Hedgewitch's Wheel

You are the hedgewitch of one village, for one year. You keep three things. A garden , because medicine and food both start in the ground and you cannot buy either. A village , which is eight named people who need things from you at bad times. And the hedge at the end of the lane, which is a real hedge of hawthorn and blackthorn and is also the other thing everyone in this village knows it is and nobody says at market. You can reach over it. That is the whole of your craft and the whole of your problem. Things taken from the other side always work. They are never free, and the taking wears the boundary thin. The year is eight sittings. One for each sabbat — Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon. Each is its own chapter, with its own colour, its own two tables and its own rule, so no two sittings play the same: the door stands open at Samhain and you answer twice; nothing can be gained at Yule; reaching over the hedge costs you nothing at Beltane and everything is already in your hands at Litha. Roll a d8 for what the season put in your hands, a d6 for what turns in the village, then a d8 and a d6 for who knocked and what they needed. Then decide, and write the page. The garden is what stops a sabbat being a self-contained evening. What you sow at Ostara is what you lift at Lughnasadh, in your own handwriting, six sittings later — and if a bed fails at Litha it stands empty until next spring, because that is what gardens do. 22 pages, hand-set as a printed village almanac rather than a spellbook Eight sabbat chapters, each with a d8 gift table, a d6 turn table and three prompts A six-bed garden that carries state across the whole year Eight named villagers, what they need, and three ways to answer the door Three tracks: Larder, Standing, and how thin the hedge has worn Five printable sheets, including a sabbat page to print eight times and a closing almanac page Two PDFs, A4 and US Letter, so it prints properly wherever you are All you need is the book, one d8, one d6 and a pen. About an hour a sitting, no prep and no reading ahead. Play one a week, one every six weeks through a real year, or all eight in a weekend. When the wheel is full, the thing you wrote in is an almanac of a year, and it is yours. The Wheel of the Year is a real calendar that living people keep. This game treats it as what it plainly is — the eight days a northern agricultural year turns on — with no invented liturgy, no deity named, nothing framed as a rite, and no joke at anyone's expense.