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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 6193943" data-attributes="member: 48965">No worries, and sorry it took me so long to reply, I got hit with a ton of work and still haven’t caught up entirely.The main issue I see arising is that the diversity of icons and the strength of their presence would be less than what the default would create.  Right now I’m not sure this would be such a bad thing, especially as I need to get used to the improvisation necessary to use icons in this way. In all honesty I think I would be more comfortable with the “roll before the next session” alternative in the book as I don’t want to fall into a mode where every little thing has a different icon behind it but the game starts to loose cohesiveness as I struggle to make it all connect.  No, we don’t do long rests at the end of every session.  I think this might be a good suggestion once I get more experience in the improvisation area.  I think the biggest issue I found with the icons in this first session was that there just wasn’t enough time and progress to work them all in, especially since it was a short session due to character creation.  The thing was, and this may have been a mistake, I didn’t keep the rolls a secret from my players and so they were interested in seeing how the icon they rolled for would show up in the game session, and when I only had time and fictional circumstances to work one in they didn’t want to roll again until they could see how they interacted with the ones that were left.On a related note I think my handling of the icons in the second session was much better because I had time to think on them in the context of the player who rolled it and the defining traits of the character they were playing.  The paladin Kal’ Ruin received a vision of the Priestess (whether this was THE Priestess, caused by the Priestess or the fanatical hallucinations of Kal’ Ruin was left up in the air) who spoke in a strange tongue (I did this because it was a 5 and that meant some form of complication, of course it wasn’t a major issue since Kal’ruin had Quinnton decipher it) giving Kal’Ruin advice on where to seek out information concerning a cure for the plague (In case you’re wondering it was a riddle that pointed to the hedge witch Rainya they had saved earlier).The other instance was with Vince the ranger, who had discovered the plague’s beginnings were tied, time wise, with the arrival of a new food supplier for the town of Mistwood a merchant named Dyonus.  Vince, assuming the merchant was in league with the orc and goblins brashly confronted him with accusations, whereupon he learned that the merchant was actually the agent of a mid-ranking house from the city in the Dragon Empire run by the Three (Can’t remember the name of the city they control in the Dragon Empire right now) and possessed a writ of official Empire business.  Vince was arrested for impeding official Empire trade and while he was in his cell, Dyonus had a pit fighter placed in the cell with him to teach Vince a lesson.  Vince was almost able to overcome him but 2 20’s rolled back to back by yours truly ended up leaving Vince on the cell floor battered and bloody.  Feeling his message had been sent, Dyonus released Vince.  However later in the adventure an agent of the Prince of Shadows offered Vince information on a future time and place in which the merchant Dyonus would be unguarded and vulnerable, in exchange the PoS asked that he be granted one future favor of equal value (I did this because Vince has a conflicted relationship with the Prince of Shadows).  Vince however was unwilling to make a decision at that time but the PoS was willing to leave the deal open… for now.   The players did know this, but it was because I told the players since I figured having served in this legion for 6 months prior to these events they would have heard this information by now.  I also told them it was symbolic of a dwarf being forever bound to silver as opposed to gold.This is a really good question and I ran into the same problem with 13[SUP]th[/SUP] Age that I did with 4e.  Mainly the issue being that the descriptions varied depending on player, and this does tend to create a dissonance in the fiction sometimes.  In general we tend to play with a gritty style but there is still low-level gritty and gonzo gritty.  On a more granular level I realized that my younger players are very much gonzo gritty in their descriptions and trend towards describing the things their characters do in the vein of shows like Naruto, FullMetal Alchemist and such… while my older players tend to be more along the lines of say Brotherhood of the Wolf, Gladiator or at the top end of the power spectrum like the movie Troy.  The tone I run my enemies in used to lean heavily towards the Gladiator/Brotherhood of the Wolf vein but in this game I am trying to find a medium where I slightly tailor the style of the scene for the character(s) taking place in it.  It’s not perfect and it doesn’t always work but I’d be happy to hear some suggestions as far as dealing with this (Oh, and remember I do have players that range from 10 to their early 30’s.) Well they were going to run into the hut either way since it was an important part of the area around Mistwood and I wanted them to know about it.  In all honesty most of the advantages/disadvantages I had for the amount of time spent before they found the scouting party were centerd around the difficulty of following their tracks back to the goblin wagon village and the situation when they arrived (Of course the players decided to go straight to Mistwood as opposed to the goblin’s wagon village so I kind of dropped the ball on this one in that respect).Well my players definitely love it and I enjoy the speeding up effect it has on combat as it grows… I think I really want to hold off on judgement though until they face their first opponent who can also use the escalation die (HINT: The Orc Lord’s agent they will be facing in our 4[SUP]th[/SUP] session this weekend.).  I’m curious to see if it creates a more tense environment in combat, especially since my players have made jokes about the fact that monsters can’t use the escalation dice (apparently they didn’t read their books very closely lol).  If I were looking for an ingame rationale, especially at mid-Epic I would probably go with either something similar to ambrosia, the food of the gods, or just make it an aspect of the players creeping towards their epic destinies… perhaps they’ve grown so integral to the legends of their world that fate itself is intervening on their behalf.   Ah, I see this was answered already but no you don’t have to.  The thing is it’s a double edged sword because you can quickly burn through more recoveries than you planned to and still have less hit points than you want/need.  I realize this may not vibe with everyone’s play style but we like those types of resource choices in our game</blockquote>

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