We, the first of our kind, at the dawn of humankind, crawl out of, er, our caves maybe, to explore rich lands, meet sages, invent technologies, become a proper people, and herald a new era. Our deeds will become legend and live on, as awkward scribbles on white cards.
The Cradle is a legacy make-as-you-play PnP civilization game. You start with tokens for each player and a deck of blank cards. Each game, you add more content to your deck, turning blank cards into Lands, Sages, and Technologies, to be re-discovered by later ages. Each game lasts until one Tribe reaches technological supremacy. After a few games, a milestone technology will be discovered, ushering the whole game into a new Era that changes some rules and adds new actions and other possibilities as humankind as a whole advances through the ages.
-description from designer