At a whopping 100,000+ words, the unedited playable draft of Do is complete and can be found on Google Docs at here and here.

In other words, the setting chapter, character creation chapter, how-to-play chapter, and a healthy chunk of the play advice chapter are complete, with tips, tools, and examples of play throughout. The examples of play account for at least 45,000 words alone, written since the beginning of November in a caffeine bender.

The stuff I'm writing this month, before sending the whole shebang to the editor, isn't essential for play, but it's nice to have. This includes a chapter devoted to a transcript of actual character creation, a chapter for a transcript of a three-session pilgrimage, and finishing the rest of the chapter titled the Subtle Art of Gonzometry.

A lot more time has been spent discussing gonzometry than I anticipated at first, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It inspired a setting detail that actually explains the whole business with pilgrim names being their source of superhuman powers (if any.) See section titled "Naming" for more info.

In short, the elders kinda sorta know they're characters in fiction. This enlightenment allows them a subtle power over that fiction in the form of metaphor and allegory. Thus, by naming a pilgrim "Rushing Spring," that pilgrim's abilities and how they get in trouble reflects that name. Or is it that the elders recognize those attributes first, then bestow a name that fits those attributes? Chicken and the egg.

This was inspired in part by Heinlein's world-as-myth stuff, which half-tempted me to make the Gonzometer an actual in-game artifact that the pilgrims carry with them, but decided against it. :P

There's been a fair amount of discussion lately about how prone collaborative games are to going off the rails into silly gonzo territory. Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple is a collaborative game, so I need some way for players to be able to discuss these issues without spending a bunch of time on the eye-glazing RPG theory stuff. Just telling players "Agree on a 1-10 rating for your gonzoness" wouldn't work.

So I'm actually creating a formalized Gonzometer for Do. Actually, it just packages up some old ideas in the game and gives them a catchy name. It'll be a tool for helping players decide how big or small they want the story's scope to be and how heavy or light they want the mood to be.

You can see a rough introduction to the concept on the live draft here and its actual implementation here. By using a common vocabulary for scope and mood, players can at least the beginning of creating a mutual agreement about how gonzo the story can be.

Big
|
Opera          |          Gonzo
|
Heavy ------------------------|------------------------- Light
|
Melodrama       |             Sitcom
|
Small

I'd like to discuss more about this "gonzo" stuff though.

What does gonzo mean to you?
What is good about gonzo?
Why does gonzo get a bad rap?
When is gonzo appropriate and fun?