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BryanChavez posted:Eh, I don't know how you'd make it balanced. Make it really difficult to obtain a Strong relationship, maybe. It's not something you start with, it's something you achieve. I'm totally fine with not starting as the Crusader's best bud. As a boon for a successful personal adventure, though, I'd definitely want that as an option, and 'suddenly you have a Conflicted relationship with the Priestess and a Negative relationship with the Diabolist' would be a good way to represent that you've now entered into a cosmic struggle by aligning yourself so closely to him. When I typed up the previous reply I had a brief thought that you could restrict any Strong relationship with an Icon from starting, and when you do achieve a Strong relationship you get bonus points to spend on other relationships because other Icons think, "Hey, they really help the thing I hate/Hey, they really hate the thing I hate," or whatever. The problem with this is that it's kind of just layering on restriction. Hallgerd fucked around with this message at 02:47 on May 5, 2012 |
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May 5, 2012 02:39
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I don't think that's the right way to go about it. You SHOULD be capable of starting off with a Strong relationship, but I think you should have two caveats apply to it: A) Your Special Thing is tied to the relationship. You can't have a Strong Positive relationship with the Prince of Shadows if you're a devoted churchman with no dark secrets who's under the Priestess' orders. B) Your Strong relationship has a part of Obligation - the organization behind the Icon (or the Icon himself) might help you, but it's not an equivalent exchange of favors by any means. You're the lesser party and you probably know it.
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May 5, 2012 02:45
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I'm not necessarily suggesting that, just floating it on the basis that if you want really want to focus on Icon conflict and 'picking a side' as prominent parts of the game then: 1) adding value to Strong relationships 2) making people have to work to progress to Strong relationships and 3) making every Strong relationship come with oppositional baggage - this is one possible way you might try to emphasize that. It is another kind of restriction on characters, which is typically bad. Transient People posted:A) Your Special Thing is tied to the relationship. You can't have a Strong Positive relationship with the Prince of Shadows if you're a devoted churchman with no dark secrets who's under the Priestess' orders. I'm not that keen on this as a caveat for a Strong Positive relationship either though; possibly just because I'm a fan of kooky/weird Special Things. I like that this ability can just be almost anything, independent of relationships to the Icons.
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May 5, 2012 02:59
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Hallgerd posted:That's basically getting additional levels of investment over any non-Strong Positive investment though. I'd imagine it's more like your characters alignments and relationship with the Icons changing, distancing yourself from the Archmage as you gain favor with the Emperor, stuff like that.
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May 5, 2012 03:05
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Hallgerd posted:I'm not necessarily suggesting that, just floating it on the basis that if you want really want to focus on Icon conflict and 'picking a side' as prominent parts of the game then: 1) adding value to Strong relationships 2) making people have to work to progress to Strong relationships and 3) making every Strong relationship come with oppositional baggage - this is one possible way you might try to emphasize that. I like it too - this was just something I came with off-the-cuff while trying to make strong positive relationships fit in with what we know of the game already. If I were at the helm I'd just let people buy strong positive relationships instead. I'm just hoping against hope that Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet don't really believe that you shouldn't be able to, at minimum, obtain a strong, reliable relationship with one Icon during the course of play because it destroys tension. That's crazy talk.
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May 5, 2012 03:18
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Transient People posted:That's crazy talk. I wonder if they didn't have that in the alpha and everybody just dumped their points into being BFFs with The Good Guys. Which would get boring quick, but seems predictably likely. A better alternative would be just not having any clear Good Guys, and give all the icons a murky moral compass. Position the icons as the heads of institutions much the same way V:tR themed their Covenants along a weird Faith v Science, Church v State, Progress v Tradition six-axis hexagraph. There's a little bit of this, (Natural life v Undeath, Demons vs That One Big Dragon and The Crusader, etc) but the presented institutions aren't remotely as universal as the Convenants's unstated themes, so you're left with fewer places they can feel organic.
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May 5, 2012 05:11
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Transient People posted:You're telling me there's nowhere left to go from 'I am the Knight of the Realm, entrusted by His Highness the Emperor with protecting his land from [Insert questline here]'? Really now? If you can't think of cool hooks for a strongly positive relationship, that's on you, because it's incredibly simple to do so. Hell, I could rattle off two situations that are ripe with plot hooks per Icon right now, if you don't believe me. Actually yes, please do. Also, to speed up the dialogue, could you make sure the interesting bits of your examples don't rest on a complicated or negative relationship with another force in the land? Here's my thing. If you have a completely positive, strongest relationship, that might as well be a background, because narrative is driven by change and tension and strong positive implies those don't exist. Tension may exist in context with other relationships, but only if those other relationships are not also strong positive. A strong positive relationship will never provide the antagonist to your story. Excuse the videogame reference, but your knight evokes it. Cyrus/Frog is completely trusted by his Queen in Chrono Trigger. Strong positive relationship? Hell no! Frog thoroughly believes he does not deserve the trust and respect put upon him, so it's a strong conflicted relationship. As soon as this element of the story is resolved and becomes strong positive, the narrative shifts to something actually interesting. There's also the question of setting. Starting out as the trusted knight of an icon isn't the narrative arc the level and icon systems attempt to support. You're not poo poo farmers, but you're also not well known by everyone in the land at level 1. Could you hack this in? Sure! But it would be important to ensure all characters start with a similar level of influence and connections to balance narrative control. Guardrails to ensure this parity do not exist in the playtest, but again, that may be different now.
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May 5, 2012 05:11
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Strong Positive Relationship with The Archmage: The Archmage personally visits you to request your help. He's found an item of amazing power from an Archmage of a previous age, but his duties require him to stay in the capital. You're the only person he can trust with a task of this magnitude. Are you up to the challenge? Possible Epilogue, tying other party members and Icons into the vignette: The Archmage becomes powerful enough to finally bring peace to the empire! Except, (Insert Icon(s) other Party Member has relatonship to here) have a way to stop it! Sally forth, and fight/steal/diplome for eternal peace! SPRW The Great Gold Wyrm: You have been appointed one of the few able to meet the GGW in person. The path to his resting place is perilous, but he requires your assistance with a matter of great import. Possible Epilogue, yadda yadda yadda: The Wyrm is weakening, due to his duty. None may know of this, but you must journey to the lair of (") and Fight/Steal/Diplome the macguffin of power to help him. SPRW The Priestess: Some evil force has found a way to kill gods themselves! The Priestess requires your help, as well as confidentiality, to keep word from spreading and put an end to this horrible blasphemy. Possible Epilogue, blah blah blah: (") is to blame/has found out about it/is willing to assist you for a price, Fight/Steal/Diplome... Seriously, do you just have no imagination at all, dude? I pulled these straight out of my rear end, and there's a billion other directions you can go with it. The only thing I would slightly agree with you about is that Strong Positive relationships should be a high-level, nearing the end of the adventure thing. Because all the quest hooks that could tie into that are badass, world-changing things. Either way, though, it's stupid as hell to say that there's nothing you can do with a Strong Positive relationship. Edit: I can actually wrap all that up in a much easier to digest format. Every Icon has goals, including one major goal that will save or destroy the world. A strong positive relationship just means that your character(s) become an integral piece of achieving that goal.
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May 5, 2012 06:10
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I was planning on doing a realtime Icon-by-Icon writeup of two hooks per Icon, but I think Bravo's proving my point here. A Strong Positive relationship can certainly be boring - it's trivially easy to run things such that being somebody's pal is nothing but a footnote, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way. Let me show you a detailed example of a Strong Positive relationship that is a hook machine, just to prove my point. Please bear with  here, I'm trying to go into as much detail as I can just to produce something that could reasonably be used as an example for the main book.Aspirant to the Throne: SPR With The Emperor Background: You are the firstborn son of one of the most respected, noblest families of the Dragon Empire. You have lived a life of luxury, never left wanting for anything at all. Such a comfortable existence has come at a cost, however: your family's elders strongly believe in whipping each new generation's scions into people of power and lordly caliber, capable of protecting the family's land and ensuring its prosperity, both in times of war and peace. Ever since you were a child, you've been surrounded by tutors who have hammered lessons of poise, dignity and etiquette into you. Not all of your tutors educated you in courtly matters, however: you also had a war instructor, who taught you the basics of [Insert Class Here]. Game Start Hook: A few years ago, you visited the Imperial Capital, now a fine young man. While your elders discussed the state of the Empire with its ruler, you were given free reign to explore the imperial palace. Your explorations presented your eyes with one hidden wonder after the next, but none of them were as breathtaking as a beautiful young lady you met in the palace library. The two of you were found in the very same spot hours later by one of the Emperor's retainers, still immersed in conversation. You were rudely separated by the emperor's servants, and it was only then that you learned that the woman you had spent the last few hours with was the Emperor's Daughter. The next few days passed in a hurry as you searched for her in vain, unable to find her. When your family returned to their lands, you were absolutely inconsolable - you just couldn't erase the Daughter's visage from your mind. Fortunately, your elders took note of your plight, and in a maneuver that mixed political acumen and solidarity for their descendant in equal parts, began making discreet inquiries about the state of the emperor's daughter. It turned out she had become as interested in you as you had in her, and had fallen into deep melancholy in your absence. Sensing an incredible opportunity, your elders asked the Emperor for permission to arrange a marriage between the two of you. Though not entirely opposed to the idea, the Emperor was hesitant - whoever took his daughter's hand in marriage would one day inherit the Dragon Empire, and choosing the wrong man to be his daughter's husband would lead the empire to disaster. The Emperor agreed to grant the union his blessing, but on one condition: at some point within the next five years, you would be called to his side to fulfill three tasks, fraught with difficulty and danger. If you manage to bring all three tasks to fruition, you will be rewarded with the hand of the emperor's daughter. Four years have passed since the Emperor's proclamation, and just a few days ago you received a letter from the Emperor, calling for you to visit him at the capital. Could this, at last, be the day you'll earn the right to be with your beloved? --- So yeah, terrible writing aside, here you go. If a DM can't make SOMETHING out of this stuff, he's not trying. A SPR needs to be important, and also needs to be a two-way relationship. Provided those things are taken care of, I can't see why something like this shouldn't be allowed. It's a classic fairy-tale setup, after all! (And we can even use in contrast to strong conflicted and negative relationships, too: in a conflicted relationship, the marriage was arranged since birth and you are in love with the emperor's daughter but resent the immense responsibility of leading the empire; In a negative relationship, the same thing happened but you don't want any part of it, so now imperial agents are on the lookout for you, ready to bring you to the capital, with or without your agreement).
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May 5, 2012 07:01
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Yeah, but that works for a party where only one person has such a strong positive relationship with an icon and the rest just follow along. What if there are two players with such a relationship with different (or even opposing) icons? Three? Five? Of course, a good GM can make this work and have interesting result, but a good GM would not feel constrained by the rules regarding relationships in the first place. I have not read the rules so I might as well be talking out of my rear end here, but I feel that this restriction exists to prevent a party of conflicting icon relationships from overwhelming an average GM.
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May 5, 2012 08:48
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Rexides posted:Yeah, but that works for a party where only one person has such a strong positive relationship with an icon and the rest just follow along. What if there are two players with such a relationship with different (or even opposing) icons? Three? Five? You start playing a game with agendas, more or less. It basically turns Icon relationships into something like FATE high concepts...and there are worse things to be done than this, honestly. It makes players proactive and that's pretty cool, though I can definitely see your reasoning. I just wish it was explicitly stated so that houseruling the system wasn't necessary.
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May 5, 2012 08:58
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Captain Bravo posted:Edit: I can actually wrap all that up in a much easier to digest format. Every Icon has goals, including one major goal that will save or destroy the world. A strong positive relationship just means that your character(s) become an integral piece of achieving that goal. Here's where I think we differ. The story isn't in an icon saving the world, or sending you on a fetch quest, or entrusting you with mcguffin. That's simple setup, and why someone is entrusting you could be contained in your One Unique Thing, or represented in your otherwise fairly static backgrounds, especially if there is absolutely no question that you should be entrusted with such heady tasks (as indicated by a strong positive relationship). The story is in the opposition to those goals. I should note that the tier system says the kind of personal quests for icons you're talking about would put you in epic level environments.
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May 5, 2012 12:59
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Transient People, the Emperor doesn't completely trust you yet. You have to perform arbitrary tasks for him to receive his blessing in a relationship that you may even feel is none of his business. If that pisses you off, that's a complicated relationship, and far more interesting than just being prince charming riding up and placing a pea under the bed because that's what he's supposed to do. Alternatively, the Emperor doesn't trust you yet, so there is still tension and movement as you try to gain his trust. Medium positive relationship.
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May 5, 2012 13:08
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Need to clarify after checking the rules. You can't start at level 1 with a positive strong relationship, but an example of play in the rules does have a level 8 character with a strong positive relationship as an example of not being able to go higher.
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May 5, 2012 20:01
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Also keep in mind that Strong Positive with an icon is not just the Icon personally, but the entire edifice associated with them. They give several examples of this - you could be known to the Emperor personally and on good terms with him, but be disliked by the bureaucracy. That would be Medium Positive. You could be loved by the Emperor but hated by a cabal of powerful nobles in the empire - that would be Strong Conflicted. It covers a lot of ground. And yes, if you check the rules you can advance to a Strong Positive with an Icon by spending the point you get at level 4? I think. Mostly the thing to keep in mind is that Icon Relationships are with more then specific people, its with Icons - symbols - what they represent, and who represents them, in the case of their followers and resources. edit: and you can start off with a strong relationship, just not strong POSITIVE; don't know if this was not made clear. You can have Strong Conflicted as a starting relationship, at level 4? or whenever you get the relationship boost, move it to Positive instead of Conflicted (or negative if appropriate). It is a good system conceptually, I just feel it needs to be more tightly integrated with the existing rules system for backgrounds. Laphroaig fucked around with this message at 05:35 on May 6, 2012 |
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May 6, 2012 05:32
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I haven't looked at the rules, so this is probably a bad question, but what if I want to, say, play an important and well-respected paladin of the "good guy," someone who's high level and has a strong positive relationship (both with the icon and the bureaucracy, and not conflicted), but in a campaign/storyline where that doesn't matter too much, where it's more of a background "cool thing," or where in the specific situation mentioning/namedropping it is likely to get you a "so what?" kind of response? Like, where the guy is used to getting his way, having things be pretty clear-cut, but now he's cut off from his support network and has to work with this small group of assholes for whatever reason. Would that be his "one cool thing," or is it alright to have a strong (positive) relationship that doesn't actually come up in play? Just from reading the thread it seems like it's there to facilitate getting things moving. Or is it that you'd never really be in a situation where an Icon doesn't have some sort of influence?
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May 6, 2012 15:32
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I'm going to put this out again, but clouding up the all-good icons will fix everything stemming from having purely good icons. Maybe the Emperor is prone to murderous eccentrics. The big Gold Dragon is pro-torture and doesn't believe in due process. Tornadoes eliminated that village because the High Druid doesn't like the way it crowded up the view. The Dwarf King is a racist. For the most part 13A got rid of cartoon vilany, but retained the white hat sherrifs. Some players prefer the goodest good guy, and that's nothing wrong with that, but relationships shouldn't function mechanically differently based on how many puppies the Icon kicks in a year. Probably the simplest fix is to eliminate the good, ambiguous, and evil verbiage entirely. Decades of D&D has irreversably loaded those terms. Present each Icon and let the player decide if that sounds like someone they want to know better, but keep the alignments out of it. This way you can keep the good guys shining armor shining, and be as tight as you want with them. (I realize this goes counter to what I was saying before about all ambiguous Icons, but it's probably got a broader appeal and won't result in Warhammer's "every faction is jerks in different ways" world without good guys.)
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May 6, 2012 15:51
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moths posted:Probably the simplest fix is to eliminate the good, ambiguous, and evil verbiage entirely. Wait, is this a thing in 13A already? As a person who absolutely hates the alignment system in DnD, I would be very disappointed if the icons were categorized in that way. I don't want this to be Warhammer, I mean, we already have Warhammer anyway, but spelling it out on the rules that "this is the good guy, this is the bad guy" can't lead to anything good. You don't even have to give everyone a dark side, everything can work out as long as you are not specific about alignments. Maybe the Emperor is the most caring and goodhearted person in the world, but the vast bureaucracy required to run an empire might seem uncaring. Maybe the Gold Dragon cares so much for the continuation of the universe on such large scales, that the famine that plagues a single village seems insignificant to his agents. And the rangers of the High Druid may be attacking poachers from nearby villages, but only after warning them and only if it's absolutely necessary for the protection of the ecological balance of the area. But nothing of this can happen if you try to court DnD players with an absolute view on morality and you categorize your icons on the good/evil scale. Again, though, haven't read the rules, might be talking out of own rear end.
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May 6, 2012 16:54
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No, you got it right. There are Good and Evil Icons, and their alignment directly affects how much relationships with them cost. Additionally, you can't start the game having a strong positive relationship with a Good icon. It's a little dumb spot of legacy in an otherwise interesting system.
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May 6, 2012 17:12
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Rexides posted:I don't want this to be Warhammer, I mean, we already have Warhammer anyway, but spelling it out on the rules that "this is the good guy, this is the bad guy" can't lead to anything good. Wait, Warhammer has a defined good side? Aside from Chaos , the 'good' ones are all ambiguously good in that they generally have human-like motivations to survive, but Bretonnia's a nightmare for serfs, the Empire is barely hanging together and constantly is fighting with itself and the Beastmen in the woods even in 'peace,' Dwarves carry grudges from thousands of years ago that turn into barely-understood reasons for war, and the Elves are all dicks in various unique ways.
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May 6, 2012 18:18
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No no no no, maybe (probably) it was bad wording on my part, but the "this is the good guy, this is the bad guy" comment was about the current version of 13A rules, not Warhammer.
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May 6, 2012 18:23
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Exactly. There is a lot of room to play in between the antique 9-alignment axis and Warhammer's blood-soaked shades of grey. 13A could own that space simply by changing the (keyword) Good guys into good guys.
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May 6, 2012 18:30
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There are ideas to muddy up the icons already laid out in the rules. But yes, there are icons that are generally seen as good (the priestess) and some that are seen as evil (the lich king) to the extent that outward alignment with someone like the diabolist is going to get you all sorts of funny looks. The rules also describe how to flip the general alignment of the party by inverting the matrix of relationship costs. Also, good and evil don't have the same legacy mechanical bullshit like 3e's detect evil. Though 9 point alignment is the default in 13a (and completely unrelated to the icons) this is another area where the rules are very upfront with the reasoning (nostalgia) and include alternatives to adjust your campaign to your preferences.
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May 7, 2012 00:46
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The 3x3 alignment is offered as a option for people who want to use it, but you're right that there's no mechanical tie-ins and that's really good. Morality and mechanics meet at such a dangerous intersection, but it's like RPG design GPS routes everyone through it at some point. It doesn't need to be there. Good and Evil are such subjective, quantifiable concepts that point values and keywords would be laughed at anywhere outside of this hobby. (If anyone were so presumptuous as to try assigning them.) I mean, philosophers have been trying to nail this down for the entirety of recorded human history; You're not going to get it right in the design cycle of a table-top RPG. Allegiances to the icons work fine without them, why shoehorn it in?
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May 7, 2012 02:48
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What's funny is that alignment in D&D started out basically as an allegiance-type system. You had Law vs. Chaos, but it was just jerseys against black jerseys and didn't really specify actual behavior.
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May 7, 2012 03:03
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Yeah, the whole Good/Evil thing is played very loosely. Hell, just look at the Crusader. You can have the white-knightingest, goodliest, demon-killing motherfucker in the world with a Strong Positive relationship to the crusader, and it's totally cool. They'll go beat up the Diabolist for a bit then fist-bump. That's where I think 13th Age actually does what 5th edition purported to do, but better. It gives you great ideas, with strong mechanics, and a lot of hooks, then says "Hey, if you don't wanna use these, that's totally cool too. Here's some other ways you can try to play this, for you to use or to base your own off of." It gives amazing, easy mechanics to homebrew, but fleshes them out for those that don't want to. It's the best of both worlds.
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May 7, 2012 03:09
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Remember: Icon relationships are not relationships with the icon in question, nine times out of ten--they're relationships with the society that icon heads up. Anyway. The good icon / bad icon duality is entirely dependent on the icon's relationship with the gameworld--the way people react to them. The game presents default assumptions for what these relationships will be, but that's all for the generic game world, which we're expected to modify for our home campaigns. To use everyone's favorite Icon, take the Crusader. If the man in the street's reaction to his army is, "Thank god they're here. Just last year three hundred of their mighty knights showed up and killed a demon army that was attacking. I owe my life to them!" then he's a good icon. If the standard reaction is, "Gee, it's nice they fights demons and all, but whenever they can't find demons they just burn down villages," then he's a neutral icon. And if the standard response is, "What, those battle-crazed soldiers? They roam the continent killing and subjugating constantly! When they hit town, a smart man heads for the hills," then the Crusader becomes an evil icon. Ultimately their good/neutral/evil status (and thus the cost of being friends with them) can only be determined by the dungeon master.
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May 7, 2012 03:20
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Also, nothing really says their status has to stay static through a campaign.
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May 7, 2012 03:47
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Right, I mean obviously most fo the contact that players will have with icons is through agents, bureaucracys, and so forth. But I think it's still best for those who haven't seen the playtest or run the games to actually talk about the Icons themselves, since that's all they've really seen. The little bit of info released was just the blurbs about the Icons. Plus, hell, being able to actually meet an Icon in person is kind of an end-game, you're a bad motherfucker thing that's nice to shoot for. If the Emporer is reclusive and never meets anyone, doing all of his biding through other people, then it really shows just how far your characters have come when they get a personal audience to shoot the poo poo with the dude. It just seems like if you're given a list of people who are the defining men and women of the age, any decent game is going to feature an appearance somewhere near the end of the line. otherwise you might as well just sub in "Mages Guild" or "Fighters guild" and be done with it. Which sounds more fun, "In a hidden basement deep within the slums, The Prince of Shadows himself stepped out from the darkness to present me with a reward, and a warning", or "We filled out form B-15, and the Thieves Guild flunky pulled our reward off a shelf then handed us a note."? (And yes, before anyone says anything, I do realize that almost that exact situation happened in our last game, but ya'll are level one and you'll have to put in your dues to get to meet the big shots.  I'm just saying that you guys in the thread aren't shooting nearly high enough with your examples.)
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May 7, 2012 03:49
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As you approach Axis a singular, impossibly tall tower reaches into the clouds and dominates all other features of the capital city. Closer, dragons are just visible bringing the powerful and elite to the upper reaches of the tower, to the Emperor's Court. This is a 1st level party's perspective of the Emperor in our campaign. The party wants dragons now, of course, which is a carrot that always works.
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May 7, 2012 05:10
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Haha. Wow. That seems really weird in comparison to how my group used them. Granted, my group never had truck with that "Luke Skywalker is a level sixteen badass, you'll be lucky to lick his boots!" sort of thing. I think, with our interpretation, it wasn't "How 'in' are you?" it was more "How important are you to their plans currently?" This is mostly a remnant of the fact that we're in general opposed to the sort of play that involves "earn your position and your fun", as it's just... not interesting to us. Which is probably again why we rarely play D&D. With our group, I think our Steelborn Monk (Steelborn being vessels of dead gods in this) was actively being pursued by the Lich King and several others. The dragonspawn sorc figured into some dragonplan. An undead* High Elf had straight-up spat in the eye of the Lich King before breaking away. Two others didn't go int much detail on their things. Mine was the last High Elf of her House, which was pretty much full of bastard elves who got killed by all the other High Elves for being total dicks; had personal interaction with the Elf Queen, because otherwise she'd be dead. I know mine was there as Strong Complicated, I don't remember the others. Maybe we're just bad at D&D though. I don't know. * Indistinguishable from your standard High Elf, but done mostly because the three elves in the party were family, and the youngest was a half elf, whereas mine was the last living full-blooded elf in her family.
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May 7, 2012 06:13
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Andrevian posted:Haha. Wow. That seems really weird in comparison to how my group used them. Granted, my group never had truck with that "Luke Skywalker is a level sixteen badass, you'll be lucky to lick his boots!" sort of thing. Nah, you're doing it right. Death to the shitfarmer phase!
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May 7, 2012 06:42
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Oh, I concur. But I think there's a step between, 'eliminate shitfarmer phase' and, 'level 1 character gets to bump fists with an icon'. A medium positive relationship with the emperor means that, throughout the empire, you can regularly call upon friends, organizations, and peers. You are almost certainly world famous. You can walk into any city on the planet and be almost assured that you'll be given a bed, a meal, and an auditorium of soldiers who are eager to hear one of your insightful speeches on swordcraft. I don't think you need to have the icons picking up your laundry to skip the boring parts. In the pdf, one of the sample adventures, for a level one party, is, "A township has decided to recognize the heroism and years of service of one of the PCs. Choose one, he or she has been promised a week long festival and the present of a magic item of historical significance."
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May 7, 2012 07:43
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Mystic Mongol posted:In the pdf, one of the sample adventures, for a level one party, is, "A township has decided to recognize the heroism and years of service of one of the PCs. Choose one, he or she has been promised a week long festival and the present of a magic item of historical significance." What the gently caress is this? If I can't skull gently caress the Lich King as my one unique thing then I don't want to play your regressive legacy groggy simulationist poo poo farmer fantasy vietnam bullshit. In my game we don't earn our fun.  Note: you can absolutely skull gently caress whatever you want in 13a, and the rules are cool because it should be clear you're drifting the default setting to your group's tastes and how that will have repercussions in other setting assumptions like relationships and tiered environments. There is legit legacy bullshit in 13a that needs to be house ruled to maintain your indie cred (rolling for stats, 9 point alignment, wizard getting more background points than the barbarian); adding mechanics around an evolving influence in the world in a game with level progression is not one of them.
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May 7, 2012 13:00
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 What do you do at level 2?
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May 7, 2012 13:11
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Well, skulls do have multiple holes. That's one well you can draw from a few times.
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May 7, 2012 13:13
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Haha. Wow. I understand what the game is doing. I understand that, holy poo poo, some people like that. It just doesn't work for my group, and I figured I'd say something about that for other people that it doesn't work for. To think that this is about anything like "indie cred" is hilarious, when it's really more about "hey this is how we envisioned this mechanic." It's just like the disappointing Escalation Die mechanic to me, only it's at least not an ingame math fix, or the game of keepy-uppy in Jupiter gravity that Momentum was. Maybe you should find a seat without the stick before posting.
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May 7, 2012 13:13
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Mystic Mongol posted:In the pdf, one of the sample adventures, for a level one party, is, "A township has decided to recognize the heroism and years of service of one of the PCs. Choose one, he or she has been promised a week long festival and the present of a magic item of historical significance." Was there another pdf? My two adventures were a goblinicide and a rail-tour of a mage tower and some ruins. That quoted text doesn't appear anywhere in my pdf.
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May 7, 2012 13:33
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It wasn't a pull quote, it was a summary. Hold on, I'll see if I can find it. E: Looks like I just attributed my kickass hook to 13th age. "The point of this encounter is to hook the players into wanting to find Zvegdar and reclaim Glaezentorg. Perhaps one PC is traveling here to receive Glaezentorg as an honor, reward, or inheritance." Wherps! I just figured it was a nice way to get the party to care about Glaezentorg and make them feel heroic at the start of the game. Sure enough, the ranger/sheriff cared a great deal about it. I strongly suggest stealing that idea. vvvvvvvvvvv: We didn't have a sword user either. It was a bow for the ranger with the old, sleeping dog. (No one ever saw the dog awake outside of combat, and the rest of the party wasn't super clear how it got from place to place, as it never walked anywhere. The ranger would just say, 'Oh, he's old. Let him sleep,' when pressed.) Then, fire! The big ceremony was ruined, as was all the cake. Glaezentorg was missing! What a disaster! If only some brave heroes would oh you've already headed out after it, no one had to hire you because clearly you're a big enough hero to have festivals thrown in your honor. Seriously, I strongly suggest this. Mystic Mongol fucked around with this message at 13:46 on May 7, 2012 |
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May 7, 2012 13:35
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 01:36 |
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He's paraphrasing. It gives a few options for why the party is going to the Mage Tower, and one of the options is that one of your party members is being recognized for heroism. His example is probably just how he or his GM ran it. For instance, in my group we didn't have anybody who was a sword user, (Plus I didn't much care for giving one character above the others an entire adventure just about the one cool thing he's going to get that nobody else will really benefit from) so I spun it as the group meeting a friend who was recieving the sword, and over the course of the adventure I came up with other rewards for the players, and had them return the sword at the end. (Although it may come up later... hint hint wink wink) Captain Bravo fucked around with this message at 13:40 on May 7, 2012 |
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May 7, 2012 13:35
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