TENDER — a journaling game of one cold year

(Note, this is created as an experiment in June of 2026 to evaluate how well Claude Fable was able to execute on creating a "complete" TTTRG, albeit under 1200 words of my direction across 17 prompts.   The model generated 9000 words of text, the layout, the prompting for 5 illustrations, and 5 songs.  (Actually, creating cyberpunk Enka pastiche was my original goal.)  All of this was done in a single session, and the conversation near the limit of what the model could accommodate within  session, and it required all of a pro plans usage requirements over 36 hours.  This was an experiment to see what the this state of the art model could accomplish with guidance but without content.   If if were an attempt at making a game, I would not have proceeded along these lines.  Nevertheless I think it is an evocative, interesting, if short, journaling game.  Anyway, even if one has no interest in playing something made with AI,  having a clear example of what the best model can accomplish might be of interest. )  

You are a tender — a night attendant at a body-inn in the Northern Ward, keeping watch over the warm, sleeping bodies of people who crossed over to the digital far country and never came back for themselves. Forty-one rooms. A key ring. A thermos. An oath: warm, clean, undisturbed, remembered.

Then a great family sends the lift for you, and for one year — from one festival of blue lanterns to the next — you move between the cold wards and the warm crown of a city that grows while you sleep, and you write down what you see.

TENDER is a solo journaling game played with a pen, a notebook, two dice, and headphones. Five chapters. Each one opens with a song — five original tracks in the revival styles the city itself dances to, from torch-song enka to glittering city pop to something stranger waiting at the waterline. Between songs, the game alternates light, playful beats (roll the night's weather, name a product you'll regret naming, choose what you notice about a stranger) with two or three real journal entries per chapter — the writing that becomes your story.

What shapes the writing:

Tone Dice. Every chapter has its own pair of emotional registers — Tender or Numb, Dazzled or Estranged, Burning or Mourning. You roll to learn the weather your entry must be written in. Ties are a gift. Usually.

Keepsakes. Once per chapter the game puts an object in your coat pocket — a spare key, a brass token, a sealed letter — and each one lets you break the rules exactly once. What you don't spend is also a story.

One corridor, no saves. The plot is linear and unashamed of it: this is a game about a world, a job, and a year, and you are the variable. It is played once, ends where you decide it ends, and leaves you holding a finished notebook — an artifact of a year that didn't happen to you, written in your own hand.

It is a game with a sense of wonder about a terrible place: a city where warmth is sold, memory is tailored, the dead are subscription products, and somebody, somewhere, is still doing their rounds.

You will need: a pen, a notebook, two six-sided dice, the soundtrack (linked free), and 60–90 minutes per chapter. No GM, no prep, no experience required.

Content notes: grief and anticipatory grief, comatose bodies and their care, economic precarity, climate loss, memory alteration, an off-page death or two. A standing "Close the Door" rule lets you skip any prompt, always.