The Transition Year [Free]

The Transition Year [Free]:

The Transition Year is a map-drawing game of post-capitalist futures. You can also use it as a world-building tool for other games or fictions. 

This is a re-imagining of The Quiet Year by Avery Alder. Inspiration is also drawn from The Deep Forest by Avery Alder and Mark Diaz Truman and A Few Degrees of Warming by Michael Elliot. Illustrations are by anarchist artist Clifford Harper. Most are drawn from the book Radical Technology and Anarchy: A Graphic Guide.

The Opening Story

For a long time, our lives and futures were captured and caged by a system we could not escape, one of extraction, exploitation and waste. Now, finally, we have the opportunity to transition to some other way of living. The engines of industry and the state have stopped, the masters are gone. They left and took the reapers with them. We're left with this: one year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to dismantle or repurpose the tools and knowledge of the past and reclaim a different way of living together. Come winter, the masters will send the reapers to take what they want. We do not know who or what will survive this encounter. This is when the game will end. But we don't know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, we have an opportunity for rethinking living and working together, away from the masters, their reapers and the coming reaping. 

What This Is

This is a map-drawing game. You collectively explore the struggles of a small community trying to transition from extractive technologies, economies, knowledges and practices and build a new way of living. It is a game about community, difficult choices, solarpunk dreams and anti-capitalist futures. Players will narrate the events of the community as it struggles to overcome the many challenges of climate change and the transition away from capitalism and control by a few to an expanded democracy of communities controlling their lives and futures together. When you play, you make decisions about the community. Those decisions get recorded on a map that is constantly evolving. Parts of the map are literal cartography, while other parts are symbolic. You will also name and describe the various groups that make up the larger community.

Will you be able to work together and survive and thrive through The Transition and the worsening effects of climate change? What will this community look like after a year of working toward transition? This game encourages you to consider these questions, and to play to find out what happens. Players work together to create and steer this community, but they also play devil's advocate and introduce conflict and tension into the game.

Supplies

The Transition Year requires 2-4 players and 2-4 hours

In addition, it requires:

• Two blank pieces of letter-sized paper
• Pencils, erasers, and several index cards
• At least 6 six-sided dice (smaller is better)
• 20 Contempt Tokens (possibly stones or glass beads or coins)
• A deck of regular playing cards, with joker cards
• The Oracle (which includes a page of reference cards) (in downloads)

Help us playtest this game! 

Email us your feedback at comrades@affinity-games.com. Playtester's names will be added to the Due Credits section. 

Share your Transition Year maps with us and we’ll post a collection of them on our website! Send a picture of them to us at comrades@affinity-games.com. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.