A Quiet Year was the first TTRPG I’ve ever played. It was an interesting and slightly overwhelming experience for me as the player to decide the direction of the game. As a beginner, I think A Quiet Year is the perfect introduction to the TTRPG genre. Players don’t embody a character. Instead, each one is a collective or a part of a society where each one pushes for a path to create the best possible society or, if the players choose, the worst possible society.
The way the game begins through the reading of the introduction to the game is a great way for players to become comfortable and brainstorm what type of world they are entering. For example, the GM makes each player first draws a resource or landmark onto the blank map and explain it. Then the GM has the group decide how many people are in their society. This has the players subconsciously create a connection with the land and the people because not only are the resources their mental creations but physical ones since they draw them onto the page.
Seeing a map physically and having players engage with it each turn aids the story because everything from the size of the paper to the way images are drawn changes the relationship between the story and the player. For example, in my game, wolves and a giant goldfish were drawn. Unlike the people in the story, who were stick figures, the wolves and goldfish felt unique and distinguished themselves from the map. The goldfish became part of a story where a woman went missing, and the wolves became tamed by the children of the society, which helped them gather food. On the other hand, when a blight struck the crop of our society, it was drawn using hashed lines which later faded away from the storyline because it seemed to fade into the map. Even the colors of the pens changed how the players looked and engaged with the map and sparked new ideas in the artist as they created a piece of the story. I remember as I drew, I’d get excited as the idea going through my head allowed me to use a new color, or I’d get excited because a color inspired an idea. The relationship players have between the creation of the map, and the story is half of what makes this game fun.
The other half of the game is each player’s relationship with one another. A player, on their turn, can start or lead a discussion where they can talk about a certain issue that is pressing the community or about a project that has been done or is currently in process. It allows each one to express their agreement or disagreement and push their narrative onto the rest of the players.
Players can additionally express their disagreements through contempt tokens. The tokens are intended to serve a similar purpose as the map. Unlike the map, the tokens don’t create a relationship between the individual and the story. They intend to be more so about the relationship between a player and another player. The tokens are there so players are not discouraged by others to act the way they would like, as well as suggest to others that the player who grabbed one wants to play in a different way. However, I feel as though these tokens are ineffective because, during my game, people only used them twice, and when people disagreed with an action of another player. They would instead express it on their turn through a project. It is not the game’s intention for them to be forgotten about, so I’m curious how other people use them in-game. Overall, a Quiet Year is a cool game, and I love how it uses art as a collaborative environment and game that encourages players to build off each other through their narratives.
