Howdy y’all! After literal years of grinding it out, my house system “Pilgrim’s Passages” is in public beta. It’s free! It’s focusing on hexcrawling, travel, crafting, programing prayers, ecosystem spirits, and so much more. I would love any feedback y’all might have and I would be happy to answer any questions here.
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OH, I like the art! checking this out…
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Thanks so much! I’d love to hear any feedback you may have!
It looks very neat, and a lot if the sections seem interesting, but I don’t think you spent long enough explaining the actual gameplay.
The “Rolling” section does not say how you determine what you roll.
When rolling dice, you always want to roll low. Sometimes that will be rolling under a target number, called a Success Value (SV), other times it will be rolling less than opposing characters.
But what dice do I roll? Is it the dice listed by the item? Do I add dice from a skill? Does grade affect dice or SV? Does everything have a grade? What do I actually do to play the game?
I can infer from the rules under stamina on p16 that this a roll-under dice-pool system, but so far I don’t think you actually said that. And do I construct the pool myself, roll all the dice, what?
I think you need to explicitly spell out your core mechanic earlier, because right now all the dice numbers alongside basically everything noted so far are meaningless.
I only got to p16, skimming some and reading some. I also read a chunk of flavor in the prayerbook, which seemed quite cool.
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semi-skimmed it. design wise, I really like your fonts. read it on my lil Chromebook in tablet mode. there were some tiny things that you will probably find later, but overall very strong.
please add a TOC!
rules were written clearly enough. on the cover it says “advanced” basically, so I think you did a good job keeping things fairly brief and clear. I think it would benefit from some examples of play, and maybe some infographic kinda stuff. but its not a deal killer.
in terms of the rules, they seem simple enough. a bit on the abstract side, with lots of ±1, 2 or 3s going on. makes me fear it might be a bit modifier fussy?
I would love if you added a little bit more information about what the characters are expected to DO, and what sort of situations the GM is supposed to set up. along with the rules, things feel a tad abstract. my ENORMOUS SCOPE CREEP advice is to package it with many sample hexes. there is a lot of implied worldbuilding which gets me excited. like this:
but like, what ARE those things? a Hill’orn is mentioned exactly once in the book. seems cool. a hill unicorn? who knows… not me!
PS: if you look at that table you see one tiny thing I noticed which is that occasionally the text is like 90% black instead of 100%. See Mort.
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Thanks so much for reading the books and writing back @abresch . I’ll get to work adding a more explicit introductory section for the next update.
Thanks so much for the feedback as well @eeldip . I was hoping the massive sections and overall short length of the book might free it from a ToC, but you’re right we should get one in there.
RE “advanced”: Yeah there is definitely an assumption that this won’t be your first RPG rodeo. I think abresh’s notes about basic mechanics not being spelled out clearly enough should include those examples of play too though. I’ll get on that.
During play testing it can be a bit modifier fussy. In my experience, since the game operates off of the table getting involved with justifying what is a benefit/hindrance to the roll the determining of the Success Value never really felt fussy. There were many micro victories and defeats during that process. We also kept our Conflicts fairly large-scale. Like violence being one roll and thus ending the violence, or climbing a cliffside being one roll.
The note on what the characters are doing is a tricky. I have a module in the works that I am hoping answers that more easily than me trying to summarize. Show rather than tell and all that. Do you think an example of play might solve that or are you looking for more concrete goals?
As for the implied setting. I am really torn on this one. I kind of want to let readers fill in the blanks but perhaps the blanks are too large at this point. I’ll see what I can do. I have a piece of art I am wrapping that will actually go on this page and imply some more.
AW MAN! I have been hunting instances of the differing black values sneaking through for months. Thanks for catching that.
Thanks so much for the thorough read and feedback. I’ll post again when I push the next update.