The Quiet Life is an outstanding job. It's loveable and I like the fact that the GM is a defined character in game. I love the fact that it works somehow like an euro boradgame where you have to balance your actions in a certain way to get the best result. But it seems that it never is enough. The promtps are introspective, allowing you to think a lot about the action but also helps you to be able to solve it and it's not just a "move" or a "roll". Also, I enjoyed the art a lot. It's amazing.
The Quiet Life is a game about a group of nuns that have recently arrived at a remote convent.
It's 11 pages, with easy to read layout and excellent illustrations. There's a few public domain pieces, and they sort of clash with the style of the custom pieces, but the art density is solid throughout the book and it's hard to overstate how good the custom illustrations look.
Mechanically, this is *sort of* a worker placement game, but there's a lot more going on here than that. You play with a deck of cards, which is divided into faces and numbers. The numbers are used to generate chores, and the faces generate challenges. Each PC plays a nun with a different statline, and those stats are useful for chores and challenges, but players can't reveal their stats to each other, meaning that everyone has to in-character make a case for why they should take on a certain chore or challenge.
Dice-wise, you roll d6 + attribute, and you have a total of three dice that you can roll per day. You can assign them to your own chores---or to other people's chores, provided your chore cards share a color.
Helping other characters with chores can also trigger a relationship mechanic, which makes future help very effective but risks random botches on rolls.
Failing chores, or failing to complete chores, causes Punishments. These are mechanical effects that make completing future chores more difficult.
After six rounds, or days, of gameplay, the players can rotate the GM or reach one of several endings depending on their choices and successes during play.
Honestly, Quiet Life being so mechanical felt a little strange to me given how much the art focuses on smooching nuns, but it's still absolutely a game that takes well to roleplaying. You just have to prioritize it as a group.
Overall, if you want a game with some fun crunch and unexpected fluff, and if you're willing to focus more on roleplaying than on trying to solve the mechanics, I think Quiet Life is an excellent pick. Alternately, if you want a purely mechanical game, I think this works fine in that capacity too, and you could even assign point values for different chore difficulty levels and make it competitive.
Minor Issues:
-Page 2, "Or occasional an easy day" occasionally
-There is a cheese strat where one player can repeatedly talk about their statline, giving other players a chance to call "Immodest!" and buff their own Modesty. Then, all the cheese player needs to do is go on a successful date and they can flip their Modesty way into the positives.
This is so sweet but I'm still laughing at the 'cheese strat' of calling out the girl you have a crush on. It's a real tactic, and any would be pastors must be aware of this devious ploy. For real tho, this is a wonderful review, thank you so much.
There is no need for complex character sheets since you only need a name and four attribute scores, but you can use the picture on pg 2 of the rulebook as a visual character sheet, writing your four attributes down in each of the four quadrants and your nun's name on the backside. The full resolution version of that picture is in the art folder as well for individual printing!
Ah! Gotcha. I thought because it said players should take a character sheet and dice in the intro that there was something more involved I just wasn't seeing.
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The Quiet Life is an outstanding job. It's loveable and I like the fact that the GM is a defined character in game.
I love the fact that it works somehow like an euro boradgame where you have to balance your actions in a certain way to get the best result. But it seems that it never is enough.
The promtps are introspective, allowing you to think a lot about the action but also helps you to be able to solve it and it's not just a "move" or a "roll".
Also, I enjoyed the art a lot. It's amazing.
The Quiet Life is a game about a group of nuns that have recently arrived at a remote convent.
It's 11 pages, with easy to read layout and excellent illustrations. There's a few public domain pieces, and they sort of clash with the style of the custom pieces, but the art density is solid throughout the book and it's hard to overstate how good the custom illustrations look.
Mechanically, this is *sort of* a worker placement game, but there's a lot more going on here than that. You play with a deck of cards, which is divided into faces and numbers. The numbers are used to generate chores, and the faces generate challenges. Each PC plays a nun with a different statline, and those stats are useful for chores and challenges, but players can't reveal their stats to each other, meaning that everyone has to in-character make a case for why they should take on a certain chore or challenge.
Dice-wise, you roll d6 + attribute, and you have a total of three dice that you can roll per day. You can assign them to your own chores---or to other people's chores, provided your chore cards share a color.
Helping other characters with chores can also trigger a relationship mechanic, which makes future help very effective but risks random botches on rolls.
Failing chores, or failing to complete chores, causes Punishments. These are mechanical effects that make completing future chores more difficult.
After six rounds, or days, of gameplay, the players can rotate the GM or reach one of several endings depending on their choices and successes during play.
Honestly, Quiet Life being so mechanical felt a little strange to me given how much the art focuses on smooching nuns, but it's still absolutely a game that takes well to roleplaying. You just have to prioritize it as a group.
Overall, if you want a game with some fun crunch and unexpected fluff, and if you're willing to focus more on roleplaying than on trying to solve the mechanics, I think Quiet Life is an excellent pick. Alternately, if you want a purely mechanical game, I think this works fine in that capacity too, and you could even assign point values for different chore difficulty levels and make it competitive.
Minor Issues:
-Page 2, "Or occasional an easy day" occasionally
-There is a cheese strat where one player can repeatedly talk about their statline, giving other players a chance to call "Immodest!" and buff their own Modesty. Then, all the cheese player needs to do is go on a successful date and they can flip their Modesty way into the positives.
This is so sweet but I'm still laughing at the 'cheese strat' of calling out the girl you have a crush on. It's a real tactic, and any would be pastors must be aware of this devious ploy. For real tho, this is a wonderful review, thank you so much.
They are absolutely the best reviewer imo
A real gem of a person
I've had a look through the PDFs and I can't seem to find the character sheets for this game.
There is no need for complex character sheets since you only need a name and four attribute scores, but you can use the picture on pg 2 of the rulebook as a visual character sheet, writing your four attributes down in each of the four quadrants and your nun's name on the backside. The full resolution version of that picture is in the art folder as well for individual printing!
Ah! Gotcha. I thought because it said players should take a character sheet and dice in the intro that there was something more involved I just wasn't seeing.