This is a bit weird. It’s not a game, not an adventure, not a setting. If you took all three and mushed them together, the intersection in the middle - that’s where this sits.
One night of gaming. Completely different. Your players trying to keep villagers alive through winter.
What Is This?
“Do Not Let Us Die in the Dark Night of This Cold Winter” by Côme Martin (Cone of Negative Energy - the HexKit creator). A friend wanted downtime rules for winter, looking after a village, making sure people don’t die. This came from that.
It’s a mini-game you can slot into your campaign. Frontier vibes. Survival mechanics. Tactical decisions. And at the end, you’ve got a village full of NPCs who survived winter with your players.
How It Works
Winter is measured in turns. 10 turns plus 2 for every player (or 10 plus 1 for every 2 players if you want it harder).
Each player has their own house with five villagers. They’re trying to keep their villagers alive. The group is trying to keep everyone alive.
Have your players name them. If this is where they’re going to be adventuring from, those survivors become real.
The Three Resources
- Medicine - stops people being sick
- Food - stops people starving
- Fuel - stops people freezing
Each turn you go out to gather resources. Fill up the storeroom. Then the storeroom gets used up. Repeat until spring.
Classes Matter
Your game system’s classes map to three types:
- Strength (Fighters) - better at finding fuel
- Arcane/Faith (Magic users, Clerics) - better at finding medicine
- Stealth/Agility (Thieves, Hunters) - better at finding food
So there’s tactics to who goes after what. The group works together, but specialisation helps.
The Turn Structure
- Count the dead - Sick for 3 turns? Dead. Hungry for 2 turns? Dead. Not enough fuel? Someone freezes.
- Roll for cold - d3 tells you how much fuel each building needs this turn
- Ration supplies - distribute from the storeroom
- Decide what to gather - pick a resource, send the party out
- Roll for events - things happen, mostly bad
The GM plays the Village Elder. An actual NPC giving advice. The GM isn’t against the players - they’re rolling dice that hurt, but they’re on the players’ side.
The Hard Choices
There’s one domestic animal for each player. But your player can’t decide when to kill it. The group decides together when food gets low enough.
You can merge two houses to cut fuel costs. But maximum five people per house. More decisions.
Someone’s been sick for two turns. Medicine is running low. Who gets it?
Events Add Chaos
- Animals break in and eat food
- Desperate crows attack villagers
- Someone steals from the storeroom
- Village Elder drops a torch and ignites three units of fuel
Little things that force adaptation. Makes each winter different.
The Tools Are Excellent
Quick reference sheet with all steps and rules on one page. Print it, run the game.
Character sheets that show you exactly what goes where.
Pages you can print to physically build the village at the table.
The Payoff
At the end of winter, you have a village with:
- NPCs who survived
- Relationships with your players
- Stories from what happened
- A place that matters
That’s not nothing. That’s world-building through play.
Bottom Line
Different. Tactical. Creates campaign content. One night of gaming that gives you a village your players are invested in.
Get it. Do Not Let Us Die in the Dark Night of This Cold Winter
