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[The Quiet Year] The Frost Shepherds have come. (Game ended.)
simonwolf
i can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered User regular
i can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered User regular
The Quiet Year
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.
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.
What Are Our Tools?
We have a map, which is currently a blank image. Before playing, we'll establish some of the landscape. As we play, we will continually update it with new discoveries, conflicts, opportunities. We'll avoid writing words on it. We are all responsible for drawing on the map, even if poorly or crudely.
We have a record list, detailing our abundances, scarcities, important people, and projects.
We have points of Contempt, representing any tension and frustration that might arise in the community as play progresses.
We have a deck of cards, divided by suit; these are our seasons, and they will guide us through the game, week by week.
The Seasons
There are four seasons in the game, as there is in real life. We start the game at the beginning of Spring, and we play through the quiet year that follows. Each season has 13 cards, represented by a single suit. We divide the deck into suits, then shuffle and stack them to make a year of cards, in seasonal order. While all the cards will tell a player to make a decision about the direction of the community, there is a special card, the King of Spades. When this card is drawn, the game will be over. It could come at any time during Winter.
Spring is represented by Hearts. Spring will ask us many questions, which will help us develop the landscape and inner workings of the community. There won't be a lot of conflict in this season, necessarily, but this is fine.
Summer is represented by Diamonds. In this season, threats will emerge, but so will progress. We'll define our community and sow the beginnings of discontent through our actions.
Autumn is represented by Clubs. Danger and failure will become become more visible in this, the most trying season.
Winter is represented by Spades. The community will continue its work and preparations, but the players will know that the Frost Shepherds might arrive at any time.
Who We Are
As players, we each have two roles to play. We are representatives of the community at a slightly zoomed-out scale, caring about its fate. But we are also dispassionate observers, introducers of dilemmas, experimenters of a sort. The Quiet Year asks us to move between these roles. We don't represent specific characters; we don't act out scenes. We represent currents of thought, and when we speak or take action, we might be a single person or a great many. But we care about their fate regardless, and allowing ourselves to do so creates a richer experience, a peek into the struggles of a community in conflict.
We will often be given opportunities to introduce new issues for the community to deal with, whether by drawing a card or choosing to Discover Something New as an action. By dispassionately putting these dilemmas forward, then assuming our other role as community representatives, we generate tension and make the successes of the community seem real. If there's something you struggle with in real life (like if violence is ever justified), introduce situations that bring it into question.
Sketching Terrain
Before we start, we have to establish some facts about the community and its surroundings. We start with a brief discussion about the general terrain and environment of the area, and after we agree on a setting (a rocky desert; a windswept coastline), we introduce details. Everyone names one detail about the local terrain, and sketches it onto the map where they feel it fits. These sketches should be rough and simple, nothing grand or elaborate, leaving plenty of blank space. There will be plenty of things to throw on the map, over time. Assume our community has between 60 and 80 members.
For example, a group might set their game on a rocky coastline. The first player introduces a detail: "Okay, on the shoreline is a series of washed up cargo containers where the community has settled". The next adds, "And there's the wreckage of a container ship, just a bit too far in the water." The third adds, "There's a lighthouse on an outcropping just off the coast." The last player says, "A thick woodland starts just in from where the lighthouse is."
Starting Resources
Next, each of us declares an important resource, something the community might have in abundance or scarcity. Things like clean drinking water, food, shelter, children, sleep, hope. Choosing a resource makes it important, as well; whether abundant or scarce, they are something the community wants and needs.
Then we choose one of these resources to be in abundance. It gets noted in the Records as such, and whoever named it gets to draw an abundance of the resource on the map. The other resources become scarcities; they are noted as such on the Records, and their absence or scarcity is noted on the map by the people who named them. Symbols and symbolic representation is fine; words are to be avoided.
The Week
We progress through the game by weeks. Each player takes one turn at a time, and shouldn't take too long to deal with. During the week, the following things are done:
- The next card is given to the current player; they choose the option that most interests them, post it in-thread, resolve it, and follow any bolded text.
- Project counters are reduced by 1, and any finished projects are updated.
- The current player chooses and takes an action (Discover Something New, Hold a Discussion, or Start a Project).
How much should we write?
Here's some rough guidelines for in-game posting:
- For an answer to a card's query, work in the range of around three sentences at most.
- For a response to a Hold A Discussion, two sentence max, with twitter's 140 characters as a eyeball.
- For finishing a project, two or three sentences, the more concise the better.
How do we begin?
Currently, this game is being played by myself, jdarksun, and Jam Warrior. If someone drops out for any reason, I'll likely need to replace them, so let me know if you're interested in that kind of thing via a PM.
simonwolf on
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Totes interested. I suggest for our terrain setting: Desert Mesa
- Terence McKenna
mangrove swamp
I'll probably keep this open for another day, for reference.
- Terence McKenna
The permanently misty moorlands.
How about: the outskirts of an abandoned town. Or is it supposed to be decidedly rural in setting?
I'm thinking I might run a second game simultaneously.
Setting-wise, there is no limit; I've seen multiple ones based in a city or other urbanised area. I believe someone set a game in a subway system, ala Metro 2033. It doesn't need to be rural, it's just what seems to come to mind for most people when they think "community in a post-collapse world".
There isn't really a "host" for this game - since we're online, however, one person is necessarily in charge of the deck that is used for the weekly progression. I don't really think having a completely set apart "host" is needed, since this game is entirely GM-less.
Grimmy, if you wanted to run a separate game, and I'll RNG the split, then the PDF is available for a scant $6 (or a single good deed) over at the author's website, Buried Without Ceremony.
Otherwise, uh, I'll RNG three players and hopefully recruit extras in the next thread, when it goes up.
- Terence McKenna
Would that help?
If you wanted to run and play a game, then let's do that. I can RNG a split when I get home from work.
Should be home in an hour or two, will RNG a split and let it go from there.
Community Alpha:
simonwolf
Jam Warrior
[jdarksun/GrimmyTOA]
Community Omega:
Kilnaga
Neaden
[jdarksun/GrimmyTOA]
Once these two decide who's just playing and who's playing and deck-mastering, I'll start things up all proper-like.
@simonwolf - do you actually keep a physical deck of cards on-hand for this, or...?
I suppose @jdarksun needs to make a decision, and then I can do things and such.
Did one/both of you want to play in it as well?
Alright, take it to PMs from here, I suppose. I'll make another post to mark that the "in game" stuff has begun, and that it should just be the members of this community posting in here.
@jdarksun, @Jam Warrior, the first thing we need to do is determine what kind of general environment we're living in. You've suggested a permanently misty moorland, and a mangrove swamp. I like the sound of the latter, but you guys can make the final call. I'm happy with anything.
Once you've made a decision, you'll need to name and draw a feature of the landscape on the map.
Here is our map.
It is a big, blank canvas, at the moment. Since neither of your suggestions involves a coast or river as a major thing, necessarily, I decided to leave it completely blank.
So, once we know the general lay of the land, name your feature, describe it with a short sentence, and draw it on the map. Rough and simple is the way to go, leaving plenty of room for other things - there will be a lot going onto this map, after all.
We have a year of building ahead.
Edit: I should clarify that either is fine with me!
Hidden within a large crack in a slate cliff face. Sheltered from the winds but open to the sky above. The secret village of the Men of the Moor.
For the sake of getting things done having a strict turn order for adding to the map allows guilt to work faster. Thus I nominate jdarksun to be next!
Or you can make me redraw my first contribution, whatever. Just erase everything below the clifftop when you upload your entry I guess?