The quiet year12/27/2022 ![]() ![]() In our playthrough, the groups represented were, roughly speaking: superstitious peasants a faction who wanted to do things the way we did back before the Empire fell (the apocalypse, for us, was something like the fall of the Roman Empire) a theistic religious faction who wanted to interpret everything as the will of a single God and a ruthlessly unity-focused pragmatic faction who mainly wanted everyone to work together to save their communal skins - or else get out. The “discussion” activities are the closest anyone ever comes to roleplaying an actual scene, but these are highly formalized and no individual human is represented there. ![]() Each player represents some faction or group within the community who wants certain things, but they’re not tied to a specific person or personality and are not even supposed to overtly communicate their faction concept, though there are ways to hint at it implicitly during gameplay. The Quiet Year is even more aggressively Not About Characters than Microscope. Our story told of a group divided by religious disagreements, threats from outsiders, limited resources (especially iron, which we didn’t have much of until late in the story), and a certain amount of archaeological curiosity. By the time play is over and the last card is drawn, the map is large and complex and bears signs of many events that have happened to the community. Each turn, a player draws the next card, follows instructions from a chart about what that card means for the community, and then takes one of three actions: proposing a communal discussion about a particular issue discovering something new in or around the community (which means drawing it on the map) or starting a project (also drawn on the map, but set to conclude several turns later). In the meantime, there are up to 52 turns (one for each week of the year), and a deck of cards is used as a randomizer to determine what sorts of things might happen during those weeks. The Frost Shepherds (also not explained) will turn up in a year, though the inhabitants of the town don’t know that. The War with the Jackals (not explained) is just over. ![]() The Quiet Year is a story game about one year in the life of a threatened community. ![]()
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