Welcome, my little critters, to Tales from the Crit Season 2, The Level Up.
We're an actual play podcast with an ever-changing cast of players making our way through a bunch
of different RPG systems, from micro-RPGs to some of the more well-known role-playing
games out there, and the occasional highly narrative tabletop game.
Content warnings can be found in the episode's description.
My name is Riley Groves, and I am the Crit Keeper on this episode of Tales from the Crit.
Welcome back to Tales from the Crit.
Today we are continuing our playthrough of A Quiet Year.
We're going to tackle this season of summer in this episode, but before we do, I would
like to introduce back to the table Connor.
Hello.
Derek.
Hi.
How are you doing there?
And we're going to answer one question from our pod deck interview deck.
I think this is this third edition, actually, and that question for today is, what was the
most memorable class you have ever taken in school or college?
And seeing as Derek's going to be player one today, why don't you go first?
I actually used to sit in my mother's anatomy classes when I was on school breaks, so I
didn't really take that class, but I sat in for seven out of the 15 weeks.
And what age were you then?
Eleven.
All right.
Sweet.
Rebecca.
The first one that popped into my mind in high school, I took Mr. Baldwin's class, Business
and Personal Law, and that was a really cool class because we'd always have tests and stuff.
It would be legal stuff.
And he'd have a right answer, but if you could argue your own way into what you thought was
the right answer, he'd give you credit for it anyway.
And I just love that that's how the legal system works.
It seems so sketchy.
Awesome.
Connor, what about you?
The first class that jumped into my mind was my addictive and compulsive behaviors class
that I took in college.
The professor would open every day with like, good morning, drugs class.
And he just had a lot of charisma and energy.
And it was neat to learn about not only the origins of a lot of the recreational street
drugs, but also like pharmaceutical drugs and stuff like that.
And cool class.
Cool.
Nice.
I've done a lot of a bunch, but I'm going to just stick to the parameters.
I will say physical education as a curriculum in college is the most fun that a college
student could do.
Did nothing but play sports.
And that was pretty sweet.
But I think my most memorable is elementary school music class, particularly around Halloween.
Our teacher was Mrs. Orr, I think.
She really, really killed the Halloween segment for music class every year.
And I just like, I think about it all the time.
She had the mood lighting set up.
The orange stage lighting and the creepy music playing in the curtains.
It was one of my favorite moments of schooling, I'd have to say.
She was a really fun teacher.
She was.
She was great on the holidays.
She definitely was.
My grandmother called her and demanded that they stop playing the song aloe-weta about
the bird, right?
Yeah, I don't know if it's about a bird, but I know the song.
I think it is about a bird.
Yeah.
Well, something...
Plucking all the feathers off of it.
Yeah.
So you heard the bird or the bird dies in it, whatever.
But like it's French and we were in the third grade, so like who, nobody cares.
But my grandmother called the school and complained and demanded that they stop playing that song.
I was very highly embarrassed.
I bet.
I feel like the school should have been like, you're a grandma, not a mom, so we don't care
at all.
The teacher personally apologized to me and I was like...
I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't care.
I was going to say where the embarrassment comes from, but I guess...
The embarrassment came from having to go down to the music room, getting called out of class
to go see Mrs. Orr in the music room and having to make the journey down there, not knowing
why I fucked up in music class.
I thought honestly the walk down was her telling me that I was not good at the percussion instruments
and that I'd be reduced to this thing with the fish thing.
And then she was like, I'm sorry that we play this song and that it's offensive.
And I was like, I love that song.
I think it's a banger, man.
I don't know.
I like this song.
Can we sing it today?
I was just getting down the pat-pats on the fucking bongos, man.
So yeah, music class.
All right.
You guys ready to play Quiet Ear?
Yeah.
Do we remember how?
No, I think so.
It's been a while.
Yeah, I'm sure.
So we're going to pull cards.
We're going to read off the options.
We're narratively going to describe what happens to our little community here in space on XP676.
So far so good.
We're making some positive progress.
One fraction, faction, fraction.
Either.
We're going to get fractured off the other.
So Derek, you're going to be player one today.
I know we have several projects starting, so we'll get to those as they come.
And Derek, you were the first one to pull a card of the summer.
All right.
Starting off the year or the season really with the Ace of Diamonds.
Cool.
So a constituent within the community demands to be heard.
Who are they?
What are they asking for?
Or a constituent within the community have acted on their frustrations.
What have they damaged?
What did they damage?
Why did they damage it?
Is it permanent?
Hmm.
I'm going to go with the latter one where constituents within the community have acted
on their frustrations.
And I am going to say that they are upset about the other faction and they're going
to destroy the mural.
Oh shit.
So a handful of them that are against the superstitions are going to and are frustrated
with the breakoff faction are going to go and destroy the mural.
Seeing it as a symbol of the other group.
Can we name them?
That would probably help.
Yeah, it'd be cool.
The cave dwellers.
The spelunkers.
Doom dwellers?
Oh, I like it.
That's a good one.
Do they call themselves that?
Or is it just the community that calls them that?
Just the community.
Yeah, we'll go with just the community.
But what should we name the community?
What does the other group call the community?
What does the violent group do to the mural?
Do they like smash on it?
Do they try and cover it up with other paint?
They smash it with picks and shovels.
I'm not going to escalate it to like explosives or anything like that.
I feel like that's too much.
What's our ship called?
The six?
The Exodus.
The planet is XP 676.
Oh, gotcha.
Is that an okay symbol to symbolize the smashed mosaic?
Yes, that works.
Nice.
Perfectly.
I feel like everything that Connor finds, other people smash and destroy.
No, he found the crater.
And it smashed and destroyed something else.
It did.
I mean, she sent an expedition over there to smash into it and pull its parts out.
That's true.
My bad.
Got to use all the parts of the crater.
I feel like we should start a discussion.
Ooh.
All right.
What discussion are we having?
What to do about the break off community?
I'll start if that's cool.
Yeah, go for it.
I think Richard says we should not worry about them.
It's less mouths to feed.
They think we're going to die anyway.
I am going to take the opinion of the captain and I'm going to voice an opinion of that
the other the other community is a danger and a possible threat.
I don't think we need any more fear mongering about this split off faction.
They've left.
They've left peacefully.
It was a little rocky at first, but if long they're not hurting us, I think we should
just leave it be.
We've got the walls.
They don't so we can be more prepared, but I don't think we need to be offensive towards
them.
Exactly.
We have the walls and they don't and these are people that we traveled with and people
that we may have used to love.
These people obviously are a little crazy.
I think they're in danger out there and it's our duty to bring them back.
Who said that?
You and Connor.
Does everybody need a name?
I guess not.
No, I don't think everybody needs a name.
Okay.
We have four very different opinions here.
Apparently, I think that symbolizes that there's a little bit of tension probably building
up in the camp.
So do all those people take contention points?
I don't know if anybody feels unheard.
No, I don't feel like anybody's been slighted or unheard.
Cool.
With that, we have two projects finished if Derek's turn is over.
Yep.
My turn is over.
The dino hunt is also over.
The expedition comes back with an abundance of leather pelts.
Great.
And the forge and smelter are done.
So put some pelt symbols outside of the forest to indicate the abundance of leather pelts
and leather.
Okay.
Nice.
And so similarly, the forge and the smelter finish up without a hiccup, but it is outside
of the walls.
There is going to be a scarcity probably of fuel though for it.
Would we want to consider that wood or coal?
I mean...
Coal's usually...
I mean, a smelter can make coal, but a forge usually runs on it.
Probably both.
I mean, if it's a forge and a smelter.
All right.
Coal and wood.
But I was thinking of removing iron from the scarcity, but not putting it on the abundance.
So just kind of...
We have the ability to make it, but we don't have an abundance of it due to having a scarcity
of two other off.
Okay.
Yeah.
So then I would probably leave it on a scarcity.
Okay.
Then if we're relying on other materials that we don't have an abundance of.
Okay.
But now we can hopefully make things.
Oh, no, this was ore.
Oh, wait.
No, she's back.
That expedition is not back yet.
Never mind.
Sorry.
Okay.
So you're going to eat the first card of summer, so you got the second one.
I do.
I've got the jack of diamonds.
Predators and bad omens are afoot.
You're careless and someone goes missing under ominous circumstances.
Who?
Or, predators and bad omens are afoot.
What measures do you take to keep everyone safe and under surveillance?
Do not reduce project ice this week.
I'm going to go with the first one.
You are careless and someone goes missing under ominous circumstances.
Who?
I think that the expedition to the crater, they set up camp on their way out at the ruins
and their project leader is missing now.
Just vanished in the night.
What was their name?
Slater.
That is a cool name.
Slater is missing.
What does the expedition team do then?
The head blacksmith takes over and they decide to continue their expedition and avoid the
ruins on their way back.
Awesome.
And so what do you want to do on your turn?
Maybe also on their expedition, they discover something new and it is a patch of brambles
surrounds the crater.
No, I don't like that.
I'm going to say actually they find the skeleton of a giant creature in the ground.
Yep, that one's perfect.
A giant winged creature.
How big?
That's a good size.
Okay.
So like fucking huge.
Yep.
All right.
Awesome.
Is that going to end your turn?
That does end my turn.
I got the five of summer.
The project finishes early.
What led to its early completion or the weather is nice and people can feel the potential
all around them.
Start a new project.
The only project that we have going right now is the expedition to the crater, right?
Okay.
I'm going to say that the weather is nice and people can feel the potential all around
them and an expedition leaves to go find the leader of the ore expedition whose name was
Smeagol.
Slater.
They go to find Slater and so they're going to leave the community to go try to find where
Slater went off to.
How long will that take?
I don't know.
That's a good question.
Does that count as a project?
Two or three weeks.
I mean, it's an expedition so I figured it would be a project.
I would think two.
Okay.
So put a two on that.
So that was the card.
So for my turn, I'm going to find another patch of flowers nearby our camp kind of around
where the berry patch was that looked similar to ours but actually turned out to be very
poisonous and deadly to people and we found this out by one person eating one of the flowers
and dying from our camp and that's my turn.
I have pulled the queen of diamonds.
A project finishes early.
Which one and why?
If there are no projects underway, boredom leads to quarrel.
A fight breaks out between two people.
What is it about?
So it says in bold a project finishes early.
So is there a project going on?
Didn't we just have one?
We have two.
We have the expedition to the crater and we have the search party to find Slater.
Okay so the party from the crater gets back early.
They're all in a great mood.
They've found lots of strange metals, some that's familiar to them and others that they
haven't been able to realize if they've seen this metal before.
They are dismayed.
They tell the rest of the town that on their travel there they had lost Slater in the ruins
and they didn't realize until they had packed up the next day and left.
They also tell of a giant skeleton that they uncovered but they didn't spend much time
looking at that because it wasn't metal.
They moved back into the crater but they found so much in such abundance that they had to
leave early because they can only carry so much.
So that's why it didn't take them quite as long as they thought it would.
Nice.
And then I'm also going to discover something new.
The local kids who had been exploring the tunnel that was opened up near the mosaic
that was still accessible even after the townspeople wrought their havoc on the original mosaic
itself.
They have been exploring and they've found that the tunnel system is quite large and
goes pretty deep but then it just evens out and extends around and they've found a lot
of different rooms and they've found that it's pretty warm in a temperate climate in
the cave and they haven't encountered anything you know scary or in a noteworthy manner as
of yet but that it keeps going and they're saying it just keeps finding more and more
tunnels.
They can't be sure of which direction it goes once they get underground and take a few turns
but they have a feeling that it goes vaguely towards where the volcano is.
How about a change of land color to indicate underground?
Mm-hmm.
Smart.
Does that work?
Yeah.
How do you want this to look?
I think that's gonna be just like put like one room off of that.
Like over here?
Yeah.
Should you draw a short one by the cave?
But we know that there's just multiple different rooms.
Just to keep the circle.
Just to signify our first expedition.
And there are a few levels to it.
All right we got underground shit going on.
I drew the four of diamonds.
The eldest among you dies.
Oh Bethel or Ethel.
Not cause the death.
Or the eldest among you is very sick.
Caring for them and searching for a cure requires the help of the entire community.
Do not reduce project dice this week.
That's so weird because those people are on an expedition so what do they care that that
guy's sick?
They don't even know.
Hmm.
I think I'm gonna go with the eldest among you is very sick.
They both get sick and it requires the entire community to search for various plants to
make a cure out of.
And I will use that to discover some herbs by the statue coming out of the ground.
Or the hand.
Any particular way you would like these plants to look?
You can go with those blue and purple ones we saw earlier.
Do they do anything specific that you know of now?
Ah they just seem to boost the immune system and help reduce fever.
It just went from being very sick to a couple of days of taking some paste mixed up with
this and a couple other plants that they find.
And they got better.
Cool.
Good job Henry.
Way to live.
Gladys too.
And Gladys.
And with that should I add like an abundance of uh.
Medicine?
Yeah sure.
You are up.
I've got the 10 of diamonds.
You discover a cache of new supplies or resources, add a new abundance, or scarcity has gone
unaddressed for too long, start a project that will alleviate scarcity.
Can you read me our scarce and abundance list?
Our abundance is oxygen, fish, pelts, iron ore, space ore and metal, and our scarcities
are weapons, communications, coal and wood.
Interesting.
I think people are starting to get nervous that they don't have weapons.
I think I'm going to go with a scarcity has gone unaddressed for too long, start a project
that will alleviate the scarcity.
I think that a small expedition of maybe five people is going to go out to the little forest
and try to get some wood for the for the forge and stuff so we can make weapons.
Help things and do things with the metals that we have.
Nice.
How long do you think that'll take?
How long did it take last time do you remember?
Took Derek four weeks to go and get the pelts and come back.
Okay so I'll say three because there's no lack of hunting and looking for things and
fighting predators.
I mean you're gonna have to fight them anyway but.
You have to fight those trees too.
I would argue five because of how heavy wood is compared to pelts.
Yeah there's a lot of transport back.
Like yeah the transport back is going to be the major.
So your expedition took four?
Mine took four weeks so I would think with that it would take a week longer.
Transport logs.
I'm gonna keep it the same because the transport would take longer but you're still not doing
the hunting and stuff and the slicing the pelts and drying them and stuff.
I was going to say take into consideration that these are not big trees as well.
They're only 20 feet so they're only going to be six eight inches around.
Okay yeah let's go with four weeks.
And then you can still take another action on your turn.
And on my turn I think I'm gonna discover something new and I think in the middle of
the forest is a small little pond.
And with that my turn is over and Connor's expedition is over to find Slater.
No that's mine.
Oh that's you.
Sorry.
My expedition finishes to find Slater and find Slater they did.
Slater was found in the river and around the fishing net caught in the fishing net dead.
Huh?
That is a long way from the river.
It is.
Why were they there?
Yeah were they able to establish how or just that's just what they know now.
So they brought Slater's dead body along with you know where he was the information on where
he was.
Actually the expedition probably didn't find him.
It was the fisher people that went out to collect the catch found him.
Interesting.
Yes.
And that starts my turn and I pulled the nine of diamonds.
The project fails.
Which one and why?
Or something goes foul and supplies are ruined.
Add a new scarcity.
We only have one project going right now huh?
What are the scarcities again?
Or what are the abundances?
Abundances are oxygen, fish, leather, pelts, iron ore, space ore and medicine.
You have to make something scarce?
Yeah I would have to move something from the abundance list to the scarce list or just
introduce a new scarcity.
I have an idea but you do you.
Would you like to hear it?
Sure.
Maybe the fish is not good because there was a dead body there.
Contamination.
Yeah that's what I was thinking too.
I was thinking of making those connections.
Moving the fish back over?
Yeah so what's going to happen is the latest batch of fish was ruined because of the dead
body and the people that found it had to like cut the body out of the net and so the net
is actually damaged.
Would you like to add fishing gear to that?
No just fish is fine.
Okay.
So it's just that the fish is scarce because the fishing net has been damaged.
And on my turn I'm going to introduce something new and those are going to be a lot of footprints
that don't belong to anything that the community knows are coming out of the well at night
and leading around the camp and off into the distance but they were never there before
but now there is a bunch of foreign tracks leading out of the sinkhole.
Plop plop plop plop.
Full circle.
Plop plop.
Which direction were they going?
Away from camp.
Many.
We're going to symbolize the tracks as two gigantic duck tracks.
Okay so for my week I picked the six of diamonds.
Outsiders arrive in the area.
Why are they a threat?
How are they vulnerable?
Or outsiders arrive in the area.
How many?
How are they greeted?
That's a tough one.
It is.
A small group of ducklings bipedals, hominids with duck feet, is seen walking around the
encampment at night but also then they're starting to see during the day.
The community is mostly hesitant and scared of these weird duck people that they haven't
seen but some members of the community set out a small basket of the flowers that have
grown inside of the walls of our camp and a small token that they had made from other
supplies we had just like a little cloth like here is from our ship and they put it out
there as a token of peace or a tribute.
Like maybe a patch from like you know somebody riding on the ship or some shit like that?
Oh yeah if there was like a patch like you can see like oh this is part of our group
who we were.
We just got a little symbol from our parchment that's there showing the best cast.
Nice.
And then I guess for my turn I'll hold a discussion.
What does everybody think about these strange new creatures that we've been encountering?
Can we trust them?
I think so far they haven't attacked us.
They seem to be coming out of the tunnels that the kids have found by the mosaic.
I mean if we're gonna live on this planet we should probably try to you know be civil
with what already lives on this planet.
I agree and maybe they can help us out.
We have had an issue with our food supply lately.
We have.
Maybe they could teach us a better way to harvest fish or maybe there's something else
we could eat.
Some cave moss.
I wonder if they're connected to the people who believe to live in the other cave system.
Do we know anybody lived in the other cave system?
No but that was a legend that we decided early on.
And they don't look like ghosts.
That's what the other group left to go split off.
Maybe they had the entrances wrong.
Good point.
Maybe they're connected.
Every entrance is always an exit.
Yikes.
I don't know.
I think they're fine.
I think that until they attack we should not attack.
We should definitely keep our eyes on them though.
Well yeah I agree.
I mean that's why we're making weapons.
Or would be.
If the people would come back.
Alright.
Any projects done?
No.
The expedition still has two weeks to come back from the forest.
Alright.
I drew the two of diamonds.
Someone new arrives.
Who?
Why are they in distress?
Or someone leaves the community.
Who?
What are they looking for?
I am gonna go with the first one.
Someone new arrives.
Who?
And why are they in distress?
Who arrives?
I am gonna go with a survivor from one of the other ships that had a crash landing a
good ways away.
Make it to here.
And they're in distress because their ship crashed and most of their supplies are gone.
They lost a good portion of their landing party.
They have not had the successes that we have had in rebuilding.
Alright.
We'll kind of call this corner the entrance I guess.
It looks the most probably but we'll put a new person there, kind of large to indicate
the newcomer if that works for everybody.
Call him Bricker.
Bricker?
Bricker.
C. Bricker.
And?
And yeah, you still have an action.
I can do stuff.
When we said we had an issue with communications, was that the ability to communicate or just
that our communications suck like we need therapy?
Both.
Both?
I assume, because I think it was talked about that we couldn't make communication with like
other people outside of our ship that largely we lack the ability to contact others.
Then I am going to start a project to recycle parts of the ship to make a couple of handheld
radio transmitters and a larger one at the ship.
I think that should take about two weeks.
I was thinking three.
I was thinking one.
What were you thinking Hunter?
I was thinking two.
Two?
Alright.
So we'll go with two.
Okay.
To make a couple of basic radios.
Well actually maybe three.
You're making one base station and then a couple of like handheld ones for people to
take with them.
Just like one or two.
So like.
I changed my vote to three.
Three?
Three.
Okay.
Alright, we'll round up with three.
I'm going to call it the command center.
Nice.
Okay.
I got the king of diamonds.
Uh oh.
Summer is fleeting.
Discard the top two cards off the deck and take two actions this week.
Oh shit.
Uh oh.
We lost the eight and the three.
Summer just goes by so fast guys.
Yeah, we lost start a project related to food production or start a project related to military
readiness and conquest or someone tries to take control of the community by force or
a headstrong community member decides to put one of their ideas into motion and start
a foolish project.
We lost some stuff that could put us ahead or put us behind or really push somebody's
agenda through.
Um, well one of my things was going to be I'm going to start a project.
Okay.
What's that project look like?
Uh, I'm going to fix the fishery.
Okay.
I do think that this would only take about a week.
How long did it take us to build?
I feel like it only took a week to build.
Yeah, I feel like it can't be that much to rebuild it.
We could just go tie the nets back together.
Yeah.
Okay.
Um, and I can take two actions.
I feel like I wanted to hold a discussion, but I can't remember why.
I'm going to start another project and some people are going to go collect samples from
the poison flowers and try to make poisons that we're going to add to like our weapons
eventually.
Okay.
And I think that'll take three weeks.
Okay.
Two weeks.
Sounds good.
Gathering and experimentation.
Yeah.
Three.
Yeah.
And that is my turn, which means that the people came back from the trees.
Oh, right on.
Wonderful.
So we're going to move wood over to the abundance for now.
Yeah.
And then the project is done.
We decided that only took one week.
Which one?
No, that was three.
We're only a week down on that.
I hope I'm not forgetting any projects.
You're good.
We're all tracking our own too.
Have you started a project?
I have not started a project.
You've not done any projects?
Nope.
I've done mostly discussions and discovered a few things.
Okay.
Every time I think of a project, it's like it gets done by the time it gets back to me.
I'm like, okay.
It's all good.
Right on.
So what did we just finish?
Did we finish the fishery?
Getting back with the wood.
No, I just started that one.
Yeah.
It will finish the fishery after my turn.
So I don't think anything finished.
Getting back with the wood was the one that just finished, I think.
Right.
Put some wood on the map.
Put it near the forge.
Okay.
We'll just make that giant pile of wood next to the forge.
Sweet.
All right.
So I guess that's my turn.
Yep.
I got the Seven of Diamonds.
Introduce a mystery at the edge of the map or an unattended situation becomes problematic
and scary.
What is it and how does it go awry?
I'm going to introduce a mystery at the edge of the map.
When they were getting the trees, the people in the forest noticed that there was another
craft, we'll say.
Another spacecraft looking thing that seemed to be partially crashed into the dirt and
it is massive and does not look like one that any of the humans had arrived in.
And so I'm going to put this little sideways airship here to indicate where that is.
Does it look old?
Like it's been here a long, long, long time or?
No.
It's recent?
More recent.
Okay.
So I'm going to introduce a project and that project is the splinter camp or the doomsdayers,
is that what their name?
They are moving into the caves.
Doom dwellers.
The doom dwellers are moving into, fully into the caves and searching for a new place to
live.
How long is that going to take?
I don't know.
The other guys spent one week down there, didn't find anything.
So longer than that, I would assume.
I'd say three to four.
Two to three, yeah.
They're moving in and then and exploring.
Yeah.
Moving and exploring.
Let's go with three.
And if that's your turn, the fishery is done.
Fishery is done.
I was initially thinking we should dedicate the new fishery to Slater, but also do we
want to be reminded of Slater's body in our fish?
Close.
Not really.
So we have one week on the command center, three weeks on the turning the plants into
poison.
Oh no, that should be two now, right?
Three weeks for the doom dwellers to move in.
Dun dun dun.
All right.
Looks like that concludes the season of summer.
Oh my gosh.
Summer ended so fucking quick.
It is fleeting.
Fleeting fun.
We did lose two weeks out of it.
We did lose two weeks and an unfortunate two weeks.
I really liked what those cards said.
So we are moving on to autumn and we will move on to autumn next episode.
Until then, we'll see you next next Tuesday.
Tales from the Crit is part of the Wolfbeard Games podcast network.
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We're going to tackle this.
We're going to tackle what the fuck is it?
Summer season.