Not the actual cover, I just needed a thumbnail for my website.
ZineQuest. It happened only once before and it already feels like a holiday. For this Explorers series, I’m inspecting people's passion projects and seeing what cool trends, ideas, and art is lurking there.
Speaking of inspecting something, let’s talk about No Stone Unturned…
Explore the impacts of adventuring through a world in recovery while building up your home settlement in this tabletop roleplaying game.
No Stone Unturned is a complete tabletop roleplaying game for 2-6 players. It's designed to play as a one-shot or short campaign, with sessions lasting from 2-4 hours each. Players will create characters and locations and take turns as the Arbiters of the world, meaning there is no set Game Master.
Adam Bell & Sashah Li
PDF Backer level: $7
Physical Backer level: $15
What’s under the stone?
In a small community, you come of age, knowing everything is somehow outside of it. The only way to grow up and not down is by leaving. You become yourself by being somewhere new and turning over stones you’ve never touched before—to change them or be changed by them.
This game makes me think of home. Unfussy illustrations of rocks and birds will do that. Maybe they belong to Ursula K. Le Guin, or perhaps they belong to the Midwest’s rustbelt and its post-American Dream?
No Stone Unturned decidedly leaves the worldbuilding to your table. All it suggests is that the world be unrecognizable. (Let the ruins be familiar—that always makes discovery somehow surprising.)
Instead, it focuses on calibrating that world’s destiny around one central theme: change. This game is about characters who change the world and the world that changes them.
In No Stone Unturned, the world has already broken. Back then, it was called the apocalypse, but now it’s just the beginning. You play to find out what happens next and learn what the characters do, what they take, and what they’ll give up. The world, their home, or themselves?
What’s the product?
No Stone Unturned, post-Kickstarter, will live on as a clean print with red cardstock for its cover. As of writing this, there are no public plans for stretch goals or a predicted page count.
Playstyle. This game aims to be a single or multi-session experience with asymmetrical play between its worldbuilding phase and the exploration phase of its characters. Examination of the game’s SRD suggests multi-session more so.
And finally, it is GM-less, which means an intense exchange of trust and intimacy, made more intimate the lower your player count. Conversations consistently occur out of character, talking about the meta-narrative evolving with the rolls.
Genre/Setting. The world is post-apocalypse, but it doesn’t specify what kind of Apocalypse. Word choices suggest a fantasy theme. Adventurers cautiously toe the grass just outside of town before wandering its overgrown landscape and ruins.
System. A heavily modified form of Forged in the Dark perhaps so modded, it’s better to suggest it’s a child of Powered by the Apocalypse from a narrative standpoint.
It has a level of granularity like FitD but replaces things like stress, playbooks, and clocks with its hallmarks. The core conceit, “feedback loops and incentivized mechanics,” remain.
First there’s the world.
The Kickstarter page says it's descended from Forged in the Dark and Powered by the Apocalypse, and during the adventure phase, that's true. But in the worldbuilding phase, it reminds me of Microscope and Fiasco.
It's a session zero with detailed steps, including one where players take turns banning story elements. Not for safety reasons but to trigger improvisation on the creative process. Like Fiasco's dice.
(Safety tools are where they should be: before any play at all.)
Then, players sketch the settlement, set down ground rules and expectations, decide what's scarce and abundant in the world, and create physical landmarks outside of the settlement's borders (along with threat levels).
And the table codifies all of this on notecards. Meaning that before there are characters, the world is already waiting for them as the table's centerpiece.
Then there’s the characters.
Characters are made loosely of different stats. Three physical aspects. Three emotional moods. And a few addendum qualities like skills and what they value or care about, described in this game as “sentiment.”
Then, whenever a character acts with uncertain results, you roll one physical aspect die, and one emotional mood die. The difference between the two numbers tells the table what happens next.
But what happens next?
That’s the heart of this game. Gameplay is about the see-sawing of a character’s two dimensions, what they feel and what they’re capable of.
Here’s how the game puts it:
If the World was determined to be more at risk, the player wins if the Mood Die is higher than the Aspect Die.
If the Character was determined to be more at risk, the player wins if the Aspect Die is higher than the Mood Die.
If the world is at risk, characters with conviction change it. But if the characters are at risk, their emotions are what doom them. It’s the hero’s journey built into the core mechanic.
Each roll of the dice pulls the authorial reigns from one side to the other.
The difference between the two numbers determines the impact a character has on the world—or the world has on them. Each point further in one direction decides the number of details that can be written.
Whoever wins the challenge gets to write those changes in the form of details. If the player wins, they get to say how the character’s bends the world to their will or evade danger by the skin of their teeth. If the Arbiter’s win, they say how the character’s emotions betrayed them.
In this way the game does have a genre. Either it’s the Hero’s Journey, where they rise and fall before their redemption. Or it’s a tragedy.
We’ll have to leave home, turn over stones, and roll some dice to find out.
Who should back?
You should back if:
This new design intrigues you, or you believe game design should enforce play.
You enjoy slow burns. This game grows more meaningful the longer it sits in your head.
You want to explore the post-apocalypse from a more personal, human lens.
You shouldn’t back if:
Story games or games with wide-open questions intimidate or flummox your players.
You prefer all table conversations to be from a character-only perspective.
Your post-apocalypse means monsters, loot tables, and stats for rocket launchers.
Do you have $7 in change?