No Stone Unturned

No Stone Unturned is a gmless game about exploring a world long after societal collapse. It's designed to be played as a one- shot or a short campaign of 3-5 sessions.

The game starts with a worldbuilding phase. Together, all of the players will come up with a broad setting, and then define the settlement that their characters are living in and working to help grow. Then, each player privately creates other locations in the world using the holy grail of indie tabletop rpg tech, the blank notecard. These are then shuffled and spread out face down on the table as a map of unknown locations for the players to explore.

You could end here and switch to a different game if you wanted to, honestly. The worldbuilding steps in this game are pretty good and easily ported elsewhere. Assuming you're sticking with it, the next step is to create characters. Characters in No Stone Unturned are made up of stats, moods, skills, and sentiments. Each of these get everyone on the table on the same page as to who each character is, what they're good at doing, and what they care about.

Then the game plays out in a cycle of adventure and downtime. On adventures, you'll be exploring the locations on the map you've built out. Be warned though, because these locations are full of other burgeoning societies, wildlife, and unstable ecosystems. Any careless move can have drastic impacts on what already lives in the world.

At any point on the adventure, a character might perform an action that endangers them or the world around them. That's when you roll dice and bring in those stats, moods, and sentiments that you built in character creation to determine the outcome and add details to the world around you.

In downtime, the players reckon with the consequences of their adventure and try to make use of whatever they found by addressing their wounds, making plans to repair any collateral damage they did to the world, and taking time to reflect on how they are feeling. After some time, it's back to another adventure.

And that's it! The 60 page book contains all the rules you'll need to play the game and explore the consequences of leaving No Stone Unturned.