How do Skills work in 13th Age?

[Eugee]

The task I remind myself of as the GM is to ensure they are providing me backgrounds, not skills.

"+3 Pick Locks" is a skill, not a background. It prompts the follow up question--how did you become skilled at picking locks?

"I wasn't a thief, I was a locksmith, with a guild membership." More follow up prompted by me:

Did you work on anything else, or just locks?

"Hmmm. I suppose I worked on anything intricate and mechanical." My final suggestion:

How about "+3 Veteran Member of the Clockwerks Guild"?

Not a thief, but a real background that fleshes out the character and provides for a multitude of skills.

I think the GM in 13th Age has a responsibility to help mold backgrounds for new players.

And I've yet to have an issue with a player trying to meta-game their background. The closest I've gotten is someone suggesting that as a gladiator they had to learn to pick locks. I let him take a +1 to his abyssmal DEX because he had managed to accidentally unlock his chains twice in the past.

 

[Shadeydm]

Perhaps I'm just overly trusting or generous but I have little concerns about backgrounds being too open ended, quite the opposite in fact. I would be much more worried about players picking backgrounds that are too hyper focused and limit the players participation in the social aspects of the game.

I've picked some pretty broad ones myself for example my current character a wizard who is old damaged clone of the wizard king recently freed from suspended animation. He has no clue who he is supposed to be or where this strange place is that he woke up in.
Relating to this his backgrounds are: Memories of a Past Life and Arcane Savant. The former is very open ended. However it can come in handy when no one has a applicable background to call upon that his memory could be jogged in a potentially helpful way.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Perhaps I'm just overly trusting or generous but I have little concerns about backgrounds being too open ended, quite the opposite in fact. I would be much more worried about players picking backgrounds that are too hyper focused and limit the players participation in the social aspects of the game.

This is also my experience. Players are more likely to have to be encouraged to use their backgrounds than to try to abuse the system with overly-broad ones.

This isn't a flaw in the background system per se. Backgrounds remain an incentive to encourage shy players to roleplay. Some just take a little more encouragement.

 

[doghead]

The task I remind myself of as the GM is to ensure they are providing me backgrounds, not skills.

"+3 Pick Locks" is a skill, not a background. It prompts the follow up question--how did you become skilled at picking locks?

"I wasn't a thief, I was a locksmith, with a guild membership." More follow up prompted by me:

Did you work on anything else, or just locks?

"Hmmm. I suppose I worked on anything intricate and mechanical." My final suggestion:

How about "+3 Veteran Member of the Clockwerks Guild"?

Not a thief, but a real background that fleshes out the character and provides for a multitude of skills.

I think the GM in 13th Age has a responsibility to help mold backgrounds for new players.

A nice little example of how to help someone move from choosing 'skills' to describing a 'background'.

A bit of a template for how to move players who are a bit stuck for background ideas:

"Pick something you want to your character to be able to do."

"Ok. How did your character learn to XXX?".

Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.

thotd

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is also my experience. Players are more likely to have to be encouraged to use their backgrounds than to try to abuse the system with overly-broad ones.

This isn't a flaw in the background system per se.

Opposite sides of the same flaw, really.

Hmm... as a DM, you could have players 'make a case' for their higher background, and, if you're not convinced, roll the lower. That would limit the impact of a player picking too-narrow backgrounds.

 

[doghead]

Perhaps I'm just overly trusting or generous but I have little concerns about backgrounds being too open ended, quite the opposite in fact. I would be much more worried about players picking backgrounds that are too hyper focused and limit the players participation in the social aspects of the game

This is also my experience. Players are more likely to have to be encouraged to use their backgrounds than to try to abuse the system with overly-broad ones.

While players may be more likely to pick narrow backgrounds than broad ones, I still see the latter as more problematic.

If a player has, despite a little friendly nudging even, chosen very narrow backgrounds, I wouldn't have any great concerns with broadening them if the player came to feel restricted somewhat by his choices. Generally, this form of rebalancing through addition is not so controversial.

The opposite, not so much the case. If a player has carefully chosen very broad backgrounds allowing his character to benefit in a much wider range of situations than the other characters, its can be bit more problematic. Of course, it does depend very much on the players.

That said, I still prefer a background system to a skill system generally. Its just something to be aware of when creating characters.

thotd

 

[Eugee]

I think newer players to 13A are the ones most likely to fall into the trap of too narrow backgrounds. In my experience, the first time they are doing an overland journey and I say, "<insert name>, during the first morning of your quest, your background in <insert background> helped you overcome... what?" It's not long after that when they ask me if they can flesh out their background a little more. Suddenly "survival expert" becomes "veteran ranger of the wyld guard".

The first time I read the montage stuff in 13A I was like, "yeah yeah it's nice in theory" and then I found myself kind of drawing a blank as to how to make an overland journey that didn't involve a wandering monster encounter noteworthy. So I lobbed that meat pitch out there...

It was amazing. Not only did the player jump in and run with it, but suddenly the rest of the party wanted to chip in with what their backgrounds offered. As a matter of fact, I ended up throwing a random encounter at them anyway, but this time it was because their story really made sense, and it was a gratuitous slaughter encounter, because their montage just teed up a great chance for them to ambush a patrol.

I got an effortless, noteworthy overland travel journey, and they were engaged, and got to slaughter some goblins.

From their perspective, they slaughtered those goblins because they overcame an obstacle in the adventure through their ingenuity and tactics. In truth, their ingenuity and tactics is the reason the encounter even occurred--and was then lop-sided in their favor.

 

[Uskglass]

Another positive about background is that it helps a lot flashing out characters for players. So instead of 'I'm a... Fighter/Rogue/etc...' now you have concepts attached to the character, defining its core and that can be used to leverage the narrative and figure out how he/she fits into the world and the narrative at every step. And because those have been laid out by the player instead of being picked from a list, they hold a stronger value.

Is it exploitable? Sure it is, but it's easy to counter as well:
- If a background is too wide, you may not allow it to be used at full in most situations
- Or just play along. Use fail forward: make failing as fun as succeeding or more!