09-11-2026, 07:34 PM
I think writing for troupe play, vs actually playing troupe play have very different needs. The groups that I play with tend to be very theater kid coded, so my players really like to get into roleplaying, and be involved with the worldbuilding process a-la Stonetop. Having players take some authorial control over the setting helps me, the GM, run a world that feels like it has a lot of depth and texture, without having to write a ton. And in a troupe game, this allows a massive open world to fill itself out very well.
However, I personally found book 2 of stonetop very unsatisfying. On the face of it, the book 2 portrays locations in a way where they are meant to be more writing prompts than actual hard and fast locations. Like I remember the monks have a big mysterious vault, but if I remember correctly, it does not tell you what is in the vault and just has a bunch of writing prompts for it. Because the mountain people were so vaguely defined, it felt like in the text, they were just like "stock Nepalese culture insert", rather than something new and creative.
I find my own dissatisfaction strange, because the writing prompt style of location design philosophically agrees with how I practically run my games, while clashing with what I want from a pre-written adventure/location.
However, I personally found book 2 of stonetop very unsatisfying. On the face of it, the book 2 portrays locations in a way where they are meant to be more writing prompts than actual hard and fast locations. Like I remember the monks have a big mysterious vault, but if I remember correctly, it does not tell you what is in the vault and just has a bunch of writing prompts for it. Because the mountain people were so vaguely defined, it felt like in the text, they were just like "stock Nepalese culture insert", rather than something new and creative.
I find my own dissatisfaction strange, because the writing prompt style of location design philosophically agrees with how I practically run my games, while clashing with what I want from a pre-written adventure/location.