The Seventh Column — a solo journaling game

Six columns, filled in every day for eleven years. One morning there is a seventh. It has no header.

You are the observer at a remote weather station. You keep the same record you have kept for eleven years: six columns, filled in every day, signed, and sent to the capital once a month.

One morning there is a seventh column. It has no header.

You will fill it in anyway.

How it works

• One six-sided die. Each day you roll once — the number is both the day’s instrument reading and the number of the prompt you answer.
• Thirty entries in five phases, and the entries get shorter as the question gets bigger: a paragraph, then two sentences, then one sentence, then three words, then one word.
• You find a pattern in your own dice. The pattern is yours, because you are the one who rolled it.
• Two endings, chosen after the last entry. Then you write the header of the seventh column — the last thing you write, and the only name it will ever have.

What you get

• The Seventh Column — the rules, thirty prompts in five phases, the letter, the endings. 15 pages, Letter, readable in black and white.
• The Observation Form — a printable play sheet: the six-column station record, and the seventh column with boxes that shrink as the game goes on.

For one player. Ages 13+. You need a d6, a pen, and a printer (or a ruler and a steady hand).

Content note: quiet horror. Nothing is described to you — you describe it. No gore, no jump scares. The worst thing in this game is a column you have to fill in.