Roll a forest, then pencil it onto a paper sheet.
You are a dog. Your human is on the far side of the forest, calling. You can see where they are. Getting there costs stamina, and curiosity keeps pulling you off the trail.
Movement
- Roll 1d6 and read it as steps: 1-2 → 1, 3-4 → 2, 5-6 → 3.
- Orthogonal only. No diagonals.
- You must spend the entire budget. You may not stop early.
- You may not re-enter the cell you just left, at any step of the turn.
- The U-turn valve: if — and only if — no legal move spends your whole roll, you may re-enter the cell you just left.
- Pencil an X in every cell you pass through. Never erase.
- Crossing your own trail costs 1 curiosity per marked cell you re-enter.
Terrain
- Open trail: costs 1 movement.
- Undergrowth: costs 1 movement and 1 stamina.
- Puddle: costs 1 movement and 2 stamina, every time you wade through it. A puddle covers one or two cells. It is not consumed — it is still there on the way back.
- Tree: impassable. Trees are the only thing that blocks you.
- Distraction: costs 1 movement, and triggers its rule.
The shouting human
- Somebody is out in the wood shouting. Not your human — you have no idea who. The arrow is how far the shouting carries.
- Enter any cell under the arrow and roll 1d6: roll UNDER the number printed in that cell and you shrug it off. Otherwise lose 3 stamina.
- Right next to them there is no number low enough, so you always pay. At 2 a roll of 1 saves you; at 3, a 1 or a 2.
- They never stop shouting. The line costs you every single time you cross it, all game.
Stamina
- Start at 6. At zero you must spend a whole turn resting to recover 3, and you may not move.
- Resting is the only way to get stamina back, and 6 is the most you can ever have.
Curiosity
- Start at 2.
- Pass adjacent to a distraction at any point during your move — not just at the end — and you must spend 1 curiosity to ignore it, or investigate it.
- With no curiosity left, you must investigate.
- Investigating resolves the distraction, restores 1 curiosity, and crosses it off for good.
Distractions
- Squirrel. Move 3 cells in a straight line toward the nearest map edge. −1 stamina. Skip your next turn.
- Scent trail. Move 2 cells along the trail, in the direction marked.
- Another dog. Skip your next turn. Restore 2 curiosity instead of 1.
- Interesting stick. Carry it. −1 step on all future rolls (minimum 1), and +1 curiosity whenever you would lose curiosity.
Winning and losing
- Win by entering the cell where your human is. Overshoot is fine.
- Lose at the end of the 20-turn track: your human stops calling and goes home.