I ran my first game of 13th Age Saturday. Predictably, 3 out of 4 players rolled 5s and 6s and so I struggled to fit all the icon rolls into the story. But my players and I discovered a bigger disconnect.
It seems like icon rolls have the potential to actually represent two very different things: 1) they confer some benefit to the player, either gold or magic items; 2) they are a tool for improvisational play.
This duel purpose seems like a problem. Here's the issue: a player rolls a 6 on his positive relationship with the Diabolist. When I drop a Diabolist-friendly faction into the session that gives his character some inside information, he feels cheated by the fact that he didn't get a magic item instead. Theoretically, I could give his character a benefit AND work the Diabolist into the plot, but that now doubles the amount of stuff I have to fit into an already busy session. Given a lot of 5's and 6's, the session could devolve into an episode of This Is Your Life.
The core rules seem quite schizophrenic on this subject as well. For instance, in the sample adventure Blood and Lightning the players' icon rolls determine who controls Boltstrike Tower, so clearly they are an improv tool. But on page 181 the book states that icon rolls might result in players being given an item by their icon or communicated with by magical servitors. So clearly they are a player benefit.
I also feel like when players are rolling dice and getting positive results, they want to know how those results are going to benefit THEM. They want gold, they want magic items. But they don't care that much whether or not their character gets a mash note from the Elf Queen.
On the other hand as a DM I don't want to just start handing out gold and magic items at the beginning of every session. It seems cheap, and anyway there's only so many magic items a character can legally use so what's the point? I'm also afraid I'd get into situations where player A is mad because player B got a magic sword and player A only got some gold.
I'm curious how others have interpreted icon rolls. Are they story guides? Are they bonuses for the players? Both? Neither?
So, I can tell you what I do, but the real answer here is “Whatever makes both you and your players the happiest.”
I’ve got a group of four players. Two are pretty comfortable with improvisation and sharing the narrative, and two don’t feel entirely comfortable doing that.
If I were running a normal-speed campaign (meeting once a week, going a few hours, expecting to level up every four sessions or so), I would absolutely have getting a magical item be the thing that you get for your 5 or 6. It’s fair, it’s reasonable, and dude, you’re getting a few of those. (I would likely aim to give magical items to anyone who had more than one 5/6 on that session’s rolls, so that those folks would still get some other possible benefit to avoid feeling ripped off, like you said one of your players did.)
However, I’m not running a normal-speed campaign. I’m running a play-by-post game, and things in PbP are glacial to begin with, so I’m running the Ten Session Campaign, with fewer, harder fights and more frequent level-ups. I have 10 chapters, and the party gets one full heal up per chapter – which is also when they roll for relationship dice like they would at the start of a session.
While I also add additional dice rolls, as per the rules (“Aha, this twist reveals that the Diabolist is using undead in this plot heavily, so anyone with Diabolist or Lich King, roll your dice to try to get more benefits now!”), people don’t end up with a ton of these benefits per chapter. As a result, and in order to encourage people to use their benefits without REQUIRING them to use those benefits, I use the following:
- You MAY use a 5/6 to get an “Aha, but!” moment. “Aha, but the guard who is about to arrest us is secretly an agent of the Prince of Shadows, and he knows who I am and won’t actually throw us in jail.” “Aha, but this reminds me of the time I escaped a horde of undead, and I use that skill to find a way through the trap-infested room!” “Aha, but then the Great Gold Wyrm’s spirit appears in my mind and tells me I’m awesome, and I shake off the Confused effect that was going to totally get us all killed since I’m the party tank!” I’ve had people use it for combat benefits, for “skip something the GM had set up as a skill or roleplaying challenge” and even for “I’m grabbing the steering wheel on this plot and yanking hard to the left!” The tough part as a GM is learning to say “Yes,” even when it seems silly, even when it’s not quite the way you would have done it. Instead of thinking about whether something is all right, approach a player spending a 5/6 with “Yes” in mind, unless it obviously breaks the entire plot and ruins stuff for others. (For example, in a mystery plot, I would not allow a 5/6 to just immediately let the player know who was behind the murder, unless I had a reasonable plan for how to change the plot into “stop this person before time runs out!” I would approach a player who asked this with a compromise, like ruling out a suspect or finding a minion of the murderer, something that clearly takes them a step further but doesn’t remove all the fun. ALSO OF NOTE: I have not yet had any player suggest something like this. Almost all players, ESPECIALLY those used to D&D, have approached these 5/6 dice tentatively, afraid of feeling like cheaters for asking for too much.
- As the GM, I may ALSO throw an advantage into the player’s path and spend that 5/6 for them. Sometimes I see something coming that the players don’t, and I know this will be something the player will love. Sometimes I see something that will screw the player over in a non-fun way, and this is a reasonable way to avoid that. Sometimes it was TOTALLY SOMETHING I WAS GOING TO DO ANYWAY, but the ILLUSION of this having been just there because of that awesome 6 (or the complication happening because of that nefarious 5) makes it feel just as cool for the player... and that isn’t cheating as the GM. This is a game where you as the GM have to be ready to improvise a lot. If the dice land in a way that was close to what you were planning, you go with that and make it look like the dice made it happen.
- Once a player spends (or has spent FOR them) their first benefit of the chapter, I make sure that a magic item finds its way to them. If possible, said magical item is thematically appropriate for what the benefit was, but if it isn’t, the world doesn’t end. The important thing is that setting up magical items behind the “Spend your benefit” screen encourages players who would otherwise hoard all their benefits to spend them on something fun, knowing that in addition to the fun, they will also find a magical item shortly thereafter.
As I said, this is what I do. Mileage may vary, and I’m sure different groups have different vibes and different levels of comfort with this stuff.
