The last train has gone. There are four hours until the first one. You are the lost property clerk at a station in winter, and your job is to write each handed-in object into the ledger. That is all your job is — and yet every single time, in the margin beside the name of the object, you find you have written something about the person who lost it.

The Night Counter, 01:00 — $5 · PDF, 11 pages · print & play · 1 player, no GM, 45–90 minutes, two d6 and a pen.

How it plays. Roll two dice: one is the shelf, one is the place on it. Read the object. Write down who you think lost it — a line is enough. Then roll again.

The dice end the night, not you. The second time a roll repeats, the owner has come back for it, and you write what they said at the counter. The third time it repeats, the first train is coming and the night is over — whatever turn you are on. Sometimes that is three turns in.

At the end you pick one object nobody claimed and do one of three things with it: shelve it, take it home, or leave it out at the counter where it can be seen from outside. None of the three is correct. Which one you chose is the record of how you ended the night.

Because the order of the rolls changes every time, which objects get claimed and which are left behind changes, and so does the last one. There are 36 objects across six shelves.

Disclosure: the text, the object tables and the structure were written with AI (Claude) and checked by a person before release — this is declared on the project page too. The cover and figures are not generative AI; they are drawn by a program.

It is my first solo game after a run of multiplayer murder mystery scripts, so I would genuinely like to hear where the pacing drags. Happy to send a free copy to anyone who wants to read it and tell me.