Journeyman Pocket Edition
A downloadable game
What is Journeyman?
Journeyman is a tabletop roleplaying game that emphasizes minimal mechanics and maximal trust at the table. It eschews complex tomes of rules and relies instead on a referee to adjudicate situations of uncertainty in a fair manner that represents the shared world in which play takes place. For instance, if magic or psionic powers or aliens with weird abilities exist in your shared world, it’s important everyone understands and agrees on how those abilities work or is willing to defer to the referee.
In short, “Play worlds, not rules.”
Presented in phone-friendly PDF, pocketmod, and pocketfold formats. It looks great in color, and the pocketfold format can do double duty as a GM screen.
License
Journeyman is Copyright © 2023 Zachery Bir of Neverending Pretending
The text of Journeyman is released CC-BY 4.0.
I would be thrilled to see what folks can come up with on their own. If you develop a supplement, please let me know and I'll happily promote it!
Colophon
Journeyman is developed in Affinity Publisher 2 using Rustic Jack, Alegreya, and Alegreya SC fonts.
The cover art is “Corpse Candles” by Gustave Doré and Héliodore Joseph Pisan.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to David Koslow for being a tirelessly amiable springboard for my ideas, and to my found families across Discord and Mastodon. You are loved.
Supplements
- Florik has created a series of tables for use with his setting: Auf der Walz
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.2 Further cleanupOct 26, 2023
- v1.1 Uploaded - Streamlined Risk ResolutionAug 27, 2023
Comments
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A really lovely game! You could play anything with these rules and they're explained very clearly and neatly. Also I love tiny little books and this is the tiniest little book.
Thanks so much! Creating a system that could be dropped in as a replacement for any other game out there was definitely my goal.
From a read, I like Journeyman so much that I've created a set of Fantasy character options for a module I'm bound to run, simply to inspire my players. This is highly specific, of course, and in German to boot ... still, wanted to let you know.
Thanks so much! This is exactly the kind of genre/setting specific extensions I was anticipating. I’ll add it to the page as a supplement.
Just a little heads-up, I have a new set of options ready, in English, for 1930's pulp and hardboiled adventures. It's called Daredevils, in honour of an old RPG, and can be found unter the same link as above.
I love what you achieved with the writing here. It's the perfect distillation of FKR principles conveyed in an extremely friendly and approachable way. Not too much, not too little: Journeyman Pocket Edition is just right!
Thanks for releasing this one and bringing more FKR games to itch.
The bundle is being recreated
https://itch.io/b/2023/itchio-indie-creator-bundle
How do other authors release content for Journeyman?
I’ve updated the description to highlight that Journeyman is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Feel free to contribute supplements or adventures compatible with Journeyman!