NEA Big Read

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.

In the co-operative game The Aquicorn Cove Board Game, 2-4 players take on the roles of members of a small fishing village struggling to survive while maintaining a balance with the natural world. To win, the villagers must feed and grow their village, while helping to restore the health of the reef and aquatic ecosystem. The villagers are fortunate, though, and the waters of their cove are home to the beautiful and benevolent aquicorns, as well as the wondrous reef guardian Aure, who can help them both to understand the impact humans are having on the environment and to save the village.

Offshore rig, DeepWell•4, has blown out and the rupture is spilling crude oil into the ocean at an alarming rate! Your response team must work together, using your individual talents to avert an ecological disaster, one which threatens to contaminate marine life and devastate the ecosystem. The situation is dire and escalating by the minute, so there is no time to waste.
Contain the oil flowing from the rig, remove what oil you can from the waters, rescue the marine animals. The world is watching. The fate of the coast is in your hands!

This fully cooperative game, for 1-4 players, features a 4-way dice tower as the oil rig, which randomly drops oil dice onto the four quadrants of the game board. In this respect, the game is a reverse tower defense game, as players sail the perimeter trying to push back and contain the oil, remove dice from the water and save the sea life.

Eden is a tabletop role-playing game about learning what it means to be human. You’ll collaborate to map the Garden, create the talking animals that live there, and role-play scenes as animals and human characters, ultimately weaving a narrative of exploration, self-discovery, and personal growth.

Eden is for 3-5 players and is designed to be played in one session of 2-3 hours. There's no GM and no prep before play, so you can start creating fiction from the moment you open the book.

A Wood Heart is a game about trees. It is a game about the insects, the soil they call home and the rivers that cut through it. It is a game about humans and the impact that they have on these things. It is a game about the survival of nature.

It is a warning.

A Wood Heart is a story writing and map drawing game for 2 -4 players played with a deck of tarot cards, a six sided dice and pencils, paper and erasers. As a group you all play the roles of the spirits in that live in the forest telling stories about the events that happen to the Wood Heart that sits in the very centre of the forest. Humans have recently moved into the area and have started building larger and larger settlements. How will this affect your forest, and will it survive?

Playing Nature's Year is a collection of eight seasonal games you can play with anybody. They evoke some of the oldest and first games learned as children: wishing games, fortune-telling games and storytelling games. Some are more narrative and some require lots of six-sided dice. Play each game in its season or several together. Play with one or many, but play Nature's Year!