Daniel (@dungeondive) explored Cinderedge, a solo journaling RPG about a forest ward protecting magical barriers against spreading fire while slowly recovering fragmented memories. The game was at crowdfunding when he covered it, and it’s a fascinating blend of resource management and narrative exploration.
You play a character suffering selective amnesia, tasked with maintaining wards to contain magical forest fires. Your stats—mind, HP, and ward strength—all start at 12 and slowly tick down each week (each turn represents one week). When any stat hits zero, that chapter ends. There are three chapters total, and your ending is determined by which stats bottomed out and in what order.
The core mechanic pairs a standard deck of playing cards (or Daniel’s preferred Ravens Ridge Emporium solo RPG oracle cards) with a prompt-driven journal system. Each card suit maps to different prompt types: hearts are locations, diamonds are runes/ward mechanics, clubs trigger memories, and spades affect mind/consciousness. When you draw a card, you find its corresponding page and read the prompt for that specific card number.
Here’s where it gets clever: each card has multiple prompts stacked together. The first time you encounter a card, you read prompt one. When that same card reshuffles back into the deck later, you read prompt two, adding more detail and complexity to your relationship with characters, items, and locations. Daniel showed how discovering a letter led to uncovering “Leona,” someone from his character’s past, then later finding a companion creature named Ami—potentially opening entirely new story interpretations.
You can sacrifice memories (items you’ve discovered) as resources to boost your stats when they’re flagging, creating tension between survival and forgetting your past. The scrapbooking-and-drawing aspects encourage creative expression beyond just writing.
Daniel’s constructive critique: the book has lots of blank facing pages (possibly for journaling?) that feel like wasted space, and he’d prefer spiral binding for easier page tracking during play. The oracle card deck really elevated his experience compared to using a standard deck of playing cards.
If you enjoy narrative-driven solo RPGs and don’t mind the doom-inevitable-but-prolongable premise, Cinderedge offers a compelling, brief campaign of discovery and resource management.