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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 8940530" data-attributes="member: 5142"><a href="http://description" target="_blank">Stonetop</a> is an in-development PbtA game that started as a Dungeon World hack, though it was the author's 4e D&D campaign before that. In the words of the author:[ATTACH=full]275883[/ATTACH]Stonetop is a more focused PbtA game. It is a fantasy adventure game centered around a particular rural, village community set in a sparsely-populated, mystical, fantasy world inspired by iron age Europe. (See the proto-Celts of Hallstatt Culture.)The PCs in Stonetop are not vagrant murderhobos. They are adventures rooted in the people, place, and needs of their village of Stonetop. This modest village is their home, and their fellow villagers are their people, in one way or another. This is what makes Stonetop a "hearth fantasy" game. Play revolves around their home and community. The stakes of Stonetop's fantasy adventure are grounded in the needs in the community. The village's problems with a summer draught won't be solved by the PCs hacking and slashing their way across the Multiverse in an ultimate throwdown of violence with Vecna or Orcus. The villagers need water for their parched crops and throats.The small village of Stonetop and its people can easily fall victims to the natural and supernatural forces that exist around their Old Wall. It's up to the PCs to aid the village however they can. The play loop revolves around addressing threats and seizing opporunities to ensure the continued livelihood of the village of Stonetop: e.g., natural disasters, fae, spirits, dangerous beasts, bandits, neighboring peoples, etc. The loss of a single villager to the malicious crinwin or the drying of the village's chief water supply by the peeved spirits are dangerous threats that can be keenly felt in the community. The PCs may even need to quest to attract a new blacksmith after the death of their previous one, who died of a fever during a nasty winter.The village of Stonetop gets its own playbook, and the fortunes of the village can change with the changing of seasons and through the PCs's actions and choices. PCs may come or go across the seasons, years, or even multiple generations of play. The PCs can help upgrade the village in a number of ways. However, upgrading the village requires time, effort, and resources, which they may have in short supply. Will they need to make alliances with the neighboring village of Gordin's Delve? Will they need trade goods from Marshedge? Is there even some artifact amidst the ruins of the ancient Green Lords in the Great Wood that can help them?The fantasy archetypes of the playbooks should feel vaguely familiar for people who have played D&D, especially in light of the game's origins. However, the playbooks represent more appropriate character options for iron age play: i.e., the combative Heavy, the animistic Blessed, the divine-invoking Lightbringer, the lawbringing Judge, the mischevious Fox, the militia-leading Marshal, the resourceful Ranger, the aspiring Would-Be-Hero, and the Seeker, who delves in arcane lore and dangerous magical artifacts. There is almost a sense that these are what some D&D archetypes may have looked like in a much earlier age. You can even see the traces of the 4e Dawn War pantheon and the real world deities who inspired them: i.e., Tor (Thor/Kord), Aratis (Athena/Erathis), Helior (Helios/Pelor), Danu (Danu/Melora). Playbooks tie the characters to the setting and its people, but also help to define and create the setting elements. The Lighbringer, for example, gets to decide what the worship of Helior looks like in Stonetop.For Stonetop, I can't easily point to inspirational media like Young Justice for Masks or Buffy & Supernatural for Monster of the Week or Murder She Wrote & Golden Girls meets Cthulhu for Brindlewood Bay. There are also not many other tabletop games that I can think of that utilize this historical backdrop either. Maybe either The Earthsea Cycle or RuneQuest are the closest in spirit, though I would say that RuneQuest hews closer to an epic, high magic bronze age setting.When you take all that into consideration plus its anti-murderhobo fantasy adventure tone, IMHO, Stonetop represents a pretty unique game in the TTRPG landscape.</blockquote>

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