The Quiet Year: Map, Storytelling, and Worldbuilding Game

Worldbuilders Market

Regular price
$45.00
$45.00
Regular price
$50.00
Saving $5.00

The Quiet Year: Map, Storytelling, and Worldbuilding Game

Worldbuilders Market

Regular price
$45.00
$45.00
Regular price
$50.00
Saving $5.00

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a community living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.

The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

The Quiet Year occupies an interesting space – part roleplaying game, part cartographic poetry.

All proceeds go to Worldbuilders, a geek-centered nonprofit supporting humanitarian efforts worldwide.

The Quiet Year: Map, Storytelling, and Worldbuilding Game

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

― Patrick Rothfuss,

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a community living after the collapse of civilization, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.

The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

The Quiet Year occupies an interesting space – part roleplaying game, part cartographic poetry.

All proceeds go to Worldbuilders, a geek-centered nonprofit supporting humanitarian efforts worldwide.

In print, this beautiful game comes in a small burlap bag. You’ll receive a forty-page booklet, a deck of oversized game cards (3.25″ x 5″, just like the booklet), a turn summary card, six small dice, and twenty Contempt Tokens (shaped like weathered skulls).


2-4 Players

180 minute play time

1.45/5 Weight rating according to Boardgamegeek.com, meaning this is a light-to-medium complexity game. 

Designed and written by Avery Alder.
Design insights from Jackson Tegu.
Illustrations by Ariel Norris.
First released 2013. This iteration 2019.
2-4 players, 3-4 hours, ages 12 up
drawing, imagination, apocalypse