More RPGing: The Quiet Year

[radiantfracture]

9/10 would recommend

(It's this or the real world, friends. So today it's this.)

My current thing is RPG actual-play podcasts¹, specifically Rusty Quill shows. What I tend to get captivated by, though, are the interstitial mini-games, the ones the cast plays three sessions of at breaks just for fun.

The first one I mentioned here was Twilight Abyss from the Magnus Archives feed. jasmine_r_s and M. and I had a brilliant online time playing our scenario New York 1979, modelled on the simple 2D6 rules of that game. Technically we have another session planned, although one character is currently unconscious on a bed of slugs and another is trapped inside a giant seafood organ. So things are not looking great.

I also heard the Magnus crew play Mothership,² an Aliens-themed space RPG with a great stress and panic mechanic. My birthday falling on a Tuesday, I declared the weekends either side as birthday gaming weekends, and made the local crew try Mothership two weekends ago.

That was also fun, although I had failed to really think through the process of interstellar travel, and so very early on we had an interesting moment where I was worried the scenario had broken, but actually there was already enough character development that they players could totally dig the story out if I just got out of their way and let them.

(Always more to learn about GMing. I'm not actually all that experienced. Just bossy.)

Last weekend was my second birthday RPG, but I'd vastly overestimated the energy I'd have for prep. I tried all day to fiddle the bits of my story together into the second half of a scenario.

At 5:30 I slumped back in my vinyl chair and thought: what can I do with this fatigue and this goodwill? I can't write all this, but I still want to gather my friends and play a game against the dark.

Hey. We can play The Quiet Year.

Do you know The Quiet Year?

This is, yes, yet another game I have been wanting to play since hearing the Rusty Quill Gaming crew play it on their break.

If you like collective storytelling and thoughtful map-drawing games about community, I recommend it. You can find it here on the creator Avery Alder's site, Buried without Ceremony.

The Quiet Year -- Setup

You have a map, which begins as a blank page. I had a big piece of white poster board and various pens and pencil crayons.

You separate a deck of cards into the suits and shuffle randomly. Each card represents one week of the year. Hearts are spring, diamonds are summer, clubs are autumn, and spades are winter.

(My crew were so convinced that hearts must be summer that I just let them have that.)

The Scenario

The scenario is very spare -- just enough to be evocative:

The Opening Story

For a long time, we were at war with the jackals. Now, finally, we've driven them off, and we're left with this: a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the game will end. But we don't know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

Gameplay

You begin by having each player add something to the map. Forest, ruins, beached tanker, waterfall. You each establish a resource, and decide that one is abundant. Then the year begins.

Each player draws a card from the season and looks that card up in the Oracle. The oracle gives you a choice of questions to answer to advance your story.

In Spring, when you start, the questions tend towards establishing your situation. For example, the Ace of Hearts offers this:

What group has the highest status in the community? What must people do to gain inclusion in this group?
OR
Are there distinct family units in your community? If so, what family structures are common?

You choose one option on the card and describe what happens in the community. Then you can take one of three actions:

1. Start a project to build something. (The community starts with few resources.)


2. Start a discussion about something in the community.


3. Discover something. (Usually this means adding something to the map.)

Notice that since you can take only one action, you cannot both discuss something and build something. Discussions don't end in decisions, unless the next player takes you up on it. Quite a bit like large community discussions.

If you are speaking for a group that feels left out of the discussion, you take a "contempt token" and place it in front of you, indicating community tension.

You play through all four seasons like this, trying to build up your community. At some point in winter, the King of Spades will come up, and that's it -- the Frost Shepherds arrive.

What You Get

What you get, or what we got, is a community story -- factions and families, individual characters arising out of crisis and taking on their own stories -- tragic failures, mysterious visitors, uncanny happenings, and then -- the end.

"This is an amazing game," said M.

You could call it more collective storytelling than a game per se -- the mechanics make the storytelling easier, and force you to deal with conflict and struggle rather than simply declaring that everyone gets along beautifully all year.

Loose Ends

This is a game that's interested in loose ends.

Unless I missed something in the booklet, nothing really happens with the contempt tokens -- you could use them as a story prompt, but there aren't any instructions about them.

Community discussions don't result in decisions.

And when the game ends, it just ends -- the Frost Shepherds arrive, and that's it.

So you have to decide you like that openness, that slightly unravelled quality of The Quiet Year, especially the end game.

I think I like this quality in some ways and wish for more followthrough in others -- I'd like the tokens to do something. I'm tempted to instigate a house rule of some kind. (I also feel like "contempt"  isn't the word I'd use, and I changed it to "alienation" for our game.)

On Saturday, jasmine_r_s and I plan to play a game in Zoom with friends. Very excited to try it out in that format, and just to play again.

The Enthusigasm / Rusty Quill crew are also super into Monsterhearts from the same creator. Have you played that? I read it over and it seems like you'd need the right group to play it with, but with that group, wow.

{rf}

1. There's an old Onion headline, "Man Replaces Entire Personality with Podcasts." L'oignon, c'est moi.

2. Their Kickstarter just blew up big time.

Comments

[sabotabby]

This game sounds super awesome as well.

1. There's an old Onion headline, "Man Replaces Entire Personality with Podcasts." L'oignon, c'est moi.

Ouch same lately.

[radiantfracture]

This game sounds super awesome as well.

It is really good. I think you would like it, in better days at least. It does help one to Imagine Otherwise, at least a little bit.

There's an explicitly decolonial version, too, called The Deep Forest, which I have not played. It strikes me as a bit odd, but that could be good, too.

[sabotabby]

I think my issue is that I have so little free time that RPGs must by necessity be done as part of a social thing. There are many reasons why I do RPG over vidya games but that's probably the biggest. That said, this is very intriguing.

[radiantfracture]

Oh yeah, for sure — The Quiet Year is by design a one-off, so it doesn’t create the social glue of a long campaign.