The Quiet Year - Week 6

The beginning

The basic unit of play in The Quiet Year is the week.
Each week is a turn taken by one player.

During each week, the following things happen:
• The active player draws a card, reads the relevant text from the Oracle, and resolves it. All bold text is followed.
• Project Dice are reduced by one, and finished projects are updated.
• The active player chooses one of: Discover Something New, Hold a Discussion,or Start a Project.

The three possible actions to end your turn are as follows:

Introduce a new situation. It might be a problem,
an opportunity, or a bit of both. Draw that situation
onto the map. Drawings should be small and simple.

Whenever things seem too controlled or easy,
we can use this action to introduce new issues
and dilemmas. When individual characters get
introduced, we’ll give them names, and record them.

You open with a question or a declaration.
Starting with you and going clockwise, everyone
gets to weigh in once, sharing a single argument
comprised of 1-2 sentences. If you opened with a
question, you get to weigh in last. If you opened with
a declaration, that’s it for you.

A discussion never results in a decision or summation
process. Everyone weighs in, and then it’s over. This
is how conversations work in communities: they are
untidy and inconclusive affairs.

Each discussion should be tied to a situation on the
map. When a discussion ends, mark the situation it is
attached to with a small dot.

It’s important that we stay concise. If any of us feel
like we have more to say on a topic, we can always
hold another discussion about it at a later point.

You choose a
situation and declare what the community will do to
resolve it. There is no consultation about this idea -
the community simply begins work.

As a group, quickly decide how many weeks the
project would reasonably take to complete (minimum
1 and maximum 6). Remember that you are a small
community when choosing a timeframe.

Be generous with your assumptions, but do remember
that scarcity and difficulty are the norm. If a project
would reasonably take longer than six weeks to
complete, it will need to be completed in stages.

Place a die on the map wherever the project is taking
place, with the die face matching the number of
weeks it will take to complete.