I made a bluesky thread to gather all the currently-extant art in one place, you can find it here: https://bsky.app/profile/izzypetersart.bsky.social/post/3lq6spearws23
I'll be adding more as I add pieces, I'm alternating writing and drawing, which is helping keep me fresh.
Here's a preview of the game material as it currently stands. This is incomplete, but gives a good sense for how the game runs and plays.
Pilgrim’s moon is a tabletop roleplaying game about exploring the moons of the gas giant Mara, in hopes of rescuing cultural history, discovering lost technology, and evaluating the prospects of a mass return to the home-moons.
Players take the role of pilgrims, explorers from Lido certified to undertake the hazardous journey to the other moons of Mara: Vesta, Syrinx, Tarsus, and Adaghist. Marrans, the people of the Eos system, who once inhabited all of Mara’s moons, are human or near-human, although they have altered their own bodies and genetics for many millenia, and are more diverse in form and hue than even terrestrial humans.
In the course of a Pilgrim’s Moon campaign, players will make long-term plans and spend resources while on Lido, traverse the void to one of Mara’s other moons, and explore the ancestral ruins they find there. Once their holds are filled (or their supplies are depleted) they’ll return to Lido with their findings, restock supplies, make plans anew, and set out again into the void. The New Pilgrimage calls, marran; what do the moons hold which sings to your heart from across the voidsea?
Marrans, the Machine Plague, and the New Pilgrimage
Three hundred thousand people call Lido, the Pilgrim’s Moon, home. Each of them traces their ancestry to one of Marra’s other moons; Vesta, Syrinx, Adaghist, and Tarsus.
Four hundred years ago, the machine plague came to the Eos system. Tarsus fell first, then Syrinx, then Adaghist, then Vesta. Overtaxed public safety systems and failsafe protocols strained and failed, and humanity in the Eos system was nearly lost.
Lido, however, was untouched. The smallest of Mara’s five moons, devoid of atmosphere, Lido was mostly uninhabited. In those times, Lido was a dusty, cratered rock with only scattered airdomes for agriculture and a few temple-arcologies for marrans making the traditional pilgrimage to the moon. Pilgrims came to experience the one place in the system from which every other celestial body in the system is visible on a regular basis - to feel their connection to Eos, Mara, the moons, and the marran people.
For the hundred thousand-odd marans marrooned on Lido while their worlds crumbled under the machine plague onslaught, Lido has been both lifeboat and safe harbor. Underground hangars and lobbies for interlunar travel have been converted into living spaces, workshops, stages, and temples. With careful attention to their resources, marrans have made families, multiplied, and rebuilt marran society in miniature - a collective of craftspeople, scientists, artists, and caretakers working towards the common goal of living - of furthering the cause of marran survival in the universe.
Lido is a good home - its tunnels and vaults are safe from the machine plague (though no one knows why) but the glories of the golden age still call out to the hearts of marrans, and many now seek to return to the blighted moons to reclaim the arts, learning, and culture that are their inheritance.
The governance of Lido is entrusted to a convocation of 100 consuls appointed entirely at random, to ensure that every citizen is afforded every necessary resource to steward the trust of their people. In recent years the consuls have authorized exploratory surveys of the other moons with the express purpose of preserving marran history, science, and art, exploring means to overcome the machine plague, and evaluating prospects for long-term repatriation.
With the surveys has come a new profession - that of the Pilgrim. If the Old Pilgrimage was one of retreat, contemplation, and serenity, the New Pilgrimage is one of risk, uncertainty, and sacrifice. Pilgrims use refitted agricultural transports, courier ships, and emergency craft to identify landable sites in golden age ruins, then set down and survey the area for threats, resources, and matters of cultural, scholarly, and artistic importance for preservation on Lido.
The Eos System
An ancient white dwarf star, Eos long ago burned away the last of its nuclear starfire, and now fuses carbon into neon, magnesium, and ether in what remains of its monstrously dense core. The tiny star is still very bright, though - were it not for Mara’s enormous presence in the sky (the planet is nearly 10 times the size of the star it orbits), day on Eosian planets would be blinding fluorescent; as things are, clear days are usually lit in a golden hue.
On Calendars: As the only celestial body with a convenient and regular rotation, Eos’s rotations are counted as one Eosian year. Marrans pay little heed to days or nights. As a society that spent millenia traveling frequently between five planetoids in asynchronous orbits, marrans are accustomed to a schedule of several rests, each of several hours, over the course of a 24 hour period, with no preference given to light or darkness. For this reason, services are staffed at all times, or post messages broadcasting when they will be staffed.
Eos is called ‘the Creator’ in the various sects of marran faith, and is represented as a colorless, androgynous figure wearing robes woven of light, and carrying a red fruit and a black sword.
Primary: Mara
Mara is a gas giant, ranging from apricot to rust in hue, which dominates the sky on all of its moons; many marrans make a hobby of reading their fortunes in the storms that chase each other across Mara’s surface. Mara’s orbit is extremely tight - about 1% of the distance from Earth to Sol, and its year is longer than its day-night cycle, making tracking time extremely complex for early marrans.
Marrans call Mara “the Ancestor,” and represent them as a towering red-gold person with both male and female sex characteristics, a necklace of five bright jewels, and an iron disk they ride through the sky.
The Moons:
Vesta
The largest of Mara’s moons, Vesta is a paradise of an ocean planet with scattered, sandy archipelagos and research centers and arcologies built to roam the oceans.
Marrans of faith call Vesta “the Giver;” she is represented as a dark-hued maiden, bald, wearing a net of emeralds and silver chain.
Syrinx
Syrinx is a mysterious world, second largest of Mara’s moons, and the only one to boast rings. Covered in purple-blue grasslands, black granite canyons, and large, freshwater seas. Syrinx was primarily a temple world, and many great temples built of black stone yet stand amid the grasses.
In marran religion Syrinx is called “the Singer” and is represented as a woman garbed in strips of cloth, with only her open mouth exposed. She is usually depicted with dyed lips and a garland of flowers around her bandaged brow.
Adaghist,
A highly volcanic world, Adaghist’s rusty soil and warm temperatures once made it an agricultural paradise, outside of the frequent eruption zones. Now, those facilities are long abandoned, and the great steam clouds from the volcanic zones float over fields gone to ruin.
Adaghist is called “the Prophet” in marran religious language, and is represented as a wild-eyed elder carrying a basket of seedpods and wearing a ragged cloak.
Tarsus
Tarsus is the second-smallest planetoid in the system, and is nearly entirely covered in wetlands. There are several mountain ranges, two at the equator and one at the north pole, high enough to escape the swamps and host snow-covered peaks.
Tarsus is called “the Thief” by religious marrans, and represented as a young man in a wide hat and pants with high sandals playing a lute.
Lido
A dusty, cratered planetoid dotted with arcologies and agricultural domes, Lido is called “the Pilgrim’s Moon.” It is your home. It is everyone’s home
Checks
Pilgrim’s Moon uses six-sided dice, any reference to dice herein refers to D6s.
When a pilgrim attempts something non-trivial (meaning something difficult or dangerous, in which failure and success have meaningful consequences) they make a check.
Making a check involves adding the pilgrim’s relevant aspect and trait scores and rolling that many dice. Dice showing 1 are called moons. The number of moons required to succeed varies based on the task, from 1 to 3. When the GM calls for a check, they should tell the player the aspect, trait, and target difficulty.
Pilgrims may gain access to certifications or equipment that change the number of dice they use in a particular check, or alter that check’s difficulty. Broadly speaking, the former is a weak effect, and the latter is powerful.
Aid
When a pilgrim can reasonably help another with a task, they may spend a nerve to aid them, adding a dice to their friend’s roll for the check. The pilgrim who received the help may then mark their “trust” space indicating the pilgrim who helped them.
Trust
Every Pilgrim has a number of trust spaces equal to the number of teammates they have. When a teammate is attempting a check, if a pilgrim has that teammate’s trust space marked, the pilgrim may spend that trust to reduce the difficulty of the task by 1, to a minimum of 1, unmarking their trust space.
Style
When you describe your action in a particularly cool way - and here I mean something that takes the story and environment into account, contributes to verisimilitude, and makes the whole table take notice, the GM might award you a dice for style. Add 1 to your roll.
States
States can be imposed on characters by friends, foes, or the environment. Some states are easily removed; others are not.
Afflicted
Afflicted characters are experiencing symptoms specific to an illness or disorder. Afflictions can be removed by resting in your voidcraft, or by certain healing items and abilities.
[to write XX]
Phases of Play
In Pilgrim’s moon, Pilgrims set out from Lido, cross the void in their vessel, seek for treasure on dangerous moons, and return to Lido with their findings.
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is the point or hex crawl phase of Pilgrim’s moon, and represents the in-person exploration of the surface of Vesta, Tarsus, Syrinx, or Adaghist by Pilgrims in search of findings.
During Pilgrimage, Pilgrims enter a new area on their map, revealing the area’s features and triggering any random or planned encounters therein.
On Pilgrimage, pilgrims might discover treasure - theatrical manuscripts, gene samples, esoteric equipment, precious metals, and more - these items of importance are collectively called findings. Findings are carried in the sample chamber, and no pilgrim can carry more than one finding at a time. Findings can be deposited into
Pilgrimage is dangerous and demanding, with pilgrims thinking and fighting their hardest to survive on a hostile world. Pilgrims may continue exploring new areas as much as they can with the health and supplies they bring with them - to rest, heal, and resupply, they must return to their voidcraft for Downtime.
Downtime
When pilgrims need to rest while on Pilgrimage, they must return to their ship’s safe environment. There, they can eat, sleep, and socialize in order to heal their wounds and buoy their spirits. During downtime, each pilgrim expends 1 unit of supplies from their ship’s stock. If there are not enough supplies for everyone, someone must go without and cannot benefit from the downtime in any way. Pilgrims who are hungry in this way cannot heal until they eat.
When you expend supplies during downtime, pick an activity from the list below:
Cook
Ration parcels are nutritious, but not very satisfying. If you’ve managed to gather any fresh ingredients from the moon you’re on, add them to the meal to share the benefit with the rest of the group.
Rest
For the sick and injured, the opportunity for extra sleep is important. Heal an extra heart, or remove an affliction (see States, p.XX).
Play
Play games or instruments, talk and joke with your fellow pilgrims, and gain Trust with everyone else who chooses to play.
Traversal
Traversal is the time spent crossing the void to a moon to explore. It consists of a takeoff protocol, spaceflight, and landing. Depending on fuel, flight conditions, and the state of the craft, this might be simple or complex, dangerous or rewarding, easy or hard. In ideal conditions, no step requires a test to progress, though tests may be required to gain rewards like reduced fuel consumption, system map information, and the like.
Moonside
While moonside, pilgrims plan their next survey and invest the resources they’re recovered into furthering the development of Lido’s culture and infrastructure. These improvements are long-term, but offer lasting advantages.
While Moonside, pilgrims apply the findings they’ve recovered toward their projects (see Pilgrims, p.XX).
Danger
Any serious threat to pilgrims or their allies or resources triggers a Danger phase. During Danger, time is measured precisely and every second matters. Think of Danger as the camera zooming in on the action in slow motion. Every action performed In Danger has a duration measured in beats, representing the time required to perform the action. Players move markers around a clock to track their actions, with different actions taking more or fewer beats.
Modern marrans think of themselves as marran rather than identifying by their blended Vestal, Syraxian, Adaghisti, and Tarsa heritages. Many aspects of the cultures of those moons are carefully preserved, though - dialects, art forms, and traditions are passed down in creches and families, with the result being that most marrans have ancestors from every moon, and observe some traditions of each moon as well. All marrans are taught Lido, and it is the most widely spoken language, being universally understood.
Marrans are physically widely diverse, being common in the entire range of human hues, shapes, and sizes. Many marrans further modify their appearance for aesthetic, spiritual, and traditional reasons. Some sport tattoos, artificial colorings, enlarged ears, modified irises, altered proportions, and more.
Body modification, like all healthcare, is provided to all citizens as a condition of their participation in society. Anything considered a necessity for living is provided for by the collective - water, food, shelter, education, and healthcare. Luxuries, though, are scarce, as most working marrans are occupied with the business of preventing the erasure of the Eos system.
Projects
Projects are the reason for the Pilgrimage, the way that Pilgrims apply their findings to benefit the people of Lido. This might be direct - like using recovered sheet music to reconstruct a lost symphony - or indirect, like exchanging a kilo of palladium with the solderwrights in return for their assistance building an asteroid shield. To complete their first project, a pilgrim must apply three findings. Every subsequent project requires one more finding than the last.
Contracts [section incomplete]
Every Pilgrim signs one of six contracts, which determines the training and equipment they’ll be provided with and sets expectations for their duties while on Pilgrimage. [section incomplete]
Academic
Penitent
Expeditionary
Tech
Practitioner
Artisan
Aspects
Pilgrims have three aspects: Mind, Body, and Spirit, and nine virtues: Focus, Learning, Reaction, Strength, Speed, Stamina, Personality, Intuition, and Subtlety.
Mind represents knowledge, reasoning, and coordination
Body represents might, endurance, and toughness
Spirit represents willpower, presence, and instincts
Virtues
Mind
Focus
performing with cool and precision under pressure. Using technology. Aiming ranged weapons.
Learning
Research, translation, knowledge, academic standing, memory
Each point in learning provides a credential. Credentials are used to ask the GM questions about the subject matter. Credentials should be worked out between the player and GM, but should be somewhat specific. “Weapons” might be too broad, but “projected energy weapons” is acceptable. “History” might be too broad but “Syrinxi history” is acceptable. If no one in the survey has a relevant credential for a topic, the pilgrim with the highest learning may roll to try to gain information.
Subtlety
Sneaking, hiding, sleight of hand, spotting hidden things, identifying traps, lying
Body
Strength
Lifting, hitting, using melee weapons, breaking, pushing, intimidating
Speed
Running, swimming, snatching, jumping. Determines zones moved in Danger.
Stamina
Carrying, climbing, enduring poison and disease, resisting environmental dangers
Spirit
Personality
Charming, impressing, convincing, persuading, flirting, consoling, encouraging
Intuition
Noticing lies, identifying motivations, interpreting the unfamiliar
Reaction
Dodging attacks and avoiding surprises. Determines initiative position.
When a pilgrim attempts a difficult or dangerous task, the GM picks the relevant aspect and virtue, and the player rolls a number of dice equal to the sum of those two scores. An aspect will usually be paired with its governing trait, but not always .
Standard difficulty is 1, challenging is 2, extreme is 3.
Character creation
[interview/filling out questionnaire with the consul in charge of the New Pilgrimage - roll or pick from certification and equipment tables?]
Pick a contract and five pieces of gear from that contract. Equip three and keep the other two in voidcraft storage.
Distribute 9 points among your three aspects: Mind, Body, and Spirit. No aspect may be higher than 5 or lower than 1.
Distribute 20 points among your virtues. Virtues may not be higher than 5.
Long story short, I lost interest in westerns - manifest destiny, colonial violence, toxic men with guns - I burnt out. Fortunately, I like a lot of the systems I wrote for Hard Six and still intend to use them as part of a re-imagined game, Pilgrim's Moon. Check out the page for a preview, and stay tuned for what's to come!
I'm getting rid of the spells and magic system; I spent about three months working on it, so why would I cut it?
In short, because it didn't serve the goals I set for myself in making this game. It was big, sluggish, and didn't feel like a western. It's important to me that every part of a game I make be included deliberately, and in service to the game experience as a gestalt.
Do you remember the Homer (the car Homer Simpson designed)? I don't want bubble domes, shag carpeting, and tailfins just because they look cool, individually, or because other cars have them. I think a lot of games have mechanics only because other, older games have them, and I'm trying hard not to re-hash systems that already exist, except when that serves a specific need dictated by my design goals. Adding a bunch of extraneous features doesn't improve a product; it usually makes it worse.
Part of writing a game is, of course, writing, but editing is every bit as important, and knowing what to cut is just as important as knowing what to create. Magic still has a place in Hard Six, in the form of charms and hexes, but it will be a smaller system with less to track and more attention paid to keeping the game feeling like a quickdraw spaghetti western in hell. Do I regret doing the hours of work that I'm now axing? Not at all. That system will see light again in another game. Look out for Sanguis Draconis, which will be my next TTRPG after the publication of Hard Six.
A hearty howdy to you all, gunslingers
I've finalized how magic works, finally, and have written about 15 spells (so far). Gunslingers with a talent for witchery will be able to choose different effects for each spell depending how much time they want to spend casting it - just need a small advantage? Spend less time. Need to create a cataclysm? Spend more time. Incidentally, there will be three sources of magical power on the Range:
-Rust and Stone
-Root and Ash
-Blood and Bone
Each power requires special components to tap into, and each grants access to a different range of spells!
Factions
I recently finished working about the major factions gunslingers can ally or align with. The major powers on the Range are:
-The Range Confederation
-The Iron Rail
-The Congregation of Ghosts
-The Ranchers' League
-The Syndicate
-The Lawless
Each faction grants advantages if they're happy with you, and each can make DEADLY enemies.
I'll post a couple sample spells and faction benefits on Twitter (ugh, "X") soon, so make sure your following over there for more-regular Hard Six updates.
Bonus! I made a playlist of some of the music I've been listening to while writing, give it a listen! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/00Fpzq9AG61fGrieeV6w3W?si=kRtwypN3QmqzYIT72K2V...
I've had Hard Six's turn order system figured out for a while now, but trying to find the most articulate and approachable ways to teach it has been challenging. I think I've gotten a good handle on it now, so I'm going to describe it, and justify why I made some of these choices.
In Hard Six's Danger phase, combat actions take place on beats - a variable measurement of time representing a "moment."
Actions take 2, 4, or 6 beats, though sometimes skills modify those durations.
When Danger starts, characters set their beat marker (2 six-sided dice or token on a track from 0-12) to a value equal to their initiative (which is 6 minus their reflexes score). The yarnspinner (DM) says "beat 0." Once everyone with initiative 0 (or no one) has acted, the yarnspinner says "beat" and everyone moves their beat tracker down by 1. When your beat tracker reaches 0, you act! After acting, you set your beat tracker to the duration of the action you took.
My hope is that this system will keep people in the game - no one's looking at their phone for half an hour waiting for their turn to come around the table - you act frequently, although you only ever perform one action at a time.
This makes weapon choices interesting. A revolver might only inflict 1 wound, but it can be fired three times in the time it takes a hunting rifle to fire once. Entering and exiting cover, reloading, and moving between zones all take time as well, and the tactically-minded can time their actions advantageously around the actions of their enemies and allies.
This system also allows magic users to choose their level of investment in a spell. For the first-level spell effect, the caster uses the action Kindle Magic, which has duration 6. When they act again (after 6 beats) they may either continue the spell, activating its 2nd-level effects with the action Stoke Magic, which has a duration of 4, or terminate the spell. When they act again, they can continue the spell, activating its 3rd-level effects with the action Unleash Magic (duration 2), or terminate the spell. As you can see, fully casting a spell takes 10 beats! That's quite a while, but 3rd-circle effects are very powerful, and the time required for each casting action decreases as the spell gains momentum.
That's turn order! Please remember to follow me at @izzypetersart on twitter for regular development updates, or talk to me about the game!
Cheers
Izzy
