A spooky game for a spooky season? Yes, please. Let me direct your attention to Carved by the Garden, a solo journaling roleplaying game (RPG) by the wonderful Cassi Mothwin.
Carved by the Garden as a Solo RPG
I’ve talked a little in the past about solo RPGs and even organized a convention panel about game journaling and journaling games. In solo RPGs, your storytelling improv is with yourself, reacting to the prompts the game book presents. Writing it down in a journal as a story has a lot of appeal to people like me.
The game situation of Carved by the Garden is that your character lives near a woodland, and you have a habit, a desire, a need, perhaps, to wander those woods. Each day you encounter strange experiences in the woods based on prompts chosen at random by playing card draw. It is primarily a horror game, so prompts are sometimes a bit gruesome, but can be open to sweetness, as well. For me to reveal any of the prompts as an example would be a spoiler! I’ll just say you might find an interest object or suspicious person or notice something strange or different about the woods. Or yourself.
The game utilizes a tumbling tower game as the timer, and the game book provides some alternative ideas if you don’t have a Jenga game. When the tower falls, game over.
So, gather your materials—deck of cards, a six-sided die, eight items to act as tokens, your timer system, and writing materials—and let’s explore the creepy woods!
Beginning Carved by the Garden
“During the game, you’ll roll a die, draw cards from a deck, read their associated events, pull blocks from a tumbling tower, place or remove tokens from a card, and write about your experiences in character.” (from Carved by the Garden game guide)
The game asks you to make a character, “human…for now,” who rambles the woods near their home: name, pronouns, and time-period, as well as answering some open-ended questions about your situation and feelings about the woods. There are also other, less spooky reasons to visit the woods, and examples of those are also provided: you’re a hunter, forager, or a scientist, for instance.
Your first step is to generate the daily event(s): you roll a die, deal yourself that number of cards, flip them over one by one, resolving tasks and prompts to which the card number directs you. The prompt may ask you set aside a card for later use or mark it with a token. Those variations will affect the story later, particularly in game resolution. You then journal about, or simple ponder, your experiences and feelings.
Several events can end the game, from the tower falling to drawing a particular card hand. When the ending triggers, your story is over. How will you resolve it?
“This is a game about the woods. This is a game about what we’ve forgotten within.”—from Carved by the Garden game guide
My Game Play
I played Carved by the Garden over two sessions with a separate short session to figure out the system and write my character. I played about a year after my mother’s death, and there was a certain unlooked-for “ancestorial” quality to the whole thing. My character, Bertha, was a motherless girl, living on a “back forty” with a widowed coal miner father and a houseful of younger siblings needing care. The woods was an escape, but it demanded a price, as well.
My first exploration began with a Joker, and my prompt “For a moment, you lost your way. But something pulls you through.” My journal entry: “I’ve walked this path hundreds of times, but for some reason I found myself in a clearing I’d never seen before. After a moment of panic and a resolution to retrace my steps, I saw a twinkling light up ahead, just beyond the tree line…I can’t help but explore.”
And so, Bertha’s story began. I tended to roll high and thus had five or six cards to resolve for each day’s adventure, so she had many creepy encounters. My story resolution came on Day #10, “I’ve tried to share the woods’ message. Pa won’t listen, but the little boys are keen…I find a book—a roll of names, all crossed out—but mine. Yes, I am on this list, a list of all dead and buried in this county for generations past. How could I have been so blind?”
My Reaction to Carved by the Garden
I enjoyed Carved by the Garden a lot and wrote twenty pages of story, which could find its way into my work, although it was most likely simply therapeutic writing. The book itself is lovely with effective, evocative illustrations and design.
This game could be played multiple times, discovering new aspects of the forest, your player character, and yourself.
If you are interested in Carved by the Garden you might like to read about a multi-player horror RPG, Ten Candles.
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