PTFOOO: What the future might hold
No new content today! Instead, some forward-looking musing.
Hello! This non-episode will be entirely out-of-fiction. I am on vacation this week at a lovely tropical destination. I’m hoping it will be relaxing, but given that we’re bringing a two-year-old and an 8-month-old, I will settle for it being fun, exhausting, and packed with core memories.
While I’m taking a little break, I wanted to talk a bit about what the future of PTFO might look like. In the medium term, I’m thinking about how we’ll conclude the Stonetop campaign, and bring the stories of Anwen, Padrig, and Vahid to satisfying ends. In the longer term, I’m thinking about what comes next — Stonetop has been an absolute blast, but I’d be excited to explore other games and other settings in this format.
So, for the rest of this email, I’m going to share what I’ve thought about those two timeframes, and ask for your input. No polls, this time — it’ll be a bit more freeform, since these thoughts are very preliminary. If you’re interested, read on! If not, I’m excited to pick up where we left off — the next episode will be published the week of July 4.
Whither Stonetop?
So far, I’m really happy with how the story is unfolding for Anwen, Padrig and Vahid. The big question in my mind is how to handle the threats: We have three big ones, one internal, one near, and one distant.
Our internal threat is Owain. Of the three, we’ve tangled with him the least — only minor skirmishes of words here and there. But as our heroes do more and more in the village, they doubtless come into conflict with him.
Our near threat is Brennan and his power base in Marshedge. He’s up to something — clearly trying to take over in Marshedge, just like he did in the Delve. Can he do it? What will the fallout be? What is the role of the Willow Witches? These are all big questions that could have meaty answers.
Our distant threat is the Hillfolk hdour, though he’s seeming nearer and nearer lately. We know he has grand ambitions — perhaps even grander than Brennan’s, and he has begun to gather riders to his cause.
My hope is that we can confront each of these threats — either on their own, or by joining them into some big crescendo before we reach an unreasonable length. We’re currently around 100k words, and I’m targeting 187,790 words as a rough benchmark — the length of Fellowship of the Rings. I picked that benchmark as an arbitrary novel length — longer than a Percy Jackson novel, shorter than Game of Thrones.
Wishes and Stars
One thing I incorporate in all my traditional TTRPG sessions is “wishes and stars,” an end-of-session exercise that creates a space for creative feedback for the GM and the players. ‘Stars’ are things during a given session a player enjoyed, and ‘wishes’ are an opportunity to give constructive feedback for future sessions. If y’all have stars, I’m more than happy to hear them, but I’m most interested in your wishes. If we assume we have more than 5 but less than 10 sessions left, what do you most wish we play to find out? Are there things about PTFO and its format that you wish were different? Is there some element of the at-the-table TTRPG experience that you wish was present but is not?
Hit the comments and let me know. I’m excited to hear from our regulars, but I’d really love to hear from lurkers this time as well. Jam the comment button and let ‘em know!
Beyond Stonetop
This is a pretty premature topic, but I can’t help thinking a little bit about it — chances are, after this note, I’ll clam up about future-PTFO stuff, because the most important thing for this project is to finish the Stonetop campaign, and I find talking about other campaigns is the best way not to finish your current campaign.
With that caveat — after Stonetop, I’d be really excited to run another campaign, in this style, in a different system and setting. I think, with the learnings from PTFO:Stonetop, other Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark could be a ton of fun to run using the same choose-your-own-adventure AP Fiction format we’re developing here.
What might those systems and settings be? Here are some things I’ve thought about:
Hearts of Wulin: This is a PbtA game that emulates wuxia dramas — masterful martial artists, family drama, revolution, political intrigue, and courtly love. I think this could be a fascinating game to play as AP Fiction. In particular, I love the idea of a martial arts school that is thrust into the political machinations of warring princes, with the students facing hard choices about how to use their skills.
Cyberpunk: There are tons of Cyberpunk TTRPGs — some in PbtA, some Forged in the Dark. I would love to run a rural cyberpunk game — not one set in the cities, but out on the road, in the places in between. Road nomads, solarpunk communities, heisting corpos on the open highway.
ATLA: I’m interested in the Avatar: The Last Airbender TTRPG that’s in beta right now, and I’ve been toying with the idea of creating my own ATLA setting with elemental benders, incorporating classical Indian mythology and history. The story would likely be a grand conflict based on the clash between the Seleucid Greeks and the Maurya Empire in 300 BC.
In the spirit of PTFO, what I hope to do when Stonetop is concluded is a ‘pilot season,’ where I develop some story premises and characters for each of these ideas (or whatever other stuff sounds exciting in 5-6 months) and then put it to a reader poll. While I brainstorm in the back of my head about what’s next, I’m curious if there are games out there that you all would be most excited to see played on PTFO. If you know of anything that might be particularly fun to see in this space, leave it in the comments!
That’s all for this week. I’ll leave you with this screenshot from my notes for Episode 7.4: The Seeker — a small window into the powerful creative process working behind the scenes here:
Some thoughts -
Owain: I'm reminded a bit of the Honor Harrington saga in which her worst recurring adversary for the first four books turns out to be a pushover because of the skills she's gained (while he remained static). It might be an amusing dream for Anwen to return to Stonetop and simply steamroll Owain - he has no inkling of the warrior she's become. This would also allow greater story focus on the other threats.
Future settings: Of the three listed, the wuxia one is interesting to me, perhaps with a highly multicultural bent - perhaps the school exists at the junction of many cultures and nations, and the styles blend in an interesting way (unlike what happened with real-life MMA).
Other settings you might find interesting... something about what the Culture might have looked like very early in its development? Something kind of brightpunk?
Of the threats in Stonetop, Owain is the least interesting to me, despite Anwen being my favourite character. I'm more interested in the other NPCs in the village, and how Anwen and the others work to make Stonetop safe and able to grow.
The rural cyberpunk campaign is the most appealing of the three you described. A lot of cyberpunk in RPGs emphasizes guns and urban haves and have-nots. I'd like to see outside the city for once.