Good Gothic Fun - Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night of This Cold Winter Review

Title: Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark Night of This Cold Winter
Publisher: Cone of Negative Energy
Author: Cecil Howe
Editor: Shasta Howe
Year: 2016
Pages: 53+ pages
Rating: 5 of 5 stars

I hope my publication date is wrong, I would hate to think I missed this lovely mini-game for 8 years. It makes me feel like I've been living under a rock in a secluded village in the middle of winter. 

No, wait. This is the premise of the game. 

Your characters arrive and are trapped in a secluded village. Being adventurers, they quickly rise to the level of decision-makers. The rules assume you play some sort of fantasy setting, probably a low-magic setting. 

You can transform your basic characters from D&D into the characters needed for this set with a quick chat with your players. Is your character a fighter, thief, or a magic user? Let the players know fighters provide firewood (fuel), thieves provide food, and magic users medicine. It's ok to get characters cross-type like a ranger counting as a magic user to make medicine or a cleric as a fighter because they do woodcraft. All you need to sort characters into the three types and be clear that these choices can't change during the game.  

Once you take off the sorting hat, you are ready to go with this resource management mini-game by setting up the village. The book or PDF comes with a map base and dozens of excellent pieces of artwork to create your village. The artwork alone is probably worth purchasing just to have as a resource for other games. It is very nice. 

Each village consists of a building per adventurer plus a storehouse. Each building houses 5 villagers and the storehouse contains resources. Place the pieces on the map and you are ready to go. 

With only 3 resources to manage the game mechanics are a snap. You roll 2d6 or 1d3 all game long, then make choices. It is surprising how complex a simple mechanic set can be. 

The number of turns determines how difficult the game will be. 

Each turn is broken down into steps: 

1. Count the dead, and determine the weather. Weather is your main antagonist. Like many games, this entry point is skipped on the first turn. 
2. Ration your supplies. Characters move supplies from the storehouse to the individual buildings: fuel, food, and medicine. You will need to use 1-3 fuel units per building, per turn. Everyone requires food. Sick villagers can be healed with medicine. Again skip this on the first turn. 
   *You have one hidden resource. Livestock can be converted to food. 
3. Gather supplies. In each turn, characters can gather one of the 3 main resources. Your character type determines what sort of bonus you receive to collect these resources. 
4. Occurrences. These are random positive and negative effects. 
5. Illness. Between 1-3 villagers will become sick per turn. 
6. Consolidation. If too many villagers die, you can consulate buildings. This reduces the amount of fuel units you need per turn. 

Winning is survival. The number of turns you play determines the difficulty of the game. Chapter 4 includes many ideas to change the difficulty and intensity of the game. 

Seeded throughout the book is descriptive text for the game master to read. This is just as good as the artwork and is excellent for those who don't like to improvise lines. I love the tone of these sections of text. With very little adaption they fit perfectly with the presentation of the game to new characters. The short duration of the game plus the copious amount of text and rule changes from Chapter Four allows for several games before players start hearing the same thing. 

The combination of simplistic yet integrated rules and great artwork for constructing villages gives this game some serious replayability. If you reskin food to water, cold for heat, etc. you could plug this into almost any scenario like a desert. 

You can pick this up at DriveThruRPG in either hardcover or PDF.