Aren't the point of tabletop RPGs primarily the fact that they are a social experience though?
Wouldn't it be easier to just read a Choose Your Own Adventure, or play a solo text based adventure game? Or just log on to a roleplaying leaning MUD and still get the benefit of others?
The boundaries have always been fuzzy between RPGs that are a "social experience" and ones that are not. "Social experience" isn't necessarily a part of the definition of what an RPG is, even if you restrict it to just table top RPGs and not the equally long history of CYOA RPGs and Computer RPGs.
Between indie developers on sites like itch.io and elsewhere there's been a lot of interesting exploration of solo RPG adaptation (playing existing RPGs with their sometimes decades of lore and tools) and new solo RPG development. Which yes, to partially answer your questions: an RPG designed for a solo experience is likely always "easier" to play than playing an RPG designed for a table full of people, especially if you have to also do the work adapting it for solo play. (That said, again, there's an interesting growing market for "professional" solo adaptations of well loved table-top settings.)
I don't think so. Not anymore than playing a video game is a "social experience". Someone who enjoys a choose your own adventure would probably enjoy solo role playing.
Someone who enjoys solo role playing would probably enjoy role playing with others.
Why is solo role playing any different than playing a video game alone?
The scope of what's considered a "table top RPG" these days is pretty large. A large number of them are more focussed on the creativity and drama aspects, rather than the tactical combat. I'm not surprised that a lot of them are able to be solo'd versus played collaboratively.
Hell, there are games like Microscope that would be incredibly fun playing solo.
Right, choose your own and MUDs and such are environments created for you with pre-determined options. I play those, sure, but the pull of tabletop games for me is the creative aspect. Creating a character (in the senses of 'fictional character' as much as a stats sheet) as a player, or a world and (npc) characters to inhabit it, as a GM. These more freeform approaches to solo play open up a lot of scope for individual creative exploration, and some GMs use them to help develop a setting they later go on to use in a group game.
A little confused by what you mean. TTRPGs were not originally about tactical combat (old RPGs were very lethal so combat was a fail state), and wouldn't tactical combat (rather than the RP) make the game more soloable (lots of video games are just the combat part of an RPG)?
Quite the contrary. D&D was originally a supplement for Chainmail, a skirmish wargame, in which they started adding characterization elements. Many/most of the early RPGs were very crunchy, and a lot of people played them focused on combat and stats. But it had started by adding story elements to a wargame, and over the years it continued adding more.
In the middle era, the trend was obvious with games like Vampire: The Masquerade and its Storyteller system, coupled with the LARPing fad and some diceless games.
Since that era, the trend has continued. Many games now have little or no crunch at all, and focus almost entirely on world-building, storytelling, and improv. Some games, like the mentioned Microscope, along with Ex Novo and The Quiet Year are almost entirely crunchless world-building and storytelling.
You can go quite far with just oracles and no system at all, and then if you need one, easily pull in something modern and light like FATE, Mythic, or Fu RPG that just adds a few die rolls to your otherwise creative campaign.
And it can be more soloable than crunchy games because you don't need tons of rules and stats and dice rolls. You instead have creative prompts and oracles and source material and can just go with it, reading, interpreting, writing wherever your imagination takes you.
I did also do a lot of solo wargaming, so crunch is not un-soloable, but less crunch is easier and can feel more rewarding.
Wouldn't it be easier to just read a Choose Your Own Adventure, or play a solo text based adventure game? Or just log on to a roleplaying leaning MUD and still get the benefit of others?