13th Age Discussion: A Love Letter to The Best Parts of D&D

[Kalontas]

You're in luck, because "someone who had it in his hands and can tell you how it played" describes me perfectly. I even described part of my playtest under One Unique Thing. I don't work for 13th Age's designers or publisher and am not doing paid promotion for their company; I'm just a gamer who's had to keep quiet about his latest passion for a number of weeks and is eager to finally be able to talk about it.

What did you want to know?

Then your styllistic choices were rather unfortunate. Not only I see little beyond praise, it all sounds very... synthetic. As it stands now, it certainly looks like a promotional material, regardless of actually being it.

Tell me what was bad. Tell me what you would change. Because I don't believe everything is good about it. I didn't see enough of that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Then your styllistic choices were rather unfortunate. Not only I see little beyond praise, it all sounds very... synthetic. As it stands now, it certainly looks like a promotional material, regardless of actually being it.

Want to dial it back a bit, Kalontas? You're being weirdly and unnecessarily hostile, IMO.

 

[fuzzlewump]

The 'One Unique Feature' examples you gave seem kind of... over-the-top? What is there for the group or DM who wants those features to be more gritty? i.e. not the daughter of a star or some such. Also, is it specific at all on how to make it not overlap with your background? Son of a Lich and Thief of the Guild seem very similar to me, they're both backgrounds.

Also, what are the rules behind this feature? Does it basically just function as required fluff for you character, with no mechanics? Or, 'Mother May I' approach for when it comes up?

To be honest, everything but this aspect of the game sounds right up my alley, but I think it might just be the examples I've heard for it. I realize this is fantasy land, but characters in my opinion don't need to stand out...genetically. Just in their actions should they stand out, most prominently.

 

[Isaac Chalk]

Then your stylistic choices were rather unfortunate. Not only I see little beyond praise, it all sounds very... synthetic. As it stands now, it certainly looks like a promotional material, regardless of actually being it.

Tell me what was bad. Tell me what you would change. Because I don't believe everything is good about it. I didn't see enough of that.

I would have thought that Communist magic items and the phrase 'murderhobo' would be clues enough that I was not a promotion-bot, but okay.

Stuff I didn't quite click with: the setting is okay, but merely okay. It's a medieval empire that may be about to enter a decline, and I've seen enough of those in gaming that this one didn't quite light my fire. Were I given carte blanche I would advance it to the Renaissance, since that's an era I'm keener on. Your mileage may vary.

At present, classes get varying number of background points, and while there is an 'official house rule' for equalizing all backgrounds, I would prefer that "all classes have just as much going on in their background" to be the default.

Ongoing damage stacks. It originally stacked in 4th Edition, and I can see why they took it out. A playtest on the Something Awful forums had someone enduring 60 ongoing a round. So much for the Bird Who Was An Elf (One Unique Thing.)

Layout wise, a consolidated list of "stuff that happens when you level" was mostly there - enough that the stuff not on it was easy to miss, such as upgrades and additions to iconic relationships.

Not a problem, but an interesting design choice: there's ten levels. Not twenty, not thirty: ten. I personally find it's a rare campaign that sees 20 levels, let alone thirty, but many of my friends made good points that the advancement may be a bit too jumpy.

Finally, the playtest just ended and according to this press release, the game will be ready for pre-order very soon and out in September 2012. Three months feels this side of short to go from final playtest to fully released ruleset, even for a two-person design team with little institutional inertia.

 

[pauljathome]

The 'One Unique Feature' examples you gave seem kind of... over-the-top? What is there for the group or DM who wants those features to be more gritty? i.e. not the daughter of a star or some such. Also, is it specific at all on how to make it not overlap with your background? Son of a Lich and Thief of the Guild seem very similar to me, they're both backgrounds.

Also, what are the rules behind this feature? Does it basically just function as required fluff for you character, with no mechanics? Or, 'Mother May I' approach for when it comes up?

Like so much of 13th Age a lot of this is very much up to the GM and the group. A significant portion of 13th Age is a rules light story telling game operating by a combination of group consensus and GM fiat. I hate the term "Mother may I" but it certainly has aspects of that.

As written, this is NOT a game for groups without a lot of trust between players and GM.

One example from the rulebook was "The only 1/2 ling paladin". The players and GM had no problem with that. Suddenly, in that particular campaign, 1/2lings just were not paladins and the character was unique in a very interesting way.

One of the characters in my playtest group was a stranded space traveller. Mechanically it rarely came up since he did NOT know how to create gun powder or the like. But it gave him a unique flavour and let his skill ("Space Ranger") apply sometimes to some other situations in a different way than "Ranger from the North" would have allowed.

 

[Isaac Chalk]

The 'One Unique Feature' examples you gave seem kind of... over-the-top? What is there for the group or DM who wants those features to be more gritty? i.e. not the daughter of a star or some such. Also, is it specific at all on how to make it not overlap with your background? Son of a Lich and Thief of the Guild seem very similar to me, they're both backgrounds.

It was a playtest, so strict adherence to campaign verisimilitude wasn't Priority One. I wanted to see how far we could push the system without snapping it. My conclusion was, "pretty far."

All unique schticks have to be GM approved, so they can be as minor or as major as you want, and can be social, mental, physical or mystical. Your unique feature could make you landed nobility, for example, or it could denote your status as a duotheistic priest holding two gods in your heart, or the last of a forgotten civilization's warriors, petrified for centuries and recently restored. It could even denote a character trait that the character is uniquely good at- Frodo, for example, would have A Good Heart as his unique thing, enabling him to bear the burden of the One Ring where others would fail.

The difference between a background and a unique schtick is that the backgrounds add to rolls you make, but the unique feature lets you make rolls you otherwise could not. There are many minions of the Lich King, but they walk in the world of the dead - only the Son of a Lich walks in both the world of the living and that of the dead.

Due to the looseness of the rule, very little else in the game ties into a character's one unique thing, so you could even delay picking it until you encounter something in the campaign that touches your character in a way that's unique.

 

[wrightdjohn]

There was a lot to like and I think some people will find it's mechanics very satisfying. I found some things interesting including the icon flavor. I may buy the game since I buy games all the time. I doubt though I will actually play the game. I'll steal ideas but stick to my regular game.

I looked over the playtest and too many things didn't suit me. But I recommend people check it out. I think it will be good for many groups.

 

[Skyscraper]

Thanks for taking the time to write this down, Isaac Chalk. I've read your posts with curiosity as I'm looking forward to hearing about this game a bit more. I just bought DCC myself and I'm happy to try new game systems.

This being said, here are a few comments on your posts, specifically (not on the game). Take them as you will, but they are meant constructively.

Your analysis of the game would be received by myself with more interest if it balanced the good and the bad a bit more as in a review of the game. As it stands, I read this more as a sales pitch than a review. Of course, you are free to compliment the game and skip the critisism; I'm just saying what I like to find in a game review.

Also, you've compared 13th Age to D&D a lot... One thing I didn't like about D&D 4E is how they opted to downgrade the previous versions of D&D after the announcement of 4E. Here, you're doing pretty much the same thing. You keep pointing at D&D's perceived failings to show your point about 13th Age. Apart from the occasional comparison to get your point through, I don't think it's necessary and I don't think it helps carry your point across. Again, that's just my personal preference, so take what you will from it.

If you wish to add to the description of the game, I'd love to hear more of how the Icons influence the game, examples of what they are, and what it does for the players and/or the story. In fact, more examples on just about anything would be good. I'll go read the links you point to now.

Peace,

Sky

 

[kitsune9]

Interesting concepts.

 

[ArmoredSaint]

I heard that the game's rules for weapons and armour were dreadfully...light...

If that's the case, I think I'll give it a miss...