Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Holmes) vs The Quiet Year

Compare Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Holmes) and The Quiet Year side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Holmes)	The Quiet Year
Genre	Fantasy	Post-Apocalyptic
Tags	Classic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Resource Management, Random Character Creation, Deadly, Vancian Casting, Descending AC, Tactical, Map-Drawing	GM-Less, Worldbuilding, Collaborative, Narrative, Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Fiction-First, Map-Drawing
Core Mechanic	Attacks and saving throws use a d20 roll that must meet or exceed the relevant table target. Attack targets depend on the defender's descending Armor Class and the attacker's level or hit dice. The referee resolves other actions through specific d6 or percentile procedures and rulings.	No dice, no GM. A deck of playing cards drives play: each suit is a season, each card a weekly prompt. On your turn, draw a card, answer the prompt, and choose to Discover Something New, Start a Project, or Hold a Discussion. Draw on the shared map to represent changes. Projects take multiple weeks to complete. The Contempt Token signals when a player feels unheard. The game ends when the Frost Shepherds arrive (King of Spades).
Dice	d20	Diceless
Complexity	Medium	Very Low
Availability	Out of print	Paid
Runnability	3 of 5 book tools	3 of 5 book tools
License	Proprietary	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	TSR Hobbies, Inc.	Buried Without Ceremony (Avery Alder)
Year	1977	2013
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want low-level dungeon expeditions built around mapping, cautious resource use, and treasure recovery.	Groups who want to collaboratively build a community's story through map-drawing: 52 weeks of discoveries, projects, and tensions before everything changes.
Highlights	Ten-minute turns tie searching and rest to the risk of wandering monsters. Recovering treasure grants experience, rewarding expeditions that secure loot without fighting every monster. Reaction rolls let encountered creatures respond with negotiation or offers of help.	Card-driven structure (one card per week across four seasons) paces the narrative through 52 turns, map-drawing produces a physical artifact of the session, Contempt Token mechanic signals when a player feels unheard, works as a standalone game or worldbuilding tool for other campaigns
Considerations	The core covers only the first three character levels and refers higher-level play to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Magic-users must spend at least a day studying to regain an expended spell. Poison can kill on a failed saving throw even when the initial hit is survivable.	Contempt mechanic can create genuine inter-player tension, no way to revisit or undo earlier map decisions, map quality depends on group comfort with drawing, limited replayability with the same group