13th Age pros and cons?

[Skyscraper]

Thanks for yet more replies.

The cooperative storytelling is very appealing to me. I like games to include some rules in that respect, that goes beyond allowing rolling a die (which, to me, is not storytelling, it's rolling a die). So what is hinted at above allowing a player to trade icon points to add story elements to the game, if I understand correctly, is very interesting.

p.s.: I like the argument that "if your group is comprised of jerks, you won't like this game". I wonder who will react to that with "oh ok, let's forget about it then". Haha

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Pros: Shared Narrative

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I've found that the let's-play stuff does even more of this. Each player takes turns establishing part of a room that you want to use for a cool battle, or each player describes part of the party's progress through a dungeon (when you want to get through it quickly instead of charting each ten-foot step).

(...)
Pros: Simple Enemies

Enemies use much more of their own AI to determine how they act, which lets me as the GM fling down a lot more enemies at once without bogging games down. Rather than having a lot of abilities, enemies usually have just one or two, plus other effects that automatically trigger in key circumstances. I've heard people complain about this making enemies too simple, but honestly, I can always complicate 'em if I want 'em. Starting them simple lets me add complication where I want it, like the designers do in their let's play adventures (where monsters use special abilities specifically where it's plot-important).

What's this "let's play" element that you are hinting at in your article? Does it represent something in the game? Is it some sort of column within the book where the designers provide optional rules or other types of suggestions for adventure design or gameplay? Or something else? Or nothing?

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On quickness of combat: I have trouble reconciling that one person says that it takes 2 hours + for his battles (and he seems to have a similar group to mine), while others speak of 20 minutes. Do people that have 30 minute and less in most of their combats, take a leisurely approach to combat, full of jokes and potato chips? Or do they drive the game forward in a disciplined way where everyone is ready on their turn, the damage dice are rolled simultaneously with the to hit die, and the tone is generally serious (serious does not mean people dont have fun)? Do you use minis and battlemaps or not?

I'm sorry to bring this back and I don't want to beat on a dead horse, but I've most incredulously read so many 4E threads where speed of combat was discussed, and I couldn't believe my eyes when some people posted that their battles lasted 30-60 minutes, or even less. While mine were 2-3 hours. So I came to the conclusion that these people simply had a very disciplined approach to gaming, at least during combats, to conclude combat scenes with such celerity. There were many suggestions, from use of dry-erase boards to write initiative and conditions, to rolling damage at the same time as the attack, to having players prepare their turns while their predecessor was acting, to the DM outsoucring some of his tasks (e.g. initiative tracking, etc...), to introducing a strict approach during battles (no talking when not on your turn, ...), etc... Our group has tried to improve when we played 4E, but the best we could do was bring down battles from 3 to 2.5 hours and we simply didn't like to need to have that approach to be able to cut down on combat durationg, to in turn be able to do something else than combat during a given session. And I wont talk about the mega battles that took more than one session to conclude! Just your regular run-of-the-mill (Level+2) battle.

 

[RevTurkey]

Probably repeating points already well made but...

my group's experience:

Good game. We like it. The way things are set up makes for many gentle pushes towards roleplaying and storytelling. Players felt invested in their characters quickly without much work.

We liked rolling lots of dice...reminded us of Tunnels and Trolls I think.
Monsters had some interesting triggers and less predictable than many games.

The writing in the book is easy to read and fun. I hate dry text book approaches and this doesn't fall into that category...quite the opposite.

No tactical grid required...hurray! That's how we like to play around my neck o' the woods.

The thing I noticed as a DM though is that rounds go by very quickly. Okay combat might take a while but I found I was getting to a new round fast...and yet everybody had done something exciting, interesting or at least attempted to do. Book keeping was easy and I found myself getting more and more animated and enjoying the game...telling the story with more flair as my mind was free of the details of crunchy rules checking but yet inspired by the action happening in the game.

Is it the only game I will be playing? Nope. But it is a damn fine one and going to get a lot of use.



Oh..sorry..cons: erm...more utility spells for the Wizard? That was the only complaint.

 

[Skyscraper]

Probably repeating points already well made but...

my group's experience:

Good game. We like it. The way things are set up makes for many gentle pushes towards roleplaying and storytelling. Players felt invested in their characters quickly without much work.

We liked rolling lots of dice...reminded us of Tunnels and Trolls I think.
Monsters had some interesting triggers and less predictable than many games.

The writing in the book is easy to read and fun. I hate dry text book approaches and this doesn't fall into that category...quite the opposite.

No tactical grid required...hurray! That's how we like to play around my neck o' the woods.

The thing I noticed as a DM though is that rounds go by very quickly. Okay combat might take a while but I found I was getting to a new round fast...and yet everybody had done something exciting, interesting or at least attempted to do. Book keeping was easy and I found myself getting more and more animated and enjoying the game...telling the story with more flair as my mind was free of the details of crunchy rules checking but yet inspired by the action happening in the game.

Is it the only game I will be playing? Nope. But it is a damn fine one and going to get a lot of use.



Oh..sorry..cons: erm...more utility spells for the Wizard? That was the only complaint.

Thanks!

What is the average duration of a combat for your group, realistically?

When you say no grid, do you still use minis?

Thanks!

 

[RevTurkey]

Hi...

Not played as much of this as we want to yet so might change in higher levels..but..
Each combat took about 20-30 minutes I would guess...didn't time it...we were having too much fun beating up the critters lol.

We don't use minis...just a scrap of paper and our imaginations. We have done in the past and they can be fun....I used to have a big collection when I was younger...but with the right rules system you don't need them and sometimes we find that they slow the action down and limit our ability to visualisethings happening in the story. A 25mm piece of lead can't really compete with a fertile mind. That said...minis can be fun too but this game doesn't need them...the range and closing distance mechanics are simple, elegant and work pretty nicely.

 

[Rel]

Just to throw another data point on the pile, Skyscraper, my group is pretty "beer and pretzels" since we have all known each other almost 25 years minimum. This week we got a bit of a late start so only gamed for three hours. In that time we had two fairly big combats plus a fair bit of exploration and problem solving.

We don't use any extraordinary measures to keep everybody on task. I do use note cards for initiative which helps me stay on track with that and I sometimes say things like, "It's the fighter's turn and up next will be the wizard." But really we're pretty easy going about it and combat moves right along.

 

[NinjaPaladin]

Thanks for yet more replies.

The cooperative storytelling is very appealing to me. I like games to include some rules in that respect, that goes beyond allowing rolling a die (which, to me, is not storytelling, it's rolling a die). So what is hinted at above allowing a player to trade icon points to add story elements to the game, if I understand correctly, is very interesting.

It's left up to interpretation, and I've seen different groups handle it in different ways. Some people leave the GM entirely in charge, and the GM is the arbiter of when a rolled-icon comes into play. Others (like me) let the players suggest things. It's the first time I've seen something (at least in a d20 system) that would work for a heist or thriller game, where you the GM could have the heroes all at gunpoint in a featureless room, and then the player can say, "Aha, but I know something you don't," put the icon die on the table, and then essentially retcon in THE TWIST ("I suspected you might double-cross us, so I called in some favors with ATF. The guard right behind you has been deep cover for ten months..."), and have it give the fun of "AHA, what happens NOW?"

(And for non-mind-breaking stuff, it also just allows people to get out of trouble or turn things in a direction that is more where they want to go. Improv, playing along, letting people make their own narrative. Like I said, I had a demon turn out to be someone's ex-boyfriend, which was kind of hilarious. He's become a recurring character.)

What's this "let's play" element that you are hinting at in your article? Does it represent something in the game? Is it some sort of column within the book where the designers provide optional rules or other types of suggestions for adventure design or gameplay? Or something else? Or nothing?

The 13th Age folks have an organized play program, where they send out free adventures via e-mail for GMs to run, either at cons, shops, or in their own homes. The adventures come in chapters or sections, like "Crown of the Lich King, Part 1 of 6", so GMs who are tired or stumped can play this out of the box, and players without a constant GM can also go from game to game knowing roughly what's going on at any given time (you always get a clue at the end of part 1, you find a contact at the end of part 2, and so on, until you get the crown at the end of part 6). I understand that 4e and Pathfinder have similar programs.

I've only run the organized play stuff a little myself, since I like my campaign just fine, but the organized play adventures are GREAT sources of fun new monsters and new ideas (like the use of montage sequences to get quickly through things you don't want to spend a lot of time on). So even if you don't intend to run them as written, I would absolutely take a look at them and mine them for content.

The link to sign up (and get access to the current adventure and all past ones) is at:
http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=12301

On quickness of combat: I have trouble reconciling that one person says that it takes 2 hours + for his battles (and he seems to have a similar group to mine), while others speak of 20 minutes. Do people that have 30 minute and less in most of their combats, take a leisurely approach to combat, full of jokes and potato chips? Or do they drive the game forward in a disciplined way where everyone is ready on their turn, the damage dice are rolled simultaneously with the to hit die, and the tone is generally serious (serious does not mean people dont have fun)? Do you use minis and battlemaps or not?

I'm sorry to bring this back and I don't want to beat on a dead horse, but I've most incredulously read so many 4E threads where speed of combat was discussed, and I couldn't believe my eyes when some people posted that their battles lasted 30-60 minutes, or even less. While mine were 2-3 hours. So I came to the conclusion that these people simply had a very disciplined approach to gaming, at least during combats, to conclude combat scenes with such celerity. There were many suggestions, from use of dry-erase boards to write initiative and conditions, to rolling damage at the same time as the attack, to having players prepare their turns while their predecessor was acting, to the DM outsoucring some of his tasks (e.g. initiative tracking, etc...), to introducing a strict approach during battles (no talking when not on your turn, ...), etc... Our group has tried to improve when we played 4E, but the best we could do was bring down battles from 3 to 2.5 hours and we simply didn't like to need to have that approach to be able to cut down on combat durationg, to in turn be able to do something else than combat during a given session. And I wont talk about the mega battles that took more than one session to conclude! Just your regular run-of-the-mill (Level+2) battle.

So, only speaking for myself:

I largely sat out 4e and Pathfinder -- played some 4e but had work/life conspiring to make it hard to get a game going, so I cannot compare those except in terms of what I have heard.

I ran a 3e campaign from 1st-20th level, and by the end, even a speed-bump fight was likely to take 45 minutes to an hour, and for the big chapter-ending boss battles, a single round (5-6 players plus an equal number of monsters) could take upwards of an hour. We’d play from 6:00-10:30, telling jokes and having fun but never entirely stopping, and might only get through half of a big boss battle.

In contrast, I’ve run 13^th at conventions as a “learn to play” kind of deal. I had three hours slotted, and the first hour was character generation and explaining basic concepts. With two hours remaining, I have still (every time I’ve done this) gotten through two short fights, a montage scene that would essentially be close to a 4E skill challenge, and a harder boss fight. So, two hours for three fights and a roleplaying/skill-challenge section sounds like an average of 30 minutes per fight, roughly?

To be fair, part of that is that the characters are low level. Higher-level characters generally have more options and might take more time. That said, it was mitigated by including some people who had never played any kind of RPG before, which is not a problem one usually faces in one’s weekly campaign.

Part of the speed is per-round. Simple classes have fewer options (but are still powerful enough that they aren’t weak, just simple), and even complex classes don’t have to worry about figuring out spaces on a grid for area-effect spells. It’s just, “Well, that’s a lot of guys. I’m busting out the spell that hits up to three enemies.” The lack of a grid also lets people forget about the environment unless said environment is fun or exciting in some way. (I included cover and dark areas because they were fun, and still used minis on a table, but the minis were just “What guy am I whacking?”, not “Okay, I have this many spaces to move…”) Also, effects and abilities are simpler in general to keep track of. For buffs, things are usually “lasts until end of your next turn” or “lasts all battle”, and for penalties, things are usually “lasts until end of your next turn” or “save to end this effect at”, like you’d see in 4E. This gets rid of things like effects lasting 3 rounds, forcing people to track lots of different status modifiers. (There are still some, and in a boss fight with multiple casters, they CAN add up, but I’ve found them easier to track in my experience.)

Another part of the speed is number of rounds. Because of the escalation die (a d6 that adds (number of rounds of combat you’ve completed) to all attack rolls made by the party), people are hitting significantly more often by the end of the fight, meaning that the end-of-fight grind-down isn’t so difficult (when you’ve beaten the really dangerous guy and now just have to grind down the tanky brute sidekick). Even without the escalation die, though, the fact that martial classes scale in damage just like casters means that bad guys can go down FAST. I don’t believe I EVER reached +6 on the Escalation Die in the games I ran at conventions, which means that every fight was over in six rounds or fewer. (I’ve had some fights reach that point in my home campaign, but those were usually staggered-enemies fights, where the heroes took out the bad guys they saw, thought they were done, but then SURPRISE, the real tough enemies showed up – which in effect meant that the party had to do two back-to-back fights, with the bad news of no chance to heal and recover spells but the good news of lasts-all-battle buffs not expiring.)

In the games I run with my kids, things go a little slower, because the boys want to describe everything and add leaping and grappling hooks and sudden rocket attacks that I somehow have to make sense of… but a normal fight still tends to take about a half hour, likely since I’m only running it for two players.

I hope that helps. I’m sure mileage varies.

 

[Skyscraper]

Cool stuff guys. I'll most certainly buy the book and see where I go from there.

 

[alien270]

In my last campaign the problem with combat length was partially party composition, and partially because my group sometimes has issues with people leaving the room for smoke breaks, paying more attention to smart phones, etc. (which isn't a fault of the system). The party was problematic because there was a defense-specced Paladin, a sword and board Fighter, and a healing-specced Cleric (later when we got a 4th player who made a Monk combat got a little faster). They basically opted to win by attrition, and as a GM I felt I couldn't threaten them easily (especially the Paladin), and so I had to increase the level and/or numbers of monsters. Problem was, they didn't do a whole lot of damage (the Fighter could, but has epically terrible dice), and so most fights took 10+ rounds. These fights could get into the 1-1.5 hour range, but these guys are not the most efficient at taking their turns either (the Fighter would often take several minutes to decide what to do, as if he hadn't thought about it during the previous turns, only to whiff).

My current campaign has run for just 2 sessions now, and so the players are still getting used to their characters. The player with the biggest "distractions during the game" problem doesn't know his Rogue very well, there are 2 Bards (arguably the most complex class in the game; one of them is a player brand-new to d20 who was only recently introduced to RPGs through Edge of the Empire), and the players who know there characters best are the Wizard and Sorcerer. Obviously I expect combat to speed up once everyone gets used to their characters, but still their first few sessions were encouraging. They ended up bypassing several fights, but they did have one double-strength encounter in the first session that ran about 30 minutes. First fight with new characters, so there was a lot of rules-referencing, but I was extremely efficient at running the monsters since I wanted to finish before 10:30.

The session after that, they had a VERY quick altercation with a brood of medium white dragons. This was already poised to be a tough fight, and the dragons wanted tribute from the PCs for crossing their hunting grounds. The Dwarf Bard tossed one of the dragons his gold (the first PC to do so), but the Rogue decided he wanted to snatch it out of midair and take it for himself. I gave the angered dragon a surprise round (in which he critted), then the dragons rolled high for initiative and there were 2 more crits in round 1. The PCs surrendered soon after that with half of them badly hurt and the dragons all untouched. That only took a few minutes

The only other fight they've had was with some Redcaps (eyeballed difficulty, but probably roughly double-strength), and that took maybe 40ish minutes but the PCs spent a lot of time trying to figure out why they kept teleporting away, and the Dwarf was reluctant to spend Recoveries before this fight so he ended up down in the first round and didn't get back up until round 3 or so. While his turns went really quick, his lack of damage early on also meant the enemies lasted longer than they should have. Plus there were bad tactics all around, and the Rogue only hit with ONE attack in a 6ish round fight.

So far, it's starting to seem like this second campaign is having fights be a more typical length that I've seen reported online. Not that we didn't have shorter fights in my first campaign, but I generally avoided them because the PCs barely got scratched unless I pummeled them with many rounds of attacks. I figured better to have a challenging fight that lasted longer than a pointless fight that was shorter. So I guess I can see where the combat length discrepancy comes from. If you don't have a walking-tank Paladin paired up with a super-healer Cleric though, you probably won't run into the issue (which is the only mechanical issue I've experienced that is likely to lead to prolonged battles).

Oh, and on another note if you're interested in more "open-ended" combat as opposed to 4E's "pick power from list" or 3E's "I have no meaningful options besides full attack," you might want to check this out.