Welcome to Stonetop

Stonetop is a hearth fantasy role-playing game, set in an iron age that never was.

It's meant for 3-5 people to play over multiple sessions. Expect each session to last 3-5 hours.

Decide which of you will be the game master, or GM for short. Everyone else is a player. Each player controls and portrays a player character (or PC), one of the heroes of the village of Stonetop. The GM controls and portrays the world around them.

Together, you'll tell the stories of these PCs and the village they call home. These stories will play out over months or years of fictional time.

Most of the time you spend playing will revolve around crises that threaten the village, or opportunities to improve its lot.

You'll face dangers both monstrous and mundane. You'll seek out the wonders of the past. You'll trudge through rain and snow to haul some treasure home.

But you'll spend time on the slow, quiet moments, too. Talking to your pa by the hearth. Courting a sweetheart. Bringing in the harvest with your neighbors, or dancing 'round the Stone come spring. Seeing children grow. Laying dear old friends to rest.

Over time—in both the game and in real life—your characters and the village will struggle, change, and grow. Together, you'll tell a story that you could never tell alone.

Welcome to Stonetop, friend.

Welcome home.

Expectations

Stonetop works best with 3-5 people: the GM and 2-4 players. With just one player, some of the mechanics and procedures fall flat. With 5 or more players, it becomes increasingly hard to share the spotlight, make decisions, and keep things coherent.

It's best if the players are consistent from session to session. Players have a lot of input into the fictional world, and they decide together how to deploy their village's resources and what projects to pursue. When you have different players each session, it's hard to keep everyone on the same page.

Premise

Everyone should buy in to the game's core premise: PCs are the heroes of an isolated village in a fantasy iron age. They have roots in the village and care about its inhabitants. Adventures involve defending the village from threats or seizing opportunities for their home.

If you want to play rootless wanderers in search of fortune and glory, this isn't the game for you. Maybe try Freebooters on the Frontier instead.

Stonetop comes with a setting. There are plenty of blanks for you and your group to fill in during play, but if you want to change the setting's core assumptions, you'll need to do a fair bit of work.

Commitment

A game of Stonetop requires multiple sessions, each of which will take 3-5 hours.

You need at least 3 or 4 sessions to really experience the game, but it's best played long-term, over dozens of sessions. Stonetop is not a good choice for one-shots.

Prior to play, the GM should familiarize themselves with the Getting Started chapter and prepare the materials for play. If possible, the players should review the Setting Overview handout.

If players want to read more, they can read the first few chapters of this book: Welcome to Stonetop (this chapter), Playing the Game, and the Playbooks

& Inserts. Players should NOT make characters in advance.

Structure

During the first session, you'll create characters together and introduce them to each other. As you do so, you'll create your group's specific version of Stonetop. You'll also roll some dice to find out what the first season of play holds.

After the first session, the GM will spend a few hours organizing their notes and preparing an initial adventure.

In subsequent sessions, the GM will set scenes and the players will portray their characters. In the first of these sessions, you'll start in the village of Stonetop and establish a little bit of normal life. The GM will then introduce a threat or opportunity, which will prompt the PCs to undertake an expedition.

Dice notation

If you're unfamiliar:

• A "d6" is a six-sided die, a "d10" is a ten-sided die, etc.
• "Roll 2d6" means: "Roll two sixsided dice and add the result."
• "Roll d10+1" means: "Roll one ten-sided die and add one to the result."

The expedition will take one or more sessions to resolve. When the PCs have met their goals, or failed to do so, they'll return home.

You'll explore how the village reacts to their return (and their success or failure), and how the PCs settle back into normal life.

If your group keeps playing, then future sessions will skip forward a bit in time.

The game will help you identify the next interesting situation—the next challenge, crisis, or opportunity that needs to be dealt with in play. The situation will likely lead to another expedition, which again will take one or more sessions to resolve.

Between sessions, the GM will likely want to spend 1-2 hours updating their notes and preparing for the next session. Players will occasionally need to select new options for their characters, or think about what they want to do next, or answer the GM's questions.

Eventually, your group will decide to stop playing. If interest wanes or real life interferes, the game might just fizzle out—and that's okay. But hopefully, you'll be able to bring your game to a satisfying conclusion.

See Ending your game for advice on this.

Content

By default, a game of Stonetop features the following content:

• Fairly graphic violence
• Kidnappings, abductions, families in danger
• Bigotry, racial tensions
• Horror elements such as mind control and possession
• Personal corruption (especially if someone is playing the Seeker)
• Starvation (or the threat thereof)

Other disturbing and emotional topics are certainly possible. Talk to your group about any topics that you wish to exclude, veil, or handle in a specific way.

GMs, see Getting Started for guidance on facilitating conversations about content.

Materials

To play this game face-to-face, you'll need printed materials (playbooks, inserts, and reference sheets), plus pencils to write with. If you play online, you'll need digital versions of the same.

You'll also need dice. Stonetop uses the many-sided dice common to roleplaying games. As a player, you'll need at least 3d6 and ideally one each of a d4, d8, d10, and d12. The GM doesn't generally roll dice during play, but they'll want a d6 and a d12 for rolling on the inspirational tables in Book II: The Wider World and Other Wonders.

The setting

The village of Stonetop…

• is home to around 300 folks. It's a nice place, though poor. People look out for each other.
• is built around a massive standing stone of unknown origin, carved with faint runes. Lightning strikes the Stone often.
• stands at edge of the Great Wood. Villagers hunt and trap but—per a compact with the Forest Folk—never fell a living tree.
• lies in the World's End, a sparsely populated region, dotted with ruins. The nearest settlement is days away.

Neighbors

The Forest Folk disappeared ten years ago, and no one knows why. Perhaps the Fae—magical, fickle beings of the Great Wood—had something to do with it?

Horrid little crinwin also lurk in the Great Wood. They've grown bolder and more numerous since the Forest Folk left.

Gordin's Delve is the closest settlement, a mining town four days to the west.

Barrier Pass is a few days north, in the mountains; stoic, grim, unwelcoming.

The Hillfolk are nomads who roam the rugged Steplands to the south and the Flats to the west. They hold the mining folk of Gordin's Delve in contempt.

Marshedge is a sizeable town about ten days' march south and east.

There's no empire, no kings or nobles—at least not around here. More "civilized" towns and cities lie farther to the south.

Lygos is the closest such city.

The Makers

The Makers are long gone, but their ruins (many sized for giants) remain.

Stonetop is built on Maker-ruins: an ancient cistern, the crumbling Old Wall, some old foundations. The Ruined Tower is about a day from town. The Great Wood is littered with the Makers' work, though much of it is overgrown.

The Makers' Roads still stretch across the region, impossibly well-preserved and far safer than they ought to be. The West Road runs between Stonetop and Gordin's Delve. The Highway crosses the West Road a few miles from town, running from Barrier Pass to Marshedge and beyond.

Other things of note

The PCs are all human. Strange peoples (like the Forest Folk, the Fae, or the mask-wearing Ustrina from beyond Gordin's Delve) exist but are poorly understood.

Wise folk whisper of the Things Below, primeval entities of darkness, corruption, and ruin. Their power taints all that it touches.

People are terrified of deep water. Evil dwells there. Evil that will drag you to your doom. Everyone knows this.

Magic is not common, nor easy, nor safe.

It can be borrowed from spirits or gods or Things Below, or wrested from the forgotten lore of the Makers. But it is not to be trifled with.

Iron is the most common metal. Good steel is hard to find. Bronze tools and weapons are common enough, but oldfashioned and laden with superstition.

The characters

As a player, you'll pick a playbook for your character. Each represents a local hero, with deep ties to the community.

The Blessed is a nature priest who speaks to spirits and beasts. Works subtle magics via sacred markings and materials.

The Fox is clever, quick, skillful. Not above bending the rules and fighting dirty. Can be quite the charmer.

The Heavy isn't just any violent individual, they're our violent individual. A champion, yes, but a liability, too.

The Judge settles disputes, keeps the chronicle, and stands as a divine bulwark against chaos. Insightful and tough, not necessarily persuasive.

The Lightbearer invokes divine power via flame and candle. A beacon of hope, charity, and mercy. No great warrior, but a fiery foe of the dark.

The Marshal leads the militia and a crew of followers. Makes choices about who lives and who dies.

The Ranger is at home in the wild. A resourceful guide and deadly hunter.

The Seeker collects lost lore and power. Has potent artifacts that might well lead to their ruin.

The Would-be Hero is full of fear and anger, and in over their head, but they just might outshine us all.

Why play?

Because the characters of Stonetop are awesome and compelling, capable of epic deeds and yet fallible and human.

Because the world of Stonetop is rich and mysterious, familiar and fantastic. You and your friends get to both explore this world and help create it.

Because adventures are fun, but they're more meaningful when you undertake them on behalf of your kith and kin.

Because here, in the real world, our communities are often fractured, broken, disconnected. Because maybe you want to imagine a community that works, one that pulls together and struggles together and looks out for its own. Because play is practice, and practice is how you change yourself, how you change your world.

Because Stonetop itself is a good place, a place worth fighting for.

And if you don't fight for it, who will?