13th Age The virtues of 13th Age, and comparisons to other fantasy games

[bsss]

Resurrecting at least one reply of mine from the thread that was closed for AI slop in the OP, because I'm happy to talk about 13th Age. Hopefully this is fine to keep the (human) conversation going.

In short and in summary (for now), I love 13th Age in many ways. The collaborative narrative element and mechanics (One Unique Thing, icons), the tactical combat (lots of class build paths) without much "ticky-tacky" rules (abstract distance and movement), the monster design (simple monster blocks with variable cool effects + lots of flavor), and probably more to come up in the thread. It's my favorite fantasy game. @Whizbang Dustyboots asked for some comparisons to other games, and while I don't know they saw the original thread, let's try to capture a bit of that "where does 13th Age live in comparison to other games?" conversation alive.

Resting/The Adventuring Loop - 13th Age

13th Age has the concept of arcs (simply called "days" in 1E, but you'll see why they changed the name in a moment) that are the point in time between extended rests (in the D&D 4e sense). The "full heal-up" in 13th Age is as in 4e as well, you get back all of your hp, your "daily" powers, all your recoveries, and other such limited things, but the interesting part is where the reasoning comes into play in moving away from "daily" or "extended rest" language. In 2E they switched to arcs because they had no intent to tie the idea to a day --- the time between full heal-ups could be multiple days or mere hours, so it was confusing to call all the features that didn't refresh when you slept "daily" powers.

What I think is a striking break from tradition is why to do any of this at all and upend a normal D&D approach, which they explain in the 2E book simply --- their take on heroic fantasy is that "fighting as heroes" pushes the action forward and can even incentivize plowing ahead rather than taking a narrative loss*, and that they're not interested in simulating as a game rule when and how characters sleep for the night. (Though you could, of course, choose to pay attention to that as a precursor to an encounter, it just doesn't interact with recovery.)

*: a narrative loss (formerly a "campaign loss") is the idea that if the party takes their foot off the gas and chooses to get a full heal-up without pushing themselves to the normal ~4 battles per arc, that they get the full heal-up, but their goals are stymied as they have lost the heroic momentum, basically. Another neat concept and maybe worth another exploration of its own later on.

Anyway, I was wondering if, while we're comparing things, anything interesting was going on here in SotDL/WW. I think the core D&D treatment is fine, if a bit frustrating to deal with, so I'm keen to hear if there's yet another take out there.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, if I peeked into a room at my FLGS and saw someone playing 13th Age, would play at the table look like 4th Edition, but with more RP and narrative stuff happening?

 

[Arilyn]

So, if I peeked into a room at my FLGS and saw someone playing 13th Age, would play at the table look like 4th Edition, but with more RP and narrative stuff happening?

Maybe like 4e's more "radical" cousin. Players can swap class features around, so you could give up a fighter ability for a ranger one, for example. It's generally more free wheeling.

There's much less pulling and shoving talents because you are probably not using grids.

Armour and weapons are more abstracted and tied to class. Rogues do d8 damage with daggers, for example. It's easy to describe your armour and weapons however you want.

There's definitely similarities with 4e but I never feel like I'm playing 4e. 13th Age is one of my favourite games. It's fun, quirky and allows as much or as little collaborative world building as your table wants. And has an awesome bestiary.

 

[bsss]

So, if I peeked into a room at my FLGS and saw someone playing 13th Age, would play at the table look like 4th Edition, but with more RP and narrative stuff happening?

It'd look like that, but the map/mat on the table would be more of a suggestion, and they wouldn't be counting individual squares on a grid, because the rules say things like "Target: one nearby or far-away ally" or "use a move action to move to any nearby place", where "nearby" and "far-away" are more like zones relative to the one taking the action. You also wouldn't hear about them talking about flanking bonuses, or trying to figure out how many targets fit in a cone, because the spell says something more like "Target: 1d3 nearby enemies in a group".

They, similar to 4e, would still likely be talking about powers and at-will/encounter/arc powers and recoveries (healing surges), and the game would have a "big damn heroes" tone to it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So, if I peeked into a room at my FLGS and saw someone playing 13th Age, would play at the table look like 4th Edition, but with more RP and narrative stuff happening?

Probably not for a couple reasons.

1. 13th Age is very loosey-goosey in handling movement; D&D 4e was very much not, as controlling positioning and forcing your opponent into bad positions was a big part of the combat loop.

2. You'd probably see a lot more interactions with setting elements via the Icon Relationship system (we kind of fell away from a lot of the on-hands versions of that because we found it awkward but we're far from everyone in that regard, though hardly unique, either).

13A is also less prone to the sort of structuralist approach to skill usage than 4e, being much more loose in this area (though they really do want Backgrounds to do some heavy lifting sometimes).

 

[zakael19]

Man, 13th age is almost what I want. Loose distances, cool abilities, “surge” style healing. I just want 4e’s skill system on top of that (or something like Draw Steel!’s) for nice consistent skill challenge usage.

 

[bsss]

Man, 13th age is almost what I want. Loose distances, cool abilities, “surge” style healing. I just want 4e’s skill system on top of that (or something like Draw Steel!’s) for nice consistent skill challenge usage.

Patching a skill system on top of 13th Age is probably one of the easiest changes you could make to it --- the math is largely already there, you're just changing how the bonuses get itemized. Though I would argue that you'd be losing something in the end by removing the backgrounds system, a skill list would work completely fine.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Man, 13th age is almost what I want. Loose distances, cool abilities, “surge” style healing. I just want 4e’s skill system on top of that (or something like Draw Steel!’s) for nice consistent skill challenge usage.

Because the Background system is so detached from the rest of the system, it wouldn't be difficult to port over another D20 game's skill system if you wanted to. You just need to remember that the scale is slightly compressed because of the 1-10 level, and that occasionally skills are going to do some heavy lifting (the way Backgrounds interact with Ritual magic, for example).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Patching a skill system on top of 13th Age is probably one of the easiest changes you could make to it --- the math is largely already there, you're just changing how the bonuses get itemized. Though I would argue that you'd be losing something in the end by removing the backgrounds system, a skill list would work completely fine.

Its one of those things where what you value is going to reflect how you feel there. Personally, Backgrounds were one of the things I least appreciated about the system (in the end I never ended up finding the Icon dice particular natural or useful either, honestly).

 

[Arilyn]

I love the background system in 13th Age. They not only inform the skills your character has, but also their personality with some details from their past. Royal Huntsman vs. Poacher, for example. They'd have overlapping but not identical skills.