The Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage is a tabletop roleplaying game about uncovering your character’s true self over the course of a sacred journey. As a pilgrim, you’ll face challenges that test your chosen virtues, reveal hidden truths about your past, and grant you the power to perform miracles. Through moments of divine intervention and personal revelation, you’ll discover who you truly are and who you wish to become.

Playing the Game

Your journey begins with three crucial choices that define who your character aspires to be: their Name, their Mantra, and their Sigil. As you travel, you’ll face challenges that test these choices, rolling dice and drawing upon your experiences to overcome obstacles. Through moments of revelation at sacred waystones and after witnessing miracles, you’ll uncover truths about your character’s past that grant you new strength and insight. Each of these elements serves as a foundation for your character’s growth and transformation throughout the game.

Names and Virtues

Your pilgrim’s name isn’t just a label—it’s a declaration of intent, a virtue they wish to embody. When selecting your virtue-name, consider concepts that leave room for interpretation and growth. The most compelling virtues are those that can be challenged by difficult circumstances and might mean different things to different people.

Strong virtue names often come from:

• Classical virtues (Justice, Temperance, Courage, Wisdom)
• Actions (Resolve, Perseverance, Reflection)
• Qualities of character (Honor, Grace, Clarity)
• Ideals of community (Unity, Accord, Fellowship)
• Absolute ideals (Perfection, Truth, Purity)
• Powerful concepts (Vengeance, Strength, Victory)

Avoid choosing names that represent concrete roles or skills—“Swordmaster” or “Healer” speak to what you can do, not who you aspire to be. Remember that the most profound character development often comes from failing to live up to your chosen virtue or discovering that your understanding of it was flawed. A pilgrim named “Perfection” who learns to accept flaws, or “Vengeance” who discovers the cost of retribution, walks a powerful path of transformation.

The Power of Mantras

Your mantra is more than just words—it’s the lens through which your pilgrim understands their virtue. It should contain both wisdom and warning, suggesting how your virtue might be tested while hinting at your pilgrim’s past. The most powerful mantras often contain tensions between opposing ideas, specific imagery that grounds them in the physical world, or suggestions of sacrifice. They serve as both guide and challenge, helping you navigate difficult choices while questioning your understanding of your chosen virtue.

Example Pairs:

Justice

• “Power unchecked leads us further from the path.”
• The hand of law is even; its scales balanced
• The world hangs by the chain of Man; preserve its weakest link

Resolve

• “The storm breaks against the mountain’s face.”
• I will bend before I break
• Each step leaves the past further behind

Unity

• “None walk alone beneath heaven’s gaze.”
• In separation we are incomplete
• The strongest walls are built of many stones

Sacred Sigils

Throughout your journey, you carry one significant item from your past—your Sigil. This sacred object bridges who you were with who you wish to become, providing unique advantages in times of conflict.

Sigils can take a variety of physical forms, from weapons to tools to personal effects, and provide a specific mechanical effect on your dice rolls. If none of the following examples suit your character, work with your Guide to create a custom Sigil that fits your story – feel free to rename or reflavor these examples.

The Blade - A symbol of decisive action that grants confidence in conflict, yet proves brittle when struck.

Power: The Rending - Remove all rolled 3’s on the enemy side

Common forms:

• A battered spearhead, cloven from its shaft
• A soldier’s well-maintained sword
• A chef’s knife, worn with long use

The Cord - Binding humanity together, yet potentially constraining

Power: Lifeline - If a companion rolls a 1, set it to your highest die’s value

Common forms:

• A length of sailing rope, strong and rough
• A spool of tailor’s thread
• Worn iron shackles, fetters smoothed with time

The Lantern - Lighting the way, yet drawing unwanted attention

Power: Luminary - The first 5 rolled in your dice pool does not count against your contribution limit

Common forms:

• A hooded burglar’s lamp
• A thick handmade pillar candle
• A censer on a long chain

The Cloth - Protection and comfort, yet potentially blinding

Power: Blinding Luck - Remove one even-numbered die from the opponent pool, add one die to the next encounter pool

Common forms:

• An oiled traveling cloak
• A colorfully embroidered stole
• A fraying woolen blanket

The Staff - Support and strength, yet inflexible

Power: Hold The Line - Once per conflict when you roll a one, reroll all dice

Common forms:

• A carved walking stick
• A guardsman’s worn baton
• A rusting farmer’s fork

The Tome - Knowledge and power, with hidden costs

Power: Forbidden Lore - Reroll one of your dice for each six in the enemy pool

Common forms:

• A ledger of debts and payments
• An ancient, weathered map
• A waterlogged sailor’s journal

Facing Challenges

When your pilgrim faces obstacles, they draw upon their accumulated experiences. Every conflict begins with a single six-sided die, with additional dice granted for character truths gained through revelations. The Guide sets the challenge’s difficulty: simple tasks require a total of 5, while difficult challenges demand 10, and truly legendary feats require 15 or more.

For example, when attempting to scale a city wall at night, you might roll your die and get a 4. Since the task’s difficulty is 5, you fall just short of success.

However, you’re not always just testing yourself against a static challenge. When facing active opposition or unpredictable forces—like a suspicious guard or a raging storm—the world itself resists change through challenge dice. These are rolled and their results subtracted from your highest rolls.

Working Together: You can join forces with other pilgrims, pooling your dice together. When doing so, keep a number of highest rolls equal to the largest individual contribution. For instance:

• Three pilgrims work together to convince a suspicious guard. They roll 6, 4, 3, and can keep the two highest rolls (6 + 4 = 10). The guard’s challenge die shows 3, making the final result 7—enough to succeed at a simple task.
• In a climactic moment, four pilgrims face divine opposition. They roll together, getting 6, 6, 5, 3, keeping the three highest rolls (17 total). Multiple challenge dice add up to 5, leaving a final result of 12.

Divine Intervention

Miracles manifest through tokens of divine favor, precious markers that each pilgrim may hold up to three of at a time. You earn these tokens at waystones or by truly embodying your chosen virtue. While you may witness many miracles, you can only contribute one token to any single divine act.

The scope of a miracle grows with participation:

• One token enables personal miracles aligned with your nature
• Two tokens create greater works affecting your immediate group
• Three tokens can reshape reality itself

Each miracle ripples beyond its immediate effects, creating changes that will echo in unexpected ways. More importantly, witnessing such divine power often leads to revelation, as the experience forces pilgrims to confront deeper truths about themselves.

Moments of Revelation

As you journey, you’ll discover truths about your character through revelations gained at waystones or after witnessing miracles. These moments of insight happen in three stages:

First, your Guide shares a truth that touches all pilgrims present. These shared prompts often carry multiple meanings, like “The greatest feats are the work of many” or “You may always return home, but you can never go back.”

Next, each pilgrim draws their own complication—a single word that colors how this truth resonates with their past. This might be:

• An emotion (Regret, Pride, Fear)
• A state of being (Lost, Hidden, Driven)
• An unresolved situation (Unfinished, Unspoken, Revenge)

Finally, by interpreting how these elements interact, you’ll discover a concrete truth about your character—a specific memory, action, or belief that has shaped them. This character truth becomes something you can draw upon in future challenges.

Examples of Character Truths:

• The revelation “Rage is a coal” paired with “Regret” becomes: “I burned down my family’s forge in a moment of anger”
• “Even the greatest of sins can be forgiven” with “Unsung” reveals: “I took blame for my brother’s crime to protect our mother’s happiness”
• “The last hope is dying” combined with “Driven” shows: “I keep fighting long after others give up, even when it hurts those around me”

Using Character Truths: When you face a challenge where one of your character truths would meaningfully inform your approach, you gain an additional die to your pool. These truths represent concrete experiences and realizations that have shaped you—they’re not just skills or knowledge, but deep understandings that change how you face similar situations.

For instance, the truth “I burned down my family’s forge in a moment of anger” might grant a die when:

• Counseling someone else struggling with their temper
• Recognizing the signs of mounting rage in a tense situation
• Understanding the true cost of unchecked emotions
• Making hard choices about forgiveness or redemption

Similarly, “I took blame for my brother’s crime to protect our mother’s happiness” could apply when:

• Weighing the price of truth against peace
• Deciding whether to expose another’s deception
• Understanding the burden of carrying another’s secret
• Confronting the consequences of well-intentioned lies

Running the Game

Your role as Guide is to facilitate a journey of discovery, helping players uncover who their pilgrims truly are through challenges, revelations, and moments of divine intervention. The path between waystones forms the backbone of your pilgrimage, with each waystone offering a chance for reflection, revelation, and the recovery of miracle tokens. However, the true story emerges in how you challenge your pilgrims’ understanding of their chosen virtues and revealed truths.

Challenging Characters

When planning your sessions, look for opportunities to specifically challenge your pilgrims’ established truths and virtues. If a character’s truth is “I abandoned my post to save a friend,” create situations that force them to choose between duty and loyalty again. When a pilgrim named “Mercy” learns the truth “I executed a surrendering enemy to protect my squad,” present them with similar prisoners who might pose a threat.

The most compelling challenges often arise when:

• A character truth conflicts with their chosen virtue
• Two pilgrims’ truths or virtues pull in opposite directions
• A past decision’s consequences return in an unexpected way
• A character must choose between two truths they’ve learned

Remember that the goal isn’t to invalidate their truths or virtues, but to deepen and complicate their understanding of them.

Setting Challenges

When pilgrims face obstacles, you’ll represent the world’s resistance through challenge dice. These come in several forms, each representing different types of opposition:

Type	Dice Range	Examples
Environmental	1-2 dice	Treacherous terrain, Harsh weather, Racing against time
Opposition	2-3 dice	Active resistance from NPCs, Hostile crowds, Rival schemes
Internal	1 die	Personal doubts, Conflicting virtues, Temptation
Divine	3+ dice	Direct opposition from higher powers, Cosmic forces, Sacred laws

The number of challenge dice you roll should reflect not just difficulty, but dramatic weight. A simple guard might roll more dice than a deadly cliff if the guard represents a pilgrim confronting their past. Similarly, challenges that test a pilgrim’s virtue directly—like Mercy facing an enemy’s surrender, or Unity trying to act alone—should include at least one Internal die.

Consider reducing challenge dice when:

• A pilgrim’s truth directly relates to the challenge
• The group finds a creative way to reduce opposition
• A sigil’s power specifically counters the obstacle
• The narrative momentum supports the pilgrims’ success

Guiding Revelations

When pilgrims gain revelations, you’ll present a shared prompt for all to witness. While you’ll have access to tables of potential prompts, consider first crafting one that resonates with recent events:

• After a miracle of healing: “Even a bed of straw is welcome to the weary”
• Following conflict between pilgrims: “The greatest feats are the work of many”
• When facing impossible odds: “An unachievable goal can be the guiding stars on our true path”

Help each pilgrim interpret their drawn complication in light of this shared truth. The best character truths are:

• Concrete rather than abstract
• Tied to specific past events or beliefs
• Relevant to the pilgrim’s chosen virtue
• Complex enough to be both strength and weakness

Use questions to help players find their character truths:

• “What specific moment in your past does this bring to mind?”
• “How did this shape your understanding of your chosen virtue?”
• “What did you lose or gain when you learned this?”

Managing Divine Power

Miracles reshape reality according to the number of tokens invested, but should never simply solve problems. Instead, they should transform situations in ways that create new challenges and opportunities:

One Token - Personal Scale:

• Personal transformations
• Localized physical changes
• Insights into hidden truths
• Moment-to-moment divine aid

Two Tokens - Group Scale:

• Group-wide blessings
• Permanent environmental changes
• Breaking or forming bonds
• Communing with higher powers

Three Tokens - World Scale:

• Fundamental reality shifts
• Large-scale divine intervention
• Creation or destruction of sacred places
• Changes to the nature of things

Every miracle should have consequences beyond its immediate effects:

• A healing might cause nearby plants to wither
• Creating water in the desert might draw dangerous creatures
• Divine insight could attract unwanted attention
• Blessing a weapon might bind its wielder to a sacred duty

Between Waypoints

After each session, consider:

• Which character truths haven’t been tested recently?
• What consequences of past choices could resurface?
• How have miracles changed the world?
• What connections between pilgrims’ stories could be explored?

Create situations that:

• Test different interpretations of pilgrims’ virtues
• Call back to earlier revelations in new contexts
• Force choices between competing truths
• Reveal the lasting impact of previous miracles

Weaving the Journey

Your role is to maintain tension between several key elements:

• The physical journey and the spiritual one
• Individual growth and group dynamics
• Divine power and human limitation
• Who the pilgrims were and who they’re trying to become

Present challenges that:

• Have multiple solutions favoring different virtues
• Create space for both action and reflection
• Allow for both success and failure to drive the story forward
• Connect personal struggles to larger themes

Signs and Portents

Between waystones, show the divine nature of the journey through:

• Natural phenomena that mirror pilgrims’ internal states
• Strangers who echo past revelations
• Symbols that resonate with chosen virtues
• Places shaped by previous miracles
• Challenges that test new interpretations of old mantras

The world should feel alive with meaning, where even simple choices can have sacred significance. Let your pilgrims’ virtues, mantras, and revelations guide you in crafting these moments of resonance.

Remember that your role is not to judge the pilgrims’ choices, but to help reveal their consequences. The most powerful moments often come when pilgrims must choose between competing goods, or when their understanding of their chosen virtue is challenged by circumstance.