A Year at the Academy

The letter came, the trunk is packed, and the gate is open. Your first year is about to begin. You are a new student at an old school of quiet magic, and every day somebody finds you in the corridors with something they want. You roll for who it is, write down what happened, and keep up with your lessons, your candles and your name for one whole school year. About twenty minutes an evening. 🌙 WHAT THIS IS A magic school solo journaling game — a dark academia solo RPG journal about your first year at an old academy. You are not a chosen one and there is nothing to defeat. You have a narrow bed, a timetable, a library with one shelf behind a curtain, and a kind of magic that nobody has quite explained to you yet. The year brings you masters in moth-eaten gowns, a rival who practises at two in the morning, a black cat nobody owns, a corridor that is only there on Tuesdays, and an examination at the end of it. You play one evening at a time: 🎲 Roll for who finds you. 🎲 Roll for what they want of you. ✒️ Write three or four lines in the term diary: what you did, what it cost, and what you did not say. If the two rolls do not fit together — the librarian who has noticed what you have been reading, asking you to keep a secret for them until spring — that tension IS the day. You do not reroll. You write your way through it. ⚖️ You never roll to find out whether you succeed. The die says what happens. You say what you did about it. 📦 WHAT YOU GET ▪ 162 written entries across 25 tables — every one of them rolled on a single d6 ▪ 4 terms, with 72 entries that belong to the terms alone, and not one repeated ▪ A quiz, "What kind of student are you?", that you answer as yourself instead of rolling: each answer picks a line from the tables, including what your magic is like ▪ A term diary of 24 pages, two days to a page, plus two pages of Friends and rivals and a letter home to end the year ▪ 12 writing prompts, three a term, for evenings when you would rather write than roll ▪ 3 ending tables — which one you roll on is decided by how you kept up ▪ 72 cards to cut out, each with a piece of its term’s painting: who finds you, what they want of you, and what the term brings. Draw instead of rolling if you prefer ▪ 4 paintings of the same old academy through the year, one opening each term on a page of its own ▪ A page for who you are, and the three tracks drawn as things you colour in ▪ 54 pages · 4 PDFs Nothing here is a stub. Every table is written out in full. 🗝️ HOW THE YEAR STARTS Six rolls, or six answers, and a name, and the academy is yours. Three for you — why you are at the academy, what your magic is like, and what you do not tell anybody. Three for the academy — the building itself, where you sleep, and what the academy hides. Then you give the academy a name, and give your magic one word. 🏰 FOUR TERMS, AND THE ACADEMY CHANGES IN EACH 🍂 AUTUMN TERM — Everything is new You arrive with one trunk and no idea where anything is. The leaves come down in the quad, the lamps are lit at five, and every corridor turns out to lead somewhere you were not expecting. ❄️ WINTER TERM — The long nights The days shrink to a few hours of grey light between breakfast and tea. Students go home for the holiday and some of them stay, and the academy is a different building when it is half empty. 🌸 SPRING TERM — The thaw and the rumours The snow goes, the river rises, and the academy fills up with rumours. Everybody seems to know something about the examinations, and nothing that anybody knows is the same. ☀️ SUMMER TERM — Examinations Long light evenings and an examination at the end of them. The masters are kinder and stricter at the same time, the library is never empty, and the first year is nearly over. ⚖️ THREE THINGS YOU ARE KEEPING ✒️ Ink 🕯️ Candles 🏛️ Standing Hours lost from your studies take an Ink, staying up late takes a Candle, letting somebody down takes a Standing; anything learned adds an Ink. A day moves one of them, never more, and together they are the reason the year has a shape instead of being a pile of evenings. Whichever one is highest when the year ends decides how your first year ends. 📖 A FEW LINES FROM INSIDE "A small black cat that walks into every lesson you have, and that no one admits to owning." "To borrow your notes, because they did not take any, and they will copy them by candlelight tonight." "The library stays open all night for one night a year, and you do not go to bed at all." "A corridor on the second floor that is there on Tuesdays and not on any other day." "You sleep through the morning bell, and nothing happens, and it is wonderful." ✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF ▪ You love dark academia, candlelit libraries and old stone buildings ▪ You always wanted the letter to come for you ▪ You want a cozy game that still has structure and consequences ▪ This would be your first solo RPG and you want one that explains itself ▪ You keep a journal and want prompts that build into one whole year ▪ You want twenty quiet minutes in the evening that are not a screen ▪ You own one six-sided die and nothing else, and would like that to be enough 🎒 WHAT YOU NEED ▪ This book ▪ A pen ▪ One six-sided die ▪ Somewhere quiet That is the list. No second die, no app, and no account. No die at all? Cut out the cards at the back for the season tables, and use a clock for the rest: the book shows how. It is made for one player, and nobody else is needed. 🚫 WHAT IS NOT IN IT No combat. No monsters. No duels. No stat blocks and no character sheet. There is magic in this book, small and strange, but nothing here is fought. If a working goes wrong, it goes wrong, and you write that down.