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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeoneer" data-source="post: 6252891" data-attributes="member: 91777">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?</blockquote>

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