wrap the narrative around the rolls.

Murderous Ghosts is a fun little two player story game that uses two short printout booklets and a deck of cards.

A game plays in about 15 minutes, but I usually do 3-4 in a row and alternate who plays which role (ghost or explorer).

No prep required.

Inhuman Conditions is a quick two player board game with role-playing that plays like the Voight-Kampff test in Blade Runner. I think there may be an official print and play version?

Have a look at dungeon scrawlers like Paper Dungeon, they are pretty fun and can have surprising deptht.

Has anyone mentioned the card game Boss Monster? https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131835/boss-monster-dungeon-building-card-game

Not EXACTLY what you’re looking for, but Gloom is a super compact card game good for packing up. You each pick a family, and your goal is to make them miserable as possible before killing them off one by one. Your opponent can fuck you up by causing positive events in your families lives.

There’s no narrative persay, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in narrating the cards as you play them, and throwing a little mustard on it or just trying to tie the events together as they play.

Pa