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Summary: Reflections and thoughts on running #Stonetop and thus revisiting #PbtA games, having remembered some of the past challenges.

It has been over a decade since I’ve run a Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA 📖) game. In that time I’ve run the following:

Some of those (BSH , Ironsworn: Starforged , Mythic Bastionland , and TOR ) were solo games, which means I might return to those games if/when the mood strikes.

I recall when I last ran a game of Dungeon World 📖 , I had derisive thoughts that “This game is really about using a bunch of parlor tricks.” Yet I didn’t write about that. Instead I wrote about this in Randomness, I Forgot that I Needed You.

Parlor Tricks or Entertaining a Group of People

What did I mean by parlor tricks? Namely that you ask leading questions to build towards agenda. Which in real life is a bad idea, and hence my derision. But at a game table parlor tricks is what we’ve signed up for.

Regarding my other issues with Dungeon World , there were two:

  • the initial bonds
  • the lack of randomness

Given Stonetop’s deep interweaving of setting and rules, the initial character relations are far more natural feeling. They appear later in the character generation process, and naturally flow from previous information.

And the lack of randomness? Stonetop provides character facing questions that give them narrative agency, which is a bit like adding randomness.

Randomness and Cognitive Load

A goal of the randomness is to introduce and then incorporate the unexpected into the fiction; that is to be surprised by the direction the story takes. I also think more important still is to callback to that unexpected.

Randomness, via reaction rolls, encounter tables, and morale are available concepts to incorporate. One could even make a random move table to consult.

Yet randomness and its incorporation comes with a cognitive toll. Having run one session of Stonetop, I am now remembering that games with the equivalent of Discern Reality and Spout Lore introduce significant cognitive load.

I recently talked with a fellow forever Game Master (GM 📖) friend and asked if he too felt an almost compulsion to fill “dead air” with conversation. Sidenote I’m wondering if there are other forever game facilitators who feel this same compulsion? I explained that as an often GM since , I had conditioned myself that in a group setting, when there was silence, I should talk. After all, the GM is the conduit for the group to interact with the game.

Which is gets to the load I feel from moves like Discern Reality and Spout Lore; I have a compulsion to answer quickly. And sometimes, the players make those moves in unexpected places, and I have little prep work to help answer that. So I feel an almost physiological discomfort of the silence and expectation of filling that silence.

Carrying the Cognitive Load

I am favoring an analogue approach for campaign management.

Between sessions, I review the last session, look for threats and ask questions that I’m curious about. This is where I explore the situation. I write, I doodle, I let my pencil wander on the page. As much as a map, this is where our localized quantum state of Stonetop takes shape. Sidenote It is during the session at the table where our localized actual Stonetop takes shape.

I also have an old army green metal case for note cards that contains threats and Non-Player Characters (NPCs 📖) . During preparation, I review each of those threats and make any notes or updates on the note card or in my notebook.

During play, I have a large dot notebook open to a two page spread. The left page is primarily for prep, the right page is for notes.

On the left page, I mount a two column print out, with margins removed, of my preparation. This leaves a narrow column on the right of that left page (11 columns wide) and a narrow footer (roughly 9 rows for writing).

I’ve committed to transcribing relevant information onto these pages. For example, for session 2, I hand-wrote the weather table for early spring. That way as they travel, I can introduce weather accordingly.

The act of “formalizing” my prep, by printing out a page, serves two purposes. First, it is analogous to writing up a paper based on research notes. Second, the act of mounting the print out to a page in the notebook signifies a completion of preparation.

As stated in Session Zero of Stonetop, one goal is to have a durable artifact for this game. Another goal is that in favoring handwriting, and according to research, I’m favoring conditions for better synthesis of the game. That is, I’ll hopefully have more in my head, at the expense of not having it quickly machine searchable.

Remembering the Good

My job, software engineer, is to look around corners for the edge cases; where things break or become fragile. And this work has created default pessimistic tendencies in my approaches. Which is to say, that this post addressed the negative but did not yet account for the positive.

I love that Stonetop and PbtA games focus on asking questions, which is not to say that other Role Playing Games (RPGs 📖) don’t, but instead that PbtA ’s focus on conversation and fiction triggerign moves, creates, for me, immersive games. Ones where I suspect the shared vision of the game tends towards greater alignment.

And Stonetop, with its setting book, doubles down on the questions; equipping the game facilitator with a plethora of questions that help meld the shared vision of the players with the designer’s vision.

There is a magic in play with the questions provided within the books—focusing on developing a care and concern for the community of Stonetop. Which is an activity that each game group playing Stonetop will engage in. And thus creating a myriad of iron age villages that each group cares about and which carries similarities and differences with each other.

Providing a common touchstone of comparison and story telling between game groups.

Another aspect I love about PbtA games is how “decisive” they can be; I think of their contrast with mid-level d20 combat slogs. I don’t want to spend 45 minutes, or more, on a single combat.

I also love how the moves of PbtA games tend to create a myriad of sub-systems that have the same interface at the table; namely the fiction triggers the move and de-prioritizes one approach over another. That is, there is no roll for initiative signifying that we start playing a different kind of game.

And then there is the baseline resolution system, with it’s “negotiated success.” I love systems that move away from the binary resolution towards a more nuanced resolution. Our world is not binary, why should our games resolve as such?

Conclusion

For now, I’ll hold off on randomness, as I get back to running a face to face PbtA . What I know to be different is that Stonetop provides a rich setting that surprises me as I prepare my game.

I’m also a different person than when I last ran games. I have worked to become a better active listener. I have accumulated quite a bit more tips and tricks of play; in part thanks to the burgeoning RPG podcast culture of actual play and discussions.

I’ve listened to quite a few actual play podcasts and thought, “Oh, as the GM I wouldn’t have responded that way but instead this way.”

I’ve also run several different games and flexed my solo-play skills, something that has helped me better respond to the unexpected. In part, because I have no preparation for any of those solo games, and instead rely on oracles and other supporting materials for solo play.

Which reminds me that I should take inventory of those solo games, the tools they provide, and look at what I might be missing from my assumptive Stonetop toolkit.