"Master, we humans are not the only intelligent beings in the universe."
"That is only partly true, young visitor."
"Which part is incorrect, master?"
"'We.'"

Still writing! This is a little sidebar on the term "Young Visitor."

This term is usually used in the most polite context. You might hear a monk quietly report to the Abbot, "The young visitor Arik the Tripping Eagle just knocked over the Precariously Balanced Collection of Ancient Statuary." A teacher might whisper to a colleague, "Young visitor Miva the Hungry Wing came to class covered in what remains of the Garden of Unbelievably Ripe Tomatoes." And the rule-keeper may institute a new policy concerning trips to the bestiary with a special footnote, "Young visitor Torlo the Honey Jar must be kept away from bears at all times."

I just spent about an hour in InDesign trying to wrangle weird glyphs I've been using in the text. ✭●○✔

Then I got a cute idea: In the current draft, the trouble cards have little stars drawn on them representing how much help you'll need to resolve the situation described on it. For example:

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King Tiktik's hunger compels him to seek out new worlds for their finest cuisine, in quantities fit for the king of the sky whales.✭✭

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In order to resolve that trouble, you'll need two other players to help you tell that story. Two, because there are two stars.

That's all well and good, except that stars don't inherently feel like "trouble" to me. There's no sense of gonzo urgency.

Perhaps exclamation points!

---

King Tiktik's hunger compels him to seek out new worlds for their finest cuisine, in quantities fit for the king of the sky whales!!

---

Hm! Yeah, I like this! It fits into the narrative more seamlessly and reduces the number of weird icons in the text. Also, potentially makes it easier to play online.

(x-posted on Story Games)

So I'm knee-deep in making 64 example characters when I whine to Ryan about how hard it is. I am doing this because I am OCD about this kind of thing. There are eight Origin archetypes that describe in broad terms the type of life your character had when she was growing up. Then there are eight archetypes that describe the circumstances in which she left home and went to the temple. 8 times 8 equals creative exhaustion for yours truly, even though I've got plenty of playtest characters to choose from.

Ryan then tries to smack some sense into me. This would be like if D&D came with example characters of every possible combination of species and class. It'd be huge! From the Evil Hat side of things, Spirit of the Century only had three example characters despite a lot more archetypes. It'd be better if I stuck to a small group of signature, inspiring characters and let everything else be open for players to interpret without my baggage.

That's all well and good, but I still don't feel like Do has the advantaged position that either of those games has. In D&D's case, they're using signature characters to show optimal character builds for monster fightin'. Do is a different sort of game, so there really is no "optimal" Aide/Runaway or Dreamer/Orphan combo.

Both D&D and Spirit of the Century also have the benefit of strong roots in a well-established genre, "fantasy hack n' slash" for the former and "two-fisted pulp adventures" for the latter. You can afford to just show a Rocketeer and Rosie the Riveter to get the gist of a pulp adventure game, but "coming-of-age road trip" isn't quite as iconic.

So, the trick is thinking of some iconic archetypal characters, both as a way to demonstrate a variety of possible characters and to really nail down the baseline of this genre.

I mean, I could just file the serial numbers off these characters:

And I have four characters on the cover already:

Would that be lazy of me or just an homage to the inspirational source, like the Rocketeer-ish and Rosie-ish characters in Spirit of the Century?

Here are some example characters from the Example Pilgrims chapter.

[W] is a placeholder for the World icon, noting each character's worldly origin.

[T] is the Temple icon, noting their formative experiences at the temple when they were rescued by another would-be pilgrim.

[B] is the Bond icon, for showing the bond that each character now has to the one who rescued them.

The Brazen Crests

Pilgrim Esha, the False Marble

[W] Pauper/Fugitive: Esha never tells anyone at the orphanage who his parents are, but assures that they're the highest royalty. No one believes him until he tricks a particularly dim royal into buying the orphanage and setting all the kids loose. As they all get rounded up again by unamused authorities, Esha evades capture by claiming asylum at the Temple.

[T] Esha's stories of noble lineage convince the younger temple kids to bring him offerings of Elder Sweet Tooth's finest chocolates. Arika rescues Esha from Sweet Tooth's sour mood by impersonating a gremlin. In disguise, she raids his chocolate stores and dodges his traps. Sweet Tooth now believes a gremlin to be the culprit, letting Esha off the hook.

[B] Esha has a Bond of Debt to Arika. He knows he'd be turned into a chocolate bar today if Arika hadn't come to the rescue.

Pilgrim Arika, the Mighty Perch

[W] Aide/Recruit: Arika uses ancient masks to draw giant monsters away from nearby innocents. One day, a swarm of tentacled eyeballs ensnares Arika's master Tark, so Arika becomes a swarm of poking fingers to scare off the beasts. Relieved, Tark confides that he was a Pilgrim and recognizes now that Arika's talents should be used for the Temple.

[T] Arika grew up besieged by giant monsters, so he's not used to living so close to the Temple's menagerie of creatures. He snaps at a herd of ghost stilts by appearing even taller than them, causing a stampede across the temple. Meanwhile, Mayatsa reads in the courtyard.  Seeing the approaching cloud, she calmly extends one foot, tripping them all.

[B] Arika has a Bond of Fear to Mayatsa. Who can so easily neutralize such monsters without ever putting down her silly romance novel?

Pilgrim Mayatsa, the Orange Bench

[W] Outsider/Castaway: Marriage between Red Clan and Yellow Clan is illegal on Crent, making Mya and Tsa infamous criminals. Born in the dungeons, their daughter Mayatsa can never be a part of either clan. In a last ditch hope, her parents write a letter to the Temple, wrapping it around baby Mayatsa. When the letter vanishes, it takes her, too.

[T] Mayatsa is a gloomy child with the odd ability to know anyone's complete family history as long as they sit next to her. Word of her talent spreads. Soon, every con artist from here to Dark visits the Temple to verify their secret noble lineage. Amaroo steps in to be the bouncer. Rule #1: One visitor per day. Rule #2: Donations strongly encouraged.

[B] Mayatsa has the Bond of Trust to Amaroo. Mayatsa doesn't speak much, but when she does, it is usually only to her trusted bodyguard.

Pilgrim Amaroo, the First Spear

[W] Noble/Castaway: The problem with a monster-hunting family is that they did any feat you can imagine. Granma already plucked the Beast Azquetl's horn to belch a sonnet for ramen? Really? Sigh. Trying again for a unique feat, Amaroo steals the family spear Amfang, but it flies away and takes Amaroo with it. (Happened to mom, too, by the by.)

[T] Amaroo pulls her through the skies, but dodges every slayable beast and devourable world. Nuts. Finally, they crash unceremoniously through the roof of Elder Sweet Tooth's secret pastry pantry. Sweet Tooth thinks Amaroo is the gremlin stealing his chocolate! ("Uh... What?") Esha resolves the confusion by confessing that he's behind the theft.

[B] Amaroo has a Bond of the Student to Esha. Amaroo had no idea the Temple existed, so she's trusting Esha to show her the ropes.

Steadily making progress on the "How to play" chapter of the next draft. It's a little over 10,000 words and will probably be 15,000 in the end.

It won't be super-dense though. I'm noting and describing lots of diagrams and visual aides with explanatory captions to help alleviate text-strain. Of course that won't help anyone reading this raw text, but it's helpful for me when I finally lay this thing out.

You might also notice that I've added a game board codenamed "Tree." It's not a grid of spaces like Grey Ranks, just a simple single-line tracker like the scorekeeping boards you might find in a German board game like Carcassonne.

That's part of why I was asking about all that math and probability a couple weeks ago. I wanted to know if drawing three-of-a-kind would be a good pacing mechanic. Basically, when anyone draws three-of-a-kind (○ ○ ○ or ● ● ●), the group moves along the game board. The further along you are, the less likely it is that your pilgrim's action will cause trouble. Go even higher, and it is more likely to resolve extra troubles. Three-of-a-kinds are unlikely early in the game, so there will be lots of trouble created early in the game, but as people remove stones, three-of-a-kinds become more and more likely, meaning the end of the game is spent resolving the troubles that were created earlier.

Hopefully, this will resolve the creative exhaustion that was a problem during the Dreamation playtests and add some flexibility to the stone-drawing mechanics.

During those playtests, Remi Treuer suggested that play could alternate Scope and Mood, switching from big scope to small scope, light mood to heavy mood, and back again. Ryan Macklin's also suggested this while discussing epic stories on Master Plan and he's put this into effect in his design of Mythender.

One could easily use this board to make just this kind of house rule. For example, if you wanted your game to follow an arc of comedy in the beginning and end, but the middle being a serious drama, you could append a Mood and Scope to each space of the board. The first space being small and light. The second space being big and light. The third space being big and heavy. The fourth space being small and heavy. Then you can just reverse the order. The fifth space is small and heavy. The sixth is big and heavy. The seventh is big and light. The eighth is small and light.

I'm pretty excited about using a game board. I'd been resisting it for a long time, but ultimately I decided to just go with it and it's making the game a lot easier to design. In terms of production, I believe the board will just be a double-page spread of the book that you can photocopy for your use. Because it's such a simple board, it doesn't need a lot of room for elaborate pawns.