An Almanac of the Small Country — A Year-Long Solo Journaling RPG

A year-long solo journaling roleplaying game about keeping the register of a small country that only exists because you are writing it. You are the Almanacist. Once a week — for fifty-two weeks — you draw cards, and you write. About the weather. About who you saw. About what the country did that week, and what it didn't. Over the year, a country you have never visited will begin to have a name, a shape, a bell, a saint, a grief. At the end of the fifty-second week, you will have an almanac. Hand-filled. Yours. Nobody else's. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT YOU DO EACH WEEK ▸ Draw one card for the WEATHER. ▸ Draw two more for the FOCUS — a person, a place, an event, an omen. ▸ Write your week in the notebook. A paragraph. A page. One line. ▸ Choose ONE thing to preserve in the Marginalia — the country's permanent record. ▸ Add a tick to the Tally. Ten minutes if you write briefly. Half an hour if you write at length. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT'S INSIDE ▸ 158-page illustrated PDF ▸ 13 Moons × 4 Weeks = 52 weekly entries ▸ Full character + country creation in the Prologue ▸ Five interlocking Tallies (Trouble, Blessing, Rumour, Weight, Fatigue) ▸ Six mechanistically-earned endings — nobody chooses; the year decides ▸ Three graceful early-exit points at Weeks 20, 32, and 44 ▸ Printable Tally chart and Marginalia templates for the back of your notebook ▸ Full naming, suit, and value appendix — one-page quick reference ▸ Illustrations by Thomas Bewick (1753–1828), from A History of British Birds ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SIX ENDINGS The Country Falls. The Country Wakes. The Almanac Is Buried. A Successor Is Named. The Almanacist Leaves. The Almanac Closes. The endings are not menu choices. Your Tallies decide, at Week 52, which of the six is yours. You may play toward one — but the almanac is patient. It will give you the ending you earned. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT YOU NEED ▸ One standard deck of 52 playing cards. Any deck. The kitchen-drawer one is fine. ▸ A notebook you will keep for a year. A hardback if you can. ▸ A pen. ▸ Optional: a six-sided die. A fallback rule using card values is provided if you prefer no dice. ▸ Optional: a candle, a cup of something warm, a quiet room, an evening. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO THIS IS FOR ▸ Solo journalers who want structure without another notebook to buy. ▸ RPG players who love session zero — the country-building — as much as the play. ▸ Writers who love writing in short bursts and hate blank pages. ▸ Readers of Ursula K. Le Guin, W. G. Sebald, John McPhee. ▸ Anyone with fifty-two weeks and a deck of cards. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHY A YEAR Because a country cannot be understood in an evening.  Most solo journaling games are a single sitting. This one asks for fifty-two. In exchange, it gives you an artifact — a filled book — that no other game gives. At the end of the year, you have a small country nobody else has ever visited, and you are the only person who could describe it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ INSPIRATIONS Koriko: A Magical Year (Jack Harrison). The Vanished Atlas (Hearth & Quill Press). Alone Among the Stars (Takuma Okada). Thousand Year Old Vampire (Tim Hutchings). Anamnesis (Blinking Birch). Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home. W. G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn. And the almanacs, herbals, and cartographies of the eighteenth century — from which the illustrations in this book are drawn. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FROM HEARTH & QUILL PRESS We make small, slow games for people who would rather play than prep. Every game in our catalogue can be played with a deck of cards, a notebook, and one quiet evening. This one asks for a year of them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━