Man, this question pops up constantly, and I gotta say, the download-first mindset is a little shortsighted for most RP books. You're not really looking for a static download file like an old PDF of 'Pride and Prejudice'. You're hunting for something alive, updated, and deeply tied to online communities. A lot of these stories live on apps like Webnovel or platforms like Royal Road, where 'download for offline' is often a perk for paying subscribers. The 'free' part gets tricky fast. What you can usually snag without paying are promotional compilations from publishers like Dreame—they'll package the first dozen chapters of a bunch of trending titles into a single epub to hook you.
Honestly, your best bet is to forget downloading and embrace the web browser. Sites like Scribble Hub are absolute goldmines. The stories are free to read online, updated regularly, and the forums are where the real roleplay energy thrives—readers dissecting choices, voting on outcomes. That's the heart of it. Downloading a partial epub feels like getting a single snapshot of a moving picture. If you really need offline, some browsers let you save pages, but it's clunky. I've found more joy in following a few ongoing stories and treating the weekly update like an event, rather than hoarding files I never open.