Pilgrims of the Flying Temple Playtest

Way back in the early eighties, my cousins, my sister, and my brother were playing Dungeons and Dragons, and they let six year old me play.  It has stuck with me as one of my most cherished childhood memories.

Fast forward to yesterday.  The Evil Hat people are playtesting a Fate Accelerated Edition version of Pilgrims of the Flying Temple.  My kids love the Skylanders video games, and the setting is kind of the same, so I thought there was a good chance that they'd catch on.

I still have that old wooden d20 from that game of Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, so I really wanted to have some props to help the kids get into the game.  First, I made a "racetrack" of the Fate Ladder to help them understand how Fate dice work.  It worked and it's been popular on the Google+ community page. I assume I'll be revisiting this again in the future.

I didn't follow the playtest completely.  First of all, this was the kids first time roleplaying, and the first time in this setting.  So we started with the whale letter from the original Do.  I even made the letters.

We had 4 Pilgrims.

There was Pilgrim Tangled Taffy, a clumsy kid that ate some magical candy that gave him stretchy limbs.

My wife played Pilgrim Distracted Dolphin, a sailor girl that carried a ton of flotsam trinkets from a hundred worlds.

My eldest boy played Pilgrim Molasses Brick, who sends all this time building gadgets with his constructive block toys.

And I had a GMNPC named Pilgrim Sticky Fingers, who was a reformed street thief that I mostly used to give hints.

This first letter was a quick one.  The pilgrims got the whale to vomit up the planet by swinging on his uvula and then stuck around to clean all the ambergris off of Melanie's house.  Everyone had a good time, and we played a second letter, where a team had to rescue a goblin survivor of a roving band of murder hobos.

This session was great.  The team helped the goblin turn her world into a theme park, which was a huge success.  Distracted Dolphin made a fish taco stand, Molasses Brick made a brick roller coaster, Tangled Taffy hung decorations from the trees, and Sticky Fingers *ahem* collected the admissions money. Okay, he gave it back. We all added to the quick map to show how the new park was going to look.

By the end of the letter, there had still only had one fight, in which they all defended themselves from a hungry troll.  Two whole adventures, with all sorts of action and adventure, without a single attack roll made by the party.

THEN . . . the pilgrims returned home to find that the Flying Temple had disappeared.  It blew the little one's mind.  They found the giant dragon egg in its place. After hatched, he coughed up a letter - just like Spike from My Little Pony! - and they couldn't wait to play the next game.  And that cliffhanger is where we ended.