The Far Post

You run the post office at the foot of the range. Four towns depend on you: Millhaven by the mill, Brackenford at the ford, Highcairn over Kestrel Pass and Greywater on the lake. Between them sit huts, a quarry, a copper mine and a ferry, fifteen places joined by eighteen legs of road, track, forest, river, pass and scree. Each season three delivery cards come in. A wedding cake for Millhaven in two days. Blasting caps for the quarry, Fragile. A doctor's bag for Highcairn that only goes to a courier the village trusts. You load what fits in your pack, plan a route on the map and walk it leg by leg, rolling a pool of d6 against the terrain and the weather. Fail a leg and the mishap table decides: a lost day, a ford running too high to cross, a snapped strap, a cake that won't survive the fall. There is no combat. The mountains, the deadlines and the upkeep are the whole fight. Writing is optional. Every table gives a one-line result, and the short questions on some lines can be answered in a word or ignored. Four skills (Pathfinding, Packing, Haggling, Mending) rank up when your rolls fail, or with lessons you pay for at the Post. Coin pays the upkeep. Miss it twice and the Post closes. Reputation with each town fades if you skip it for a season. Three towns at 2 after season twelve earn you the Grand Delivery: the Charter, all four towns, one trip, ten days. What's in the book (45 pages) Eight pages of rules and a worked trip The route map, every leg and its difficulty, and the districts 36 delivery cards to cut out, or roll for with two dice Courier sheet, trip sheet, gear, upkeep and a ledger Weather for four seasons, terrain mishaps, breakdowns and roadside sights A page for each town, twelve season logs, the Grand Delivery, four endings and a two-page quick reference You need five or six d6 and a pencil. A trip takes fifteen to twenty minutes and a full run is four to six evenings. The rules were checked over 5,000 simulated runs: about three in five reach the Grand Delivery, about one in five goes bankrupt, and no starting skill wins more often than the others.