How it works …
This is the first journalling game I tried. Simple but highly effective with a definite quirky vibe. Describe your cottage and setting. Then start the first day. Take a card for the weather and roll for the type of encounter. Then roll for how many cards to pick up from the pack. Each card has a simple prompt. Create the story of the day from these cards. You can choose to return one of the cards back into the pack so you may encounter it again.
On to the next day …
A Game Play
The Cottage
In the woods, under the crag, sheltered from the winds, is a hazel dome, mud plastered and turf roofed.Smoke twists from the stone chimney and water pools by the spring’s base. Herbs grow in and around the stones and the currant bushes hang with berries. The forest trac twists below the crag and the ravens spiral in the wind above it. Often hung with mist, sometimes cleaned by the wind, always full of the birdsong.
Day of The Broken Pot
Dry and still
10 Hearts - Voice from an urn
Ace Hearts - Witch
9 Clubs - Mural on the wall
2 Hearts - Mushroom Sprite
An unexpected encounter
I white washed a smooth patch of the wall and chose the best of my charcoal and started the swirl of leaf patterns. The mushroom elf who lived in the moss around spring crouched on the stones watching. Never speaking it hummed sounds following the lines.
Our peace was broken by the huffing and puffing of a traveller on the path below. “Drat and bother, bother and drat!” Cracks of breaking pottery and a curse in a sharp tongue. I peered over the edge, mushroom elf with me. Down on the path was a Web Witch, gossamer threads hanging green and silver hands on hips growling at the broken bag and smashed pot. But the sound that followed was not his. Deep bell tones labelling and naming. Soil, slate, root and fern .. there seemed to be a pool of words spreading from the broken pot out into the forest, sinking down into the earth. Stone, pebble, worm, mould ..
The Web Witch gathered the pots peices and placed them in a leather sack. He kicked the stones and strode off leaving behind the faint bell echoes of labelling. Dust, thread, node ..
We returned to the drawing.
The Day of the Eclipse
Rain cast, wind blowing around the crag
6 Diamonds Potted plant reflects your mood
Queen Clubs Brew a potions
A Spades An eclipse
A planned encounter
The pot fern grew by the door. I had not planted it. It had just appeared. Now green fronds were unfurling round the window. If I was cross it splayed out its fingers, tired it curled up on itself, playful it tickled my ears as I passed. It was now still even in the rainfilled wind. I’m sure it was looking up at the sky. Alert. Waiting. The almanac said that come noon the sun would slip away bringing a midday twilight to the wood but in this rain hung cloud who would see. I gathered clarity – water, crystals, the stars of the elderflower – and mixed them singing long whistling notes. Just before noon I poured the potion into a clear glass vial and, with one stretched out throw, cast it skyward. It flashed and then was gone, leaving a window in the clouds through which the sun’s eye peered through. Sure as sure at noon the eye seemed to close and the day faded into twilight leaving the wood in silence until the sun’s eye opened again. The fern relaxed and curled in thought.
One Day at at Thyme – find it here
One Day at a Thyme is a cozy, whimsical solo journaling game in which you play the inhabitant of a cottage in a magical world.
Creative Storytelling