Stonetop GM Notes
This page is my attempt to offer a peek behind the GM screen of my ongoing Stonetop Campaign; a place for me to drop some insight, share my thoughts, and help process my prep. I have specifically NOT told my players about this, and will encourage them to avoid reading it.
- If you’re looking for a review, there’s already a lot of buzz about Stonetop online; I highly recommend the 90-minute Quinn’s Quest Video Review.
- If you are thinking about running Stonetop, I hope this offers a little glimpse into what it’s like to be a GM.
- If you’re a player, this probably won’t spoil much. Each campaign of Stonetop is WILDLY different (by design).
- If you’re one of MY players, this might ruin some of your fun. You’ve been warned.
Reading The Rulebook(s)
My biggest criticism of Stonetop is that it’s hard to recommend, especially to myself. I tend to play shorter, weirder, smaller games. Partially because I get bored easily, partially because as a designer I want to try out as much as I can, but mostly because life is busy! It’s so hard to wrangle players (including myself) into a long-term regular RPG campaign. In over 15 years of tabletop sessions, only 3 games lasted longer than 6 months. And when we can all commit to a game, I’d rather play something simple, novel, and easy to learn in the short time we have together.
Stonetop, however, asks a lot out of the GM and the players. From the GM it asks you to read through 1200+ pages of rules, advice, examples, monsters, locations, lore, magic items, and more. Stonetop also has a very specific way it wants you to run the game: light on rules, but HEAVY on structure. From the players it asks them to be highly engaged, to lean on the fiction, and to resist the urge to abuse the light rules. And it also demands TIME from the whole group. This is a game that wants to be played every week for several months.
I backed the Kickstarter for this years ago, but as time went on I was more and more convinced this just wouldn’t be for me. I’ll let the PDFs simmer in storage and maybe steal some ideas here and there. However, after I saw the Quinn’s Quest Video Review and it re-ignited my imagination and my thirst for a long epic campaign.
If I can find the right group, the right time slot, and the right mindset, I think we can definitely make this work. And if we’re lucky, we’ll have created something beautiful and grand that we can treasure forever. I’m so happy to report that I found that group. I read the rules. I prepped the adventures. And we are almost ready to play!
But first we gotta talk about the 1200+ page elephant in the room. After my deep dive into zines and micro-games I find these big books hard to swallow. If a game can’t be explained in a few pages, then something’s gone amiss. I have no problem with Stonetop Book 2 being 600 pages of adventures, monsters, items, and locations. Bring it on! But 600+ pages of rules? Give me a break.
And the hard thing to explain is that, yes, you really should read the whole thing. I’ll come back to this point later, but it’s worth calling out here: The strength of Stonetop is its little details. If you are looking for something new, or innovative, or flashy, then Stonetop will probably disappoint. It’s fairly traditional fantasy stuff. But if you are willing to work for something of incredible quality, then you’ve come to the right place.
Reading Stonetop is like eating the best grilled cheese sandwhich you’ve ever had. Every element is divine, the ingredients combined and cooked to perfection, the presentation is luxurious, and all future grilled cheeses are ruined forever. But that kind of makes it hard to explain or justify to other people. “$100 for a grilled cheese? Really?” Yes.
You’ll see a chapter titled “Hit Points and Damage” and roll your eyes. Everyone knows how HP works. How is this chapter 15 pages long!? Then you read something like this:
HP are a game element: they don’t represent any one particular thing in the fiction. They’re a combination of fighting spirit, determination, pluck, luck, and skill; the ability to turn what should be a lethal blow into a graze. HP definitely are not a measure of how injured or uninjured a character is. Mechanically, HP serve as plot armor and as a pacing mechanism.
And you begin realize that this isn’t a rulebook. It’s a curriculum designed to teach you how to play Stonetop. Trust me, read the whole thing, ESPECIALLY the examples of play. Invest the time to question your assumptions. And try to learn what Stonetop is teaching you rather than trying to play it like any other RPG.
Prepping For the First Session
Stonetop has a fantastic guide for your first session. It walks you through the entire thing from start to finish. And I’m very grateful for that, because the first session is a bit of a puzzle.
See, Stonetop wants you to emphasize relationships and connections every session. Hilden isn’t just adventuring to get rich, she’s trying to prove to her father that she can lead the militia. And depending on how this goes it will affect her relationship with her father, her friends in the militia, and everyone in Stonetop who looks to her for leadership.
But you can’t emphasize relationships before they exist. So how the heck is your first adventure supposed to work? How can the GM prepare a tense standoff between Hilden and her bandit brother when the players haven’t created Hilden yet?
The answer is to prep everything halfway. Leave lots of blanks and unanswered questions. The book has you create a Threat, something that endangers the town. But the exact details of this threat are unknown, and there are lots of missing pieces. For example:
Wolves are scaring away game and making travel unsafe. A few have even approached the ringwall, their eyes glowing a faint purple. Obviously they were drawn here because–
STOP! don’t go any further. Just leave it there. Maybe give the wolves some details and a cool magic power or something. Write down some possibilities if you like, but leave it open so you can connect with what the players come up with during the first session.
Later, when Rynan admits he dabbled in necromancy before he accepted Danu’s Light, you can tie the wolves into a mistake from his past. These wolves are not only purple-eyed, but skeletal and rotten; obviously some kind of revived dead.
So here’s the initial Threat that I came up with for our first session: The Missing Caravan
The village is expecting the annual merchant caravan to arrive in early spring with supplies. Have a short scene where different members of Stonetop talk about what they want to buy, or what supplies they need. Then reveal that the caravan is a day late. Three days late. A week late. Tensions are rising, people are angry or worried. If those supplies don’t get here soon, it could be bad!
Later that night someone spots a massive bonfire off in the distance from the direction that the carvan was expected. Obviously its because—
NOPE! Stop there. I have a few possibilities of course, but nothing set in stone(top). A few ideas:
- The Hillfolk raided the Caravan for supplies, and use a signal fire to begin negotiations.
- The fire is from a big fight or disaster. The ruined caravan is scattered around with clues.
- The Caravan lit the fire because they need help. Something is preventing them from getting to Stonetop.
We play our first session in a few days. I’ll see what the players come up with, and how I can tie everything together.
Session Two Prep
The first session was AMAZING! My players immediately picked up on the themes and goals of Stonetop. We built out a bunch of awesome relationships and details of Stonetop that I can’t wait to explore.
I want to call out another example of Stonetop being excellent in the small things. During character creation each player can pick a few questions they want to answer in front of the whole group. And in any other game, this would just be a cute prompt for creativity or to keep the conversation flowing. But these questions act like a hand grenade tossed into a tea party.
To whom do you owe a debt that cannot be repaid?
Which one of you scoffs at mercy and hope?
Who is dead because of your decisions?
Why is the village so happy to see you? And who isn’t?
Whom do you secretly watch over? Why?
These were amazing, and really juiced up the entire session. It would have been so easy to make these questions something generic. “What’s your favorite food? What kind of magic do you prefer? Who is your best friend?” But instead, Stonetop is immediately pushing players to dig deeper, to think about their past and its consquences.
Part of the reason Stonetop is so massive is that it’s showing you the RIGHT way to play, rather than just explaining the rules.
Unfortunately we didn’t really come up with anything that connected to my Threat. We have two PCs who travel a lot (Stridelong and Zavia), so maybe they know something about it. We only had one NPC who could be considered a villain (Betrys), but maybe I want to keep her as a troublemaker rather than a real Threat.
I’m resisting the urge to plan everything else. I want to continue to leave blanks in my prep. So maybe I split this threat into parts:
- Part 1: Caravan missing. Fire on the horizon. Many questions. - DONE
- Part 2: Travel to the fire, overcome some known obstacles (animals, ghosts, etc).
- Part 3: Meet with the Hollfolk, negotiate for supplies. Maybe fight alongside them?
- Part 4: Return to Stonetop with supplies. Triumphant (hopefully).
And maybe drop some hints or clues about the fate of the caravan. What happened? Is it part of something larger? Leave that unanswered for now. Just focus on the supplies.
But the Hillfolk need to have a complete story ready to go. That’s not something I can make up as I go along. I really want the Hillfolk to be a potential ally, so I’ll have them be mysterious and strange, but not hostile. They found the caravan, realized the supplies were for Stonetop, and opened negotiations. They could have just kept the supplies, but instead opt for trade.
And now some kind of hint about what happened to the caravan. I’m leaning towards a “natural” disaster that raises questions. Like the carvan was struck by dozens of lighting bolts or something (burned wagons, charred remains, black scars on the grass, fulgerite everywhere). This could be connected to the Stone, or to Betry’s worship of Tor, or a weathermancer, or something else entirely. But lightning is already a theme of Stonetop, so that feels right.
I should have a few possibilities lined up, just in case I need to drop more hints or if the players try to Know Something. I search for “lightning” in Book 2 just to see what pops up.
- Thunder Drake - A big lizard/dinosaur thing that bursts from the ground and bellows. This is a great option if I want to wrap up the thread and have it be a little more mundane. Maybe they don’t even fight it; it’s just a warning that dangerous creatures are about. The Hillfolk could even say it, ending the quest there. “Definitely a ThunderDrake” they say knowingly.
- The Ruined Tower - Lots of fun stuff to do here and explore. The Caravan was waylaid during a big thunderstorm. Not a bad idea to drive players here. Or at least hint at it.
- Lightning Vortex - A spirit of the Tempest Lords. This could be a great boss-creature or something controlled by a larger threat.
Ooh! Okay, what if we have the best of both worlds: The Hillfolk assume it was a Thunder Drake (since they know of them). But they’ll also share they found the Caravan near the Ruined Tower, hinting at something more. And the Hillfolk gave them an air-burial, so maybe the players could stop by on the way home and get a little more info.
Maybe Betrys is messing around in the Ruined Tower? Maybe it’s an old Tempest Lord awakening? Or a Vortex gone rogue? I’ll continue to leave these as blanks. We have enough for the next session. I’ll take some notes, come up with a few small obstacles and encounters during the journey, and we’ll see how it goes!
