Sleepless Tide

You fish Halloway Water for twelve nights, on your own, off the town dock. Nobody else goes out there any more and nobody has told you why.

Each night you roll one die for the weather, pick how deep to cast, and roll two dice on a thirty-six entry Catch Oracle. Sometimes it is a perch. Sometimes it is a bicycle bell that still rings, or a pair of spectacles that turn out to be your prescription. Sometimes it is something that was never a fish, and that costs you a point of Nerve whether you keep it or put it back.

Nerve is the whole game. It starts at six, every cast past the first costs one, and the only way to get any back is to go home after a single cast. Push for one more cast on a bad night and you find out what the deep water has. Three Turns fire after nights four, eight and twelve, and each one takes away a piece of the shallow, safe end.

Then you write the night down. Two lines is a full entry. After the twelfth night you fill in a sheet called What the Lake Kept, which counts five things off your log and asks you five questions about them.

• 18 pages, laid out for print: A4 and US Letter, both set for their own paper
• A 36-entry d66 Catch Oracle in three depth bands
• A Nerve track, a d6 weather table and a d6 table for going ashore in town
• Five printable sheets: the season log, a full night page, a short-nights page, a ledger of all thirty-six results, and the closing reflection - Two six-sided dice and a pen is the whole kit

Tone is unsettling rather than frightening. There is no monster illustrated anywhere in the book, and there is no way to lose.