Hello, first time summarizer here.
At Tuesday gaming (a week ago) we played The Quiet Year. It ended up being the least quiet year imaginable for our little village on a little hill.

The Quiet Year is played with easy player representing sentiments within a struggling village, such as the desire to militarize, or the need to bring the community closer together. Each players turn was one week--signified by drawing one card from a deck of playing cards (52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks in a year)--reading the event corresponding to the card, and doing an action. Actions included opening a discussion on what direction to steer the village, starting projects to better the village, or discovering something new on the map we created.

We set the stage as Mongolia-like steppes picking up where a previous village must have been before, with technology around bronze or early iron age. We struggled with our shortages of weapons and textiles as inner strife and outside armies threatened to tear our community apart. Events included: secret caves filled with poison gas, poison wine, taming coyotes, mysterious deaths, arson, two armies fighting over the land we called ours, diplomatic discussions failing, a surplus of goats, and a communal house turned fortress that looked like bacon.

I very much like this system for how it models different desires within the community and the various voices trying to steer the community in different directions. Although it's hard to picture the game as anything other than bronze age village after playing it that way, it is time period and technology neutral... as long as there can be a struggling village/city. I would love to play this again with a different setting.

We did fall into the trap of discovering too many interesting things on the map we added to throughout the game without devoting time to exploring them. I felt there were many more stories that didn't get a change to evolve. I think I would also appreciate a house rule allowing more discussion on issues facing the village as the rules delineate limited times for discussion.