Category: Stonetop

Well, here’s something cool.

I didn’t actually read the Prydain books until recently, well after I started working on Stonetop. And they aren’t quite the right feel… But there’s a to like in them, even if it’s just a bunch of characters with Welsh sounding names.

I’m finding this take on The Book of Three to be more enjoyable than the actual novel. Taran’s a little less obnoxious (or rather, the graphic novel spends less time on his obnoxiousness). It seems a little better paced, and the exposition works betters in visual format, I think.

http://thebookofthree.webcomic.ws/comics/first

Some kind words from William Hollar. Thanks, William!

Originally shared by Vox Arcana

Stonetop is great and you need to play it.

http://voxarcanapodcast.blogspot.com/2017/10/you-must-play-stonetop.html

Here’s my chicken-scratch outline for what the GM section of Stonetop will look like.

I’ve been going round and round on how to organize these. Do I put all the “common” GM moves (basic, exploration/dungeon, homefront) in one section? Do I split them out? Where do I put the Homefront chapter? (Before “The Hook” or at the end?) Do I introduce Threats before the first adventure, or after?

Ultimately, I’ve opted for what I hope is a workflow-based/task-oriented approach: you get an overview of how to GM, then we talk about how get started (character creation, introductions) and leap into the first adventure. From there, look at the parts of each adventure, and what goes into them.

If you’re willing to wade through my chicken scratch, I’d love to hear thoughts and impressions on this.

Originally shared by Jeremy Strandberg

In my home game/Stonetop, I’ve been toying with changing the Ranger’s Hunt and Track move to this:

HUNT AND TRACK

When you spend a few moments to scan your surroundings, you can ask the GM “What tracks or other signs of passage are present here?” and get an honest answer.

When you Discern Realities by studying tracks or other signs of passage, take +1 and add “Where did they go?” to the list of questions you can ask.

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By contrast, here’s the original move:

HUNT AND TRACK

When you follow a trail of clues left behind by passing creatures, roll+WIS: on a 7+, you follow the creature’s trail until there’s a significant change in its direction or mode of travel; on a 10+, you also choose 1:

* Gain a useful bit of information about your quarry, the GM will tell you what

* Determine what caused the trail to end.

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Reasoning:

The original move is… okay. I like that it’s a move where 7-9 gives you a full success and a 10+ gives you something extra. The things I dislike about it, though, are:

1) It sorta implies that you need that move in order to follow a creature’s trail. But really, you could get basically the same info by closely studying a set of tracks, triggering Discerning Realities, and asking “What happened here recently?” “Well, there was a fight, and this guy got killed, and then the victor skulked off down this tunnel.”

2) Nothing about the Hunt & Track move makes you particularly better and noticing that there are tracks in the first place. I guess that the fact I have the move, as a player, makes me more likely to ask the GM “Are there any tracks here?” and the GM should then be a fan and think about it and be like “yeah, totally, tracks!”

But I’ve see too many players not do that, or just forget that they have the move until I as the GM offer an opportunity fitting a class’s abilities and then prod them a little.

3) It doesn’t really lend itself to that scene in The Two Towers, where Aragon’s like “A hobbit lay here…” and then recreates the events in his head based on the tracks. Yeah, that’s totally Discern Realities and not really “following a trail,” but that’s the kind of thing I wan the ranger with this move to be able to do. They should be able to Sherlock the place up.

4) In Stonetop, rangers don’t automatically start with the Hunt & Track move unless they pick the “Mighty Hunter” background. So it’s pretty important to me that the move be “worth” the choice and that it not imply you can’t track creatures without this move.

Anyhow… interested in opinions! How do you like the proposed revision vs. the original move? How heavily does Hunt & Track get used in your games? Have you had parties without rangers that followed tracks? How’d you resolve it?

That feeling when you write a ton of stuff for a chapter, and then realize it doesn’t quite belong, and it makes you rethink you entire chapter structure.

sigh

Christo Meid is going to be running some Stonetop over at the Gauntlet! If you’ve been wanting to try it out, this is a good opportunity.

Originally shared by Christo Meid

Darkest Fridays: A Colony of Crinwin (A Stonetop game)

When: 8/4/17, 8/11/17, 8/18/17, and 8/25/17 9:00 PM – 12:00 AM EDT

Where: Google Hangouts

Gorlass staggers back into town muttering, “Crinwin! Nests of ’em. Lots of ’em. A great big one, too!” A small crowd gathers, asking questions and poking fun at him. Few believe him. One of you does, why is that?

Stonetop is Dungeon World hack by Jeremy Strandberg currently in playtest. The setting is a small isolated village of 300 souls living near the edge of the known world, on top of a flat-topped hill with a huge monolith on top of it that is often struck by lightning. It stands at the edge of the Great Wood where the Forest Folk live, which complicates things. Adventures focus on dealing with threats to the village, such as Crinwin, seizing opportunities for the village, or pursuing personal goals. Months or years might pass between adventures, with the fortune and prosperity of the village depending on the projects undertaken and decisions made.

Note: This game will be recorded since it is a playtest, although there are no plans to make it public.

Session 1: https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-Kp8K8goNMj3Vi59hidq

Session 2:https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-Kp8L-rJW7Qar9pWAf7U

Session 3:https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-Kp8LGb8UrhnfZ7Nmquz

Session 4:https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-Kp8LRKlHmP48b1mUG_c

Second stab at an adventure starter

The original version was (mostly) based on the classic Dungeon Starters, with questions and “love letter” moves that started the situation in the field, having already made it through the Great Wood and right to the crinwin’s doorstep. It asked a lot of questions about why they were out there and what they hoped to accomplish, but it basically meant that they spent a bunch of time building the town of Stonetop up and then not setting foot in it during play. At least, not in the first session.

Thinking about it, I realized that I never did that in my own games. In my own games, we start the first “adventure” session in town, reveal the problem, and then almost immediately launch into play. They’d Chart a Course (even if I hadn’t called it that), maybe recruit some followers/help, then Outfit for the adventure. We’d then deal travel at some level of abstraction, and then get to the destination and the “meat” of the adventure.

And I think that’s about right. A Stonetop adventure starter needs to start in town and let us see a slice of life. It should let us see who/what is important to the PCs and who/what the players are interested it. And then it should push them out into the field, with a mission in mind. It should give some guidance on how to handle the travel, and then give us something to work with: a map, blanks, discoveries, and dangers.

So… here’s what I’ve got. I’d really appreciate feedback on the format, level of detail, usefulness, etc.

All art should be considered placeholder.

https://goo.gl/UtfHFd

Fourth Draft: Parley (again)

So, I said I was done with this and I even changed my moves sheet to use a boring old crib on AW 2e’s Seduce/Manipulate. But then this happened.

It’s actually much closer to the root inspiration (Freebooting Venus’s Demand Something move, as described Johnstone Metzger) than any of the previous drafts. And it gives up on the Petitioner/Granter framework I was going for.

In the Demand Something move, the trigger is easily met (“When you demand something of someone”) and doesn’t require any leverage. The result then determines if there’s 1 requirement (on a 10+) or 2 (on a 7-9). But what goes unstated in the move is that the requirements can have already been met in the triggering of the move. So on a 10+, the GM could decide that they’ll do it if you have and apply leverage over them but you already did that, so whatever, they do it.

In this version, I tried to make that an explicit choice for the GM on a 10+. And on a 7-9, there will always be at least 1 requirement, no matter how well positioned you were before hand.

So, we keep the open trigger (“press or entice someone into a course of action”) without requiring the “do you have leverage” conversation, but keep the move from being mind control by allowing the GM to decide on a requirement on a 10+. And while there’s overlap in the 10+ and 7-9 results (e.g. in both cases, the GM could choose 1 requirement), I think this frames the decision for the GM in such a way that the results will feel different.

As always: feedback and questions appreciated!

https://goo.gl/dWDtqP