Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
Publisher Description
Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple is a slapstick fantasy storytelling game about helping people and getting into trouble.
You tell the story of young travelers who mean well, but spend most of their time getting into trouble. You use your creativity and strategy to create a humorous coming of age story. It's like a comedic crossover between Avatar: the Last Airbender, the Little Prince and Kino's Journey.
There's a great development team behind Do, including editors Ryan Macklin and Lillian Cohen-Moore; artists Liz Radtke, Kristin Rakochy, Dale Horstman, Jake Richmond; and Evil Hat Productions, publishers of Spirit of the Century and the Dresden Files Role-Playing Game. The game also includes adventure seeds by Jared Sorensen, John Wick, Sophie Lagacé, and many more!
Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, First Edition - Rules SummaryCollapse
Character Creation [ edit ]
As a story-heavy game, character creation in Do is much simpler than (say) Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, your entire "character" is defined in a single sentence!
You start by choosing an "avatar", which can be any ordinary object (eg. "cat" or "cup"). You then pick your character's "banner": a descriptive word for that avatar, eg. "sleeping" or "empty".
You then have to decide how your banner and avatar then define helps people, and how they "get in trouble" (both are central to the game). To do this you simply fill out the rest of your character's sentence: Pilgrim *Banner* *Avatar* gets in trouble by _____ and helps people by _____.
For example, Pilgrim Sleeping Cat might get into trouble by falling asleep at inappropriate times, and help people by suddenly freaking out without warning. By writing that sentence the "character" sheet has started, and the character is ready for play.
Core Mechanics [ edit ]
In Do there is no "Game Master": instead, each player takes a turn (in clockwise order) being the "Storyteller", with all the other players being "Troublemakers" for that turn.
The Storyteller then draws three stones from a bag containing white and black stones (Do doesn't use traditional dice), and the ratio of white to black determines the outcome of the turn. A character might help someone and/or get into/out of trouble as a result, and the details might be written by the Storyteller or the Troublemakers.
When those details are being written (again, depending on the stones), the player may or may not get to use a "goal word" in the description. Goal words come from the "letters" which started the entire adventure. For instance, an adventure might begin with an NPC asking for help after their island was swallowed by a whale, and promising cookies as a reward; that letter might have both both "whale" and "cookies" in its goal words.
After all the goal words have been used, or more than 8 stones have been drawn, the adventure ends. Characters don't exactly level at that point, but they add more story to their sheet, and get to change their banner before the next adventure.
Combat [ edit ]
Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple is a completely combat-free system, and so it has no rules at all for weapons, hit points, initiative, etc.
