An Intro to PTFO:Stonetop
What are you getting yourself into?
PTFO:Stonetop is the story of a village called Stonetop, a remote, iron-age farming community at the edge of the known world on a magical alternate Earth. The story is told through the eyes of three of the village’s heroic inhabitants.
Our Heroes
Padrig, who was born in Stonetop but left as a young man and fell into a life of violence. He has recently returned home (with some brothers-in-arms in tow) to find some peace.
Vahid, who came to Stonetop from faraway Lygos, hoping to study the ancient ruins of the Makers, who ruled the world before their fall.
Anwen, a young aspiring warrior, born in Stonetop to a refugee mother, trying to find her place in a community that by turns loves and scorns her.
What you get if you subscribe
PTFO:Stonetop is a tale of high adventure, delivered to your inbox serially every week. There will be danger, duels, magic, powerful spirits, mighty gods, cults, sorcerers, brave champions, and terrible villains. Good and evil won’t always be perfectly straightforward, but this ain’t Breaking Bad — our heroes strive to be heroic.
Each installment is roughly a 20-minute read; A couple of tightly-framed scenes with some action. Think of it as a little dose of swords-and-sorcery with your morning coffee or a replacement for your afternoon doomscroll.
You can get a more in-depth introduction to the village, the setting, and the heroes in the Introduction and Session Zero. The table of contents has a link to every episode.
Why PTFO?
The site is called PTFO after an old TTRPG adage: Play to find out. PTFO:Stonetop is not written like a traditional novel, with every twist and turn dictated by my (dubious) authorial judgment.
Instead, PTFO is Actual Play Fiction1: A piece of fiction whose story is shaped by the solo play of a tabletop roleplaying game. The main characters have character sheets that define their strengths and weaknesses, and when they attempt a feat of daring, the outcome is not pre-determined — they might triumph, they might be defeated, and they might pay a terrible price for their victory. As the story unfolds, I provide notes on how the rules inform the fiction, based on my 30ish years of experience as a player and a gamemaster, so that you can follow along with both the game and the story.
We also are playing this game together. At certain key moments, I will pause the action and ask the readership to choose a path for the story to take. When a character needs to make a big decision, or when we need to decide what sort of dangers or obstacles the heroes will face, PTFO readers make the call.
If all that sounds interesting to you, I invite you to subscribe!
Stonetop: The game
This is our very first story here on PTFO, and we’re playing Stonetop. If you’ve never checked out Stonetop, by Jeremy Strandberg, I strongly recommend it. It’s a well-designed, narrative-focused RPG with some really rich foundational worldbuilding that leaves a lot of room to build on it, and for its players to tell fantastical, heartfelt stories about their characters and the community they’re a part of.
If you’re curious about the mechanics of Stonetop, there’s a brief overview here, and you can learn a lot more as you read the story.
This term, shortened to AP Ficition, first emerged from the Ironsworn RPG Discord server with writers like Tavon Gatling and Margot Hutton — props to that community for developing this cool new niche
Exited for you to get in there! Feel free to leave comments if anything strikes you as particularly interesting or dull. I try to reply to everything.
I’m excited to dive into this.