Systems: The Game Basics
During your time playing Pilgrims, much of it will be spent describing your actions, interacting
with the world and thinking through the situations that your character finds themselves in. This is
all narrative play and the core backbone of any TTRPG. What your character is described as saying
and doing feeds back into the narrative of the fiction and the game continues.
Occasionally, the situation or opponent may be particularly challenging. Alternatively, something
particularly meaningful is at stake. When there is significant doubt as to the success or outcome of
an action, this is when we get the dice out. The dice are used to take Task Tests, a way of seeing
how successful the activity and how to apply that back onto the narrative of your game (i.e. you hit
or didn’t hit the target etc.)
The following section provides the basic rules for Task Tests and the other core systems of the game
that hang off of or support them. It’s here at the front of the book so you can know the mechanics of
doing things in the game for context when making your characters in the next section.
Task Tests
As stated above, Task Tests are the core mechanic for resolving actions in Pilgrims. There are
several different kinds of Task Test (discussed in more detail below, pg. xxx) but the core procedure
is always the same. When you’re required to take a Task Test you roll 2 ten-sided dice and total
them together, then add the Action Total to the result of the dice roll. The sum of the dice roll and
the Action Total are then compared to the task’s Difficulty Class (DC). If the sum total meets
(equals) or beats the task’s DC the character has succeeded in what they wanted to do.
2d10 + Action Total Vs Difficulty Class (DC)
Meet or Beat the DC to succeed
Action Total
- attributes
- proficiencies
- modifiers
Critical Results
-
- critical results are dice rolls of 2+3/4 (critical fail) and 18/19+20 (critical success)
- hyper critical failure (2): auto fail + critical drawbacks
- critical failure (3 and 4)
- critical success (18 and 19)
- hyper critical success (20): auto success + critical benefits
types of test
The main reason for a distinction between different types of task checks is that some items or
abilities in the game, such as equipment or spells, might affect only one, multiple or all types of
check.
- action tests/checks (general/most checks, stealth, talking, investigation etc.)
- attack tests/checks
- attribute tests/checks (action total only includes attribute and modifiers, not proficiencies)
- saves
Saves are mechanically the same as an action test but proficiency comes from a save proficiency,
rather than that of a skill, tool or other source (weapon, language etc.) For more information on
proficiencies see pg. Xxx and saves, pg. Xxx.
Difficulty Class
- measure of challenge and/or complexity
- 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 38
- 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30
Modifiers
- General: Advantage and Disadvantage
These are the most common and general type of modifiers
- roll an additional d10 (3d10 total) when making the check
- advantage: keep 2 highest dice
- disadvantage: keep 2 lowest dice
- counteract but don’t stack
- General: Asset and Drawback
Assets and Drawbacks are still general modifiers but tend to be more specific circumstances than
advantage and disadvantage. They mainly represent the having or lacking of something.
For example, a badly worded argument may give a character disadvantage, a poor reputation may
give them a drawback. When a character attempts a climb, poor weather may impose disadvantage,
poor or no climbing equipment (if equipment is needed) would impose a drawback.
- asset: +2/4/6
- drawback: -2/4/6
- stack and counteract to maximum of 3 tiems
- Specifics: Items and Circumstance (???)
- rare compared to use of adv/dis and asset/draw
- mostly come from equipment, combat and character features
- bonus: +1 to +3
- only one of each type is allowed, highest counts
(- penalty: add to DC (+2))
Scenes
- a quick note briefly explaing scenes and pointing to the scenes section for more information
Narrative Extras (optional, recommended)
- Boons and Twists
- provide more granular check results
- do this by introducing costs or complications
- not the same as success or failure, not the same as critical results.
- success at a cost, failure with a silver lining etc.
- double odds (twist) and double evens (boons)
- superseded by critical dice results
Focus Points (optional, recommended)
- (note for 5e players)
- boons
- narratives
- team uses
