Today's the day! For the first time (finally!), you're old enough to visit the magic crystal market on your own. You've got an empty pack on your back, a shopping list from your magic instructor, and a bit of spending money in your pocket. Your attention jumps between the bustling crowds, colorful shops, and the little crystal spirits flitting to and fro, but you're not worried. You have the whole day to take them all in, and that feels like all the time in the world.
A Day at the Crystal Market is a solo tabletop rpg where you play a child-aged magical apprentice running an errand to buy magic crystals for your teacher. You are excited, kind, and enthusiastic. Along the way, you’ll visit the shops, become distracted by the wonder around you, and maybe get a bit of spellcasting practice in. You’ll also interact with and befriend the tiny crystal spirits of the market, who will help you along on your journey. As you collect magic crystals, your spellcasting abilities and the number of spirit friends you might make will grow.
Within the game, you are supposed to gather all of the magic crystals before the day is over, but if you don’t, that’s just fine. Your teacher will understand.
The real goal of the game is to engage in the childlike wonder of being entrusted with a task that is larger than yourself, the childlike joy in observing the world, and the childlike kindness directed where adults might not think to look. It’s about a magical day in which nothing important happens, but everything that happens feels important. It’s about imagining the small details of a world, holding them in your head, inspecting them, and then letting them go.
It’s inspired by the movie Kiki’s Delivery Service, the book Eva Evergreen: Semi-Magical Witch by Julie Abe, and my own experiences visiting mundane markets with kids.
A Day at the Crystal Market was created for the RPG-Talk Discord server May 2021 design contest, whose theme was “magic crystals”, as well as the Carta Jam.
This work is based on the Carta system (found at https://peachgardengames.itch.io/carta-srd), from Cat McDonald and Peach Garden Games, and licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
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