Worked Example: Wants and Beliefs for Stonetop

07 Apr, 2026

The Black-Blood God promised Senator Johnson that, in exchange for extracting more fossils fuels from the Tennessee hills, it would save Senator Johnson's wife from lung cancer. After all, it knows the disease well, having been awoken from its slumber by the deepest coal mining delves. The demon wanted domination. It planned to use the state senator as an avatar, puppeting his body to advance its foul agenda.

This demon was a core antagonist in a game of Urban Shadows 2E I ran for my friend Sam Kabo Ashwell last year set in my hometown of Nashville, TN. I am proud of this concept - it is concrete, has some pathos, and has nice ironic resonance. I found this demon quite hard to run at the table, though - I often wondered, "Wait, what would this demon actually do next? How will it realize its goal of domination over the state of Tennessee?" I never solved this problem satisfactorily, even though it was a great game.

Enter: 3x5 Arcana's Role Playing for GMs. The author (a stage actor for about 20 years) argues that true roleplaying requires two elements: a want and a belief. To quote:

In very large part, acting (and roleplaying) is answering two questions.

• What does this character want?
• What does this character believe?

When you’ve answered them, you will have specific and compelling answers to the question you must face over and over again

• What does this character do?

This post struck me like lightning. The Urban Shadows game is long done¹ but I am once again running a game for Sam. This time, we are playing Jeremy Strandberg's excellent magnum opus, Stonetop. This post explains how I used wants and beliefs for immediate benefit at my table - read on!

The Worked Example Series (?)

I consider this post the informal start of the Worked Example Series. My fellow bloggers have written tons of great advice, but I learn best from applying advice to real-world examples. So, I'm starting a blog series² to put these tools into practice so more people can see how to take advantage of all of the great GM advice they can get their grubby mitts on!

Applying Wants and Beliefs to Stonetop

This weekend, I sat down at my laptop to take my extant elements (threats, NPCs, locations, etc.) and sharpen them by providing wants and beliefs³. In this post, I'll describe two particular characters that I treated this way and then tell you how this honing process helped me run the game last Sunday.

Ailen, the wise woman

Our PCs, Huw and Blodwyn⁴, wish to recruit an engineer from Marshedge, a town ten days away from Stonetop. On an early morning, Huw went out to visit Farmer Tam in the fields, as the horse was pulling a plow. On arrival, Ailen---a wise woman and informal priestess of Danu (see below)---was already there, convincing Tam that he definitely should not let this horse leave with Huw.

After a tense scene where Huw and Blodwyn argued their case in front of the whole village, Ailen agreed to stop politicking against them on one condition --- Blodwyn (now the wielder of the Twisted Spear, a frightening artifact of bone-pale wood) must complete a ritual to ensure Danu blesses this journey.

At this point, we ended the session. So far, so good! I prepped the NPC using Jeremy's excellent advice and she was a great source of in-village tension. Between that session and our session last Sunday, I read "Role Playing for GMs" and added this sentence to my notes about her:

Ailen wants the village to be safe from the eyes of the gods and believes that only the initiates of Danu truly understand how to keep the village safe from magical threats.

Danu, the Earth-Mother

The people of Stonetop venerate Danu out of respect and fear, alongside three others. Per the Stonetop Almanac, "She is the deity of the earth and the wild places, of beasts and birds, of green growing things." I believe that the wants and beliefs paradigm applies just as well to gods as much as earthly NPCs⁵, so since Danu played an important role in this conflict, I figured I'd add a want and belief for her too.

Danu wants to see green and growing things prosper and believes that the surest path to victory is to sow many seeds and let the halest ones grow on their own.

Oh No, I Promised A Ritual

Last session, I asked Sam to recap what we'd done last time⁶, the first thing he mentioned was Blodwyn's ritual --- and I had totally forgotten to prepare for it! Wants and beliefs saved me.

First, Ailen. Since she believes that "only the initiates of Danu truly understand how to keep the village safe from magical threats", I gave her two companions for the ritual. The ritual three were young Gwyn (as Planter), Carys (Ailen’s son, as Tender), and Ailen herself (as Reaper). The point of this ritual, though, came from Danu. If she believes “that the surest path to victory is to sow many seeds and let the halest ones grow on their own”, this must be some sort of trial. Danu would not intervene, or even give an obvious nod to what she thought (as Blodwyn’s seed must grow), but instead, she would provide a challenge against with Blodwyn could be tested.

A ghost from the Great Wood that Blodwyn had faced before emerged, threatening her and offering an opportunity to prove her worth. She succeeded, and (crucially) Ailen acknowledged that fact, however begrudgingly. I often find it tempting to have problem NPCs stay problems forever, but that is often dissatisfying. By acknowledging that Blodwyn did indeed play to Ailen’s wants and beliefs, this means Ailen is much less of a threat moving forward.

Closing Thoughts

I have found this technique very helpful. I hope this post shows you why. I encourage other folks to try this specific technique but also to do their own worked examples! I think the blogosphere would benefit.

Footnotes

#rpgs #worked_examples