Time for a little more archival work! Today I'll be reading through Winter Harvest! It's been awfully cold this past week, and I've been thinking about wintertime, and this is another game from some of my earlier kickstarter purchases. This is one I do remember reading through - but I don't remember any content! The blurb puts me in mind of what I think of as a spate of cozy games, coinciding with and following Wanderhome's emergence onto the scene (even though I think Wanderhome doesn't neatly fit "cozy", or is doing something different with coziness). But that's a different game for a different time! Let's get feasting.
I can already tell that this review will be much shorter - the text is a nice and concise 21 pages. It opens with a cute little story (that might also function as an example of play), and a collection of influences, which includes books, artists, and musicians, in addition to other games. I think that's really cool! I often see books or tv shows or movies as inspirations, but I think paintings/illustrations and music are a little more rarely cited. One thing I've been meaning to re-examine is the way Dream Apart and Dream Askew interleave some of their inspirations next to "mechanical" text (specifically the way Alder and Rosenbaum quote their "sources" in the setting element playbooks). The games are also an interesting selection - the three are Ryuutama, The Quiet Year, and Monster Care Squad. Monster Care Squad is on my short list for another archive delve, but I haven't read it yet! But Ryuutama and The Quiet Year are about as mechanically distinct as they come.
Mechanically, the game is moderately simple. Your character is mechanically defined by their profession, which grants 2 skills, and their hobby, which counts as its own skill. Technically the text says "Each profession has 3 defined skills: 2 must be related to tasks of your job, whereas your Hobby skill is free-form and personal." but I think it makes more sense if "profession" in that line were replaced by "character," so I'm choosing to read it that way. Characters also have weaknesses, which inflict a penalty but are also a source of tokens (which instantly puts me in mind of the No Dice No Masters games), There's a nice litle table that lists professions along with suggested skills and weaknesses, although the text invites you to come up with your own.
Every season, players will have to contend with obstacles - one emerging out of the natural world (which the text dubs "external" and "major") and one interpersonal conflict from the community ("internal" and "minor"). At this point the text switches to a section about materials and getting started, which was slightly frustrating for me - I wanted to know what to do about obstacles!
Luckily the annoyance is slight and easily overcome, with a mere 17 more pages to check. Every player will take turns declaring what they do about the major obstacle, rolling 2d6 (if and only if failure is an interesting consequence - I think this is an interesting thing to establish as a rule) and adding one of their skills if relevant and/or subtracting their weakness if relevant. 11+ is total success, 8-10 is mixed, and 7- is a "fail" that also "makes things worse" - it's hard not to read these as pbta success bands, although the 7- band strikes me as slightly reductive of the pbta "failure/gm move" band (although if you're trying to be short, reduction is the way to go). Shifting the bands up by one is perfectly in line with the original reasoning of Apocalypse World's bands, if the assumption is that most often players will be rolling with a bonus of +2. Based only on reading, though, I'm kind of inclined to think that rolling at +1 or 0 will be pretty common too, though, which might feel a little punishing (although you've still got ~60% chance of getting an 8 or above with a +1). After everyone's taken a turn, if the group feels as though the problem is getting better, they can remove a complication - this continues until the situation is resolved.
Minor/internal obstacles have a looser structure - in order to solve these, players need to come to consensus about what is to be done. I think that's really cool! The text notes that characters might need to take action to investigate deeper causes, or might simply be engaged in conversation. These suggestions actually point me towards more serious complications than the text previously put forward as example obstacles - I think it's great to have a wide variety, but I wish the earlier examples were also helping pull me in surprising directions, like this text here is.
Accepting a weakness penalty on a roll grants the player a token, equipping them for future rolls. Before a roll, a player may spend their token to invoke a "legend" (the details of which are to be established collaboratively, with each player adding to the legend when they spend their tokens). This boost the roll to 3d6, where you keep the highest 2 - I often see this abridged to "advantage". That's fun! I love the collaborative worldbuilding aspect. It does seem to me that accruing tokens is a little costly, or at least likely to be painful.
The last dice mechanic is a "Burrow Check," which is actually deployed in a slightly confusing way - I think the text is directing the GM to make a burrow check after all the players have gone, but the sentence it's mentioned in could also be read as only applying to a specific kind of roll that a single character made - it does come right after the rules for invoking the legend, so it's possible that's what's implied. The burrow check is a straight 2d6 roll, with the standard 10+, 7-9, 6- bands, although since there's never a bonus to this roll, you've got a little less than 60% of getting 7+ again. The consequences of the burrow check are interesting - you might wind up changing the burrow's characteristics. The text has 4 different axes that define the burrow, and moving along these axes is a possibility of the burrow roll. This is another detail I think could have come earlier - it definitely helps color some of my ideas for "damage to the burrow" that the text had been hinting at.
The very last mechanical piece is stress, which fills in for HP or similar. Taking stress reduces your character's resilience, which starts at 2, and if it hits 0, your character must leave the scene. The text notes that it assumes this doesn't mean dying, but that's on the table for players to decide in the moment, if it feels appropriate or interesting. I wish this didn't come in between the burrow check rules and the burrow characteristics rules!
Now that we know what happens during obstacles, there's a final phase to play in. I jumped over this detail, but play occurs in (as the text would have it) fairly strict stages - first the major obstacle is overcome, then the minor, then there's a nightfall stage. Nightfall is an opportunity to spend tokens as well - each token can move a characteristic one point on the 6 point scale, with a specific incitement to think about how to prepare for winter. There's also a chance to change your character's skills, if desired.
The very last game text is about the midwinter feast! The text suggests playing three "normal" sessions, each being one season, and the fourt session being the midwinter feast. The feast session does away with any strict rules, in favor of having a potluck with your friends where you maybe can talk about your characters and the legends you wrote together. The text declares that, regardless of what difficulties befell the burrow, that the players have " [made] sure your home is cozy, secure, and well-stocked," although the game invites you to discuss how well the burrow is actually prepared. I had some mixed reactions to this idea - Winter Harvest isn't really the game I'd reach for if I wanted to experience a game wherein I might have to describe the harshness of winter, and going hungry due to the cruel whims of fate. But at the same time, that does kind of seem like an outcome that's suggested by how narrow the dice math works out, and how stressful the consequences seem to be. It's unfortunate, because my first reaction was to the idea of inviting all my friends over for a potluck, and that idea sounds wonderful.
That's it for the "game" - after a brief note on the lack of "lore" and some ideas for how you might hack the game (which does point out a piece of text I've missed, that the players are encouraged to change characters each session - interesting, but not really a far-ranging "hack") the rest of the zine is for recipes! I think that's very cute. Mostly deserts, which is good, but two vegetarian recipes that I'm interested in trying.
Final word: I think the part of this game that I'm most excited for is the recipes. I'm intrigued by the minor obstacle scenes in particular, and I really like the communal legend creation, but otherwise I think the "rules" text of the game is fairly familiar to me. The promise of drawing on the power of community and shared oral history, as implemented, doesn't quite make the leap from "game mechanic" to "powerful theme I will be thinking about in other games." But it is cute, and a nice read, and it makes me want to share a nice meal with my friends.
So what does this mean for our heroic archivist? Well, first, I'm instructed that every week on saturday, the roman legions invade. It says they start at 0d6, but I'll go ahead and roll 1d6 vs my 3 - we handily rout the romans, with a score of 8 vs their 1. Phew! Then we get some points! 5 for reading + (5*12 'graphs) + 3 for rating = 68. Whew, that's not much less than last time after all! We'd saved 43, so our total is a healthy 111. I'll go ahead and buy a 4th level and another medal, 55 points spent, leaving us with still 56.
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