Stardew Valley returned to the video game consciousness in a big way recently with the release of its 1.6 update. This update includes new content, rebalancing, and generally significant improvements and changes to the game that most thought unlikely after the 1.5 update due to designer Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone shifting his focus to his next game, Haunted Chocolatier. Needless to say the scope of the update was a very pleasant surprise, and many players, myself included, dove back in.

I’ve put a number of hours into a new playthrough of Stardew Valley, having previously put the game down after the 1.5 update. Compared to my last two playthroughs I’ve taken more time to consider the design of the game and what it can teach us about tabletop games. Much like the last time I analyzed a video game like this, No Man’s Sky, the intent is not to imply that the gameplay loops would make much sense at the tabletop; Stardew Valley’s most tactile elements, like its combat and fishing, belong firmly in the digital realm. Instead I’d say there’s a lot to learn about how Stardew Valley presents a world and the avenues by which a player can interact with that world. This world design is, in some ways at least, the opposite of No Man’s Sky. Stardew Valley presents a ‘closed world’ where the avenues of interaction are finite and presented from the beginning, and that mode of world design can teach some lessons to tabletop RPGs, either to designers or GMs.

Closed World Design

When I say Stardew Valley is a ‘closed world’, what I mean is that the game is built around a set of finite locations, most of which are known from the beginning. Instead of driving the game by outward exploration or an overarching journey, the game is driven by deepening interaction with the key elements. The player builds up their farm steadily, while building relationships with the other villagers, while in turn finishing bundles for the Community Center. Instead of feeding the player new content through new regions of the map or new levels to complete, the new content comes in the form of constantly changing the relationship that the player has with the existing locations and NPCs.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a hard and fast rule; there are new locations you eventually access in Stardew Valley, first Calico Desert and then Ginger Island. There are also two dungeons which work in the traditional way where you must clear levels and make your way to the eventual bottom (or as far as possible, for the bottomless Desert Mine). What’s notable though is that the game still isn’t being driven by these discoveries most of the time. Once you make it far enough into the game to unlock these areas, they simply become another element that is engaged repeatedly throughout the game. Once you make it to the bottom of the mines, that doesn’t mean you never go in the mines again; knowing which biome exists at which level to go find specific gems or monsters is part of the continuing gameplay loop. This paradigm of deepening engagement and growth is one that TTRPGs don’t necessarily do well; much of the hobby is driven either by the room-by-room dungeon clearing paradigm or the unidirectional ‘story arc’ paradigm, neither of which loop. There is significant potential in focusing smaller for longer, and nowhere in Stardew Valley illustrates that better than the cast of NPCs.

Growth, Change, and Marriageable NPCs

Stardew Valley has a cast of NPCs in three concentric circles of importance. The middle circle are ‘bachelors and bachelorettes’, the twelve marriageable NPCs. All of them have potential storylines which involve romance with the player’s character and special cutscenes and events which occur as the player explores the storyline, which can culminate in marrying an NPC and having them move into your farm.

The next concentric circle are all the other villagers who you interact with on a regular basis. They too have some special cutscenes and events, and as you become better friends with them, they may send you gifts or recipes or other tokens. Finally are the special or one-off NPCs, characters like the Wizard and Marlon who have much more limited opportunities for interaction but are still important within their specific places.

I think one interesting thing about the dynamics with these NPCs is that the middle circle ends up becoming somewhat bifurcated. You the player decide which of these relationships are important to you, and which ones end up going fallow. This means you could focus on one to the exclusion of all others, be a little polyamorous in your approach, or even try to go for everybody at once (there’s actually a special event that happens if you try to date every eligible bachelor, and a similar one for trying to date every bachelorette). This is somewhat true with all of the NPCs, but the core cast which are unavoidable are actually the NPCs tied to the businesses you frequent in the town, since you need to interact with them to progress.

The latter group of NPCs, the business owners like Robin, Pierre, and Clint, are the ones most parallel to how most GMs insert NPCs into their games. Shopkeeps, questgivers, and plot-relevant NPCs make up the bulk of what GMs write into their worlds; interestingly the category ‘antagonist’ is legion within TTRPGs but nearly absent in Stardew Valley. Still, a trad RPG doesn’t focus on relationships, even when it’s something players want. The somewhat classic anecdote of a group of players glomming onto a random NPC that the GM had no intention of fleshing out is, to me, an example of something that happens when the players are looking for more relationships to ground themselves to the setting.

One could argue that the marriageable NPC structure in Stardew Valley isn’t a particularly good example of this because it’s part of the gameplay loop. That said…it isn’t. While other activities in the game like fulfilling the bundles in the community center or getting to the bottom of the mine unlock other interdependent items and quests, getting married in-game is a separate narrative, and it is completely possible to achieve everything else in the game without getting married or having children. That said, it’s compelling, especially as there is so much narrative content in the form of each NPC’s special events and scenes.

TTRPG Examples

Considering the structure of Stardew Valley is independent from considering the gameplay; I would not endorse, for example, having players build up NPC relationships by bringing them gifts and engaging them in dialogue on a set cadence. That said, the basic idea of writing a core of NPCs in several concentric loops of importance and then focusing on those with which the players engage is an interesting one. There are many RPG rulesets which could potentially benefit from deeper, more finite development, but some, like Powered by the Apocalypse, are already primed to benefit from a Stardew Valley-like structure.

Among games which are already out in the world, Apocalypse World is a particularly good candidate for ‘closed world’ plot development. A session zero of Apocalypse World begins with both character creation and establishing relationships between those characters. Additionally, there’s several NPCs which are generated organically from among the character playbooks. Now, there’s nothing stopping an Apocalypse World game from focusing on a nomadic group travelling the wasteland, but several playbooks push the implied mode of the game far from that conceit. Both the Maestro D’ and Hardholder introduce a central and usually fixed location which the game will inevitably revolve around, while the other playbooks which introduce groups or factions are split between whether the group is nomadic or not (for the Chopper the answer is likely yes, and for the Hocus it’s likely no). Beyond the starting location, Threats in Apocalypse World are distributed around four directions of the compass rose, in a manner which encourages the Threats to be proximate and the new locations finite. It’s not an exact analogue to Stardew Valley in any way, but it’s still a structure which intends to set the game in a closed and finite set of locations that should be engaged with repeatedly over the campaign.

Apocalypse World also provides some parallels to Stardew Valley in terms of character interactions. The biggest difference between Apocalypse World and Stardew Valley in terms of character interactions is that Stardew Valley is entirely focused on NPC interactions, while Apocalypse World focuses more strongly on PC-PC interactions. This is primarily due to the medium; Stardew Valley doesn’t have a party of PCs, and even the multiplayer opts not to gamify interactions between player characters (with a few mostly quality-of-life exceptions). In a TTRPG on the other hand, the strongest, best written characters will always be the PCs. Additionally, running NPCs at a level which would promote strong depth of interaction is difficult, especially as your cast of characters gets larger. A GM would have a fairly hard time, as an example, playing, tracking, and giving depth to a full dozen potential romantic partners for their PCs. However, given how many engagements a typical player actually pursues, this need not be necessary. Apocalypse World gives the MC the opportunity to build many NPCs alongside their players, but it’s play that declares which NPCs are the most important. Writing 30 NPCs and sorting them into tiers of importance is something a programmer needs to do, but a GM can simply prioritize their NPCs based on who the players interact with most.

Building a game around a smaller, deeper setting need not mean literally writing a slate of NPCs…but sometimes it does. While not a direct parallel, Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast takes the constrained setting to an extreme, focusing around one building and the characters that come and go there. What makes Yazeba’s different from most games, though, is that it does have a pre-written cast of characters that can be engaged with through the course of the game. The gameplay conceit doesn’t quite match, as these are player characters as well as NPCs, but the overall casting of the game represents a closer parallel to what Stardew Valley aims to emulate, namely a relatively closed community with a relatively consistent set of inhabitants. Having pre-written characters also means that each of them has a backstory and personality that players can engage with as they choose; a game like Apocalypse World tends to tie that engagement to creating the characters and is going to be a different kind of experience than a game where either the GM or designer is the one providing the cast of characters.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend running a TTRPG to emulate Stardew Valley; the gameplay loop relies on both repetition and mechanics which are much better suited to the video game realm. What is intriguing, though, is how much story material can be generated from one little town and a few surrounding areas. Given that TTRPGs often make assumptions which collapse back to the tropes of Dungeons and Dragons, high-stakes, high-adventure play is a norm which carries through the top-selling RPGs comprehensively.

That said, smaller scale and higher depth play holds significant potential, especially if your players are interested in how their characters grow and change as a core driver of play. I’d encourage any GM to try their hand at writing a constrained campaign, something limited to a single town, or a school, or even a more profoundly closed environment like a cruise ship or a prison (or space station! – Ed). Keeping a closed set of locations and characters interesting and engaging is a different challenge, and it’s going to require both creativity and a different set of impulses than the ones that would serve you well in a D&D campaign. Still, Stardew Valley proves that even the lowest stakes in the smallest town can provide a compelling canvas for character development and play.

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