The Players- Davis, Harris, Alisha, Dan, Caspian, Dani

We played a six-person game of The Quiet Year. The setting we came up with was Avalon, a community of magic-users who had set themselves up in the ruins of an unnamed city.

Abundances included sources of power for their magic and shelter.
Scarcities included trust, focuses for the power, wood, and drinkable water.

There were several prominent factions- the wandmakers who were determined to keep their monopoly, the Merlin family who had allied themselves with the wandmakers since they controlled what was essentially the only source of wood, the Wise Sages—the oldest and most powerful magic users, the youth who had established a school for themselves, the kindly teachers/healers who eventually took over the school, and the diviners who made dire predictions about the arrival of the Frost Shepherds.

Some key developments included the discovery of a community of non-magic users just outside Avalon (at first the community wanted to drive them away but eventually agreed to try to work them. Can’t rely on magic for everything after all!) as well as everyone finally working together when the Parish arrived and confirmed that the diviners had been right all along. The community ended up working together to try and prepare for their arrival. We also attempted to address various Scarcities. (Towards the end we were doing better with trusting each other but there was still sabotage and use of Contempt tokens to do things that weren’t in the community’s best interests.) It turned out in the end that the arrival of the Frost Shepherds was a self-fulfilling prophecy! (Some strange interactions of magic occurred that turned the Flame Shepherd- basically a flame golem- into the first Frost Shepherd who was able to summon others from the snow and ice during the winter.)

Despite the large number of players including two new to story games, I felt this went pretty smoothly! We all had a fun time exploring the setting and despite some of the conflicts between the different groups in the community, the players at least collaborated nicely while still advancing the goals of the group they represented. We also worked to build on established elements and weave an interesting story about a group of people trying to survive. I am not sure if it’s explicitly encouraged but was really cool to hear people narrating how projects were completed or failed.


So yeah, I think this was overall a positive experience! We didn’t have to do any tweaking to make it work for six, though it’s not necessarily designed to accommodate that number. The game seemed to move at an okay pace and no one seemed to be impatient as they waited for their week to come up. I appreciated that people were so patient and the players worked together to develop the community and tell an interesting story set around it. Since I haven’t played much of this, I’m not sure how common it is for people to stick with similar groups but it seemed to work well.

Thanks to Caspian, Harris, Alisha, Dan, and Davis for the fun afternoon. :)

- Dani