"You have one quiet year — then the Frost Shepherds arrive."
The Quiet Year is a GMless, diceless map-drawing game for two to four players. A shared 52-card deck marks the weeks of a single year, from spring thaw to the killing frost. Each week someone flips a card, answers its prompt, and redraws the community's map — founding projects, spending scarce resources, and silently stacking Contempt tokens when tensions rise. There is no winning: you build something fragile and hopeful together, and then it ends.
A community has just driven off the Jackals after a long, brutal war. Now it has one quiet year to rebuild, forage, and prepare before the mysterious Frost Shepherds arrive and everything ends. A post-collapse world of scarcity, small hopes, and quiet dread — the exact ruins are yours to draw.
The 52 weeks
A standard 52-card deck is your calendar. Each week you flip the top card and answer one of its two prompts — an omen, a delay, or a sudden stroke of luck.
Draw the map
There is no printed board. Together you sketch your community's land on a shared sheet, adding rivers, ruins, and resources as each week reshapes the terrain and the story.
Projects & dice
Big undertakings become Projects, timed with a die that counts down the weeks until completion. When the die runs out, you finally learn whether the work paid off.
Contempt tokens
You may never argue aloud during play. When a decision stings, you silently take a Contempt token — a quiet record of resentment festering beneath the community's fragile peace.
Open in Session Zero to let every player vote and see the results.