A Year at the Fairy Ring

You are small, you have wings, and the fairy ring at the edge of the meadow is home. You are a fairy for one whole year. Every day somebody comes to your door with something they want, and you roll for who it is, write down what happened, and keep your stores, your glimmer and your friends. About twenty minutes an evening. WHAT THIS IS A fairy solo journaling game — a cozy solo RPG journal where you become a tiny fairy living in a fairy ring. There is nothing to fight and nobody to defeat. You have a house in a snail shell or an oak root or an old teapot in the hedge, a thimble for gathering dew, and a meadow full of neighbours: field mice, hares who gossip, a bumblebee too cold to fly, a farmhouse girl who leaves out milk, and a cat and an owl you keep well clear of. You play one evening at a time: 🎲 Roll for who comes to your door. 🎲 Roll for what they want. ✒️ Write three or four lines in the fairy’s diary: who came, what you did, and what you kept to yourself. If the two rolls do not fit together — the oldest fairy of the ring, wanting your best thimble until the full moon — 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 seasons, with 72 entries that belong to the seasons alone, and not one repeated ▪ A quiz, "What kind of fairy are you?", that you answer as yourself instead of rolling: each answer picks a line from the tables, from how you came to the ring to who lives next door ▪ A fairy’s diary of 24 pages, two days to a page, plus two pages of Neighbours of the ring and a last page to draw the ring a year on ▪ 12 writing prompts, three a season, for evenings when you would rather write than roll ▪ 3 ending tables — which one you roll on is decided by how you kept the year ▪ 72 cards to cut out, each with a piece of its season’s painting: who comes to your door, what they want, and what the season brings. Draw instead of rolling if you prefer ▪ 4 paintings of the fairy ring through the year, one opening each season 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 ring is yours. Three for you — how you came to the ring, what kind of fairy you are, and what you do not tell anybody. Three for the ring — the ring itself, where you live, and who lives nearby. Then you give the ring a name, and give yourself one word for your colour. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌙 FOUR SEASONS, AND THE MEADOW CHANGES IN EACH 🌸 SPRING — Waking The ring wakes up one mushroom at a time. The meadow is wet and loud with birds, the first primroses open along the bank, and every fairy you know comes out blinking from the winter with something to do and nothing ready. ☀️ SUMMER — Midsummer The grass grows taller than a fairy can see over, the evenings never quite get dark, and the whole meadow hums. Midsummer is coming, and with it the dance, and nobody in the ring talks about anything else. 🍂 AUTUMN — The gathering The mushrooms come up fat and red in the wet mornings, the hedges are heavy with berries, and the whole ring is busy putting things away for the cold. Swallows line the wires, and talk about leaving. ❄️ WINTER — Frost The meadow goes white and silent. Most of the ring sleeps under the roots, and the few who stay awake gather close around one warm hollow, telling the long stories, waiting for the light to come back. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚖️ THREE THINGS YOU ARE KEEPING 💧 Dew ✨ Glimmer 🤝 Kinship Giving away food or going hungry takes a Dew, a long flight or a sleepless night takes a Glimmer, a broken promise or a quarrel takes Kinship; anything done for the ring adds Kinship. 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 the fairy’s year ends. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 A FEW LINES FROM INSIDE "A bumblebee too cold to fly, sitting on your doorstep and humming at you, very slowly." "The foxgloves flower, and every fairy in the meadow comes to try on the bells." "A great gale strips the oak, and acorns fall like hailstones on the ring for a whole night." "The stream freezes, and the young fairies skate on it in acorn cups." "You sit in a buttercup and let the pollen turn you gold." ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF ▪ You always knew, a little, that you were meant to be a fairy ▪ You love mushrooms, meadows, foxgloves and tiny doors at the bottom of the garden ▪ You want a gentle 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 battles. No stat blocks and no character sheet. You are small, and the world is large: the cat, the owl and the frost are dangers you keep clear of, never enemies you beat. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 THE A YEAR AT… SERIES A Year at the Fairy Ring uses the same rules as the other books of the A Year at… series, A Year at the Wayside, A Year at the Lending Library, A Year at the Ferry, A Year on the Salt Road, A Year at the Apothecary, A Year at the Witch’s Cottage, A Year at the Café, A Year in the Walled Garden, A Year at the Bookshop, A Year at the Academy and A Year at the Dragon Roost, with a different place, different people and different things running out. It is the only one of them where you are the small one. Each book stands on its own. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📄 THE FILES Two zip files, one for each paper size, so you only download the one you print on: ▪ A4 — colour and ink-saver ▪ US Letter — colour and ink-saver The ink-saver build drops the tint, prints the paintings grey, and keeps every word. Same book, same 54 pages, cheaper to run — and the diary pages are the ones you will reprint for the second year. ⬇️ Instant digital download. Nothing is posted to you. The whole shelf lives at onegoodevening.pages.dev — every adventure and printable, with what is inside each one before you decide. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🕯️ ONE GOOD EVENING Games for a table, and for a chair by the fire.