Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
My 13th Age Report
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6156080" data-attributes="member: 9789"><p>The "13th Age Prefix" thread has a lot of good information about the game, but just to give some further information about what all you're really getting and why it's worth buying the book, in my mind most of the big stuff you get can be lumped into two piles: mechanical ideas and story-telling ideas.</p><p></p><p>The mechanical ideas are honestly the thing that appeal to me most. This is reflected in my earlier posts about porting stuff to other versions of D&D. In fact, the main thing that got me interested in 13th Age was that it had some of the mechanics that I wished were in D&D Next, but weren't - and the purchase price of the book was completely worth this to me. It's not just creative but simple ideas like "one unique thing," but entire ways of looking at rule structures that D&D Next seems to be unable to imagine. There's a huge treasure trove of great mechanics to steal that will absolutely be a part of any future D&D games that I run, regardless of the version.</p><p></p><p>Separately, there are a bunch of huge story-telling ideas. These range from the equally portable icons and setting, to one of the biggest points of actually using the icon relationships: cooperative narrative and improvisational narrative <em>during </em>play. One key theme of 13th Age is the idea that the PCs are the stars of the show and they absolutely influence the story, from its meta direction all the way down to telling the GM that there's a funky terrain feature will now be used to do something awesome (look, a beehive in the tree, which I knock onto the bugbear's head!).</p><p></p><p>Some of these ideas were less useful to me personally because of the way I tend to run games. I usually have most plot points laid out well in advance to help lay down foreshadowing and structure in the world; 13th Age's storytelling lends itself more toward an episodic sort of adventure, where the "super meta plot" may be in stone, but whatever you're doing each session has an extremely high degree of variability. PCs are headed to the Archmage's outpost this session? *icon roll* Ok, actually it's the High Druid's outpost we're going to today, and that means instead of mages and magical wards there are druids and dire bears. This sort of highly improvisational re-skinning on the fly is great for some GMs, because it naturally fills in all the details while they're painting the plot with a broad brush. If you plan by saying, "I want the PCs to encounter a villain on top of a tower," this this is great - you just got your villain and tower and everything laid out for you! However, if you're the type that already planned which villain and what tower based on the story structure you've long-since created and foreshadowed and planned around, that type of improvisation is more disruptive than helpful. Obviously there are multiple depths of improvisation I'm talking about here, and the minute-by-minute stuff is absolutely still fun and useful to me. I just rarely run a game that's "just show up and kick down some doors," which makes some of the mid-level icon relationship rules less useful to me.</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, what I find the icon relationship rules are absolutely perfect for: running demo games. Both in selling the game to others and in rapid iteration of ideas during design, "rolling up a story" in just a few seconds is perfect when you're doing one-shots. If you're a more one-shot sort of GM, I can't imagine a better system to get you going.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="evilbob, post: 6156080, member: 9789"] The "13th Age Prefix" thread has a lot of good information about the game, but just to give some further information about what all you're really getting and why it's worth buying the book, in my mind most of the big stuff you get can be lumped into two piles: mechanical ideas and story-telling ideas. The mechanical ideas are honestly the thing that appeal to me most. This is reflected in my earlier posts about porting stuff to other versions of D&D. In fact, the main thing that got me interested in 13th Age was that it had some of the mechanics that I wished were in D&D Next, but weren't - and the purchase price of the book was completely worth this to me. It's not just creative but simple ideas like "one unique thing," but entire ways of looking at rule structures that D&D Next seems to be unable to imagine. There's a huge treasure trove of great mechanics to steal that will absolutely be a part of any future D&D games that I run, regardless of the version. Separately, there are a bunch of huge story-telling ideas. These range from the equally portable icons and setting, to one of the biggest points of actually using the icon relationships: cooperative narrative and improvisational narrative [I]during [/I]play. One key theme of 13th Age is the idea that the PCs are the stars of the show and they absolutely influence the story, from its meta direction all the way down to telling the GM that there's a funky terrain feature will now be used to do something awesome (look, a beehive in the tree, which I knock onto the bugbear's head!). Some of these ideas were less useful to me personally because of the way I tend to run games. I usually have most plot points laid out well in advance to help lay down foreshadowing and structure in the world; 13th Age's storytelling lends itself more toward an episodic sort of adventure, where the "super meta plot" may be in stone, but whatever you're doing each session has an extremely high degree of variability. PCs are headed to the Archmage's outpost this session? *icon roll* Ok, actually it's the High Druid's outpost we're going to today, and that means instead of mages and magical wards there are druids and dire bears. This sort of highly improvisational re-skinning on the fly is great for some GMs, because it naturally fills in all the details while they're painting the plot with a broad brush. If you plan by saying, "I want the PCs to encounter a villain on top of a tower," this this is great - you just got your villain and tower and everything laid out for you! However, if you're the type that already planned which villain and what tower based on the story structure you've long-since created and foreshadowed and planned around, that type of improvisation is more disruptive than helpful. Obviously there are multiple depths of improvisation I'm talking about here, and the minute-by-minute stuff is absolutely still fun and useful to me. I just rarely run a game that's "just show up and kick down some doors," which makes some of the mid-level icon relationship rules less useful to me. Interestingly, what I find the icon relationship rules are absolutely perfect for: running demo games. Both in selling the game to others and in rapid iteration of ideas during design, "rolling up a story" in just a few seconds is perfect when you're doing one-shots. If you're a more one-shot sort of GM, I can't imagine a better system to get you going. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
My 13th Age Report
Top