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.