ZEITGEIST 13th Age Icons in ZEITGEIST

How would you approach 13th Age Icons in ZEITGEIST? I'm thinking of maybe playing around with the idea.

That's a good question. Some of the NPC's that could be used aren't known to the players and it would be a major spoiler to include them.

I guess nothing prevents the Icons from shifting as the the campaign progresses?

So here's my guess as to what you could use:

1. Priestess -> The Clergy
2. Old Faith -> High Druid
3. Dragon Emperor -> Risur (or King Aodhan)
4. Elf Queen -> Unseen Court
5. Dwarf King -> Drakr
6. Orc Lord -> Bruse Shantus
7. Archmage -> Principal Minister Harkover Lee
8. The Crusader -> Flint (not a match, but a prestige group to track)
9. Prince of Shadows -> The Family
10. Diabolist -> Heid Eschatol
11. The Three -> House Jierre
12. Golden Wyrm -> The academies at Sid Minos
13. Lich King -> The Obscurati (I don't like this because the player's don't know about it, yet).

This is all off the top of my head. I haven't read all the adventures released for Zeitgeist yet.

I don't think there has to be the same exact number, or that they have to translate exactly to the default Icons in the 13th Age rulebook. I think the task is more just to identify the key movers and shakers rather than try to match them. Using organizations seems a good approach.

The other issue would then be how that interacts with the Prestige mechanic in ZEITGEIST.

For a self-contained campaign like Zeitgeist, I think you could get away with a fairly small number of icons as available to PCs at start, like 6. You could then introduce a couple more as the game goes on, but it's good to know where your focus lies.

To be honest, I suspect that's not bad advice for 13th age in general ("I want to run a game that deals less with these 3 icons, so don't pick those")

I guess I have 13 on the brain from 13th Age and also the 13th Age icons for Eberron.

Then I'd just go with the ones mentioned that you track Prestige for and then ones listed as power groups. Player's can put up to 3 points into an Icon in either positive, conflicted, or negative. I believe you get up to 2 more points to spend as you level (for a max of 5). I'm guessing for Zeitgeist, you'd change this from level based to when appropriate in the adventures.

You probably don't want a player to start with a 3 in Flint.. They should build that relationship up over the campaign. Maybe a max of 2 in any given category (or a 3 if the player picks the Docker them, for example). They could put a 2nd point into "conflicted" with Flint. So, for role play, they are generally known in Flint, but maybe there's certain parts they've ran into in the past that may cause delays in reqested help. So, for the total prestige and how fast your request is completed, you can add up the positive, subtract the negative and maybe a 1/2 level for each conflicted. That's a bit of math to keep track of though.

Flint
Risur
Unseen Court
Clergy
Obscurati (this may need changed to be a hidden one the GM tracks until the player's become aware).

Then the Power Groups and Philosophies

House of Jierre
The Family
Heid Eschatol
The Panoply

Add in Bruse Shantus if a player is from Ber.

So, I think I'd leave the Obscurati out. When the players do become aware of it, then start tracking it.

I'm still trying to think of how/if you can combine Icon dice rolls with Prestige. The Icon rolls might be better served to help introduce unexpected help (or complications) during the adventure and let Prestige work the way it does currently.

I think it would be very interesting trying to rework the first Zeitgeist adventure into a 13th Age version. Probably duplicate the type of thing set up in the 13th Age Core Book sample adventure. One where the GM is given some advice on how to alter some things depending on the PCs Icons. Small things, like the changes to the Goblins look and feel in that sample adventure.

I'm going to see if I can work something up like this.