Settlement | Zine Quest 2026

A magical storm is raging across the land and your village is in its path. The Wizards Guild spent resources generating an Investigator. What did they do?
A set of murders are taking place across your city. The City Watch is investigating, but so are The Underworld and The Clergy. Though none are cooperating.
It's your hamlet's first season, and a flood has reduced your ability to grow crops. How are you going to feed your people?

In this 24XX game we go big. You're not playing adventurers, you're playing an entire city.

What are we bringing you this year?

Last year we brought our cozy murder game, Final Rest, to Zine-Quest. Because it’s table based, we built a village generator and we loved it. So much that we talked about what we could do with it beyond … well, beyond cozy murder.

One of us said "Why don't we play the Town? Like - you're Commerce, or Religion. And then when we generate missions it happens at that level: "How does The Church respond to this issue” or “What are the Little Old Ladies Who Are Absolutely Not Witches going to do about the missing children?”
We then put that idea in a book and then forgot about it for a year - and now we're bringing it back.

And, what do you do?

In Settlement you generate… well, you generate a settlement - from hamlet to Metropolis.
While doing this players choose an aspect of the town they want to play - agriculture, commerce, law and order, the underclass, religion, the mage's guild, the little-old-ladies-who-are-absolutely-not-witches - whatever you can think of. 
You generate your area like a character - giving it skills and resources.

But - what if two players want to be Religion? Then there's more than one religion in your Settlement. 
Do they get on? 
That's for your table to determine.

Because Turn by Turn combat isn't really a thing in 24XX, even if you find your party at each other's throats, it will be more with intrigue and sabotage, rather than outright war, as sectors turn their powers against each other.

Of course, in a battle between The Crown and The Church, it might be The Unwashed Masses that rise up and seize control.

Sometimes you'll need to put an agent in the field - A Witchfinder General, a great detective, a Necromancer, or an absolutely not a witch. Spend some resources, spawn an agent and role play some scenes with your characters.

External challenges are set, and they trigger at time steps - imminent, soon and distant. And with narrative driving the game, no doubt solutions to today's problems become tomorrow threats.

This game stands on the shoulders of giants, inspired by map making games, PbtA, and built on the 24XX ruleset, this is a rules-light, narrative lead game is designed to get you up and running in next to no time. 
The perfect game for setting up situations to play it be that pastoral games waiting for lambing season and the harvest to come in, to MegaCity challenges on multiple fronts.

But how does this play?

We're glad you asked. This was a thing that plagued us for many months and to get over it, we wrote it out. We're going to put the start of this on the front page, and then every day we will play this through updates until the session comes to a reasonable stopping point. 
So, without further ado...

The Town of Ashfall has grown from a hamlet over many weeks of play. Our 4 players - Sam, Jayden, Elena and Damon (don't @ me for my TV choices) chose the following areas:
    Commerce - Elena
    Undercity - Damon
    Religion - Sam, and
    The Council - Jayden.

As the Hamlet grew, these 4 areas became districts, with buildings and services under each player's purview.
Elena now controls guilds and is concerned with supply chains as part of her Commerce remit.
Damon, always concerned with bribery and back-handed deals has spawned a group of smugglers and, much to the annoyance of the Elena and her guild system, day labourers.
Sam has lent into service and the cities religion now provides medical services, and has even found space to incorporate the local Hedge Witches as the city grew.
Finally, Jayden has used the council to enact laws, and incorporate a militia to enforce them.

Ashfall is a border town. Not Border enough to act as The Crossing, but border enough to be in disputed land. The Ref has a long running challenge of “Invasion” and has created a clock that she is slowly filling in.
She also has a crisis “Plague” move its way to “In the Immediate Future.”
She’d love the plague to be manufactured as a first strike in an invasion but lives for "Playing to Find Out." So she, too, is rolling the dice and seeing where her players take the story.

The session starts with a recap: 

The last session, and 3 months ago game time, a ship wrecked just outside the city. This should not happen because Ashfall has a lighthouse. On top of that, a portion of the cargo went missing, presumed lost at sea. Until it started showing up on some market stalls, and absolutely on the Underground Market.
The table bickers about this and Jayden says that he’s going to conduct a thorough investigation over the next turn - the next 3 months in game time. Damon laughs and says he’ll find nothing because his hands are clean, while secretly hoping his rolls from last session hold.
As the players roleplay their anger, and future plans, the ref starts her Plague clock - 5 boxes - and fills the first one in.
The session continues...
Sam’s Church wants Elena’s markets to mark the Holy Day, as well as the High Holy days, and close. She has had the churches preach on the sanctity of rest and succeeded a little too hard. Now some stall owners are facing violence and this has caused Jayden to step in.
The Underworld needs to fence the rest of its contraband off, or at least get it out of the city, so Damon and Elena are engaged in the diplomacy of bribes and heists.

Nothing, yet, is requiring skill checks and so the Ref lets the table play.

The conversation starts dying down as plans are ready to be put in place. Bonuses are being calculated and skill checks are on the verge of being made when the ref announces:
“Sam, Sanctuary is getting reports from the healing centers. A large number of people are showing up with fevers. They wouldn’t have commented really, but the numbers are alarming, and the people who first started showing up went from fever, to delirium, to rapid system shut down in a matter of days.

We’re going to slow down play for this. What do you all want to do?”