Tag: ttrpg

Foross Subsector map for Traveller

So yeah. Traveller. Very cool.

Aside from the elaborate character creation mini-game, one of the main thing Traveller is famous for is its setting creation system. From what I remember, the system for making a map and populating it with planets is almost identical in Stars Without Number, and that was what I used for the Esekar sector map for the first version of Iridium Moons.

I now made a map for the new Foross (Sub)sector using the system from Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition. In previous posts, I already described the six primary planets of the Foross Sector. The first thing that I did was to translate these into Traveller game terms. For each trait, like planet size, atmosphere type, population scale, and so on, there is a table listing the different possible options and each of them is identified by a single character. These can then be strung together in a fixed order to create the world’s UWP code. It’s a summary of a planet’s statistic in just one 8 to 10 digit code. The first character for the size of the spaceport facilities, the next three characters for the planet’s physical traits, and the last four for the society of its inhabitants. And if you’ve been using them for long enough, you’re supposedly able to read quite a lot of information from them before even looking up the respective tables. That’s exactly the kind of RPG nerdery I can absolutely get behind.

For those Traveller nerds who are interested (I assume there might be one or two), here’s the UWPs for the six planets:

  • Sarhat C862733A
  • Kion C765734A
  • Palan B763695B
  • Meruna C8686469
  • Halon E9703008-A
  • Ataris D6A0416B

And for those Traveller players who have not read my previous planet descriptions: Yes, Iridium Moons is a pretty low-tech and low population.

The default subsector map is an 8 by 10 hex map, but since I’m not working on photocopied sheets, I went with a 10 by 8 arrangement resulting in a square map. It doesn’t affect hexagonal movement.

Each hex has a 50% chance of having stars in them, and after four attempts, I settled on this arrangement, which I quite like, and hand selected six of the stars for my planets.

Click to embiggen.

Unlike Traveller’s default Third Imperium setting, there is no such thing as scooping up raw fuel from gas planets and ocean worlds in Iridium Moons. Instead, ships must refuel at starports. It is possible to take on additional fuel as cargo to make multiple jumps without refueling stops, but this does significantly reduce a ship’s capacity to carry goods, and commercial cargo ships avoid doing this whenever possible. For this reason, new trade routes require an infrastructure of dedicated fuel stations every two parsecs to be commercially viable for cargo ships. There are currently six such station in operation in the Foross subsector.

With these stations being literally centuries old, and the subsector being heavily shaped by industrial decay, I had the idea that most of these stations would not be refining their own fuel, but instead get it delivered by giant tankers carrying thousands of tons. And at the scale of a subsector, that still has considerable local industry going on, it really would make sense to have one central refinery that is supplying all the starports and fuel stations in the area. Station 54 would be perfect for that, resulting in the addition of the seventh main planet to the setting.

Station 54 (B3305179)

This small planet (size 3) has sufficiently strong gravity to run fractional distillation and a non-toxic atmosphere dense enough to breath with regular respirators (atm 3), making it perfect for refining ship fuel. The planet typically houses over 100,000 people (pop 5), who are almost exclusively employees of the refinery (gov 1) on six months assignments. The refinerie’s starport has the capacity to service several of its giant tankers simultaneously (starport B), but lacks the equipment and staff to make major repairs (TL 9). The refinery and the starport are owned by one of the Sarantal Oligarchs from Palan.

The ancient tankers being out of commission sometimes for months has been causing huge disruptions to trade in the Foross over the last decades. Many traders and cargo captains have grown extremely concerned about the reliance on a single refinery for the subsector, and the economic damage that would result from it going out of service for more than a week or two.

Having such an obvious weak point in the aging infrastructure of the decrepit sector is just too interesting to not use, so this remains the only fuel source in the whole Foross subsector.

I also had a plan for a space station near Sarhat, and hex 62 seems like a great place to put it.

Station 62 (C000412A-A)

This old station (C000) is one of the oldest in the sector, going back to the first mining operations on Halon. Back in the early days of the Foross subsector, it served as a central trade hub where smaller mining camps from the surrounding systems would sell their ores and buy new equipment or food coming from Kion. With the closure of the mines on Halon and the depletion of many smaller mines, large scale ore and food trade has ceased on the station over  a century ago. The station is now home to some 20,000 people (pop 4), and while technically being run by one of the Tauros Oligarchs from Sarhat (gov 1), it is largely under the control of several gangs (law 2). Most ships coming through the systems only make a quick stop to take on new fuel and have their crew stay close to the ship (travel code A).

The other four stations are simply fuel stations with nothing of interest going on there.

For the rest of the systems, I decided to see what the random generation rules can produce. I generated another 35 worlds (which with the help of spreadsheets and random number generation sites was fairly painless), and oddly enough, it started with giving me 7 really awesome planets that basically wrote their own descriptions, followed by 27 really boring ones and just one quirky oddity.

E3113797

A large moon (size 3) with almost no atmosphere (atm 1) or water (hydro 1). This gives it the Ice-Capped trade code to determine resource availability, so I’m making it like one of the main moons of Jupiter. It’s home to a few thousand miners (pop 3) who have split into rival factions (gov 7), but lack of access to weapons (law 9) has kept things civil so far. Unfortunately, they don’t have the technology to maintain a space habitat (TL 7) and they will probably have to leave the planet. Getting passage for several thousand people might be difficult, which is probably the reason for the hostile factionalism.

B420575E-A

A small planet (size 4) with thin and toxic air (atm 2) below freezing and no water (hydro 0). It is home to over a hundred thousand people (pop 5) who have split into competing factions (gov 7). Military weapons are banned but there’s plenty of smaller stuff around (law 5). It gets interesting with this being a an very high-tech world (TL 14) for the subsector, with a small shipyard (starport B). Not sure what’s going on here, but this has potential.

D0(2)02527-R

A space station (size 0) occupied by a few hundred people (pop 2) living under Technocratic Feudalism (gov 5) with free possession of almost all weapons (law 2), and their technology is incapable of maintaining a space station (TL 7). It was immediately clear that this is a derelict space station where everyone is under the thumb of the last engineer who maintains and controls what is left of the life support systems. Being the third world I generated, I made a mistake and rolled for an atmosphere, even though size 0 and 1 worlds don’t have any and everyone has to live in artificial habitats. However, since the low tech level indicates the station can not be properly maintained, and the atmosphere I rolled (atm 2) is “thin and toxic”, this is just way too good not to use it! Not only is the station going to shit, it’s already so shit that you can’t leave the living quarters without respirators. Given the circumstances, I also gave the place Travel Code Red. This is all one big nightmare.

XA645374

A large planet (size 10) with a hot but normal atmosphere (atm 6) and some small seas (hydro 4). Home to several hundred thousand people (pop 5) ruled by an hereditary elite (gov 3), allowing no guns (law 7). It has no ship landing facilities at all (starport X) and the original Tech Level I rolled was stone age (TL 0). Though it’s hot and has little water, it does qualify for the Agricultural trade code, which means visitors can pick up wood, textiles, live animals, biochemicals, uncommon raw materials, and luxury consumables. I like the idea of crops being grown in underground caves where it’s cooler and moist.

Option A is to take this as it is, and make it a new alien species native to this planet. Option B is to raise their Tech Level up to 4 and make them something like Fremen, because this is already totally Dune! With the crazy plants being grown underground and the outside being a desert, nobody might know about them except the locals. And with the way space travel works, you can’t just follow the one trader that is selling these new exotic plants to learn where he gets them. Great potential.

E8432008

Earth-sized planet (size 8) with a thin, hot, and slightly toxic atmosphere (atm 3) and little water (hydro 4). It is home to a few hundred people with very basic starport facilities (starport E, TL 8). Since they are so few and the planet has no special resources, I default to them being a small independent mine. With the air being thin, hot, and slightly toxic, I had the idea that their settlement is high up in the mountains, where the temperature is not as deadly and the toxic gases are low enough to be okay with just a respirator. Not sure what interesting things might happen here, but the environment is neat.

E6601006

Mid-sized planet (size 6) with a standard atmosphere (atm 6), very hot temperatures, and no water (hydro 0). On it there are a dozen or so people (pop 1) with no government (gov 0) or weapon restrictions (law 0), and they have no digital technology (TL 6) or the means to survive for long, but a basic landing site (starport E). Must have crashed their ship here. Is this Pitch Black?

D7C156A7

Mid-sized planet (size 7) with highly corrosive atmosphere (atm C), a brutal heat (17 on a scale from 2 to 12+) and very little water (hydro 1). Under these conditions, we get large lakes of petrochemicals and precious metals. There are hundreds of thousands of people living on this planet (pop 5), but they are being controlled by a hostile outside power (gov 6). They have no weapons (law 10) and their Tech Level (TL 7) is three levels to low to survive in this environment. This is obviously some kind of brutal prison world like Chronicles of Riddick.

X7880000-A

A mid-sized planet (size 7) with a dense atmosphere (atm 8), temperate climate, and a lot of water (hydro 8). Other than Meruna, it’s the only planet in the subsector that qualifies for being a Garden World. And it is completely uninhabited. Why is that? Certainly should have Travel Code Amber.

The other worlds are all very nondescriptive and don’t bring up any inspirations. Since 16 worlds is way more than I would think I’d ever need, with the three largest being home to several colonies and stations each, I decided to just erase some of the stars from the map that were particularly densely packed. Maybe I leave the remaining 25 stars blank until I have need of them. There is already so much here to work with.

Yora looks at Traveller (not a review)

So I’ve been reading the Traveller rulebook these last few days…

I’ve been struggling for quite some time with getting the appeal of this classic game, as browsing through the pages doesn’t really bring up anything that looks special, and trying to just start on the first page and continue forward very quickly slams you into the wall that is character creation in Traveller. Which I believe is quite famously known as the most elaborate mini-game in the history of pen and paper games. It’s not quite as scary as it first looks, and once you have made your character you will never have to deal with it again for the rest of the campaign, unless your character dies. But for my ADHD brain, it’s a whole lot of information being thrown at me all at once, for which I don’t have any real context at this point. But there’s been a lot of chatter about Traveller over the past months, much of which did sound quite intriguing. And so this week I made the decision to just skip the whole part about character creation for now, since this is something I wouldn’t have to deal with anymore once a campaign starts, and instead read everything else in the book first instead.

And I can absolutely see the appeal of this game. Scum and Villainy is a great system, but as a GM, I actually have always enjoyed it a lot to have games be at least a little bit an attempt of simulating a world, with NPC and creature stats, equipment and loadout management, vehicle rules, and the like. The old Star Wars d6 game does that, and it’s by far the best of the many Star Wars RPG out there. But if I don’t want to explicitly run a Star Wars campaign, I don’t feel so sure that the generic d6 Space system would be the best choice. And then there’s of course also Stars Without Number, but something about that game just doesn’t feel quite right to me. I think it’s the OD&D framework on which it builds. Traveller is the fourth game dominating in this particular niche of games, and my first impression so far is that it actually could be the thing for me. Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition specifically. From what I’ve seen on the internet, almost everyone seems to be playing either Classic Traveller from 1977, or Mongoose Traveller 2e from 2016. I went with Mongoose over Classic. Don’t ask me why.

There is a lot about this game that makes me think “Hey, this reminds me of Stars Wars d6.”, “This reminds me of Scum and Villainy.”, and “This reminds me of Coriolis.” Because, of course, all these games are build on standard and conventions first established by Traveller.

I mentioned the issue with character creation being a rather elaborate process above. But that is indeed something that you do probably just once at the start of a campaign, and after that it won’t be part of actually playing the game. So that’s something that doesn’t bother me as much anymore than I thought it would. (Even though I still don’t have it fully figured out yet.)

Another thing that always sounded weird is that characters don’t get experience points to improve their abilities. But realistically speaking, what’s the time frame over which a Traveller campaign will take place? Maybe a year, or perhaps two? And probably a large majority of that will be spend idle in hyperspace waiting to arrive at your destination. Characters improving their skills to a clearly noticeable degree isn’t really part of the fiction with games like these. Yes, Luke Skywalker gained a lot of new abilities over three movies. But Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the two droids didn’t. And people probably don’t play Traveller to play a Jedi apprenticeship story. However, you do of course gain resources. Money, equipment, and allies. This can always be a source of significant growth in what characters can accomplish and how they engage with the obstacles of the world. And to be fair, not having to deal with deciding on new abilities when leveling up actually does sound refreshing.

The one main negative thing I noticed is the dubious editing quality of the rulebook. One of the very first things you read when starting with the character creation rules after the introduction is “assign the scores in any order you wish to the six characteristics, starting with Strength”. And there are so many cases of this. Sentences that have correct spelling and no grammar mistakes. But when you try to understand how the game works from reading the rules, there are constantly cases where the sentences are missing important information. It’s not too terrible, and most of the time I think I can assume what the writer was trying to say, based on 25 years of having learned many different RPG systems. But I always have to guess. My impression is that this was proofread by someone who already knew the game well and only checked for spelling and grammar. But when you write an RPG rulebook, you really should “playtest” it by having people try to learn the game from the text. In just a day, I could have easily filled a page with questions that would only have taken the addition of half a sentence to the respective sections.

It did awaken some vague memories from back in the day when I was very active on many RPG forums and people quite regularly making jokes about one publisher in particular for the really bad editing of their books. I am not completely sure, but I think that might actually have been Mongoose.

But overall, I really quite like what I’ve been seeing. Over the years, Traveller has been recommended to me many times, in particular in regards to discussions about my Iridium Moons setting. I’ll have to see what my ADHD brain is going to say in two weeks from now. But I think I might actually prefer this one over Scum and Villainy for running an Iridium Moons campaign.

DIYRPG failed because we didn’t gatekeep enough!

Back in 2009, lots of small personal websites covering homemade pen and paper RPG material and general thoughts around the subject popped up. Mostly as a decentralized forum for people very dissatisfied with how D&D had been developing for the last 15-20 years and the direction it kept heading for to the future. Because people found common ground in how D&D used to be in the olden days, it became known as the Oldschool Revival. Unsurprisingly, this became a fertile space for “Good Old Boys” to connect with other like-minded middle-aged straight white men and reminiscent how everything used to be better before their cherished private space was invaded by newcomers (young, queer, non-white, and women) who kept trying to put their own stamps on the traditional values of the game.

Not saying that RPGs are a hobby that is particularly attractive to misogynists, homophobes, and racists. But any space where older white men come together to bond over their teenage memories is inherently a potential hotbed for them to thrive.

But many of them knew how to be subtle, and I guess young white men like me might have been oblivious to things that women and non-white people would have spotted from miles away. And sure, there was drama and some kerfuffles, but hey, many of these controversial guys created really creative and evocative RPG material! Some of it a bit try-hard edgy, but very different from the output of the big commercial publishers.

Zak S., James Raggi, and Venger Satanis were all big darlings of the OSR. I too marveled at their creative output.

But with success and adoration, the masks started to come down. First gradually, then increasingly. But people loved their work, and saw themselves as members of a friendly community, and so nobody really wanted to rock the boat. Also, as people engaged in more research on the famous creators from the early days in the 70s, things came to light that previously nobody seemed to have paid attention to. The creator of Tekumel and the inheritor of the rights to Wilderlands turned out to be tied to Neo-Nazis.

I guess it was in the late 2010s that the facade was finally crumbling down, and lots of people who had been big fans and proponents of Oldschool Roleplaying stopped associating themselves with the OSR label because the space was looking increasingly toxic. Which meant that the real shitheads increasingly had the space to themselves.

And there seems to have emerged a new space for people still interested in simple RPG systems and sharing free home-made game material, but not wanting to have anything to do with the toxic pit that was left over from the OSR. DIYRPG was put to consideration as a new banner to rally around, and also NSR (whatever that was supposed to mean? New-Oldschool Revival?)

But then I saw something very peculiar happening, I think about a year or so ago. New people coming into this new space being all hyped about DIYRPG embracing both the NSR label, and also using the OSR label interchangeably. Apparently unaware of their their respective backgrounds. And I think it wasn’t long after that that the DIYRPG scene on the internet seemingly collapsed. I heard of several people just leaving it all behind them because it’s still full of racists, homophobes, racists, and other bigoted shitheads strolling around in the open and being heaped with adoration.

DIYRPG didn’t work out because quietly cutting ties with the OSR label and just doing our own thing wasn’t enough. It felt to me that we tried to create an RPG space on the internet was inclusive. But we didn’t explicitly make it a space that is actively anti-nazis, anti-homophobic, and anti-abusive. Tolerance was what turned OSR into an alt-right shitshow, and hesitance to call people out for their shittiness in an attempt at politeness is what made DIYRPG fail. And now most of the creative people making cool stuff and sharing the most interesting ideas seem to be gone.

I have been thinking for a while that it seems strange that the discourse about innovations about RPGs appears to have trickled down to almost nothing, even though I believe we still have barely even scratched the surface of what pen and paper can be and what could be done with the medium. And yes, perhaps it’s because all the people with new and creative ideas don’t want to talk with those of us who are still left running their own personal RPG sites and hanging out on Mastodon. Because they assume we’re still hanging out with the OSR shitheads. And I actually can’t blame them.

I very much would love to have a global community and space of both new people with fresh ideas and old veterans open to expanding our horizons and searching for new possibilities. I don’t know how to do this with so many of the people with the brightest potential having already given up on it and turned their back for good. But to have such a thing work, it can no longer be “OSR, but with a friendlier face”. There must be a clear severing of ties and an explicit rejection of all hateful and abusive people. Awful people can have fascinating creative ideas. But a space for DIYRPG creativity must always be about the community first, even when that means purging interesting works associated with horrible people from our collective discourse. And it’s not like there should be a thought police making background checks. The truly awful people who ruin things for everyone but their bros don’t merely have a slip of the tongue were they crossed a line. They are the kind of people who never back down from something dumb they once said, and instead just keep piling on more of it to the applause of their equally horrible friends.

DIYRPG has the potential to come back. Maybe next year, or maybe in 10 years. But it will only work out for us if we constantly make it clear that assholes and shitheads will not be tolerated, and that brushing away concerns is complicity.

Grant Us Eyes!

One of my favorite game mechanics in videogames in Insight from Bloodborne. You increase your character’s Insight by encountering weird alien shit for the first time, or by consuming the Madman’s Knowledge item. As your Insight increases, you gain the ability to see more supernatural stuff happening around you that would otherwise be invisible. But as you are pulled into the world of eldritch beings, you also become more vulnerable to their strange powers.

For a campaign in which the player character’s are on a journey to visit sacred shrines of supernatural power to gain greater wisdom and enlightenment from personal encounters with cosmic forces, an Insight mechanic would be just perfect.

In Dragonbane, this is a perfect case for introducing a secondary skill. That is, simply a skill that isn’t in the main rulebook for the game. Assuming the campaign begins with the PCs already having done a circuit of the regular pilgrim’s path but still craving for greater understanding from more out of the way and controversial sites of power, all PCs would start with Insight as a trained skill in addition to the starting skills of a new character. Which means it starts at a rank of 1 to 7, based on the character’s Willpower attribute, corresponding to a 5 to 35% chance at making a successful skill check.

Insight checks are rolled when touching a supernatural object, entering a supernatural area, or first interacting with a supernatural creature to gain a first impression of what’s going on. It might also be rolled in secret by the GM to become aware of a hidden presence. And in turn, an Insight roll might need to be failed or otherwise supernatural beings take notice of the PCs entering their vicinity and come to investigate. (That part is admittedly still very vague at this point.)

As with all skills, a roll of a 1 or a 20 marks the Insight skill for advancement at the end of the game. Once the game ends, players make a skill check, and if the check fails, the skill advances by one rank. The sacred shrines that the characters are seeking and visiting count as a teacher for for the Insight skill. Spending a full shift in a sacred shrine and contemplating the experience lets players make a skill advancement roll with a boon (roll twice, take the better result).

The Pilgrimage

The main challenge for me in imagining fantasy adventure stories has always been the motivation of the adventuring heroes. Oldschool D&D was before anything else a tactical dungeon crawling game. It wasn’t even called a roleplaying game for some time. Just a fantasy adventure game, that had evolved out of wargaming. Characters were play pieces for the players. Both disposable and replaceable. The game is being played to have fun interacting with the challenges. It was not a game about experiencing the heroic journey of memorable characters. In that context, people just picking up a rusty sword to walk straight into monster-infested hellholes and to their pretty certain death was not an issue of narrative dissonance.

But very few roleplaying games that succeeded early D&D since the mid-80s are anything like that. They are not dungeon crawling tactical games. They are roleplaying games about characters with personalities, motivations, and ambitions. But in the typical fantasy adventure game, they are still walking straight into situations that should be certain and immediate death on a regular basis. Real people do significantly dangerous things as a job, even if the pay is poor, because they want to help people in danger and believe that this is worth the risks they are taking. But these people usually go to incredible length to mitigate all the possible risk to themselves and rely on extensive support structures to fund and equip them. And even then, there is regularly a point where they concede that there is nothing they can do because the risk of becoming additional victims that need saving is just too high.

Fantasy is fiction of the impossible and magical. But when it comes to the risk that characters take in fantasy adventure scenarios, and the possible gains they expect from that, my brain just can not believe that a person with a mind that works in similar ways to real humans, would make decisions like that. (Let’s not even touch on the whole genre of JRPGs and Shonen anime.)

We do have many fantasy protagonists who go on adventures outside of games, and many of them were the direct inspiration for dungeon crawling games in the first place. But old king Conan does not go on adventures. He rides out into battle to defend his country from invading armies. Ending up in dungeons and fighting demons was never his plan. Young man Conan does go dungeon crawling many times. But his motivation is that he thinks killing, stealing, and intimidating people are the most fun passtimes one can engage him. Not exactly a model for the typical fantasy game player to emulate.

Elric and Kane frequently find themselves in adventure situations, but adventuring is not what they set out to do. Most commonly they are on a journey to get a thing that is important to them or will be a valuable tool for their goals. And along the way, an adventure happens to happen by accident, and is something they would rather have avoided.

I don’t think any of these characters and stories make for good models for player characters in roleplaying games. And that is probably at the heart of why all my campaigns in the last 10 years have felt to me like a compromise to just have something to play, rather than nothing. But the adventures as a whole never felt meaningful to me.

But thinking about the topic again over this weak did lead to an idea that could be interesting to pursue further and build a campaign around for the Iron Lands.

Characters on Pilgrimage

Why would people go on adventures? That does depend on what even is an adventure in the first place? In the context of Sword & Sorcery tales, it’s pretty much a given that it is about characters on a journey during which they enter at least one exceptional, and often supernatural, location and face off against a significant, and usually supernatural, threat. But why do they go to the place, and why do they risk facing the threat? And for a campaign, why do they keep doing that over and over?

Self-preservation and defense only works so many times. By the third time the heroes’ home gets attacked by demons, the believability breaks down. Seeking an opportunity to get rich quick or die trying does work structurally, but that just goes completely counter to any themes I find worthwhile to engage with. And traveling heroes for hire who ask around in every village they come through if they have any monsters they want to be freed from just doesn’t pass my personal checks for a plausible world.

But here is one new idea! What if adventuring is basically a religion?

The idea is that there are many kinds of mystic cults and societies that seek to gain understanding or enlightenment about the reality of existence and their own being through personal experiences of the supernatural or divine. Living a rural life in the natural world only lets you experience a small fragment of what reality in its entirety really is. Studying tomes and listening to the words of mystic teachers in great metropolitan cities will only get you so far. To truly gain enlightenment and real understanding of the world and being, people have to experience the supernatural as well. And to that purpose, followers of these religions go on pilgrimages to visit many holy sites, and experience the presence of supernatural phenomenons and beings for themselves.

For most people, these pilgrimages are just that. A year, or maybe two, visiting several revered shrines and sanctuaries, and returning to their former lives as a grown person with a greater appreciation for the world and life. But some pilgrims feel that there is still more for them to learn. Greater truths and more revelations that are just out of reach and prevent them from returning home just yet. Many great and most revered mystics continue their pilgrimages to more distant and remote sites for decades or their entire lives.

And off the regular pilgrimage routes, on rarely travelled paths deep into the wilderness, pilgrims can often find themselves in the presence of forces far from the serenity of the more famous sanctuaries. And on these journeys, some people discover that they have it in themselves to face the supernatural even when it is frightening and hostile, and to keep going forward into the unknown when most others would turn back. Warriors and mages who have stepped on the pilgrims’ path are often found among those who have both the courage and the compulsion of curiosity to push on on these darker paths. But they can also be found in the most unlikely people who have never considered themselves as being particularly brave or thirsting for knowledge. And it is these people that many remote settlements, that have no experienced priest or shaman of their own, put their hopes on when they are struggling with the dark forces from below and beyond. And in many cases, pleas to take a look into these strange and rare manifestations of the supernatural are too tempting to resist investigating.

In Dragonbane, professions for new player characters cover the typical fighter, hunter, mage, and thief. But they also include scholars, merchants, artisans, and mariners. People without any special martial skills or magical powers, who really would have no qualifications to leave their homes and clear out bandit lairs, goblin warrens, and haunted tombs. But going on a pilgrimage to visit holy shrines? Sure, why not. Lots of ordinary people do that. And as their journeys go on, asking other pilgrims if they can tag along to visit some of the more dodgier and out of place sites is not much of a stretch. The professions are also only a template to speed up character creation. Once play begins, character advancement is entirely by using skills and receiving skill training from instructors. Who your characters will become depends entirely on their experiences during the campaign. This seems a really nice mechanical fit for a world in which characters become adventurers during their journey, instead of chosing it before they set out.

This setup also provides a nice default action for sandbox campaigns, for when an adventure is wrapped up with nothing else for the characters to do. Just take out the map again and look if there’s any other pilgrimage sites in the area. And if that turns out uneventful, continue on to the next one until something extraordinary disrupts the quiet journey again.

This is a new idea I just started thinking about. But I think this could be something really interesting to use as the centerpiece to build a fantasy world around.