Q: In the unfinished "Optional Rules" portion of the Google Doc, there is a section title "Allies and Adversaries." What's going in there? Is it a way to reincorporate characters to help or hinder the pilgrims?

A: Yes, this is an idea I was thinking about for reincorporating characters from previous sessions. I thought it would be interesting if you could bring an older NPC back into a later story so you get these recurring allies and adversaries throughout the Pilgrimage. I'm thinking of the various villains and secondary characters that keep popping up throughout Avatar: The Last Airbender.

One way to mechanically encourage reincorporation would be something like this: When you bring in a character from a previous session for the first time in the current session, you may re-draw a stone.

But that doesn't *quite* work out since the order of play goes 1: Draw, 2: Keep, 3: Narrate.

Perhaps you draw first, then keep whichever stones you wish to keep. That part is normal. By choosing your stones, you know whether your pilgrim will get In Trouble this turn.

Perhaps if you incorporate an Adversary to get your pilgrim In Trouble, then you can add a point of black or white destiny to your character. Similarly, if your pilgrim is getting Out of Trouble, then you can incorporate an Ally into your narration and add a point of black or white destiny to your character.

But those are just optional rules, whatever form they might take in the future.

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Q: I was trying to understand what kind of play you were try to solicit through the Goal Words. My only concern: while I think you're right about the risk of turning a very long list into "grocery playing," I was thinking about the opposite risk. Meandering after nearly all words have been checked and the group feeling quite awkward about "Well, everything seems resolved - so what now?" Have you thought about some rule like "in a sentence you can include every Goal Word you like but check only only one"?

A: I have indeed considered a rule stating that there may only be one goal word in a sentence, but decided against it for the following reasons.

The interesting thing about Do is that Mark Sherry's done the math and figured out the average length of a game session. There is actually an exact number of turns that will be in the average session: 14. Maybe a little more, maybe a little fewer, but usually 14, regardless of the size of the group.

So if you're only allowed one goal word in a sentence, and your letter has 7 goal words, then you have some room to meander. You only need to use one Goal Word every other turn and you'll probably get the Parades ending.

If the letter has 14 goal words, then there is a slight chance for a Pitchforks ending, depending on how the players' choose to keep their stones and whether they can think of a way to include the Goal Word in every single turn.

If the list of Goal Words is 15 or higher, then it's very, very likely that the story will end in Pitchforks. The only option players will have by the endgame is to keep pushing stones back into the bag, stalling for time a few more turns so players can get a chance to not have a Pitchforks ending. In doing so, their pilgrims may get In Trouble (even though the overall story ends with Parades).

There are two sometimes parallel/sometimes opposing forces at work in a player's decision during their turn. In the long-term, she is deciding whether she wants the story to end with Parades or Pitchforks. But in the short-term, she is deciding whether she is willing to let her own Pilgrim get In Trouble in the process. (There's also a long-long-term factor here, but I won't lengthen an already long blog post.)

Keep this in mind if you decide to play with the one-Goal-Word-per-sentence rule in your home game.

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Q: It seems too easy to use all the Goal Words before a player reaches 8 stones. (That is, if you intend it to be a challenge at all.) What if a player really aggressively and creatively uses a whole bunch on his turn, but there are still several turns left to go? Should the letters have more goal words?

A: Let's first recap what "Goal Words" are and how they figure into the game.

There are two possible endings for each session of Do – "Parades" or "Pitchforks." Either the pilgrims are celebrated as heroes or they're kicked out by an angry mob. Whether either ending happens depends on if the players can use all the Goal Words in the letter they're answering in that session. The Goal Words are a list of key phrases like places, character names, and important objects or concepts that are important in the letter. By incorporating those key phrases into your story, you can ensure your story gets the "Parades" ending.

Now, as for the number of Goal Words, I agree with you that some of the letters have very short lists. That was intentional, so that some letters would be "easy" while other letters would have longer lists and be "hard."

And yes, you could play aggressively so that all the goal words are included in the story very quickly. The worst that does is keep the story focused on the letter, which was the whole intent of Goal Words in the first place. There is a chance that the story would meander after all the Goal Words are tapped out, but perhaps I'll just add a sidebar to the text adding that as a potential endgame trigger.

If you feel like there are too few Goal Words, you may double or triple them. I suspect you're going to find that a list that long becomes a somewhat tedious task, like crossing off items from a grocery list. Give it a shot, though! I'm honestly curious to see the results of play in either situation.

Q: There's an outline in the unfinished portion of the Google doc called "In Praise of Camels." What's all that about?

A: There is an old joke here in America that a camel is a horse designed by committee. The joke is supposed to make fun of those situations where too many people have creative input on a project and the result is less than perfect.

However, I believe that the fun of Do comes from the collaboration, not from creating a perfect work of art. If you spend too much effort focusing on the artifact itself, the creation of that artifact may be less enjoyable. (At least, that's the flavor of fun I'm trying to design. As they say, designers are out of the picture as soon as players touch the game.)

Note: I'm really only talking about the urge to create a great, perfect story, which is all well and good, but might make players stall during their turn. That's a concern for story-writing, not necessarily story-gaming. There is a lot of advice in the book about maintaining a shared, consistent set of boundaries for the fiction, though.

So, I celebrate "camels." The stories you make with your friends will be silly, sometimes even nonsensical, but they're *your* stories. You made them together and that experience is the fun.

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Got a question about Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple? Ask it on the official Do blog, on my blog, on Twitter or via email.

A fan from Italy emailed a whole bunch of questions, so I'm going to break them up into a series of posts under the new "mail" tag.

Q: Is there enough in the Google Docs to play?

A: The Google Docs are found at http://bit.ly/DoPilgrims1 and http://bit.ly/DoPilgrims2

Yes, you can play Do from what is in those google docs. The fundamental rules are in place as well as advice and examples of play. The parts that are not yet written, about writing letters and some best practices, are very esoteric and not REALLY directly related to actual play.

The one drawback is that those docs are REALLY long. They're much longer than what will be in the final book. I wrote all of that content assuming that the editor will delete about half of it, so only the necessary parts will remain. If you're willing to dig through my cluttered text and too-extensive examples of play, be my guest! :D

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Got a question about Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple? Ask it on the official Do blog, on my blog, on Twitter or via email.