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The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive beyond that. 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.
The game plays through a year of relative peace for a small post-apocalyptic community. Players take turns playing through weeks in this year. Each week, the active player draws a card from the top of the deck (which represents the year), and reads the card. They carry out the actions or answer the questions that are specified on the card. Once the card is resolved, some quick upkeep occurs: projects that the community has in motion get closer to completion. Finally, the active player picks an action from a short list: hold a discussion, make a decision, discover something new.
The three actions give players a meaningful and difficult set of choices: do you spend time listening to others, in the hopes that they'll listen to you in kind? Do you pursue your own goals, ostensibly for the good of the whole community? Do you focus inward or outward?
The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Oh my goodness oh my goodness oh gosh oh God I have so many
- It's my roommates so it's less my shelf a shame and more his shelf of Shame it's shared shame
- Well it's actually head to the by itself now
- I have a lot of Legacy games on my shelf of opportunity because you need the right combination of people just it's so difficult to get to the table it's a big overhead and figuring it out is a lot once you start if somebody decides they don't like it you've got problems just takes hours
- I'm talking to somebody who's in game nine of charterstone with no hope in finishing
- It's so terrible that they vowed me not to sell it and I've had it for so long they can basically make him make me hold on to it
- I don't buy board games I hate to break it to you but there are yarn shells of Shame and there are bookshelves and I I have subscribed I'm at the top of the list for both of those but I'm not I can only be on so many shelves of shade the shame is gone now
References (from this video)
- Deep rich storyline
- Community focused
- People need to play this game
- Very interested in this game
- Curious about it for a number of years and haven't tried it yet
- People can't just stop blowing up Earth
- Struggles of a post-apocalyptic community
- post-apocalyptic
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- community decision making — You shape the decisions of the community as a whole not an individual character.
- Map Driven — Started as a simple map led to a deep rich storyline.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- People's Choice top 10.
- This is now my all-time favorite game.
- This is the perfect Adventure series for short attention spans.
- This is the game I own that I most want to play but won't until five other Campaign games are at least good but not yet finished.
- This month's top touted game is Scarface 1920.
- I like more pretend Bloodshed than actual Bloodshed myself.
- This game was the perfect thematic gangster board game we needed.
References (from this video)
- Open-ended storytelling and emergent narrative
- Collaborative world-building with defined prompts
- Humor and chaos can enhance entertainment value
- Rules-lite feel may cause ambiguity
- Dark themes (violence, cannibalism) can be unsettling
- Group dynamics can be uneven or unstructured
- survival, rebuilding, community governance, ritual, scarcity
- Post-apocalyptic community developing under a subway/underground environment
- collaborative storytelling with prompts and season cards
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- group decision-making — The community votes/negotiates on important choices affecting the settlement.
- Projects and events — Players initiate projects to build defenses/infrastructure; deck-driven events drive outcomes.
- Resource Management — Markers for abundance/scarcity (tools, scrap metal, gunpowder) influence choices.
- Resource tracking — Markers for abundance/scarcity (tools, scrap metal, gunpowder) influence choices.
- Season cards/deck prompts — Weekly prompts guiding events and decisions when drawing a card per turn.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Finders Keepers
- the shotgun gods
- we’re going to Walmart and take over that spot
- this is mass armed conflict in Walmart parking lot
References (from this video)
- Uniquely creative activity
- Closer to board game than RPG
- Great for collaborative storytelling
- Used successfully to build Star Wars campaign setting
- Community preparation
- Post-apocalyptic
- Collaborative world-building
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- event cards — Cards determine narrative events
- Map building — Players draw map evolution
- Shared Creation — Group decides story outcomes narratively
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- throughout my entire board gaming life I've also been a role player as well and to me the two hobbies have always interconnected and overlapped
- I've always liked board games that tell stories and have always liked a little bit of crunch in my RPGs
- D&D was the game that got me into role-playing games and the reason I'm probably still playing role-playing games
- the best things about shadowrun are the heists you can pull the great missions the Mission Impossible style feeling you get of the game
- when done right it's a darkly humorous incredibly sinister experience combined with just absurdist comedy
- the war was over belief and what defined what was real and that idea was just a great hook
- the investigation system felt better than any other game I've come across because you could spend the time and the energy to succeed
- the Rebel Alliance sourcebook for Star Wars west end games is one of the best RPG source books I've ever read
- I like the game so much that I almost entirely rewrote the rulebook myself
- all of creation is called the symphony and everything is music in some way