as it appears in Stonetop and is applicable to wider TTRPGs.
audio version here (12 minutes) : https://youtu.be/_6WDjOq1hyY
The village of Stonetop, as viewed from the West Road.
TTRPGs are a genre concerned with immersing yourself in another world, one you can act freely in and see the consequences of any subjective action come to fruition. All too often, however, I've seen games that flounder in one avenue or another when it comes to actually crafting and maintaining this world, making it feel real. On the tactical end of the spectrum, rigid rules turn people into game pieces, actions into buttons, and combat into a fun activity. On the Old-School end too much is left to GM adjudication, leading to inconsistent rules and GM burnout. But I've been obsessed with the Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA) space for a few months now, in large part due to one game: Stonetop.
Stonetop is a PBTA game about leading adventurous lives in the hearth-fantasy iron age of World's End- your characters are tied to their village, and everything they do they do for their home and their loved ones. But how does the game accomplish this? If you come from a Traditional game background (D&D and its contemporaries), you know well the struggles of trying to get your players to care about your NPCs, your world, and your combats. That's what we'll be investigating today, by going through the Session 0 procedures of Stonetop and seeing the components it puts together that tie everyone to the world and one another.
Step 1. Introducing the Setting
A mildly cropped map of World's End, the setting of Stonetop.
Session 0 of Stonetop begins with a quick overview of the Setting Handout, a four page printable with bolded keywords and pretty pictures giving the basic primer on the premise of the game, important components of the titular village, some of the more exciting parts of the world, and how each character's Playbook fits into it all. It's a great thing to send out ahead of time or read as a group, and is followed up with a free-for-all question round if people are confused and a prompt for what people are interested in to make sure the group can collaborate on getting it in the game.
It's nothing revolutionary on its own, but having a broad-strokes pitch and round of questions gets people excited and invested in the world before they've even started thinking about characters.
Step 2. Making Characters
A glimpse into the village's daily life.
First, one chooses their Playbook. For this post, we'll be following that of the Judge- a lawkeeper and chronicler of history, adherent to the god Aratis.
Second, one chooses their Background. Backgrounds cement your relationship to your Playbook and the village of Stonetop, adding something to the world and giving you some abilities to go with it. The Judge has the choice between Legacy (the Judge is a long-running, inherited institution in Stonetop, in charge of disputes and with a Chronicle full of disorganised lore), Missionary (Judges originate somewhere else and are sent out as missionaries charged with protecting civilisation; your Chronicle is relatively new, and you keep in touch with the other Judges in World's End by messenger bird), and Prophet (the Judges and their Chronicle haven't been seen in a long time, but Aratis called you personally through dreams, omens, and visions; your Chronicle is entirely new, people aren't sure what to think about it, and you can commune with Aratis for portents).
Whew! That's a lot! But it's also exciting- players want to step into these roles and each one gives the GM and your fellow players a ton to work with in creating a living world and dynamic character interactions! Imagine borrowing the Prophet's birds, or delving through the Legacy's massive Chronicle... Imagine the drama that comes from Missionaries new to town conflicting with a Marshal's influence. And we're only just beginning!
Third, one chooses their Instinct, Appearance, and [location of] Origin. These are small choices, but nonetheless continue to carry implications! An Instinct drives your character to act (or resist acting) a certain way, your Appearance often prompts some interesting considerations (why does the Judge only wear modest clothes? or if they wear robes of office, who recognises and respects them?), and your Origin prompts you to consider who your family and friends might be (parents, grandparents, friends, enemies, lovers, children? what does it look like to be connected to you? where are you respected? where are you disliked?)
Fourth, you start making some of the more mechanically direct choices- Stat assignment determines how the narrative is likely to shape itself around your involvement, like Wisdom and Seek Insight not meaning you notice less, but that you're more likely to notice bad things. Special Possessions give you purpose to Stonetop beyond just working the fields, like being able to read and write or having the knowledge and tools for engineering and mathematics you'd otherwise have to venture out to discover. And Moves detail some of the more exceptional things you're capable of, like denouncing individuals as anathema or peering into someone's eyes to determine if they're lying.
Fifth, last but not least, is your world-building question. If everything before this point was a masterclass in creating an interesting character with their own history and implied ties, this is the final little grabbing trick Stonetop pulls to create an interesting world and get everyone invested in it: The book disclaims ownership of some portion of the world to the Playbook that relates to it the closest.
Our Judge has claim over two things:
- The Chronicle, the Judge's repository of all gathered knowledge. Influenced by your background, it might contain centuries of customs, events, and lore- overflowing and with dangerous artifacts mixed in... or it might be relatively new, on the outskirts of town- but well-fortified and with plenty of room to grow.
- And Aratis, the Lawkeeper. If I'm being frank, this choice is what ultimately lit the spark in me to write this essay. The gods of Stonetop, as with all things magical in its world, are not absolutely-defined entities you can simply look up in the setting guide and understand completely, or "Plot on an org chart.", as Quinn says in his review. They're left as overflowing numinal points in space, powers that exist and have influence over the world, but that everyone seems to have a different opinion on, conflicting interpretations surviving side-by-side. And the players, in particular the ones heavily associated with certain deities (The Blessed, The Judge, and The Lightbearer, if you're curious), get their own, heavy say in that sprawl. Skipping ahead a moment, the next and final component of Stonetop's session 0 is to discuss and explore the answers each player has made in the process of creating these characters. In that step, I have seen input on deities broad enough to define the entire culture of the village, an entire history of the world. An overgrown Stonetop with institutionally trusted Initiates of the nature goddess Danu and wild rituals. A long-forgotten light god Helior, surviving stories from his final servant dismissed as naught but myth. A Stonetop fearful of incurring the judgement of Aratis and her Keepers, dealing in subtleties and darkness. It's something truly magical. But I digress.
Other Playbooks contain similarly defining questions, and it is here that the book then asks you to wait- once everyone has completed their character, play proceeds to the final step.
Step 3. Introductions
The heroes of Stonetop. Or at least one iteration.
A series of seven introductory questions, answered by everyone going around the table, with the included prompts of:
"When someone reveals something and you want to know more, ask them about it. When someone asks you a question, answer it truthfully."
The game, as well, provides interesting and critical follow up questions; why someone has come to the village, how they came to possess the things or talents they do, if they can read and write, who their family is, and a swath of questions specific to the information in each Playbook. But the true magic comes from the interaction of these two components:
- The players are each advocates for their own components of the world; because the Judge is so closely tied to the Chronicle and Aratis, the Judge's player is excited to learn more about them both, to tie them to things, to make logical conclusions as to how "their stuff" would interact with others.
- In so doing, everyone else is hooked in turn. When the Heavy speaks of their History of Violence, the Lightbearer is interested in how the Heavy takes to Helior's mercy... and then the Heavy, in response, forms opinions on Helior, his followers, and the Lightbearer themselves, tied directly into the things they already advocate for.
It's an immaculate design, the first time I've ever seen or played a session 0 that didn't just feel like pre-amble, it felt exciting, it felt deep, it felt like play! And these beautiful components take root into even the subtle things; an NPC introduced by the Lightbearer who "needs Helior's light, badly" can easily become intriguing to the Heavy from before, for the very same reasons. Once it's all over... everyone feels the world they're living in. They have connections, fascinations, implications, reasons to live and reasons to fight.
Conclusion
The Ceirwmawr, unnaturally deft despite its giant antlers.
Stonetop as a book demonstrates an amount of perfection I find frankly surreal. I've been talking about it for months, I hope to play it for many more. But even the best games deserve a strong start, and I think Stonetop makes an excellent case study and argument for the existence of intentioned, critically important session 0s in TTRPG. Too many games I've read and played fall flat when it comes to investment or depth because they leave players on either or both sides of the screen starting from nothing or near-nothing; every ounce of reality is a collaborative white-knuckled yank at the collective consciousness. I argue that a design like Stonetop's turns this blistering prospect into a free-flowing river, easily reflecting the beauty of every observer. Write and play through bespoke session 0s, and reap the beauty.
Thanks for reading.
