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 RPGs 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 to Tales from the Crit!
Today we are continuing...
No, we are finishing our playthrough of A Quiet Year, as we have just gotten into the
season of winter.
We're going to find out what's happening to our tiny little community, all the cult-like
shit that's going on, and the terrible volcanoes and death, and at the table I have Derek,
hello, Rebecca, hello, and Connor, what's up?
Before we get started, the question from our pod deck interview deck today is going to
ask what do you think is the biggest con of being famous?
Rebecca, why don't you go first?
Uh, well, probably the lack of privacy overall, but specifically it must be really annoying
to like, go to the grocery store, or do literally anything without someone being like, will
you take a picture with me?
Will you sign this thing for me?
Holy shit, you're that guy!
It must be so fucking annoying.
I would hate that.
Yeah.
Mine would be having to sacrifice self-respect and dignity to do certain roles, or just,
there's parts of being a celebrity that aren't fun at all, and are debasing.
Again, with the lack of privacy, like not being allowed to have a bad day, like, you
know, you go out somewhere and you have an episode, everybody's got their camera out,
you're on the news, internet, whatever people are watching, they're seeing you have whatever
little bad day you had that someone else could have and just, you know.
It's normal.
It'd be okay.
Yeah.
I think one of the biggest ones that gets overlooked is like, the public can almost
dictate who your friends are, like if you're friends with somebody and they do something,
like all of a sudden you have to take a stance against them, whether you know them as a much
different person.
And I know that kind of translates some degree to who we are now, but like, you could still
hang out with somebody or be friends with someone without a lot of people taking cameras
or making a big deal about it, but like having to publicly write off your friends seems like
a really shitty way to end a friendship.
Especially if it has nothing to do with you or your situation.
Yes.
Especially if it's all speculative anyway.
Right?
Yeah.
Tough life.
Yeah.
You probably never know it.
So.
No.
With that, fuck those celebrities and let's get onto winter time.
Derek, I believe you drew the first card of winter.
I believe I did and it is the Three of Spades.
Someone comes up with an ingenious situation to a big problem and as a result a project
finishes early.
What was their idea?
Or someone comes up with a plan to ensure safety and comfort during the coldest months
start a project related to this.
I don't think we have any projects on the table right now.
We do not know.
I don't believe we do either.
And that is really a hard one to do because we've already completed leather clothes and
moved underground to where we already know it's warmer.
Um, we can go with comfort though.
Why don't we expand the outpost quarters to sleep more people more comfortably?
Okay.
I think the expansion would take five weeks because we already are mostly downstairs.
People are going to be a little more motivated.
I'm with that.
It's a long project but I think it's definitely a big one.
And then you still have your action too.
Hmm.
I am going to start another project to make a second trip out to the crashed ship for
larger supplies taking the sleds we used for the wood.
Okay.
The alien ship?
The alien ship, yes.
Just making sure.
So just stay consistent.
I think that would be another four weeks.
Yeah.
Okay.
I got the Two of Spades.
A headstrong community member takes charge of the community's work effort.
A project fails and then a different project finishes early.
Or a headstrong community member tries to take control of the community.
How are they prevented from doing this?
Due to the conflict, project dice are not reduced this week.
I think a headstrong community member takes charge of the community's work efforts.
A project fails and a different project finishes early.
I think that somebody convinces everyone that it needs to be all hands on deck here before
winter sets in.
So I think they abandon the alien ship investigation and finish expanding the quarters.
And Derek, what do you want in this?
Just triple the size of the cavern that should be big enough for the entire community to
live in comfortably, right?
Plenty of mushrooms.
That's up there.
This is living quarters and comfort.
Recreational space.
Not bad mushrooms.
The bigger ones are soft.
You just got to dry them a little bit first.
It's going to have a whole mushroom economy down here.
Not a bad idea.
All right.
Solid.
And then my action.
I think I discovered something new.
In expanding the living quarters, I think we find a hot spring.
So now we have fresh water without going to the river and people can bathe and stuff.
Hot water too.
You'll just have to cool it off for drinking.
We put it above ground for cooling ice.
Got to stay hydrated.
Important.
And that is my turn.
Does that look good for a hot spring?
Yeah.
All right.
We have a hot spring and fresh water.
Cool.
I guess that means it my turn.
Yep.
I got the ace of spades.
Now is the time to conserve energy and resources.
A project fails, but gain in an abundance.
Or now is the time for hurried labor and final efforts, a project finishes early, but gain
a scarcity.
We don't have any projects.
So I would pick abundance.
Yeah.
I guess we'd gain water as an abundance.
That makes sense.
So fresh water.
So I think on my turn two, we are going to discover something new.
And that is in the mushroom patch on the back wall of the mushroom patch.
The wall is broken and there is a new path leading a different direction.
So the mushroom patch wall has been broken.
None of the mushrooms are damaged, but nobody knows how that passage was opened.
And that's going to be my turn.
All right.
I've got the six.
The time has come to consolidate your efforts and your borders.
Projects located outside the settlement fail and all remaining projects are reduced by
two this week.
Where someone finds a curious opportunity on the edge of the map, start a project related
to this discovery.
So following this new tunnel all the way down to the edge of the map, there has been discovered
an abundance of different edible plants and other plants that are very warm and can make
nice beds and insulative clothes for the winter or just other comforts.
So where do you want this tunnel to lead to?
Like just a little bit further than where it is.
So start a project related to the discovery.
So we're going to start a small camp at that end to harvest and process the different resources,
the different plants.
And there might even be some other minerals or crystals down there that we might find
uses for.
So another little outpost will establish there.
Was that project part of your card?
That was part of the card.
And then I'll also start a project to create like a system, almost like a conveyor belt,
but something to help get supplies to the surface or to the far ends of the tunnel quicker.
Like harnessing the water.
Yeah.
Almost like the Roman aqueduct system.
Yeah, like a carousel or something like that.
There's a closed path that goes throughout the cave to a couple of different spots and
it is being moved by the turning of the water that we found in the cave.
And it can be used for transport.
How long are both of those projects going to be?
So the first one to set up the camp was two.
This one is going to be four because we've got to go to all different parts of the cave
and set these different things up and make sure all the mechanics are lining up in the
right way to not cause any disturbances.
Nice.
Does that look like an alright representation of the plants you found?
I figured that'd be a little bioluminescent.
Because like lack of natural light.
Alright, awesome.
Derek, I believe it is your turn.
It is and I have drawn the queen.
You see a good omen.
What is it?
Um.
What was the other one?
A bad omen?
No, that's it.
You see a good omen.
What is it?
Wow.
Good omen.
That's the hard part.
We have not set ourselves up for a good omen.
During the winter, the flowers that started to grow around our original camp spread farther
than the walls and spread out a lot farther.
You just represent that with like a wall of plants.
You know, just try and fill that whole space in.
And we see it as a good omen because it's plants bursting to life during winter.
Cool.
And I want to start a project for Sally to break Lisa out of jail.
Alright.
How many weeks do you think that'll be?
Should only take a night.
But we'll go with a week.
Lots of flowers.
Yeah, seeing this prompts Sally to try and get Lisa out of prison.
Alright.
That's my turn.
I got a five of spades.
Winter elements destroy a food source.
If this was your only food source, add a scarcity.
Or winter elements leave everyone cold, tired, and miserable.
Project days are not reduced this week.
I feel like it has to be the first one because we're not going to be cold.
I feel like it has to be the second one because we've already moved everything underground
so the winter conditions can't.
I feel like it could be fish though.
They could kill the fish.
It could be fish.
Yeah.
If the river was to freeze over.
I was thinking the river froze over and the fish are gone.
Ah.
Do we have other food?
Yeah, we have lots of food.
We have other food.
Okay.
Well in that case, yes.
Winter destroys the food because it's hard to go fishing in the winter.
We don't have ice fishing gear.
Fish is now a scarcity.
But we have other food so we're okay.
And then for my turn, this part's always hard.
I would like to discover something new.
Okay.
What are we discovering?
I think we have built out some more tunnels throughout here.
And we found the arm to the hand of the big statuey thing maybe.
Sure.
And we use it as a good, what do you call it, like a load bearing beam.
It just supports our tunnel system.
Yeah.
You should definitely connect it back through to the main cavern too.
Yeah, come right along.
I can use that in the narration when the weird pulley system finishes.
Nice.
That should be done I think.
No.
I think it's just the outpost.
Yes, your outpost is done Connor.
Uh, is Lisa free?
Lisa would be free after the end of my turn, yeah.
So the outpost finishes and it's just a couple small, one building, just a bunkhouse for
a few people and then another building for just processing like, you know, the different
plants that have soft fibers from separating them out from the hard part of the plants
and other processing that would get done there.
Filtering out the seeds to plant more, drying them off if they're wet.
It's completed and Stan and Danny the Berry Fighters are taking the first shift.
What did you call Stan and Danny?
The what?
The Berry Fighters.
How does it go getting Lisa out of the cage?
Um, Sally is able to sneak around and Jimmy Vee lock open and free Lisa and the two of
them together are going to attempt to push the orb into the hand.
Whoa.
I'm going to accomplish this with help from the um, who was it that you found?
The, the parish.
Yeah.
They convinced the parish to like, oh yeah, this is part of the plan too.
So Sally and Lisa convinced the parish to push the orb into the hand.
Wild.
It's your turn.
Is that a pro?
That's my turn?
Yeah.
Okay.
So they haven't actually done that.
No, that was just them getting free, but that's the intent.
Cool.
Let's see what card I draw.
I got a nine.
Someone goes missing.
They're alone in the winter elements.
Choose one.
The community organizes constant search parties and eventually the person is found.
Project dice are not reduced this week or no one ever hears from that person again.
I think it's Lisa and I think it's while she's investigating the orb, um, by herself one
night and the next day after she goes missing, both the orb and Lisa are gone.
And then it's my turn, right?
Yep.
Um, okay.
Yeah.
I think I'm going to start a project too.
And that project is going to be to continue the tunnels past the new we found, um, plants
where we set up camp and continue to push to hopefully come out underneath the alien
airship.
So you're making another entrance into the caves from the surface?
Uh, I guess essentially I'm looking to pop out either inside of, which seems difficult
of the alien ship.
Yeah.
I think they're trying to tunnel like into the alien ship to create like, or as close
as possible.
Yeah.
Isn't it crashed partly into the ground?
Yeah.
So I think they're trying to get in and create, you know, like a vault situation.
How long do we think that will take?
With how close they are, maybe like another two weeks.
Two weeks.
That's what I was thinking.
All right.
And that's my turn.
All right.
Next up is the seven of spades.
What is winter like in this area?
How do community members react to the weather?
So this area gets quite frigid winters.
So far it has just been very, very cold.
The pond and the river have frozen over, which has killed our fishery and it's made crossing
the river much, much easier as long as you don't slip.
There has been little snow yet, but when it does come, it comes in large volumes all at
once in small areas.
It can snow over in the crater and no snow in the forest.
And it's very windy.
So when it does snow, there's little visibility.
The community is very glad that it found a way to shelter itself from the harsh realities
of the winter here.
Cool.
Some people say there are monsters in the snow storms.
Oh, Oh shit.
Throwing some snow on the map here and there.
The community reacts with joy that they have found these caves and had such an expansive
cave system made.
And few of them venture back to the colder parts of the cave and certainly not the surface,
except for the crazy few who have friends to save from cages.
And some of the children who still like to explore and find adventure in the ruins.
And then for my action, I'm going to discover something new.
And that is off of the room where we have underneath the hand where the giant arm is
and the conveyor belt being around built around there.
There's another room off there that opens up into a small chamber where you can see
lava deep.
It's a, you know, a small chamber that opens in this very deep down where you can see a
glowing red and you can feel the heat coming out of this small chamber.
All right.
Which side do you want that on?
The side towards the forest.
Yeah.
Okay.
Is that the end of your turn?
That is the end of my turn.
Oh, actually with the end of my turn, the conveyor belt system is completed and that's
just a system of rope pulleys on like kind of little wooden tracks and there's spots
where you can put in like wooden carts that'll get pulled around.
A child could probably be pulled around by it and it's powered by the underwater stream
and hot spring that we found.
Propel the gears to turn and allow us to move all of our goods easily through the cave and
also provide a path so that you don't get lost.
Cool.
I have drawn the jack of spades and infected outsider arrives seeking amnesty.
They have some much needed resources with them.
Choose one.
Welcome them into the community, remove a scarcity, but also introduce an infection
into the community or bar them from entry.
What scarcity could they have addressed?
How does it need to become more dire for this week?
Hmm.
So I am going to choose to bar them from entry and the scarcity that he could have alleviated
is going to be weapons and the reason that it becomes more of a necessity this week prior
to last week is as we have opened up some more parts of the cave system, we have allowed
little cave critters to start running amok and causing issue with our food and health.
Shit, so is our health still in scarcity?
Yes.
Shit.
There's cave critters pooping in all our mushrooms.
Pretty much.
Living in the nice beds we just made with these new cave plant fibers.
Fucking A. Derek still has an action though.
I still have an action.
Does that look okay for your pulley system?
That looks phenomenal.
What do we have for projects?
Nothing.
We're digging tunnels to try to get under the alien ship.
That will end after, oh I think it ends after Connor's turn.
No, it'll end after Derek's turn.
Yeah, because I started it.
I'm going to start a project that I think should take one week and that is to move the
forging stuff down into that room where we just kind of tapped into lava.
Forge and the smelter?
Yeah, sure.
I'm going to say that will take two weeks.
Two weeks.
It's pretty big.
Two things, two weeks.
Yep.
And that ends my turn.
Nice.
All right, that means my tunnel to the airship finishes and it finishes pretty easily and
they're able to bore a hole into the side of the ship so they've got like, they're not
coming out under the surface.
Yeah, they're in part of the alien ship.
Okay.
I've got the ten of spades.
No options here.
In preparation for the coming year, the community begins a huge undertaking.
Start a project that will take at least five weeks to complete.
Oh boy.
I don't think we have that much time.
We don't have five weeks.
We're preparing for next year.
Yeah.
Okay, something that'll take five weeks.
I think that we'd like to build more tunnels so that we can get, I was going to say under
the river, but if we already have a hot spring.
Oh my God, the room with the lava.
We're going to try to build tunnels enough that we can get kind of a lava stream going
and it'll like go straight through the forage and stuff and it'll just always be lit and
no one has to worry about resources for that anymore.
A lava tube tunnel?
Lava tunnel.
Okay.
Really, I must say as a person, I wouldn't be super jazzed about leading tunnels of lava
through our underground lair or the fact that we have water leaking into it.
All of these things in reality would be-
Yeah, all of these things in reality would have made me abandon this tunnel a long time
ago.
The fact that we're boring into a volcano.
Sulfur dioxide that's going to get you-
Are we coming down to the last few cards?
Yeah, it's going to be frost shepherd time soon.
Oh God.
I feel like I had a project I wanted to do, but I can't remember what it was.
Yeah, I'm going to start a project that will take four weeks and we're going to fortify
all of the walls of the tunnels.
That's a good project.
Yeah, solid.
What did I say?
Four weeks?
Four weeks.
Okay.
And that is my turn.
All right.
That means I am up next.
Let's see what card I have to draw.
Bad news, folks.
Uh oh.
Seems like winter's set in.
The frost shepherds have arrived and the game is over.
Damn.
Wow.
At this point, we can talk about what happens when the frost shepherds arise.
And I think winter here is not necessarily dictated by the onset of the snow, but I think
the volcano erupts, destroying pretty much everything on the surface.
It creates like a nuclear winter.
It's a cloud of plume covers the whole planet.
And that's why all these other civilizations have not made it.
They do good until winter hits.
Or it could be why there's so few plants, why it's a rocky planet at first too.
Say we-
And the trees are very small.
We were able to survive being farther away from the volcano and having put in gates and
reinforcing-
Going underground.
Yep.
I think our community might flourish.
We did pretty good.
We've done great.
We'll make a whole city under there.
And eventually we'll morph into being dwarves.
We're going to mate with the lizard folk.
It's the human way.
There's ducks too.
Oh, the duck folk.
We didn't get to what happened to them.
Oh man, duck lizard folks.
Sure, they could have been a lot creepier than they were.
I forgot about ducks.
I forgot about the ducks also.
Well that was pretty sweet.
Ultimately, I think we did pretty well to make this community survive and thrive.
I agree.
There were some obstacles.
There were some disappearances and some differences of views.
I'm not sure we took a hard enough stance that the people just accepted that there was
definitely aliens and other civilizations that had to be here before them.
Yeah.
May have prompted another discussion that we probably missed out on.
The parish also could have been more of a religious discussion.
We didn't have to make them so culty.
We could have just been them.
I love the culty bits.
I thought that was excellent.
I didn't think that we needed to not do that at all because in situations like this, according
to TV, there's always cults that pop up.
It's true.
It's one of the first things that happens when a group of people hangs out with each
other for a month or two.
After an apocalypse.
Yeah.
You speculate wildly and begin making different cults.
Cool.
It does not take much to spawn a cult.
I also want to point out that I've waited all these episodes to tell you, I think it's
the quiet ear, not a quiet ear.
You are in fact, incorrect.
No, I am not.
What do you mean?
Oh, am I the wrong?
You're wrong.
You're saying a, I'm saying the.
So the name of this game is the quiet ear.
We changed it to a quiet ear so I can change some rules.
So it's not an exact adaptation.
No, I'm just stupid.
So let's just check.
What were the cards that were left?
The four of spades and the eight of spades.
Oh man.
Those are some good ones.
All of the animals and young children are crying and won't stop.
Hold the discussion about this.
In addition to your regular action for the week or a great atrocity is revealed.
What is it?
Who uncovers it?
Definitely human sacrifice or eight winter is harsh and desperation gives rise to fear
monitoring.
Choose one.
Spend the week calming the masses and dispelling their violent sentiments.
The week ends immediately or declare war on someone or something.
This counts as starting a project.
Cool.
I think either of those could have fit very well into our, into our situation.
They could have declared war against the volcano.
Or the parish.
Cause it just attacked the volcano.
Or the dinosaurs.
Just throw ice chunks into it.
It doesn't stop.
It's erupting.
Cool off, man.
That's how ice works.
Definitely.
Well, that was pretty fun.
I got a good one.
Yeah, it's a great game.
I think this is a really cool way to like set up an area or, you know, start a game.
If we were doing longer games, you know, with this being as long as it is using it as, as
like a setup would be really pretty lengthy, but it's a cool way to flesh out a community
too.
It is.
I can use it to call on for inspiration in the future by coming over that time with all
the caves.
Yeah.
We went underground really pretty quick.
Yes, we did.
I didn't expect that of us.
I didn't either.
We're not usually the crew that like digs very few digging moments in our past.
I had a preconceived notion that at some point there was going to be something that led to
a cave or a cave-in or a tunnel, a well, a collapse or something, and I couldn't shake
it.
It was just like after I read the rules, like this is in my head, like this is going to
come out somehow.
Yeah.
Perfect.
I thought about putting an earthquake in, but like the only opportunity I had to do
it, we had already moved everybody down to underground.
I was like, man, what a bad thing that would be.
We can try that next time and create a lot of scarcities.
Yeah.
Create a lot of dead people.
Cave-in destroyed all of our abundance.
Community is more like a camp now.
Yes.
That's a great game.
I really enjoy it.
Yeah, me too.
I would definitely play this one again.
Absolutely.
You can even do this as a one player, which is cool.
Yeah.
It's a great way to help flesh out a lot of stuff if you're writing a book, want to play
by yourself, just entertain yourself, make a world.
I think this is a really cool way of doing it.
Well that finishes the first arc of season two.
We did it.
We did.
And on that, we are going to end this episode.
See you next next Tuesday.
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