Hillfolk playbooks

For Continuum, I’m using the Hillfolk one-shot playbooks designed by Jon Cole. The playbooks are inspired by PbtA games, and consist of:

• The Captain
• The Elder
• The Curate
• The Homemaker
• The Libertus (a freed slave)
• The Warrior
• The Pariah
• The Artisan
• The Chief

A one-page summary of the rules for a one-shot Hillfolk.

(The playbooks are here, towards the bottom of this list of Hillfolk resources.)

Each playbook is a single sheet and consists of a front and back cover, and a double-page spread with everything you need for your character (example dramatic poles, a blank table to fill in relationships and wants with other characters, a summary of the rules and typical petitions, and something unique about each character).

Although they’ve been created for one-shot play, I’m sure they’d be fine for an ongoing game as well. The playbooks have 90% of the information you need – they’re missing the action types used for procedural scenes.

Playbooks seem like an accessible way to play Hillfolk – I think the series pitches would have been stronger (and easier to use) done as playbooks. (There’s also a set of playbooks for Dream Askew on Pelgrane’s Hillfolk Resources page, but I don’t know anything about Dream Askew.)

Once I’ve got my head around Hillfolk, I will create my own playbook set.

But first I want to run it…