Running a Stonetop party

Everything on this page is specific to Stonetop. The Getting started and Running a session guides cover the parts of Sled Dog that are the same whatever you're playing; this is the rest.

The steading

Stonetop itself is a tab on your party: Party → Steading. It's the thing your table is defending, and Sled Dog treats it as a character in its own right.

Five tracks run across the top:

Adjust them as play moves them. Fortunes and Prosperity also appear on every player's Stats tab — read-only there, but visible, because those two touch the characters directly.

Below the tracks live the steading's improvements (what Stonetop has built), its assets, and its people.

Turning the season

Stonetop runs on a seasonal clock, and Sled Dog walks it with you. Each season has its own roll, its own consequences, and its own weather:

• Spring — the most hopeful rolls +Fortunes. On 7+, pick a seasonal gain.
• Summer — the most content rolls +Fortunes; a 10+ picks two gains. Roll 1d4−1 for Surplus.
• Autumn — the most determined rolls +Fortunes. Roll 1d4 for the harvest's Surplus.
• Winter — the weariest rolls 1d4+Population; the steading eats that much Surplus. If it can't, things get worse in the ways the rules describe.

Sled Dog holds the full text of each season's move so you don't need the book open, offers the seasonal gains as a pick list, and applies the mechanical ones to the tracks when you confirm. Weather tables are there too, split into early and late periods where the season has both.

Expeditions

Expeditions are Stonetop's structured journeys — a destination, what's on the way, and what the party finds. Sled Dog ships a set, and community-made ones appear here when your table installs them.

Add one to your party and it becomes a live thing you can reveal in pieces, the way you reveal map pins.

The travel map

Party → Maps holds the party's map and its pins. Drop a pin for anywhere worth knowing about, and hide the ones the party hasn't reached — a hidden pin is invisible to players until you show it.

Sled Dog estimates travel for you: Stonetop's default pace is 18 miles a day over an eight-hour march, adjusted for terrain, and it converts a distance into days plus a rough uncertainty band. Provisions work out at roughly one use per traveller per day, and the supplies list sits beside the map — tap a traveller's name there to jump straight to their Inventory tab.

Arcana

Arcana are the relics of the world that came before, and they're the one piece of content only you can hand out. On a character's Arcana tab:

• Only the GM can grant an arcanum or reveal it.
• Players tick off its unlock requirements as the fiction meets them.
• When you reveal it, the card flips — its true name appears and everything it carries (moves, an inventory item, sometimes a follower) is applied to that character's sheet automatically.

The Seeker starts play holding a major arcanum, and the Heavy with the Storm-Marked background starts with their storm markings. Both arrive part-way unlocked, so expect to be revealing something before long.

The world

Party → World holds Stonetop's people and groups — NPCs, organizations, and locations, each with its own entry you can edit as things change. Anything flagged GM-only stays yours.

Content and the rulebook

Sled Dog ships our own starting content, not Stonetop's text — see the Game Master FAQ for why. Every entry is editable, so if you own the book you can put its exact wording in wherever you want it. You'll want the book: this is a companion, not a replacement.

Stonetop's clock is seasonal, and the steading is the character that survives the campaign. If you keep one thing current, keep the tracks current.