By: Joe Zhang
I decided to have a go at The Quiet Year as one of the games of inspiration heading into the TTRPG section of our course. I will say right off the bat that TTRPGs aren’t exactly my favorite kind of analog game, so please don’t mind if my tone becomes a little unexcited at some points(I also forgot to take any pictures so bear with that please)…😅
First off, I will say that as a general introduction to the TTRPG genre, it certainly did cover many points for me. One aspect of the game that I did enjoy was definitely the interactions that I could have with the rest of the group, as we built the story further. Alongside that, the narrative cards being a choice between two scenarios and being fairly open ended allowed for a very flexible storytelling that allowed gears to turn and see how things would go as we progressed further into the years. We started inserting characters from other games and shows as existing within our world just for fun(though some didn’t live very long…).
Despite having fun with my group playing the game, I can’t exactly say that I had an overall positive experience playing the game. I will say that I believe part of the lack of enjoyment did come from us and the way we approached the game. There were many actions that we took that never truly created a full community: many of the projects and places that we built were never really finished and our village was more akin to a cabin in the woods with our supposed community just camping outside for the most part. Along with that, we also sent out our characters on expeditions outside of the map, yet never really defined what that mission would accomplish as there are different actions from creating and discovering and we weren’t sure how to classify certain actions that we wished to actually take. While I do believe that there is certainly a lot of potential to be had in The Quiet Year, the way my group approached the gameplay hindered the potential experience we could have had with it.
Finally, the one mechanic that I did not enjoy in any way was the Frost Shepherds. I understand that the idea of the Shepherds should give a sense of impending doom and you want to try to establish your village as much as possible, however, I just never felt that the Shepherds being an absolute end to the game led me to not really care as much about the village that was created. If there is no incentive or reward for building a good and secure village, I can’t bring myself to be motivated to pursue the creation aspect of the game. I believe if there was some way that building a secure village could somehow prevent the end of the game and give you a “happy ending”, I would have ben more incentivized to pursue a more ambitious path with my group while playing The Quiet Year.
All in all, regardless of my enjoyment of playing, I believe that The Quiet Year was a good textbook example of allowing freeform world building and interaction to have an enjoyable experience with those you play with. However, if you see yourself that can’t really bring yourself to put in effort towards a game that has no obvious payoff at the end, I do not recommend this game for you.
