Campaign/Setting ideas that really USE the Icons

[EzekielRaiden]

I recently got in touch with a friendly fellow-poster (who frequents other parts of the internet) and the possibility of a future 13th Age campaign sprang up. However, before he makes any firm commitments, he wanted to get some character and campaign ideas. I've got the former covered pretty well, including my beloved standby (dragonborn Pally, with a fun OUT built-in). The latter, on the other hand, are coming up a bit short. I've thrown a few ideas his way, but for a lot of them, he wasn't feeling 13A for them--the Icons are supposed to be at least a *moderately* big deal, and he'd prefer a campaign where he doesn't have to "create" their importance from whole cloth. For example, a campaign set in Fantasy Ancient Greece could have the Olympians (and some Cthonic deities) act as its Icons, and people wouldn't need a lot of explanation for why they're there, nor why we care or why various Icon relationship rolls mean what they do (e.g. you roll a 5, "Athena's decided you're cute, all muscly and dashing, so she wants to see you sweat!")

I've done some digging elsewhere, but I haven't found any settings that really 'pop' in terms of the icons. The Eberron Dragonmarked Houses, for all their central relevance to the story, feel a bit anemic to me (just as an example); while their meaning is already baked into the setting, why any given person would care what any given house wants/thinks is less obvious. I also suspect that, if we did Eberron at all, the DM would want to run it in 4e, which defeats the purpose in the first place (as I'm wanting to try 13A to see how I like it, and he's open to the idea of running that system specifically).

So I turn to you, ENWorlders. What ideas, whether for campaigns (set in the standard 13A universe or not), or for baseline setting stuff, do you know of that really help the Icons shine?

 

[arscott]

I'm running planescape with 13th Age, using the Icons as Sigil's factions (there's a thread a bit way down about the factions I use, but there's no reason someone who like the original 15 factions can't simply use those as Icons).

I'm also playing in a game created by my friend, who homebrewed 13 Icons for his setting, but is making excellent use of those Icons--which veer much closer to the original ones designed for the Dragon Empire setting in that they are powerful, usually mortal figures with political reach and fit identifiable archetypes.

With the Great Gold Wyrm and the Three being such obvious analogues of Bahamut and Tiamat, lots of WotC's dragon-focused material should actually work really well in 13th age. I think the "Red Hand of Doom" mega-adventure, with its emphasis on Tiamat, Factions, and a war would work really well with the Core Book Icons.

 

[Kinak]

You're probably looking for a setting that has organizations baked into it's essence.

I agree Planescape is a good one, with the factions or their factols as Icons.

Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings) also has a good structure for this, with the emperor and clan champions.

For Eberron, I'd be tempted to use the nations and power blocs on that scale instead of the dragonmarked houses. The dragonmarked as a whole could be one Icon, but splitting them up doesn't make sense unless you're running a campaign that's all about dragonmarks.

Even in a psuedo-modern game, you could have planets or zodiac signs as Icons. It has the bonus of everyone kind of knowing them a little already. The closest equivalent for a standard D&D game would probably be the planes.

Heck, you could even do Shadowrun with the Corps. That... actually kind of makes me want to run 13th Age Shadowrun.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[MoutonRustique]

The Scarred Lands could work pretty well, having fallen Titans, the gods and some of the more influencial NPCs as icons.

The main thing about the Icons is to have them be something with in-game reach and impact. Also, active personalities are much better for Icon status - it's not really about "power" it's about "impact".

In the Scarred Lands, there's a sort of undead druid-lich. He is incredibly powerful. On the other hand, he's super-top-secret-spy-manipulation-guy. Not a good fit for Icon. Whereas, King Virduk of Calastia has great reach and is actively trying to conquer... well pretty much everything - a sort of darker Emperor.

Also, if you keep your game located in a smaller geography (a few hundred miles), it becomes much easier to find/create Icons that can be at least somewhat relevant and present in pretty much all locations.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Inspired in part by reading your responses, I have begun the process of creating and converting icons of my own, and I'm relatively pleased with the results so far (I'm about half finished). The only one remaining largely (but not completely) unchanged is the Great Gold Wyrm, though I am working to tweak it ever so slightly. More or less, I want ALL of the Icons to be plausibly "Ambiguous" in the right contexts, with GGW being the closest to completely unambiguously Heroic, and only one or two being the opposite, almost-completely-unambiguously Villainous. I'll post when I have more of them sketched out, though all of them will be very rough (a name, some alternate names, and their associated 'spheres of influence'). Here's hoping the prospective DM likes them!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Alright, I have drafted the list of "new" icons. Note the quotes. Some of them are not really new, but re-interpreted to one extent or another. As stated, the Great Gold Wyrm is the one with the fewest changes, though the High Warlock is not far off from the Diabolist either (not exactly what I intended, but oh well).

• The Storm Captain (sailors, spring, storms/rain, winds, command, exploring); other names: The Orc Sailor, Davy Jones, Thunderboots
• The Leviathan (sea creatures, earthquakes, nightmares, insanity, infinity); other names: The Deep Horror, Kraken, Ten-Arms
• The Horned God (forests, prophecy, wine, song, mirth, lust, summer); other names: Cernunnos, Seelie King/Queen, The Satyr
• The Changeling (trickery, dreams, poison, obsession, art, asceticism, winter); other names: Unseelie Queen/King, Nemesis, the Abhartach
• Great Gold Wyrm (sacrifice, solitude, martyrdom, pride, enduring, faith); other names: The Bulwark, Hidden-Fire, Arjuna
• The Council (pragmatism, greed, luxury, pride, scheming, enterprise); other names: the Hydra, Five-In-One, the Zirnitra
• Master Mouse (poverty, revolution, giving, revenge, anarchy, cunning, harvest); other names: Mu'addib, Street-Rat, The Chastiser
• Many-Scars (hunting, fighting, readiness, survival, predator, lycanthropy); other names: The Gladiator, Stalker, Father Wolf, Woeden
• The Courtesan (merchants, diplomacy, order, intrigue, manipulation, wealth); other names: Queen/King of Coins, Honeytongue, Netspinner
• The Librarian (history, alchemy, education, enchanting, medicine); other names: Chronicler, Rune-warden, the Chymist
• The Faceted Eye (divination, mind, dreams, light, vision, secrecy, mirrors); other names: the Blind Cabal, Hagstone, All-Tales
• The High Warlock (contracts, subjugation, omission, portals, sacrilege); other names: Demonbinder, Old Scratch, the Foresworn
• The Pale Lady/Lord (death and undeath, disease, decay, night, underground); other names: Deathshead, the White Raven, the Vampire Queen/King

In each case, I plan to do a full write-up like the "standard" Icons, including how they relate to each other and their strengths (and weaknesses). Each of them is meant to be weaker than a typical deity of mythology, but still powerful and influential. Some of them are relatively impersonal forces given some semblance of form (the Leviathan, the Faceted Eye), while others are in some sense 'mantles' which can be passed from one person to another (the Storm Captain, the Courtesan) and some could go either way (Many-Scars, the Changeling, the Horned God). I've tried to avoid particular genders for most of them--though I do have sort of "implicit" genders in mind for some (e.g. the Horned God and Many-Scars are typically male, while the Changeling and Pale Lady are typically female).

Obviously some are pretty closely inspired by something from the original set. Less obviously, a few are very similar to some from one DM's "Icons in the Titan's Shadow" post, where he details the Icons created for the setting his group made using Microscope. In every case, though, I'm trying to make them at least somewhat unique, even the Great Gold Wyrm who is nearly the same (that the Titan's Shadow Icons include an unchanged default one makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing). Ideally, I'll even be able to get "icons" (that is, small pictures) for each of them from the same source that he did!

 

[Bishop_]

Despite your admirable effort (well done about the Icons for your homebrew setting), one thing I personally think about the Icons is: it's not mandatory to use the 13 base figures. Even in a 13th Age game, I'm OK in using 5 ~ 8 Icons only.

Another thing: the Icons are fantasy tropes represented in that game mechanic. So, I think you don't have to match your homebrew Icons with the original spirit as seen in the core book. To be true, imho, the best Icons utilisations out off 13th Age universe are those who strongly reinforce the game mechanics (in that case, Icon relationships) with the original setting which they are linked. Take a look in the Parsantium material (the author always be around here in EnWorld) or the viking - Midgard setting launched to 13A by Kobold Press, if I'm correct.

My two cents.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Despite your admirable effort (well done about the Icons for your homebrew setting), one thing I personally think about the Icons is: it's not mandatory to use the 13 base figures. Even in a 13th Age game, I'm OK in using 5 ~ 8 Icons only.

Initially, I was concerned 13 would be a limitation. Then, I found it to be almost a challenge. The number I've got is good for a variety of reasons (I tried to create...'types,' if that makes sense, and give 2, or 3 in one case, to each 'type'). I'm not sure I'd be able to come up with too many more that didn't start to really encroach on each others' concepts, particularly since I'm going for "nearly every Icon is ambiguous." GGW is as close as it gets to unambiguously Heroic, and the High Warlock and Pale Lady are the closest it gets to unambiguously Villainous, though even they can be positive/beneficial to the world at large under the right circumstances due to their proficiency at dealing with/opposition toward the vile creatures of the Abyss.

Another thing: the Icons are fantasy tropes represented in that game mechanic. So, I think you don't have to match your homebrew Icons with the original spirit as seen in the core book. To be true, imho, the best Icons utilisations out off 13th Age universe are those who strongly reinforce the game mechanics (in that case, Icon relationships) with the original setting which they are linked. Take a look in the Parsantium material (the author always be around here in EnWorld) or the viking - Midgard setting launched to 13A by Kobold Press, if I'm correct.

I agree that creating new icons, in a generic sense, does not require that you make them be the same, in nature or in description, as those in 13A. I did, in fact, check out the Parsantium Icons, which contributed to some of my stuff (the Duke-Admiral is a more, but not a lot more, mundane take on the idea behind the Storm Captain; perhaps ironically, some of the stuff about the Dragon inspired my Courtesan; etc.) However, since I'm doing this not to create my own setting, but to give a potential DM ideas for a campaign for him to run, I'm sticking to relatively "conservative" (that is, close-to-original) concepts to hopefully improve their chances of sounding as cool to him as they are to me.

 

[Tony Vargas]

He might check out Eyes of the Stone Thief.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

He might check out Eyes of the Stone Thief.

I'll definitely point him in that direction; I don't know what level he wants to start at, but I'd presume it would be lower than the recommended minimum for EotST (that is, either first or second level), both because I'm new to the system and because there are so few levels to be had as it is.

As long as I'm free at a reasonable hour, I'll start my writeups for my icons, probably in the order they're listed above (since that's the order I "created" them in, in the first place).