Category: Stonetop

The Open Barrow

aka Eternal Tomb of a Shallow Asshole and His Best Bubs

39 sessions in we had our first PC fatality (I’m a bit of a softy, I think).

He died by taking damage as part of a love-letter, even! Player knew the risks, and made the choice anyway, and roll damage equal to his remaining HP. And then even with another PC Aiding, he got a 4 on Death’s Door.

So now the 8th-level Heavy is a ghost. I think he also just got himself a crew or followers (soldier buddies, who he died breaking out of the brig).

http://goo.gl/v9C2km

A little refinement to my player’s guide for Stonetop.

I think the player’s agenda, principles, triggering moves, and “when in doubt” part is pretty applicable to most PbtA games. It dawns on me as I write this that this could also be a place to define a couple things like “+1 forward” what it means to hold and spend X.

The “If You Want To…” section is based on feedback from a few playtest groups. Many of the long-term mechanics of the game are subtle enough that it’s not always obvious what you should do if you want to achieve X. Hopefully this helps?

https://goo.gl/FgkUey

Huh… this seems like something that’d be useful in Stonetop.

Anyone out there ever use Kumu.io for relationship mapping in your RPGs? Got a good template to start with? Any advice for getting the most out of it? Alternately, do you know of a better tool?

The link below is an abortive stab at mapping out some of the PCs and NPCs I use in my examples. Not sure I’ll keep building on it.

Initial impressions:

1) super click-heavy to use… UI isn’t terrible, but it’s not easy either

2) You can color-code or otherwise change connections based on tags (like “enemies” or “allies”) but there’s no easy way to see the unique description of each relationship.

3) No ability to crop/zoom/re-position images within the circles (y’know, like Facebook/G+/etc. let you do). Means you have to crop/center images before uploading. Pretty big pain in the ass.

4) You can make unlimited publicly visible maps for free, but still grant editorial access to specific others. That’s nice.

5) There are handful of public RPG maps out there that are discoverable… but man are they kinda messy. Not entirely sure how I’d actually use a big ol’ map like that once play began.

https://www.kumu.io/jeremystrandberg/stonetop-test

Agenda & Principles for Players

I’m not strictly sure these are necessary, but I had room on a handout and thought it’d be a good thing to add. What do you think?

PLAYER’S AGENDA

● Portray your characters as real people

● Engage with the world you are creating

● Play to see what happens

PLAYER’S PRINCIPLES

● Think in character

● Think about the rules, too

● Begin and end with the fiction

● Show us what’s important to you

● Make connections to other characters

● Have goals and pursue them

● Be bold, take risks

● Embrace difficulty, setback, and failure

● Answer questions with integrity

● Be a fan: pay attention, ask questions, contribute to the conversation

● Respond to others with generosity and trust

● Communicate your wants and needs

● Be patient

Because I can’t stop fiddling with the Parley move… how about this?

When you press or entice an NPC, say what you want them to do (or not do). If they have reason to resist, roll +CHA: on a 10+, they either do as you want or reveal the easiest way to convince them; on a 7-9, they reveal something you can do to convince them, though it’ll likely be costly, tricky, or distasteful.

Things that might convince them…

• A promise/an oath/a vow

• A chance to do it safely/freely/discretely

• Appeasing or appealing to their ego/honor/conscience/fears

• A convincing deception

• A better/fair/excessive offer

• Helping them/doing it with them

• Violence (or a credible threat thereof)

• Something they want or need (coin/food/booze/etc.)

• Concrete assurance/proof/collaboration

• Pressure from __/permission from __/help from __

(This list would probably go in the GM Playbook, alongside other “What’s Required” lists like those for Make a Plan and Chart a Course.)

Design thoughts: I’ve been playing with previous (draft 4.5… link in the comments) version of Parley for a while now, and it’s seen a lot of action. The biggest problem I find with it is that it just doesn’t give me enough guidance on the 10+ vs. the 7-9. I’ve tried to incorporate a lot of Johnstone Metzger’s thoughts and feedback, but the “do it or choose 1” on a 10+ vs. “choose 1 or 2” on a 7-9 just wasn’t prompting me enough.

What I like about this version is:

1) Keeps the open trigger. You don’t need to establish leverage before you roll, you just keep your eyes open for PCs pressuring or enticing NPCs and roll.

2) It avoids being mind control by the “or reveal the easiest way to convince them” on the 10+.

3) Unlike my previous versions, the “easiest way to convince them” makes it clear that what I (the GM) should reveal should be the minimum, the most accessible avenue. That might still be functionally impossible or really unpalatable, but you know on a 10+ that you’ll get either success or the best path forward.

4) The 7-9 gets me thinking about hard choices, dramatic choices. “Yeah, you could convince the leaders of the slave revolt not to murder their minders, if you suggested that they enslave their minders instead. What do you do?”

5) The bullet list doesn’t need to be explicitly part of the move, so I don’t need to include it (e.g.) on a basic moves handout. It can go the GM Playbook. It also doesn’t have to be exhaustive, right?

I’ve been working lately on the GM side of Stonetop, trying to codify the things that I do (or wish I did) when I run the game. Here’s a stab at a worksheet for planning the first adventure.

In standard Dungeon World, you generally zip through character creation, swap some bonds, and start with a series of loaded questions that drops the PCs into an adventure. The first session is mostly figuring out what the hell that adventure is. Then, between sessions, the GM works up a front or two and fleshes the adventure out (or not… they might just wing it; I know I have).

But in Stonetop… you don’t want to do that. You start the first sessions making characters and the town they live in. You might get into some actual play, but often you’ll spend that whole first session introducing yourselves, completing introductions, and sketching out NPCs and threats and opportunities and relationships. Then the players roll Seasons Change for their first spring, make a choice or two, and that launches us into play.

The first adventure, then, usually happens on the 2nd session. I intend to include a bunch of adventure starters for quick play, but more often than not, I expect GMs to prep a custom first adventure. But the first adventure is a dicey thing. You want to start in the village and see it in play a bit, but then you want to draw them out into adventure before the whole thing devolves into a game of Apocalypse World or Smallville or whatever. But you still want to ask questions, leave blanks, etc. And you don’t want it to be a railroad.

I’ve got a whole chapter in the works, but I thought a worksheet might help. So I made this.

Problem is… it’s too small. I spent a couple hours today filling in the sheet, and even with my 8-pt handwriting (and a cramped hand), I found it too cramped.

Plus, a lot of the process involves ordering things… not easy to do in this format.

With that said, I’m happy with the steps and prompts. I’ve used this process a couple times now, and both times I’ve ended up with an adventure I’d be excited to run. So, I’m thinking that some sort of template in Word (or whatever word processor) would be more useful to most GMs.

Anyhow… you can at least get an idea of why my process looks like here, if you’re interested.

As always: feedback welcome and appreciated.

https://goo.gl/dHFwhh

Here’s the map of King’s Rock and Three-Coven Lake, the region where the less powerful Hillfolk clans are holed up against Marc (Nolwenn’s father) and his Red Band.

The PC’s and their allies have a camp of about 400 in and around King’s Rock, from 7 different clans, with only about 250 are combatants (the rest are too old, too young, or infirm… both genders fight among the Hillfolk).

Arrayed against them are almost 800 combatants, plus the three heiromonks who dictate Hillfolk religion.

Yikes.

My home game of Stonetop took about a month off, and when last we saw them, they were heading down to King’s Rock to join the alliance of Hillfolk banding together against Marc (Nolwenn’s father) and his Red Band.

We time jumped a couple weeks and kicked things off with some love letters. These took a while to process, but I feel like they gave us a lot of great details to work with.

https://goo.gl/yJf3CR