I admit, I haven't played The Quiet Year yet, but it's on my list of games to try out this year. Needless to say, The Deep Forest is on there too, and I'm thrilled I finally got a chance to play it!
Here's the end result of last night's game, followed by details of our set-up and highlights throughout the seasons.
An Introduction
The Deep Forest, like The Quiet Year, is a GM-less, map-making, community-centered game, where the players collectively decide what happens to a community of monsters that have driven the humans out throughout the course of a relatively peaceful year.There are, however, rules to this madness! Going around in a circle, players take turns drawing Oracle cards and choosing one of three actions: working on a project, uncovering something old, or agreeing on something. Generally, each turn represents a week.
The Oracle cards are playing cards with suits matching one of four seasons (Hearts-Spring, Diamonds-Summer, Clubs-Autumn, Spades-Winter). Players consult the Oracle list with their chosen card and pick one of two choices listed (i.e. What cultural practice or ritual unifies your community? OR There is a monster who did not join with you in driving off the humans. Where are they on the map? What makes them different?)
The game starts with Spring then advanced to Summer, Autumn, and finally Winter. The game ends when the King of Spades is drawn and the Heroes arrive (whatever that may mean)!
The game is available here: http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-deep-forest/
Pre-Game (Landmarks, Monsters, and Remnants)
With a total of five players, we picked one person to establish the city, and the rest of us established borders. Some of us wanted to focus just on the city while others wanted to explore lands outside the city. Ultimately, we settled on a compromise and ended up with a large city with some landmarks outside its borders. The first player marked the city, and we defined the map's borders.• Player 1 drew a landmark for the center of the city - the Plaza of Blood and Bones (more of a giant pit, really).
• I drew two, giant, human statues along a southwest path leading to the city that were desecrated by the monsters and became limbless abominations.
• Player 3 drew the Last Man's Grave in the outskirts to the northeast, surrounded by poppy flowers.
• Player 4 drew the River Styx to the northwest.
• Player 5 wanted something happier and not death-related, so he drew a land of double-horned horses in the southeast.Next, we all chose a type of monster and where they lived in the community. Throughout the game, anyone can say what happens to any monster on their turn, but in situations like the Agree on Something action, we each speak for the monster we chose. They're almost like PCs but not really, since this is a community-centered game if that makes sense.
• Player 1 chose Grey Goo which resided in a place called The Merchant's Moonscape near the center of the city.
• I chose Ghoul Driders which resided at the Blood Rose Garden in the northern part of the city.
• Player 3 chose Super Ultra God Orc who resided in a giant, mess hall with his orc/goblin minions outside the city to the southeast. Super Ultra God Orc was so huge and fat, he couldn't fit through the door to leave his mess hall!
• Player 4 chose Robot Liches which resided in the west part of the city.
• Player 5 chose the Mindfryers (a play on Mindflayers) which resided at the Temple of the Sons of Mente in the northeast of the city.Finally, we went around the circle a third time, choosing important remnants left behind by the humans. We would adopt one, and the rest would become taboos.
• Player 1 drew The Chasm south of the city which held glowing rocks that were used for energy, light, etc.
• I drew The Mage's Library Tower of Enchanted Knowledge in the city, south of The Merchant's Moonscape.
• Player 3 drew a church/hospital in the northeast graveyard, just before the Last Man's Grave.
• Player 4 drew a royal courthouse dedicated to law in the city, west of the Plaza of Blood and Bones.
• Player 5 drew human, slave pits in the city, east of the central plaza.After a short round of debate, we unanimously decided to adopt The Chasm and its power rocks into our lives and make all the others taboo that our monsters feared and distrusted.
Now, we were finally ready to begin play!
Spring - Introspection, Familiarity, Building
Much of Spring was spent fleshing out details about our community, describing our monsters' behaviors, rituals, cultural practices, diets, communication, what drew them here, etc. based on the Oracle cards we drew and choices we picked.While most of the monsters (Orcs/Goblins, Ghoul Driders, Mindfryers, and Robo Liches) invaded the city by conventional means, the Grey Goo came from a meteor that crash landed and tipped the scale in the monsters' favor, finally driving the humans out. They feed on most matter and are quite territorial and invasive, but they freely choose who they feed on and what they dissolve.
Super Ultra God Orc or, "Super Ultra," for short, served more as a comic relief character to be picked on and humiliated but who had his own agenda for greed, domination, and destruction (especially toward the end of the game). He had a voice like Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons.
The Mindfryers were mostly happy-go-lucky monsters who fed off minds and knowledge. They hardly gained any contempt throughout the game.
In the game, Contempt is represented by tokens (in our case poker chips) that players could take and give to monsters that they feel haven't been consulted or honored in a particular decision or don't agree with it. As a general rule, players aren't allowed to voice objections or speak out of turn, but they are allowed to take a Contempt token for their monsters (or anyone else's really). Alternatively, if someone does something that certain monsters greatly support and rebuilds trust, they can remove a Contempt token. Contempt can also be removed any time whenever monsters act selfishly (i.e. discovering a hidden vault of power rocks which a group of monsters suddenly claim for themselves). To make it easier on us, we drew all five monsters on an index card in separate boxes and placed tokens on the card rather than the edge of the map as per the rules.The Ghoul Driders, despite their penchant for dead and rotting flesh, became one of the most community-driven monsters with a passion for intrigue and a greed for power rocks.
The Robot Liches yearned to raise dead bodies and construct mecha-like abominations. At times they were neutral, at other times they would ally themselves with the Driders, Mindfryers, and Orcs against Super Ultra and the Grey Goo.
Every six years, during the night of a blood moon when the skies are clear, the monsters would hold a conclave/soiree at the courthouse to discuss important matters. So far, this had only happened once.
We discovered ancient, underground catacombs that the humans had desecrated and a crown of the old king which one of the monsters (either the Grey Goo or the Robo Liches) melted down. We also discovered a sentient, enchanted tome with an obsidian cover in the Mage's Tower which fed on knowledge and became a rival for the Mindfryers.
In addition, we designated projects, uncovered old artifacts and mysteries, and stated our opinions a few times throughout Spring.
Some of the projects included: destroying the outer walls of the city to make room for our monsters' expansion; establishing an industrial, mining operation to excavate the power rocks using Ghoul Drider webs and menial orc/goblin labor (the Driders took half of the first haul, while Super Ultra took the other half); and raising dead bodies and turning them into robots with chainsaws for the head and limbs. The Robot Liches took this one step further and gathered enough corpses to form a chainsaw-limbed mecha (the picture on the map is to scale).
We uncovered such things as: a hidden vault of power rocks (which the Driders immediately claimed); an abattoir devoted to the god, Mente; a pentagram inside the courthouse that mapped out obelisks around the city which stood over places of power; a prophecy relating to the human god, Tarkir; and a mysterious sword (similar to Excalibur) that landed in the Moonscape, right in the middle of Grey Goo territory.
A majority of the game was spent on Spring and we almost got through all the Oracle cards, but we decided to take some cards out and move on to the other seasons, since we were a bit pressed on time.
Summer and Autumn - Testing Unity, Conflict, and Intrusion from the Larger World
Tensions rose quickly during Summer and continued on through the bit of Autumn that we got to play (again, we were running out of time and took even more cards out toward the end).The Grey Goo ended up flooding the Chasm and turned it into the Lake of Goo, though the Orcs and Robo Liches continued drilling with their chainsaw golems. Most of the Driders were forced back to the Blood Rose Garden, where they turned their attention to breaking open the hidden vault of power rocks. Unfortunately, the Grey Goo seeped into it as well and dissolved everything.
The Robot Liches felt the Grey Goo were too invasive, and everyone else agreed. Thus, sanctions were placed on the Grey Goo, and the Robot Liches eventually got to work trying to create something to contain them.
At one point, Crown Princess Leila of the Ghoul Driders betrayed her kind by falling in love with Super Ultra and underwent a lengthy project of slimming him down so that they could get married at the courthouse. Meanwhile, the Drider Queen discovered that the power rocks gave off a radiation that, when mixed with the Grey Goo, gave off a poisonous miasma at the Lake of Goo which they could harvest into a deadly poison to assassinate both Super Ultra and the traitorous Leila.
An Orc captain working for Super Ultra grew restless and tired of Super Ultra's lethargy, so he amassed an army called the Red Hand (for the right hands of his followers were drenched in blood as a mark) to go off an pillage/conquer other cities. The Crown Prince of the Driders took a quarter of his kind to join them, and the great, Robot Lich Mecha came with them as well. Together, they all crossed the River Styx to carry out their mission.
It turned out the Mindfryers were secretly feeding off the minds of a cabal of mages, so they were punished and locked inside the Mage Tower with the mages and the rival obsidian book.
Leila ended up marrying Super Ultra, while the Ghoul Driders poisoned all their drinks for the post-wedding toast. Super Ultra had been using Grey Goo to help slim down, so he developed a natural resistance to the toxin and became sick, while Princess Leila died.
Super Ultra decided to try and pull the mysterious sword from the Moonscape, while a human hero came to the city looking for the sword. He didn't make it past the statues and was ambushed by monsters and killed.
Soon, the Grey Goo and Mindfryers called for a system of law amongst the monsters, whereby an individual from each of the monster groups would act as a council to dole out punishments for crimes. In truth, the Mindfryers wanted to be freed of the Mage Tower, and the Ghoul Driders, surprisingly, didn't object and said they had served their time.
The obsidian book ended up consuming the cabal of mages, but their corrupt power also caused the book to wither and die - much to the surprise of the Mindfryers.
Super Ultra managed to pull the mysterious sword out of the Moonscape, hoping to become the Avatar of Tarkir and use his bolstered power to dominate and destroy, but his arm became solidified with Grey Goo and his plan was corrupted. Instead of Tarkir, the equivalent of Satan appeared and cursed Super Ultra by forever remaining with him and whispering into his ear so long as he has the sword (which he couldn't get rid of, since it solidified onto his arm with the Grey Goo).
The Ghoul Driders, it turned out, actually praised the Satan of monsters and quickly took advantage by enacting a ritual in the Mage's Tower, with the help of the Mindfryers who absorbed the knowledge of the mages, to grant Super Ultra immense power to take out the Grey Goo. This transformed Super Ultra into a muscular, macho Orc with immense power and ambition, bent on total annihilation and domination over all the other monsters.
The Robot Liches were able to create a spherical container to trap the Grey Goo, but it also caused disturbing weather patterns that made it snow Grey Goo. Fortunately, the magical container would trap all the snow and convert it into a power source for the Liches.
Winter - The Sweet, Bitter Ending
We had less than ten minutes of play remaining and sped the game up drastically by this point, but only a few cards were drawn before we reached the King of Spades!For the ending, we decided no human heroes actually came back to take the city. Instead, the arrival of the hero was Super Ultra himself, the Avatar of the Satan of monsters who nearly destroyed the Ghoul Driders, the Mindfryers, the Robo Liches, and fought the great, Grey Goo menace now that it was more or less contained in the magical container.
Final Thoughts
I'm sure I missed a few things here and there, but hopefully the highlights are enough to showcase what happened without going into every Oracle card that was pulled or every action taken.Overall, I really enjoyed playing this game. The rules are simple and easy to grasp; the design is unique and provides plenty of opportunity for conflicts, resolutions, and story-building (to an extent). I was very impressed by the other players and the zany, creative ideas we kept coming up with. There were many times where we pushed each other to go more in depth with our descriptions and explanations, and it made the game that much more interesting.
The Contempt currency works really well in this game too. When our monsters started forming cliques and ganging up on each other, Contempt was being gained and lost all around. I especially like how Contempt can be spent whenever monsters are acting selfishly and players can simply declare that something happens or is true because of it. The Grey Goo ended up with the most Contempt at the end with Super Ultra at a close second if I'm not mistaken. We almost killed off Super Ultra when he was poisoned but decided it was much more fun to keep him alive.
In the end, the community aspect is what I really love about this game. Sure, our monsters fought, intrigued, allied, backstabbed, and more, but we, as players, chose decisions based on what would be most fun for the entire table. Just because I picked the Ghoul Driders and voiced their opinion, I try to make them win or necessarily gain power/status or even survive, because the game's not about that. It's about the community as a whole (the monsters, the individuals, their collective fates), and it's about all the problems and tensions that are introduced and dealing with them together. By the end, we all saw Super Ultra and the Grey Goo as the two, greatest threats in the community, and the thought of all hell breaking loose seemed way too good to pass up.
It would have been nice to play more of the Oracle cards, but we did have five people and were pressed for time in the end. At least we finished by the book!
I would gladly play this game again, and I really look forward to trying out The Quiet Year at some point in the future as well!
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