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Inspirations & Early Ideas

I started noodling the idea for this game at the beginning of the year when I played Hades 2. One of the new things I really like about that game is the resource collection. As you travel from room to room, there is a chance of finding metals, fish and plants that you use to cast your incantations. It really fed into the witch-y feel of the game, which is one of the big things that differentiates it from the first Hades. I was really drawn to the idea of a solo RPG about doing the same.

Then I was thinking about Stoneburner by FariRPGs, specifically its expedition generator. Before delving into one of the demon-infested asteroids of the Long Belt, you roll a set of polyhedrals on a sheet of paper and turn them into areas with events based on the size of the dice and their results. For example, if you travel to Kazab Baram, a d4 that rolls a 4 becomes a “crashed space ship” and a d12 that rolls a 7 becomes a “corrupted greathall”.

I tweaked this slightly so that each die is always the same type of location. The d12 is always “The Cave of” something, for example, unlike in Stoneburner where the prompts on the same die are more distinct.

I’ve found the fill-in-the-blank-style prompting to feel really novel and compelling. Multiple of my playtesters pointed out that it was a simple system that led to evocative names. This was exactly what I was hoping for!

At this point, I had a narrative genre and a core system, but I was stuck with an incomplete hook for the game. I knew you were collecting ingredients for a ritual, but what did the ritual do? I spent a while mulling on this idea while I was working on my university projects, until tragedy struck.

Tragedy.

In February 2026, my dog Timmy died at nearly 15 years of age. Up until this point, the game was just notes and ideas. But after this happened, I took some time away from uni to clear my head and focus on this game instead. The first full draft was written in a fit of grief during that first 24 hours after he died. It’s fitting, really, because that’s exactly when the game is set.

It’s interesting looking back at it a few months later, especially the endings (I’ll talk more about the mechanics of those in a bit). The ending that’s hardest to get sees your familiar coming back to life with a full extra lifespan ahead of them. He was nearly 15 when he died, I’m 22! He’d been in my life for basically as long as I remember, and it won’t be until 2034 that he’ll have been in less than half of my life. That’s staggering to think about. When I wrote the endings, I wanted nothing more than to have him back and redo everything, taking better advantage of the time we had together. But, as much as that seems like the “best” ending (in the sense that it’s the hardest to get and sees the spell you’re casting at it’s most powerful), it’s not the ending that I would want now. Instead, all I’d ask for is the middle ending, to have him back for a single day. And I’m sure, as time passes even more, I wouldn’t want to attempt this ritual at all.

Endings

Once I had worked out the player character’s motivation, I could see an ending and a final resolution mechanic. At the end of the game, you choose three of the cards you have collected to make a hand and the quality of the hand determines the ending you get. From best to worst, the hands are: three of a kind, straight flush, straight, flush, and then anything else. I spent a while looking at different card games and the hands they used. My first thought was poker, but poker has 10 different hands (and still 7 if you counted everything using 4 or less cards as one outcome), which felt like far too much nuance. Would there actually be a meaningful difference between a 4/7 ending and a 5/7 ending? I looked around for card games with other hands and stumbled across Brag. Brag is traditionally played with 3-card hands, which led to 6 possible hands. I then combined the two hands that don’t use all three cards into the “anything else” category, leaving me with 5 degrees of success. I’ve never played a game that features more than 5 degrees of success, but my gut told me that anything higher was going to be difficult to write.

Since the procedures that lead up to the ending feature a large amount of randomness and player choice, I have no idea what the odds are of getting each ending. If anyone is interested in running the numbers for this, let me know and I’ll add an addendum here! But currently I have no idea where to begin with that.

Optional Tables

After the first couple of early playtests, I started to think about any extra support I could provide for the players. Things like character names and additional prompts for the ingredients you are collecting. I already spoke about this in a recent post, Musings on Randomness, but spark tables are really inspiring me right now. I love how a few simple words can prompt so much creativity, and wanted to put some of that in the back of the game.

Each table is a d4/d6 table, which leads to 24 results in total. This was mainly for space reasons, it meant each table could fit exactly on 1 page. But it also feels big enough that you probably won’t get a duplicate if you roll on it 4 or 5 times in a game.

I’m really happy with the entries in each table too. Some personal favourite names include Hotaru (the Japanese word for firefly), Perecles (in honour of an NPC from my Godkiller game), and Starpot (this just came out of me, but I think it’s really cute).

Conclusion

This feels like the first game I’ve made that is really personal to me. Up until this point, my games have been about genres I like or mechanics I found novel, but it’s not really felt like you could look into my soul through my work. This is different. It’s still a genre I like, and it’s still mechanics I find novel! But I’m also in there in a way I’ve never been before. It’s a weird feeling, to bear my soul like this, but it’s exhilarating! This definitely feels like my new favourite project, the new thing I’m proudest of, the new thing that represents me best.

What’s Next?

Big news! I’ve been accepted into Gamefound’s RPG Party 2026! The Gamefound team will be mentoring a group of crowdfunders from teams of various sizes and various levels of experience. This is my first time running a crowdfunding campaign which is scary but also really exciting! There’s a hugely diverse set of projects coming out, from solo stuff to original trad systems to third party Daggerheart material! I’ve particularly got my eye on what Tori Truslow is working on, their previous game Tending looks absolutely gorgeous!

I’ll be making Dewin, a solo RPG inspired by Welsh ghostlore that uses the same system as A Witch’s Pilgrimage! I had the idea for this game back in 2024, when I read The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts by Delyth Badder and Mark Norman. I actually wrote a review of that book back on my old blog, where I first said I was making Dewin. I’ve been shopping it around different systems this whole time and it finally feels like this is the one.

Since I’m making a second game in this system, I’ll also be working on a Creator Kit for other designers interested in using the system! This will be my second creator kit, after the RPTree kit I made back when I released ABODE. You can check out the page for the Pilgrim’s Path Creator Kit on Itch now, although there’s only a logo there at the moment.

This is all really exciting, and I’m sure I’ll be telling you more about Dewin soon. Join the Patreon at the free tier to get my writing in your inbox, and consider subscribing for $3 per month for access to my Work-In-Progress games, there were three drafts of A Witch’s Pilgrimage published here before it released!

Thank you so much for reading, just a reminder that you can purchase A Witch’s Pilgrimage on Itch right here!

Speak soon!

CJ

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