Cozy Garden Solo Journaling RPG | A Year in the Walled Garden | Creative Writing Prompts, Printable PDF

🌱 The lantern is lit on the bench, the watering can is full, and somebody is at the gate. You will not know who until you roll. You keep an old walled garden, and the gate is open to anybody who asks: neighbours wanting seedlings, children wanting to see a seed come up, a cook with a list and no money until the end of the month. You write down what happened. That is the whole game — one die, one pen, and about twenty minutes an evening. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌙 WHAT THIS IS A solo RPG journal — a solo journaling game about one year in a walled kitchen garden. You are not a hero and there is nothing to defeat. You have four old brick walls, a well, a shed full of saved seed and a glasshouse with panes missing, and the year brings you frost, drought, glut and bare earth. The town brings you everything else. You play one evening at a time: 🎲 Roll for who comes to the gate. 🎲 Roll for what they want. ✒️ Write three or four lines: what you gave them over the gate, what it cost, and what you did not say. If the two rolls do not fit together — the judge of the town show, in a straw hat, pretending to be just passing, and wanting something to win the show with — that tension IS the evening. You do not reroll. You write your way through it. ⚖️ You never roll to find out whether you succeed. The die says what happens. You say what you did about it. There is no failure in this game, only what it cost. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📦 WHAT YOU GET ▪ 162 written entries across 25 tables — every one of them rolled on a single d6 ▪ 4 seasons, with 72 entries that belong to the seasons alone, and not one repeated ▪ 12 writing prompts, three per season, for evenings when you would rather write than roll ▪ 3 ending tables — which one you roll on depends on how you kept the garden ▪ One day worked through from the first roll to the written entry, so the first evening does not start with a decision ▪ A quiz, "What kind of gardener are you?", that you answer as yourself instead of rolling: each answer picks a line from the tables, so the year starts with somebody a little like you ▪ 8 journal sheets: 4 of The gate book, 2 of What grew and 2 ruled, because in a game you play by writing, the writing space is the product ▪ 72 cards to cut out, each with a piece of its season's painting, six of each for every season: who comes to the gate, what they want, and what the season brings. Draw instead of rolling if you prefer ▪ 4 paintings, one opening each season on a page of its own, and a strip of the same painting across the top of its tables ▪ A page that is yours to fill in, for who you are and the garden you keep, and the three tracks drawn as things you colour in ▪ 35 pages · 4 PDFs Nothing here is a stub. Every table is written out in full. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🗝️ HOW THE YEAR STARTS Six rolls and a name, and the garden is yours. Three for you — why the garden is yours, what you are good at, and what you do not say. Three for the place — the garden itself, what grows against the wall, and what needs doing before winter. Then you give it a name. The town already calls it something, usually after whoever had it before you, and that will take years to change. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🍂 FOUR SEASONS, AND THE GARDEN ASKS FOR SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN EACH 🌱 SPRING — The first sowing The soil warms a finger at a time, every sowing is a bet against the last frost, and the whole town remembers at once that it meant to plant something. ☀️ SUMMER — Glut Everything ripens in the same fortnight, the evenings are long enough to water by, and you give away more over the gate than you could ever sell. 🍁 AUTUMN — Picking and keeping The apples come down, the onions go up in ropes in the shed, and every evening is a race against the first frost to get everything in. ❄️ WINTER — Bare earth The beds are dug and empty, the frost holds the ground like iron, and the garden is all bones and promises until the light comes back. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚖️ THREE THINGS YOU ARE KEEPING 🌾 Seed 💧 Water 🤝 Goodwill Anything sown or planted takes a Seed. Anything watered by hand takes a Water. Anything kind gives a Goodwill. They come back up too: Seed saved, swapped or given adds a Seed, rain, a mended butt or help with the cans adds a Water. Turning somebody away costs a Goodwill. A day moves one of them, never more, and together they are the reason the year has a shape instead of being a pile of evenings. Whichever one is highest when the year ends decides which ending you roll on. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 A FEW LINES FROM INSIDE "A boy sent with a basket for a pound of strawberries, who asks how many he is allowed to eat on the way home." "To borrow a spade. They will bring it back, and you both know how that goes." "The fig ripens. One fig, after all these years, and you do not tell a soul." "The seed merchant, with his catalogue and his stories, who stays three hours and sells you nothing." "You sit on the upturned barrow and watch the beans grow, and are almost sure you can see it." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF ▪ You love gardens, allotments, seed packets and the smell of the earth after rain ▪ You want a cozy game that still has structure and consequences ▪ This would be your first solo RPG and you want one that explains itself ▪ You keep a garden journal, or always meant to, and want prompts that build on each other ▪ You want twenty quiet minutes in the evening that are not a screen ▪ You are tired of combat and stat blocks ▪ You own one six-sided die and nothing else, and would like that to be enough ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎒 WHAT YOU NEED ▪ This book ▪ A pen ▪ One six-sided die ▪ Somewhere quiet That is the list. No second die, no app, and no account. No die at all? Cut out the cards at the back and draw one instead. It is made for one player, and nobody else is needed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🚫 WHAT IS NOT IN IT No combat. No monsters. No magic. No stat blocks and no character sheet. Nothing here is fought. If somebody comes to the gate with something you cannot help, you cannot help them, and you write that down. It is four brick walls, a gate, and four seasons of people and weather. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 THE A YEAR AT… SERIES This is the eighth book. A Year at the Wayside (an inn on a quiet road), A Year at the Lending Library (a small town library), A Year at the Ferry (a rope ferry on a river), A Year on the Salt Road (a salt cart on a long road), A Year at the Apothecary (a country apothecary), A Year at the Witch's Cottage (a cottage at the edge of the wood) and A Year at the Café (a café on a town square) use the same rules with a different place, different people and different things running out. Each book stands on its own. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📄 THE FILES Two zip files, one for each paper size, so you only download the one you print on: ▪ A4 — colour and ink-saver ▪ US Letter — colour and ink-saver The ink-saver build drops the tint and the cover painting, prints the season paintings in grey, and keeps every word. Same book, same 35 pages, cheaper to run — and the journal sheets are the ones you will reprint. ⬇️ Instant digital download. Nothing is posted to you. The whole shelf lives at onegoodevening.pages.dev — every adventure and printable, with what is inside each one before you decide. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🕯️ ONE GOOD EVENING Games for a table, and for a chair by the fire.