Stonetop vs Dragonbane - which fantasy campaign fits your table?

Stonetop gives you a home. Dragonbane gives you a road. Both are fantasy games with a map in the box, both come from people who love the hobby's roots, and both are very good at what they do. But what they do is almost opposite, and once you see the difference, the choice makes itself.

The short answer

Pick Stonetop if you want a long campaign about a place. You play the villagers who step up when something comes out of the marsh, the village has its own character sheet, the seasons turn, and a good year is measured in a palisade that got finished and a winter nobody starved through. It is the game for groups who want to care about somewhere.

Pick Dragonbane if you want to open a box on Friday and be playing by half past eight. One d20, roll under your skill, a dragon on a 1 and a demon on a 20, eleven adventures already in the box. It is fast, funny and dangerous, and it never asks you to prepare more than you feel like preparing.

What these two games have in common

Both are fantasy with real dirt on it. Stonetop is an Iron Age that never was: hill forts, old gods with teeth, ruins humming under the fields. Dragonbane's Misty Vale is a frontier of forests, ruins and things that live in them. Neither is high fantasy; in both, a sword is a serious object.

Both arrive with a map and want it on the table. Stonetop's hand-drawn village map and world maps turn "where does the smith live?" into something everyone can point at; Dragonbane's map of the Misty Vale is where the adventures hang. Both reward a group that talks, and both were built by people with deep roots in the hobby. Stonetop, designed by Jeremy Strandberg and published by Jason Lutes's Lampblack & Brimstone, began as a setting for Dungeon World and grew over ten years into a standalone game. Dragonbane is Free League's reimagining of Drakar och Demoner, Sweden's own Dungeons & Dragons since 1982; we told that story in From Drakar to Dragonbane.

Where they really differ

The hero. A Dragonbane character is an adventurer. You pick a kin, a profession and a sheet of skills, and off you go into the Vale; where you came from matters less than where you are heading. A Stonetop character is a neighbour. The nine playbooks are roles in a village: the Marshal who runs the watch, the Judge, the Blessed, the Would-Be Hero who starts weaker than everyone and grows by taking risks. Each playbook comes with bond questions about the people you live among. You are not passing through. You are from here.

The dice. Dragonbane is roll-under: a skill rated 1 to 18, one d20, land on or below it. A natural 1 is a dragon and something great happens; a 20 is a demon and something terrible does. Boons and banes let you roll twice and keep the better or the worse. Stonetop is Powered by the Apocalypse: two d6 plus a stat, 10 or more succeeds, 7 to 9 succeeds at a cost, 6 or less and the GM makes a move. There is no initiative, no grid, and failure never stalls the story; it pushes it somewhere new. If you have played Root or Monster of the Week, you know the rhythm.

The clock. In Dragonbane, time is the length of an adventure. The eleven adventures in the Core Set chain into the Secret of the Dragon Emperor campaign, but each fits an evening, and nothing in the rules cares what month it is. In Stonetop, time is the whole point. Every season, someone rolls to see what the turning of the year brings. The village has Fortunes, Prosperity, Defenses and a Surplus to get through winter. Expeditions leave and come back, and a triumphant return raises the village's Fortunes. Improvements take seasons: a mill, a herd of horses, a stronger palisade. Years pass. Nothing else in the shop makes a campaign feel this much like living somewhere.

The GM's job. A Dragonbane GM reads one short adventure, lays out the standees, draws initiative cards and plays. Prep is minutes. A Stonetop GM has two books of around 600 pages each, and the honest news is that they are the best-organised GM support we stock: a step-by-step first session that builds the village together, threat guidance, season procedures, campaign arcs. But you have to want that. Book II is a menu, not homework, and the game rewards a GM who lets time pass between adventures.

The fight. Dragonbane fights are short and lethal: one action a round, initiative from a deck, low hit points, high damage. A dragon roll can end an enemy in one blow, and a demon roll can end you. Stonetop fights are dangerous in a different key. Moves resolve them in the fiction, and the real stakes are usually not your hit points but the barn behind you. One honest note: Stonetop keeps the six familiar attributes and hit points from its Dungeon World ancestry, which some Powered by the Apocalypse purists find old-fashioned. If you come from D&D, it will feel like a kindness.

The price of entry. Dragonbane's Core Set is a complete game in one box for well under fifty euros. Stonetop's slipcase set with the Map Pack costs roughly four times that, because it is two large hardcovers, five big prints and a decade of work. Neither price is wrong. One is a night out; the other is a long-term commitment, and priced like one.

What it feels like at the table

A Stonetop evening starts at home. Somebody's goats are missing, the smith wants help with the new gate, the season roll said the rains came early. Then a few of you go out to deal with the thing in the marsh, and the expedition rules take over: the road, the camp, the Die of Fate, the long way back. When you return, the homecoming is a scene of its own. Sessions run three to four hours, and the game wants a dozen or more of them. Groups who stick with it describe the village as a character they would not want to lose.

A Dragonbane evening is quicker and rougher. You draw initiative, you roll under, someone rolls a demon at the worst moment and the table erupts. An adventure fits in a sitting, often with a mallard involved. The rules teach themselves in twenty minutes, which makes it a gift for groups with irregular attendance, mixed experience, or a player who is twelve. Stonetop's moves are learned in an evening too, but its world takes a few sessions to settle into, and it asks everyone to care about the same place.

What you actually need to buy

For Stonetop, the Stonetop slipcase set including the Map Pack is the whole game: Book I with the rules, the nine playbooks and the GM guidance, Book II with the almanac of regions, creatures, ruins and arcana, and the five large maps. Add two d6 per player and a GM with two to five players. There is nothing else to buy, and nothing else coming that you need.

For Dragonbane, the Dragonbane Core Set is the complete package: rulebook, eleven adventures, a solo booklet, map, cards, dice, standees and battle mat. If you want a hardcover on the shelf, the Dragonbane Rulebook is the rules on their own, and the Dragonbane Bestiary adds monsters and new kin once you have played through the box. Free League keeps expanding the line, but the box is where you start.

Choose Stonetop if ... Choose Dragonbane if ...

Choose Stonetop if you play with the same group for months, you want a campaign with roots, and you like stakes measured in harvests and neighbours rather than gold. Choose it if you are a GM who enjoys strong support and a slow build, if your players like playbooks with a point of view, and if the idea of a village that changes because of what you did makes you sit up. Choose it, too, if you loved Dungeon World and wondered what it would look like finished.

Choose Dragonbane if your group is busy, changes from week to week, or includes someone new. Choose it if you want danger with a grin, a campaign in the box rather than a blank page, lots of one-shots, or a solo booklet for the nights nobody else can make it. Choose it if you are the GM and you are tired of preparing. And choose it if you are not yet sure fantasy campaigns are your thing; it is the cheaper way to find out.

One third door: if what draws you to Stonetop is the warmth of a small place but you would rather have no GM and no monsters at all, Wanderhome wanders gently where Stonetop stays and fights. It is a different game, not a compromise.

Where to start at Netherbook

Read our Stonetop starter guide or the Dragonbane starter guide before you buy; both walk through the first session. If Dragonbane is the one and you are also eyeing Daggerheart, our Daggerheart vs Dragonbane comparison settles that. If Stonetop's engine is what hooked you, Root: The Roleplaying Game takes the same dice into a very different woodland, and our history chapter From wasteland to everywhere explains where that engine came from. Dragonbane lives with the rest of Free League in the Free League Publishing collection; both games sit in Fantasy, and Stonetop's old gods also in Mythic & Folklore.

And if you are still torn: they are not competing for the same evening. Dragonbane is for this Friday. Stonetop is for the next three years.