The Game: The Quiet Year
The Players: Jerome, Caspian, Liz, and Davis
The Theme: American West frontier town

For those not familiar, The Quiet Year is a different style of story game from because the narrative is centered around building a map over the course of the game. That means starting with a blank piece of paper, each character adding a couple features as a jumping-off point, then going right into the main game and building the story a turn at a time.

The theme of this game is that it focuses on a year of peace in a small community. Near future, distant past, post-apocalypse, whatever theme and setting is used, it is a story about a community building/rebuilding itself over 52 weeks. Each player turn is one week with a chance to add or modify a feature on the map, building the overall narrative. A deck of cards and an event table is used to add randomness and also act as the game timer.

For our setting, we settled on a frontier town in the American West. The structure was recognizable enough that everyone could easily think of map elements to move the game along. It also lends itself well to a small community structure. The specifics are that it is a mining town that is hitting its bust cycle. There is a scarcity of copper, the mine resource, but an abundance of wild game.

As the game starts out, we try to figure out how to make the town prosper since the mine has dried up. Over the course of time, there are saloons and brothels that rise to power, ghosts in a haunted lake, crazy hill folk in the nearby forest, and an influx of Chinese immigrants. We also see an unexpected rush in oil and gold, success from the railroad coming to town, but we also see troubles of a plague in the area, dead lawmen, and rich folk up to no good. There are highs and lows, moments of sadness, despair, and contention. In the end, everyone survived the encounter and the settlement got to see another winter. The attached picture documents the year of trials.

This is the first time I have been exposed to The Quiet Year, but I find I like it. There is not much opportunity to roleplay in a one-on-one approach, but this game makes up with vibrant world-building that doesn't come from a scenario list or scribbled notes in the rulebook. It also leaves a great souvenir with the map that everyone has to draw on. I would definitely play it again and already purchased a set of rules just so I can make it happen. Good experience overall.