New deets about Paizo's '13 Omens' horror TTRPG

Paizo, publisher of Pathfinder and Starfinder, announced its new horror-themed TTRPG 13 Omens in April. Via the official mailing list, a few more details have been shared.

We already know that the game is being designed by Pathfinder creator Jason Bulmahn and Starfinder's Joe Pasini. It's a modern-day supernatural horror game, with a narrative slant and a new game system.

The game engine is d6-based, using a shared dice pool. Some of these dice are 'Omen' dice, while others are 'safe'. Bad rolls on an omen die means bad things happen--and these omen dice increase in number as the game progresses, adding to the suspense and danger. The dice are kept in a bag, which all the players use to make checks.

This is quite a departure for Paizo, with a brand-new game system--it's first since Pathfinder and its spinoff, Starfinder. Horror isn't new to designer Jason Bulmahn, though, who--under his own Minotaur Games imprint--created zombie game Hopefinder, the occult Eventide horror setting, and modern horror RPG Hellfinder. However, he did not invent d20 fantasy roleplaying.

 

[dbm]

The dice are kept in a bag, which all the players use to make checks.

This is a really interesting implementation. ‘Bag building’ is a fairly common mechanic in board games. I can imagine a situation where there are a certain number of ‘good’ dice in the bag to start with, and the GM adds ‘bad’ dice as the tension ramps up. For each skill roll the player draws a number of dice ‘blind’ from the bag to roll, and only finds out the mix of good / bad dice when they are cast.

If you don’t refill the bag every time then the mix of good / bad dice will change as specific dice are pulled from the bag, changing the odds of something triggering through pulling a ‘bad’ die. Maybe there is a way players can refresh the bag somewhat to add in more ‘good’ dice.

Interesting. If they don’t use this specifically I might look into home brewing into a system somewhere.

ETA: reading further it sounds very much like the above

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

What about the lore or background?