There is a really long draft of [Do] waiting to be edited by the inestimable Ryan Macklin when he gets a free chunk of time. I mean long. Like, 80,000 words. It's intentionally too long, so Ryan would be able to cut out all but the best 10% of valuable material. I mean, you can read it if you're crazy, but I didn't think anyone would be insane enough to actually play the game from this draft.

Obviously, I underestimated the enthusiasm and pure grit of the Italian gaming scene! Fabio and his friends created the following characters:

Fabio Succi Cimentini (me): Pilgrim Ikuna the Resplendent Puppy
Ariele Agostini: Pilgrim Lani the Mercurial Falls
Bruno Capriati: Pilgrim Kaki the Sincere Koala
Francesca Giacomini: Pilgrim Matareka the Dignified Arrow
Mario Bolzoni: Pilgrim Taranga the Judicious Mosaic

The group decided to answer the following letter (written by Ben Lehman!):

Dear Monk(s)
Hi how are you! My name is Melanie. I come from a very small planet.
There is me, my house, my cat, and two trees (see drawing).
I am not so good, because my planet has been eaten by a whale.
It is a very small planet. I woke up and I was inside a whale. I don't want to get (more) eaten.
Please help!

your freind
Melanie (age 8)

P.S. Drawing is on the other side.
P.P.S. I will make you cookies.

Fabio translated the following AP from Italian, so forgive any quirks of grammar, but really it makes about as much sense as any average session. :P

Note: The abbreviation ST stands for "Storyteller," a role that passes from one player to the next on each turn. The abbreviation TM stands for "Troublemakers," who are any players who are not presently the Storyteller. The number of stones the Storyteller keeps on her turn determines whether her pilgrim gets In Trouble. Other pilgrims can, if they draw and keep the right stones, get that pilgrim (or themselves) Out Of Trouble. I can explain the rules in more detail, but this is a long post as it is.

ROUND 1

FABIO: 2 Black Stones
ST: Ikuna is the first Pilgrim to enter the belly of the whale, lighting the way with her glistening gold body.
TM: But before she reaches Melanie's planet, she is bewitched by the luminous baleens of the whale

ARIELE: 3 White Stones
ST: Lani takes a stroll upon the whale's gastric acid, then swims into the soft palate to force the beast to cough

BRUNO: 2 Black Stones
ST: Kaki lands on the cavo orale of the whale, bandages Ikuna whole with his meditation bends and carries her away, saying “You want the beast to keep eating the planet?”
(Ikuna out of Trouble)
TM: The coughing of the whale launches Kaki away, who ends up being tangled up between baleens.

FRANCESCA: 1 White Stone
TM: Matareka reaches the planet, Melanie hugs her pleading her to save the cat. “He just flew away!”
ST: But she literally reaches the cat on the fly and brings him back to the girl.

MARIO: 2 Black Stones
ST: Taranga throws himself in the blowhole, just as he glances Melanie's house
TM: But he's blown away by the pressure

ROUND 2

ARIELE: 1 Black Stone
TM: The whale keeps on coughing, and Lani is violently knocked from one side to another
ST: He swims upwards and reaches the whale's palate

BRUNO: 2 Black Stones
ST: As whalebone is not so different from tree branches, Kaki can wrestle his way out and lands on the planet.
TM: But he's instantly recognized by the trees on the planet... and he's quite notorious among vegetables, so they're not really happy.

FRANCESCA: 2 White Stones
ST: Matareka begins to navigate the planet across the puke streams towards outside.
TM: But as the planet's weight unbalances, she falls in the stream and is carried onwards.

MARIO: 2 White Stones
ST: Luckily Taranga bound himself with elastic cords to the whale's mouth as Matareka taught him, so he's brought back to the start
TM: But the backthrust is too strong... and he lands on the house's roof. Smashing it.

FABIO: 2 White Stones
ST: Marching on with eyes still blindfolded, Ikuna ends up hanging from the mouth of the whale, who starts to follow the Pilgrim-emitted light turning downwards and pushing the island in its throat close to the outside.
TM: But she's struck by the downflowing streams and covered whole with a disgusting green patina which freezes her in horror.

ROUND 3

BRUNO: 1 White Stone
TM: The trees are Whomping Willows!
ST: But Kaki knows their weak spot: so he throws them Mel's star-shaped cookies, which they love, with a “soporific cookie throw”

FRANCESCA: 2 Black Stones

ST: Matareka grabs the cat's tail and manages to reach the bank.
TM: But the angry cat assaults her,


MARIO: 1 White Stone

TM: As he wakes up, Taranga sees an enraged Melanie attack him with a rolling pin
ST: The beating causes Taranga to blow up over and over, until he begins to lift the planet up


FABIO: 1 Black Stone
TM: As seaweed attaches itself to Ikuna, she draws the giant hungry plankton emerging.
ST: Crying and all pissed, she blindly beats up everything in the path so she can give vent to her frustration and then calm down.


ARIELE: 3 Black Stones
ST: Lani can see everything. He then swim even upwards to force the3 whale to the ultimate sneeze.
(Here we had finished all the Goal Words: but no-one reached 8 words yet. So we went on.)

ROUND 4

FRANCESCA: 1 Black Stone
TM: The cat enlarges everytime it angrily blows at Matareka
ST: But as it reaches the size of cow, she eventually knows how to deal with it and calms it down.

MARIO: 3 White Stones
ST: Using the elastic cords Taranga manages to ferry the planet out of the puke stream.

FABIO: 1 White Stone
TM: But Ikuna is still near to the plankton, and the whale is still hungry.
ST: She is falling asleep, though, and seeing her all curled up ready to slumber softens the whale... which ends up placidly following the planet.

ARIELE: 1 Black Stone
TM: But the cords are too dry and Lani is slipping down
ST: He rubs them on whale mucus, so he's manage to climb.

BRUNO: 2 White Stones
ST: After striking the trees Kaki takes care of them until they blossom.
TM: But the planet may be too small for a third tree..!

8 Stones are reached. All GW weres marked.

END GAME – PARADES

MARIO: Taranga binds the whale in the elastic cords.
ARIELE: Carrying bucketfuls of building material, Lani repairs the roof.
BRUNO: Kaki puts the newborn tree in a vase, then he greets Melanie goodbye and begins to depart.
FABIO: Ikuna cuts off her hair so she can weave a shiny golden flag to direct the whale so it can drag the planet everywhere Melanie wishes to go
FRANCESCA: And Matareka teaches Mel how to cook plankton sushi. Every hunger issue is solved!

And then they played another letter after this! Fabio hasn't translated that story yet, but I'll post it as soon as he does.

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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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.

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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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.

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.

I think I've settled on a color palette for the rest of the illustrations. Fewer blacks, but include one "hot" spot of intense red to contrast wherever the blacks are. Everything else is auburn and orange, with sepia throughout. Once again, you can see the process in the video below.

It's been a while since I posted a screencast, so here's one of my process coloring one of Liz Hooper's black and white illustrations. (In HD Widescreen!)

A first coloring pass at another one of Liz's big illustrations. Got just one more to do after this one, then I'll do a second pass on the rest of the batch using some of the advice y'all gave me in the last art post.

More here

I'm going through Liz Hooper's grayscale illustrations and adding some color to create more atmospheric perspective. Lower contrast is farther away, higher contrast is closer. I just don't know if it looks muddy now. Hmm... Work continues.