I played D&D for the first time in 7th grade back in 1977. I was an active player for the next 25 years, but slowed down around the turn of the century. D&D and the entire gaming ecosystem has changed tremendously since then, and I found myself not really liking how the D&D ruleset has evolved. However, it's really cool to see the thousands of RPG systems that have been developed.
A while ago I decided to stop missing the kind of D&D I loved and started doing something about it. The Pillars campaign is the result. It is not finished and hopefully never will be.
TL;DR: Pillars is a homebrew Fantasy Role-Playing game designed to be easy to play but rich with details and possibilities.
Similar to original D&D (which always had a fair amount of homebrew baked in), you might hear me referring to Pillars as D&D. This will make sense to older players but may confuse—or even ruffle—players familiar with the current D&D system, which has evolved tremendously over the years.
Now it is easy to play D&D without any homebrew elements at all. This is not that game.
Development
Pillars is being developed primarily by Spencer Marks, with Stan Hickman helping quite a bit especially with the math bits. It's my hope that additional play testers will help further its development. Think old school D&D.
Pillars' rules—how the world works, its physics basically—are largely based on Steve Jackson's The Fantasy Trip. The Fantasy Trip is the precursor to a much more elaborate system Jackson developed called GURPS. I found GURPS interesting but more elaborate than I liked. I wanted a system that favors generalizations with few special cases and is relatively easy to play both as a player and—importantly to me—as the Game Master.
Basically, I started with The Fantasy Trip system and modified it to my taste. It draws on my 40 years of gaming experience, including video games and reading sci-fi and fantasy.
If you've played D&D or D&D-like games (there are so many now, including Pathfinder and GURPS), most of these rules will look familiar in general, with flavor being introduced in the specifics.
The core The Fantasy Trip rules are available free from the publisher here: https://thefantasytrip.game/products/core-games/the-fantasy-trip-melee-wizard-pocket-box/
Note: I don't use all the rules as written and have tweaked and added others. To keep the focus on story and adventure, some mechanics remain hidden from players. Sometimes players can discover how specific mechanics work through experimentation during play.
I wanted to develop a game that's relatively easy to play, with interesting but not overly complex combat, strong storytelling aspects, and a need for both strategy and tactics to succeed. However, unlike many games, success is really defined by players and their characters.
For me, success means the game and world are engaging and fun. It might mean having the character with the most powerful items or damaging spells, but it could just as easily mean running a popular inn, being a scholar, or even playing a beggar who manages to eke out a life on the streets.
There's no endgame, and there's nothing in particular a character must do other than provide themselves with basic necessities like food, shelter, and clothing. Just managing those basics could be a lot of fun or merely a starting point—it's really up to how you want to play your characters.
My focus includes strong elements of storytelling, puzzle solving, and free-form character development. By free-form, I mean you develop your character(s) organically, without specific templates or required skill trees.
Pillars uses lightweight but serious and fun-to-play game mechanics. Despite their simplicity, they offer fun, reasonably paced physical interaction with the world that hopefully captures the interesting, unique aspects of adventuring and combat.
Skills and Character Development
Anyone can attempt to learn or do anything. Skill in a particular thing helps, but is not required to be successful. Also, skill doesn't guarantee success.
Skills are rated on a numerical scale. For example, having high skill in blacksmithing means you can make quality items out of metal, while having high skill in something impossible (like physically jumping to the moon) won't make the impossible possible—the system is grounded in the world's reality.
Success depends on both your character's capabilities and the difficulty of what they're attempting. A skilled character attempting something reasonable has good odds of success, while anyone attempting something beyond the world's physical laws will fail regardless of their skill level.
Character's start out at age 16. However, you can age your character using prior experience tables.
Pillars is designed to reward creative problem-solving, strategic thinking, and character investment. Whether you want to delve into dungeons, build a merchant empire, uncover ancient mysteries, or simply survive on the streets, the game provides the framework for your story.
The rules are intentionally accessible—you don't need to master hundreds of pages before your first session. Jump in, experiment, and discover what your character can become.
Ready to explore the Pillars world? Let's begin your adventure.
Pillars is a sword and sorcery role-playing game whose emphasis is primarily story telling but also includes a detailed magic and combat system.
The Pillars universe is intended to be one of exploration, problem solving, story telling and learning. Where feasible, players do not know more than the characters. Of course, as players run more than one character, they will learn more about the world than any one of their characters. Typically, that's OK. When a player through interacting with a character they are running learns something general about the world, that information becomes common knowledge and can be freely shared among characters and players. However, specific knowledge about a specific thing should not be shared, and should be considered a specific character's proprietary knowledge.
There's no public GM Guide or manual. Lots (most) of the mechanics are hidden from characters and players (kinda like how the real world works.) Your characters are free to try to figure out how things work (and they will be able to). But players won't be able to say or do things like "Hey, my character will definitely succeed in that action because on page 34 paragraph 5 of the rules states BLAH, BLAH, BLAH." Players don't get to know stuff like that.
Magic System
Magic follows the basic mechanics of concentration and effort expenditure, but its practice is not widely observed unless you are attending the only known school of magic (which is invitation only) or have the luck (or misfortune) to be apprenticed to an existing practitioner.
In Pillars some magic is known and can be readily learned by player characters. But these common magic abilities are primarily based around learning magic recipes and becoming proficient in reciting them. These magic skills are acquired by joining one of many organizations whose members are taught skills. These organizations vary widely by region. Some are schools, some could be considered cults, others guilds while some are basic student teacher 1 on 1 relationships. The central premise here, though, is this type of magic training is somewhat superficial. Learning by rote. That's because it is usually safe and effective. A deeper study of magic, learning the root principles, is also possible but far less common and far more dangerous.
Games Master i.e. the dungeon master. The master of the universe. Same concept as most FRPGs.
The game master applies existing rules to situations characters find themself in and judicatures all aspects for game play. It’s possible that a situation may not have specific rules to govern it. That happened entirely reasonable for the game after to wing it as long as the players and characters don’t a noticeable difference in gameplay.
The games master is neutral - not favoring any particular player or character (unless there is an in game reason for doing so).
The games master knows all the rules, whereas player do not.
Characters Anyone who has played a FRP game is probably well acquainted with the notion of player characters. And there's no difference here. Characters are beings that are controlled by players and interact in the world of Pillars.
NPCS Characters control by the games master are called non player characters or NPCs and in many cases they are as developed as PCs (player characters). If you are not PC, and you are sentient in the Pillars Universe you are an NPC. It it my hope that there will be lots of interesting NPCs player characters can interact with.
One big difference between Pillars and “Standard” D&D is that **There are no character classes in Pillars. ** No character templates or public skill trees. Players create characters and do what they want with them. And while here are no character classes, specific character attributes lend themselves to specific roles. e.g. Fighters make good use of Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution while those who use magic benefit from high intelligence, wisdom, maybe a bit of dexterity and even charisma.
Note: attributes align pretty closely to current D&D character classes, but they are not exact matches or as precise, or and are generally more flexible and fluid. e.g. there's no reason why a player could not develop a successful fighter with a low strength if that was their goal.
However, there are prior experience tables that new characters can use to flesh out their background while picking up suitable skills. (Character’s begin the game at 16 or younger. The can start campaigning right away with other characters and their players or they can opt to spend as many years as I'd like getting prior experience. However, getting prior experience is not without some risk and as your characters grow older, the age, physically and mentally, so some balance is required.
The known world, referred to commonly as the Circle of the World it has existed in its current organizational state for roughy 4000 long nights.
A long night can be thought of as a year. The long night is a consistent, predictable interval that occurs after the same number of short nights or simply nights. A short night equates to what we could call a day.
Approximately 12 hours of daylight from dawn to dusk and then a short night of approximately 12 hours of evening and nighttime. The notion of an hour does exist especially in cities and larger towns where there are sundial like measuring devices, but in more rural areas a days is frequently measured by first light, last light, high light (noon) and half light - afternoon. Although those that study the skies can often provide a more specific time of day even if in the absence of measur The primary world is called Steven's World by some, but simply Earth by most of its inhabitants. Of course, it has other names as well. The known area of the world is large and there much known about it, but also much unknown.
The primary world of Pillars is old layers of civilizations have come and gone leaving tracers not unlike the stratification of rock formations formed over epochs.
Most the inhabitants are aware that they are not alone and that earth is just one node in a vast cosmos.
Before the great conflagration now know has the Splintering, there was the Isle of Man: a vast continent home to many tribes, ways and cultures.
When these peoples were not at war with one another, they were forming or breaking alliances and treaties. This behavior climaxed with the splintering the Isle of Man was rent asunder, the tribes and their lands were scattered and cast into the oceans. The Main land is all that remains of the former days.
Now the tribes have their smaller lands, and while the bickering continues, it has interested in a dynamic mix of trade, treaties and skirmishes, as tribes try to expand their influence or at least keep what they deem is theres.
These days, the tribes and customs have become even more diversified than when they shared the entire land.
As a new player, your character will start on the main land but there are many choices to made in the creation of your character beyond determining characteristics.