The Quiet Year is a map game created by Avery Alder. In this 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.

In this class, we will play a game of The Quiet Year together, and create one of these communities. We will discover and create their triumphs as well as their struggles together. As for what will happen to the communities when we're done? Digital maps will be created of each of them as we play, and shared with the players for multiple purposes:
- Players will have a tangible memory of the class and shared experience!
- Players (especially Dungeon Masters and writers) who play other games such as Dungeons and Dragons, or who have plans for writing, will have the ability to take the inner workings of these pre-fleshed out communities to use in their own worlds, helping them world build!
- The vast majority (if not all) of the created communities via these classes will be dropped into my own personal D&D worlds, so players who also join other classes of mine will be able to explore these areas they helped create as their own characters!

This course does not require any experience in The Quiet Year, though knowledge and comfort with roleplay scenarios is encouraged. We will play on a platform called Roll20, which is a "virtual tabletop" website, used for playing several types of tabletop role playing games online. Each session will start with a recap from the previous session.