The Lone Toad Newsletter - March 2023 - All about Stoneburner this month!
Hello everyone! Below is the Lone Toad Newsletter, March edition. If you'd like to get these in your email box when they are released at the start of the month, be sure to sign up for my newsletter here!
Welcome soloists to The Lone Toad for April! This month is all about Stoneburner, an upcoming solo-friendly RPG from a friend of the blog, René-Pier of Fari RPG. Enjoy the read!
Are you enjoying the newsletter? Like it! Now! Do it! Please! I’m not desperate or anything and my self-worth totally isn’t tied to how many people like this…
Favorite Blog Posts from March 2023
Technically happened on the first of April but it’s my newsletter so who cares.
My Review of Stoneburner! By René-Pier of Fari RPG. This solo-friendly RPG blends Sci-fi and fantasy. Check out the review.
And of top of that we have a review with René-Pier to talk about the upcoming game.
Interview with René-Pier about Stoneburner
We are incredibly lucky because we have one of the creators of Stoneburner here to answer some of my questions about the upcoming game! My questions will be in bold.
Thank you for taking some more to speak with me about your upcoming game Stoneburner, Kickstarting on 11 April (be sure to follow it here). Now I've been lucky enough to take a look at the game and it looks stunning. How did you get the idea for the game?
Thank you so much for having me! I’m very excited to chat with you again. The idea for Stoneburner was actually prompted by a tweet from Galen Pejeau, my collaborator on the project and the game’s illustrator. He had tweeted how great the new Dwarf Fortress soundtrack was, and if there’s a thing I love as much as TTRPG, it’s video game soundtracks.
I immediately went and listened to it on loop for days, and then thought: “hey, wouldn’t be cool to make a game where all players play dwarves? But instead of them being in a classic fantasy setting, maybe they’d all be space dwarves or something?”. I wrote and sent 4 paragraphs of text as a pitch for a game to my friend Andrew Boyd of Pandion Games, and he immediately replied that it sounded amazing. Those 4 paragraphs then became the pitch of the game on the website.
I started working on a logo and layout proof of concept, shared some screenshots on Twitter and people responded so well to this I knew I needed to make this a proper game.
Brokur Longneck of the House Grandrock has passed away, and you are his only surviving relative.
In his will, Brokur has bequeathed to you the cursed mines of The Long Belt, its dilapidated settlement, and the leadership of House Grandrock.
However, other dwarf houses seek to overthrow you and take control of the valuable minerals hidden deep within those cold tunnels.
To complicate matters further, most of the mine’s galleries are inaccessible due to them being haunted by fire spitting demons from the underworld.
The art really stands out in Stoneburner. I love the vibe of it all, it effectively evokes the feeling of being a Dwarf in space. How did you come to work with Galen Pejeau, the Illustrator and co-creator of Stoneburner?
I had actually reached out to Galen to work on another project: Our Last Stand, an upcoming tactical mech combat RPG. As we started working together, we realized that working together on this felt extremely natural and easy. After I started sharing initial layout proof of concepts of Stoneburner on Twitter, Galen sent me a message with some illustrations in attachments saying: “Whether we work together on this or not, I’m making fan art for this game”. And just by seeing those illustrations, I knew we had to collaborate on this project.
As we started developing the project, we decided to do so as a full-fledged partnership and work on this as hard as we possibly can and knock this game out of the park.
Galen’s work has truly elevated the game beyond anything I could have imagined, and he’s also an excellent person I can bounce mechanical or layout ideas with. He came up with very interesting ideas, which are now some of the core reasons why Stoneburner is so fantastic. Now, I just feel absolutely lucky to have found such a great friendship on top of all of this.
The universe of Stoneburner is unique but also familiar. Most sci-fi settings have aliens and other unknown creatures, but instead Stoneburner is populated with cultures we are all used to, such as Elves, Demons and Dwarves, not to mention those pesky humans. Why go with these traditionally fantasy cultures?
I think this has something to do with something I realized while playing with my home table. We love sci-fi, and played a lot of it using the Charge or Fate system, but one thing we had a lot of trouble with is defining what is true and what isn’t. This bogged down gameplay a lot as we tried to answer some of the most basic questions.
Most people have a good idea of what a high fantasy or low fantasy setting looks like in their heads. But if we say soft or hard scifi, there are still a lot more questions that need to be answered as to the kind of cultures that live in it, what technology looks like, how do people live or travel through space, etc.
By deciding to take classic fantasy cultures and making them take to the stars, we set up a strong foundation and understanding of what you can expect in the game. You don’t need to come up with fancy alien names, or to figure out how technology really works. Just assume there are elves and goblins, that magic is very intertwined with technology, and figure out the rest as you go.
That’s one of the reasons one of the first sections of the books is about going over a couple of “facts” about the universe and the galaxy in general. We quickly wanted to establish what you could expect from the setting, what you don’t need to worry about, and how you can easily add on top of it.
As you know this newsletter and blog are solo focused. Stoneburner is a solo friendly game that can be played with or without a friend. When designing a solo-experience, what are the most important principles?
That’s a good question. Usually, I tend to focus on a couple of core ideas.
First, I write everything from the point of view of the players, not the GM. Even if Stoneburner can be played by a GM who guides a group, all the mechanics talk about how YOU make a check, or how YOU take a hit. In kind of the same vein, the mechanics themselves are entirely player facing, meaning there are no opposed rolls and everything done in the story is triggered by the players themselves.
The other point is that the game sets up a solid core gameplay loop that the players can always come back to when they are in doubt of which step to take next. In this case, the loops starts by finding a dilapidated settlement in need of a lot of love, exploring the mines for treasures and cleansing them of the danger that lurks within. From there, you start selling and salvaging those treasures for credits, and use those credits to upgrade the settlement with new buildings and constructions.
Lastly, the game includes many tools, oracles, and tables to keep the imagination of the player flowing. Since Stoneburner is a Breathless game, it features similar concepts has Nomadic, my previous solo Breathless game which you had reviewed a couple of months ago on your site. The game includes a Question Oracle for you to get answers to the questions you have about the world, it has a Risk Oracle which helps you answer if doing something requires for you to make a check or not. Character creation is also done by rolling on many rolling tables to keep things interesting and dynamic. There are tables for NPCs, demons, factions, and what I call World Sparks which is a unique feature of the game especially tailored for solo play which allows you to add some dramatic events in the story.
Solo play was very important for Stoneburner, which is why we also worked on adding a way to procedurally generate the mines. This process is done by rolling dice on a flat surface and using their physical location to map out the layout of what the mining sector looks like, and using the numbers on the dice themselves to create intriguing points of interests and random events.
Thank you so much René-Pier for your time. And to find out more about Stoneburner read my review here -
Learn more about Stoneburner here:
https://stoneburner.farirpgs.com/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/farirpgs/stoneburner
Cool Solo Game I Haven’t Played Yet
Order of the Falcon by Drakonspyre
Order of the Falcon is a supplement for Shawn Tomkin's Ironsworn RPG and is inspired by the Assassin's Creed series of games (specifically the early games in the series). Written by a friend of the blog, Drakonspyre. Check it out and let me know how you like it. I’ll be playing it soon!
Other RPG Stuff
Wow, another great bundle for another great cause. For $5 you get access to hundreds of games, some of which are solo. In the bundle is Sworn by Ghostlight, a game I reviewed. Be sure to buy the bundle and get stuck into that game.
There is an Ironsworn game jam going on. Ever want to be creative and make something for Ironsworn? Check out this game jam!
This is a super cool study of of Johan Nohr’s Art style (Into the Odd and Mork Borg among others) by a fellow Solo game designer.
Cartograph seems like a good map-making solo RPG. Let me know if you play it and like it.
My traditional group is slowly getting close to the finale of Electric Dreams, the Blade Runner starter scenario. Looking forward to seeing how it ends and then starting up Dune: Adventures in the Imperium!
Next Month on the Blog
The blog continues its neverending march to world domination! Or at least doing more Solo RPG stuff. I’ll be finishing up Rebel Sworn’s second episode shortly and then launching into a few shorter games. Looking forward to it!
Be sure to check out the League of Incredible Soloists! Always going great stuff!
Thank you for Reading!
As always I write this because you all read it. Please like this newsletter and share it with others who may be interested.
Comments
Post a Comment