Lock Nine: A Summer on the Sallow Navigation

Every boat that climbs the hill takes a lockful of water with it. This summer, there isn't much to spare. Lock Nine is a solo journaling game for one player. You're the keeper of the last lock below the summit of an old canal: a brick cottage, a garden, two pairs of heavy wooden gates, and a long dry summer. Each week the weather turns, a boat arrives at your gates, and you choose one job to do with the time you have. Walk the feeder to bring water down from the reservoir, mend the gates before they fail, or tend your garden. You can't do all three. The boats bring families on holiday, coal and grain and stone, pedlars, mourners, and people running away from things. And sometimes, late at night, you hear your own lock being worked, though your gates never open. What you need Two six-sided dice (or one die rolled twice) A notebook and pen, or a keyboard, or a voice recorder About an hour to ninety minutes per summer, depending on how much you write No cards needed. What's inside A twelve-week summer in three parts (early, high, and late summer) with weather that dries out in the middle and turns wet at the end Simple tracks: Water and Gates (0 to 6), plus Garden , Moored Below , and Night Boat One choice every week: walk the feeder, mend the gates, tend the garden, or clear the queue of waiting boats Boats: a full d66 table with 36 boats and crews in six groups (pleasure boats, small working boats, people travelling alone, traders, heavy barges, and odd ones) Weather, Moored Below, The Garden, and Company Letters: four d6 tables The Night Boat : a three-step mystery that advances on doubles, a d6 table of what it leaves on your lockside, and a closing passage that depends on your answer Character setup tables: who you were before, why you stay, and something about the lock cottage Three ending tables: The Gates Gave Way, A Good Summer, and A Hard Summer, plus a garden epilogue. Nobody is seriously hurt in any ending Rules for another summer, with an Over Winter d6 table A full example of play Accessibility notes: playing with cards instead of dice, without writing, with a screen reader, plus a six-week short-summer variant A one-page quick reference (setup, the weekly steps, keeper's jobs, and end-of-summer checks) A printable keeper's sheet with tracks and a weekly log Format A self-contained HTML file (open it in any web browser, or print it with its built-in US Letter print layout) and a PDF. No internet connection, fonts, or apps needed. Tone Warm, slow, summery, a little uncanny. Mostly gentle; some weeks are sad. You decide how much. Content notes: grief and widowhood; a funeral journey; illness (in the optional between-summers table); loneliness; a child travelling alone; mild ghostly events. AI disclosure: The text of this game was drafted with generative AI and checked so every table is complete and playable. The cover art is an SVG drawing that was also written by AI. The setting, characters, rules, and prompts are original to this game. The Sallow Navigation, Brenning, and the Coldwell Reservoir are fictional. Printing for your own personal play is welcome. Please don't redistribute the file; point friends here instead. Published by Jarvis Ross. Questions: jarviss.ross@gmail.com