These are some neat stories people have posted. I have to wonder how Stonehearth is supposed to do any of those things, though. Maybe it’s just because, having followed the game for several years, I’ve seen it change to substantially, but look at the depth in the stories @coasterspaul and @micheal_handy76_mh are sharing. Those aren’t feasible with just some minor tinkering.
I loved building a stronghold in Terraria. But even though Stonehearth has measurably more options for designing buildings, there’s nothing alive about the Stonehearth world. Sure, with judicious use of ib you can make a huge castle…but can you fish in the lake? Does your solemn graveyard do anything? Do your cauldrons bubble and your specialty merchants wander around your home? Do you feel like your Hearthlings are your PCs and visiting merchants your NPCs? No - none of this happens in Stonehearth, so even if you had all the pieces you’d still not have the puzzle.
@coasterspaul 's CK2 story is a really good one (and I’m impressed by anyone who does well in that game, that game is downright vicious). But it needs distinct and persistent NPC entities, not just little war camps spawning here and there. It needs awareness of social and economic pressures, not just military ones - and Stonehearth has no social constructs at all, and no economy to speak of.
@micheal_handy76_mh 's Rimworld story also relies heavily on a persistent NPC colony. It sounds more like something we could see in Stonehearth, if there was a cohesive enemy AI built. But his story is also entirely hinged on the social interactions between the player colony and the NPC colony.
@TheRedBaron91 's story is a Stonehearth one. So obviously that story exists in your game. But it’s also mechanically the simplest by far of the three - it’s just a tale of multiple attacks wearing down a village. It relies on a lot of flavor text and imagery created by the player. While struggling against the odds is always a fun story to be in, this is just a story of losing through attrition, and trying to survive a fighting retreat. That’s not even a good story to work toward because so many potential players won’t enjoy that sort of slog at all.
I guess all this pessimism is rooted in my inability to understand what kind of game you’re actually trying to make. You don’t have a combat system even worth the electrons it takes to disparage it, despite many posts about the shallowness and excessive simplicity of it all. There’s no social construct because there are no choices and consequences; yes, you have personalities and “interactions” but they’re independent of player input so they’re just something you have to see interrupt the tasks you’re actually trying to complete. You don’t have any sense of a living world; neither in the static buildings and furniture, nor in the ephemeral here-and-then-gone war camps of spawned enemies, nor the lifeless emptiness of your village as your Hearthlings spend all day out and about sort of following your orders. You have no economy of any interest because there’s nothing special to buy, there’s no limit to what you can sell to a trader - only how much gold they have to buy - so they have no personality.
I really want Stonehearth to be a good game. And even though it’s a discouragingly long dev cycle, you’re obviously still working on it with intensity and perhaps even passion. I just don’t see how we can give you good feedback on what narratives Stonehearth should support, when it’s still unclear what sort of game Stonehearth is going to be. Maybe that’s just my own failing. I have a few 