GM Planning: Session 6

What threat is rising this harvest season? What dangers will our heroes face on their coming journey?

Last episode, we concluded Session 5, which covered the summer in Stonetop. Each of our PCs banked a big win and answered some of the questions we posed way back in our Session Zero — Padrig earned a place in Stonetop for himself and his crew, Vahid confirmed his belief that an ancient power is hidden beneath Stonetop, and Anwen earned her initiation with courage and self-sacrifice.

Now, it’s autumn, and the party is once again leaving home to journey across the Flats. Their goal is to make contact with friendly bands of nomads who have traded and had friendships with Stonetop in the past. This mission will help them learn more about Stonetop’s lost history and the House of the Nine Thunders, and perhaps cultivate allies against the Hillfolk sorcerer we’ve begun to hear rumors about.

We’ll begin today’s episode by doing the End of Session move, awarding experience points, and seeing if anyone leveled up. Then, we’ll focus on looking ahead — we’ll check the results of last week’s poll, which will tell us what threat is facing Stonetop this autumn, and decide how that threat will endanger the coming mission.

This episode will not have any new fiction — we’re just planning for what comes next, so if you’d rather dive right back into the story, this episode is an OK one to skip!

Session 5: End-of-Session Questions and XP Talleys

As a refresher, here are the character-specific end-of-session questions. For each ‘yes’ answer, the character marks an XP.

1. Did you demonstrate or struggle with your Instinct?

2. Did you change your relationship with a PC or NPC?

Session 5 covered a lot of ground, so the PCs had a lot of opportunities to mark XP. For Instincts: Vahid demonstrated his Curiosity instinct by risking life and limb to explore the ruins beneath Stonetop. Padrig demonstrated Caution by pushing hard to secure a place of relative safety for his crew in Stonetop. And Anwen struggled with her Defiance instinct by choosing a more peaceful path for her initiation while still not backing down from her conflict with Cerys.

And for PC relationships: Padrig’s relationship with his crew and with Stonetop changed dramatically last session: Garet and the elders gave their permission to stay in the village, despite Padrig revealing the crew’s bloodstained past. Vahid has also changed his relationship with the elders: By discovering the ruins beneath Stonetop, he has become an essential conduit to the village’s history and legacy, which puts him in something of a vizier role — A perfect spot for our definitely-not-a-wizard to be in. And finally, Anwen redefined her relationship with Cerys, from a foster daughter to a near-peer and potential student.

Then, we have the partywide questions:

1. Did we learn more about the world and its history?

2. Did we defeat a threat to Stonetop or the region?

3. Did we improve our standing with our neighbors?

4. Did we make a meaningful improvement to Stonetop, or make progress towards doing so?

Three of these are a resounding yes — discovering the House of Nine Thunders qualifies for #1, slaying the Thunder Drake for #2, progressing, and Vahid’s rainwater collection scheme counts for #4. Since Session 5 was on the homefront, we didn’t really have a chance to improve our standing with our neighbors, so we arrive at a total of 5 XP for each PC.

On top of that, each PC gets 1 XP per Miss result. Folks rolled pretty well in Session 5 - here’s where we shake out after the misses, totaling the Session 5 awards plus the leftovers from leveling up to 3:

• Padrig: 10

• Vahid: 11

• Anwen: 10

It costs 12 XP to level to 4, so we won’t level now but probably will while we spend time among the Hillfolk.

With that housekeeping out of the way, we’ll look ahead to the journey to the Hillfolk.

Let’s Plan: A journey across the Flats

Now let’s put on our GM hats and revisit Stonetop’s guidance when planning a journey, which we first used back in planning Session 3:

Source: Jeremy Strandberg // Stonetop

Stonetop is filled with helpful guidance and frameworks for GMs like the above. Perilous journeys are a huge touchstone in fantasy, but making them fun and interesting to play through requires some prep. Stonetop advises you to concentrate on the requirements and challenges of a journey.

Requirements ask PCs to accomplish some objectives before they set off; A good example of this in fiction is when Thorin’s Company must first travel to Rivendell and ask Elrond about Thror’s map before they travel to Lonely Mountain.

Challenges define what points of conflict will arise along the journey. For example, when planning their path to Mordor, the Fellowship of the Ring had to decide between braving the mountain pass of Caradhras or delving through the Mines of Moria. Often, these challenges are told to the PCs in advance, but sometimes they are surprises that the GM holds back.

Our journey to Marshedge in Session 3 didn’t have much in the way of requirements since it was a straightforward 8-day journey on the magically-protected Makers’ Roads. This time, however, the party must travel through the trackless wilds to a nomad encampment, far from the Makers’ Roads, so there’ll be a few additional requirements. We’ll choose “You must first travel to ________, and from there to your destination” and “you need detailed directions” from the list. We’ll deal with these requirements in the fiction — next session we’ll use the Fate tables to randomly generate and then envision a landmark that the nomad traders directed Anwen to at the end of Session 5. We’ll begin the next session with the party approaching it.

Next, we turn to the challenges — most of what we’ll discuss fit into the “You may need to watch out for _____” and “You risk drawing the attention of _____” items on the above list.

What Challenges Await?

If possible, we want to use these challenges to foreshadow the rising threat in autumn, which was the subject of last week’s reader poll! Let’s take a look at the results:

This autumn, the sorcerer — whom we first learned about in Session 3.4, when Padrig and Vahid interrogated a dying Hillfolk bandit — will make himself known as a threat to the village. This gives us the opportunity to use the challenges on the journey to develop the sorcerer as one of the central threats of our story: Currently, the PCs know very little about him — they know he leads at least a handful of Hillfolk riders, they know he may have some magical power that can dispel the magical wards of the Makers’ Roads, and they know he has some affinity with storms.

Advancing the hdour as a threat dovetails nicely with our visit to the Hillfolk — it’s been about four months since our heroes encountered the sorcerer’s riders on the Makers’ Roads, and he has no doubt been busy — but busy doing what? Stonetop (and PbtA games in general) help us answer this question with threat moves. Let’s look at a set of threat moves through the lens of another of our story’s antagonists, Brennan.

Brennan, the Marshal of Marshedge

Brennan, the chief of Padrig’s old bandit crew, now leads Marshedge’s guard and has been dealt a bloody nose by Padrig and the rest of our heroes. He has big plans for Marshedge and views Padrig as a threat to those designs. We represent Brennan as perhaps the most basic threat type — the Villain:

Source: Jeremy Strandberg // Stonetop

We’ve already seen Brennan do a bunch of these things: Offscreen, prior to the PCs arrival in Marshedge, he was Gaining followers/allies/power; when negotiating with Padrig, he Made an offer with strings attached, and when Padrig refused, he attacked ruthlessly, with little warning, and he took a prisoner. If you’re a GM after my own heart, you’re probably excited at the prospect of him doing the unthinkable or finding someone’s weakness, but we’ll explore that some other time.

Cirl, the Hillfolk Hdour

The Hillfolk sorcerer (Vahid’s session zero named him as Cirl, but our heroes do not yet know that name) is something of a villain himself — for example, we know that he’s been gaining followers/allies/power. But, to envision him as a character, we’ll also need another set of threat moves:

Source: Jeremy Strandberg // Stonetop

This set of moves has some similarities with the Villain moves, but it has some subtler, more fantastical ones. For reasons we’ll explore in the fiction, the hdour has a set of very human behaviors and motivations, alongside a set of much more arcane and mystical ones.

So, to decide how the hdour’s rising power might interfere with or threaten the PC’s journey, I’ve gone through these two move sets and picked out a few that might fit nicely into a journey across the vast grasslands of the Flats:

1. Magical Entity // Spy on someone, unseen/from afar: We know the hdour is searching for Vahid and the Azure Hand. On the journey, we could provide the PCs an opportunity to realize he is capable of, and has been, spying on them for some time now. If we choose this one, we’ll introduce an element of paranoia and secrecy to this threat and make the PCs feel like he could be watching any time.

2. Villain // Attack cautiously, holding reserves: We know the hdour has been recruiting from among the Hillfolk, but we don’t know how many warriors he commands. If we choose this option, we signal to the PCs that his numbers are relatively few, but he is a canny opponent.

3. Villain // Attack ruthlessly, with little warning: This is the flip side of the above option — if we choose this, we will signal to the PCs that the Hillfolk are uniting behind the hdour, and he must be feared as a political force.

4. Magical Entity // Send forth minions to do its bidding: We’ve hinted that the sorcerer can command beasts of the wild — choosing this option will confirm it, and gives Vahid some proof that he was behind the drake’s attack on the village in Session 5.2.

5. Magical Entity // Shape its environs, per its nature: The Flats are prone to wildfires — some in Stonetop and Gordin’s Delve say the Hillfolk set them intentionally, but often they are caused by lightning. The hdour certainly commands the power to cause such a disaster. Choosing this option dials up the magical and elemental nature of the hdour as a threat.

6. Magical Entity // Appear in glimpses, dreams, or visions: As Vahid draws closer to the hdour, perhaps he will begin to perceive his power in strange, uncontrolled ways. Choosing this option opens the door to some nonviolent (but still dangerous!) interactions between the sorcerer and Vahid.

We’re trying something a bit different with this week’s poll — I’ve laid out these six choices, and when you mash the button below, you can choose your favorite three. We’ll incorporate the top 2-3 of these challenges into Session 6’s journey — these choices will shape the moment-to-moment action of the session and how we depict Cirl as a threat more broadly: Has he assembled a vast band of Hillfolk followers? Does he have spies everywhere? Can he appear in dreams? Does he harrow his enemies with displays of elemental power? I leave it to y’all:

Sound off in the comments if you have strong opinions. Next week, we’ll reveal the challenges you chose and set off searching for the Hillfolk! I’m excited to envision and explore the culture of the Hillfolk and create some Hillfolk NPCs — Stonetop gives a lot of great starting points that are a ton of fun to fill in the blanks on. See you next week!

Next Episode: Session 6.1 - The Flats