Last night Teddy and Tricia hosted Brian and I for our first session of Stonetop. Teddy had prepared an amazing taco salad spread, which we enjoyed before getting down to co-creating the characters and community.

My task for today is to synthesize my notes, everyone else’s characters, and begin to develop the initial threats and starting adventure/situation. I’m opting to use a bound notebook for all of my notes. My goal is to create a durable artifact that I can keep on my shelf as a reminder of time well spent with friends.

Brief Overview

Throughout the character session, we were all asking questions of each other’s characters. And offering world-building recommendations.

Interestingly, all of the characters were new to Stonetop. Ezra (Seeker) from Lygos. Tomatu (Fox) originally from Stonetop but recently returned from decades in Barrier Pass. And Hiltrude (Heavy) from the northern-most Manmarch.

Ezra had arrived the summer prior. Tomatu returned a couple of years ago. And Hiltrude arrived a month from the start date during a winter blizzard. And in the Spring burst forth on the land move, we got a 6-; I’m wondering if the village might have a bit of a “now prove your worth” attitude towards the new mouths to feed?

Notetaking

I’m now thinking about how I’ll be using the bound notebook for preparing and running the game. It makes sense that while running I have a spread (that is two pages). I envision a portion of one page of the spread as having questions and textures to include in the session. Leaving the majority of space for the notes I take during play.

Working backwards, any draft work for the upcoming session would be on pages after the previous session’s notes. The notebook I chose for session 0 did not have a dedicated index page and I opted to start my notes on the first page. Which leaves me feeling a bit uneasy about the notebook I chose.

Were I to Use My Computer for Notes

I’m inclined to not use my computer for the note-taking; in part because I’m not going to be using it during game-play. Were I to use my computer for note-taking, I’d want to “print out” the session preparation page; leaving space on those pages notes.

Further, those preparatory notes would be a subset of my total set of notes. All of which begins to sound like premature optimization and turning fun into toil. So I’m holding off and instead “playing” with pencil and paper. In part because paper and pencil have greater liberties.

Also, I spend enough time on a computer. And feel like I should explore another space. Doodle on my notes. Let the page be more of a canvas.

Rituals

I’m also reading The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han. As I write I’m thinking about Yes Indie’d Pod’s interview “10 Years of Making Stonetop” with Jeremy Strandberg—creator of Stonetop.

Jeremy Strandberg highlighted that the homecoming procedure—dare I say ritual—was crucial for creating connections between the player characters and their community. In games where they skipped that procedure, the characters seemed to have a weaker attachment to the village.

I carried both this interview and my reading into our first session. I used Stonetopalmost as a liturgical text, guiding us through our character creation.

Conclusion

This is my first face to face game since running Errant 📖 in 2023. It felt good to return to a Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA 📖) game that is questions forward; by which I mean these questions draw the players into the world, by giving them authority, but also in their framing declaring what is somewhat established. The questions provide the lines, the answers provide the color.

Other games can and do do this, but in the case of Stonetope, the game continues to be questions forward. Not just with the ubiquitous “What do you do?” but all throughout its setting book. Thus making it easier to “play to find out.”

I’m excited to get about the work of synthesizing, but used this post as a means to think a bit about how I’m going to approach note taking. Further, as I was writing, I found my background thoughts beginning to draw connections and wonder more about the nutrient rich material we worked through yesterday.