# Follow *Created:* 2024-08-10, *Modified:* 2026-10-05 ![[Follow - A New Fellowship (cover).jpg|600]] ![[Follow (cover).jpg|600]] **Follow** is Ben Robbins' gm-less co-op RPG "about working together or falling apart." A band of characters picks a quest — slay the dragon, cure the plague, get the candidate elected — and finds out over a single session whether their differences tear the effort apart or the whole thing succeeds despite them. It's built to be whipped out at a moment's notice: no GM, nothing to prepare, just a bag of stones, some index cards, and a group willing to see what happens. It is emphatically a group game, not a solo one — the whole dramatic engine is what a handful of people do to each other. ## Setting There's no fixed world, because the quest *is* the setting. **Follow** opens by picking one of a run of published quests — the Booty, the Candidate, the Colony, the Cure, the Dragon, the Heist, the Posse, the Raid, the Rebellion, the Show, the Siege, the Superheroes — each a lean framework saying what the group is trying to accomplish and why it's difficult. You build a **Fellowship** of main and minor characters bound to a shared goal, then discover what actually happens when they try. The premise hands the tension over up front: everyone starts wanting the quest to succeed; the question is whether they still do by the time the third challenge is resolved. The mechanic itself is the drama. ## Mechanics The signature is the **stone bag**. You resolve each **Challenge** — the quest's story beats, usually three per game — by drawing stones and reading the red and the white. Every challenge plays out as scenes first: on your turn you frame a scene and the group role-plays it, with the player who set the scene holding final say over who's present, when it is, and where. Once everyone has played a scene, the fellowship decides the outcome with a draw. ### The Challenge Draw The bag starts with one white and one red stone, and then the real votes happen: - Each player secretly adds up to **2 red stones** — one if their main character is unhappy with the fellowship's path, two if they actually want the quest to fail. That's the **betrayal** pressure, made literal. - Each player adds a **white stone** if they think, as a player, the group did what was necessary to succeed, or a **red stone** if they didn't. - **Draw two stones** and read the outcome: whites drive success, reds crowd it toward failure, and the reds push characters toward **betrayal** — turning on the fellowship. That's the whole game in a nutshell: the quest's success is a direct vote of confidence in your own group, weighted by how much of it is at each other's throats. The fiction follows the stones, and the rules welcome your characters quitting, turning, or dying — "follow the fiction." You're never truly won or lost until the third challenge resolves. ### Character Creation Each player makes a **main character** with a **Want** (what you hope the quest brings), a **Concept** (who you are and what you do), and a **Need** (the hidden thing that drives you), plus minor characters who drift in and out. The current free edition, **Follow: A New Fellowship**, streamlines the same loop. ## Editions - **Follow** (2016) — the original gm-less quest game (early-access and release drafts). *In the library.* - **Follow: A New Fellowship** — the current **free** edition: the same mechanics with less meta-commentary, five of the original's quests rather than eighteen, and an open quest-license so anyone can make and release their own. *In the library.* **Follow** is by Ben Robbins, creator of **[[Kingdom]]** and **[[Microscope]]**. ## References - [Follow — Lame Mage Productions](https://www.lamemage.com/follow/) - [Follow: A New Fellowship (free PDF)](https://www.lamemage.com/Follow_New_Fellowship.pdf) - [Follow on DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/413338/Follow)