TRAILMARK

You are a cartographer. The Ambit Guild has put a season and a modest sum behind you and sent you to the edge of the Unnamed Reach with a board, a compass and three pencils. Come back with a sheet.

TRAILMARK is played across twelve expeditions, one per sitting, twenty minutes to half an hour each. Every expedition adds one new hex to a map you are drawing yourself. You roll two dice to find out what the ground is, draw it, roll again for what else is out there, then roll your crossing against the terrain's toll and find out what it cost you. Then you write the part a survey never records.

The map is the game and the map is the keepsake. By the twelfth expedition you are holding a sheet of somewhere that did not exist in the spring — in pencil, with your own names on it, and a rumour or two you never got round to settling.

What's in the 22 pages:

• Six terrains, each with its own hand-drawable symbol and its own toll
• Four d66 oracle tables — terrain, discovery, hazard and rumour — 144 entries
• Three tracks (Days, Supplies, Condition) and the Long Walk Home when they run out
• A season in three parts, each of which changes one real rule
• Twelve journaling prompts, in order, that run the arc of the season
• A name-building table, because naming things is most of the pleasure
• One-page quick reference
• Six write-on plates: the Cartographer, two Survey Sheets, the Expedition Log, the Rumour Board, and a Completed Atlas cartouche to fill in at the end

No illustrated landscapes anywhere in the book, on purpose. The only picture of the Reach that matters is the one you are making.

You need: two six-sided dice in two different colours, a pencil, and a printer. That is the whole kit.