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Yeah made it to the ~20 minute mark and the joke about how as an AUTISTIC ELF he talks to items more than regular folk before cutting bait on that one. Can't really say that's an acceptable representation, y'all. Also he's scared of the ground because he's on the spectrum? That was weird and unclear but I may be being unfair in that descriptor because I didn't really get all that far into the podcast.
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Apr 12, 2018 06:21
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"Talks to items" is such a viable character concept particularly in 13th Age that I don't see why you need to attach the AUTISTIC descriptor to it. Much like modern real world ideas like that translate to a fantasy setting only so much before it becomes "actually a reskinned contemporary setting" (I'm definitely guilty of running games like that).
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Apr 12, 2018 07:34
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I mean I had an elven ex-male model who was working for the Blue because she respected him as a person and made him chief of security of her fabulous underwater metropolis of monsters and magical genetics experiments. He was beset by teleporting high elf paparazzi. The same game had carrier pigeons used to channel lightning bolts for deniable Archmage ops.
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Apr 12, 2018 07:48
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I mean, yeah, fantasy and sci-fi always to some degree mirror our own world. I guess what I'm trying to say is if there's stuff like sentient items already in the setting and mechanics, it's much more interesting to give your characters traits that would be classified as autistic in a context where things simply aren't sentient than flat out say "oh he talks to items because he's autistic." Like one of my players once played a character that "heard voices" and would talk to objects or just empty air, and we gave it an animistic spin where she would sometimes get replies, but we often left it kinda ambiguous whether the replies were her own thoughts or actual spirits in an object or place, and we did fine with that without ever claiming representation of actual schizophrenia.
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Apr 12, 2018 09:18
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Yeah, we did similar with another character who claimed his sword talked to him, but he was such a fantastic prodigy of a swordsman that the other mercenaries were never sure if he was unwell or if he was just describing his virtuosity in a way that only made sense to him since he was so far beyond the rest of them at fencing.
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Apr 12, 2018 13:31
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This is reminding me of good old Jackengill, a half-orc in a 13th age wild west reskin I GMed , who talked to mechanical objects like guns. I'm pretty sure mechanically, he was really able to talk to those objects. I think at first I think I tried to leave it pretty vague, and I don't think any of the other characters believed it. ("I ask the water pump which way is (whatever objective it was, I forget). "North". meanwhile inside contact tells them to go North Jackengill: "Ha! Told ya"). He was also really into guns' rights. (The apostrophe isn't a typo. The rights of the guns was important to him.  )He was an odd fellow. And yeah, from what I've heard here of that podcast, it does seem a bad representation of Autism, though I admit to not having more info than the descriptions.
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Apr 12, 2018 18:25
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I'd like to say to whoever designed that part of Wyrd of the Wild Wood from the organized play series: coming up with wolves made from living wood and calling them Timber Wolves is one thing, and gets my grudging respect. Giving them an ability called Worse Bark: I will hunt you.
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Apr 17, 2018 19:44
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Night10194 posted:Yeah, we did similar with another character who claimed his sword talked to him, but he was such a fantastic prodigy of a swordsman that the other mercenaries were never sure if he was unwell or if he was just describing his virtuosity in a way that only made sense to him since he was so far beyond the rest of them at fencing.
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Apr 18, 2018 00:32
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It does help that in 13a, your magic sword does talk back. Kinda.My Lovely Horse posted:I'd like to say to whoever designed that part of Wyrd of the Wild Wood from the organized play series: coming up with wolves made from living wood and calling them Timber Wolves is one thing, and gets my grudging respect. Giving them an ability called Worse Bark: I will hunt you. I'm using this in my next game. It's not even fantasy, I don't care.
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Apr 18, 2018 03:14
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ProfessorCirno posted:It does help that in 13a, your magic sword does talk back. Kinda. crap. I want this.
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Apr 18, 2018 05:16
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ProfessorCirno posted:It does help that in 13a, your magic sword does talk back. Kinda. What do you mean? I thought every magic item had like a personality, I create a character sheet for each one. Are you not supposed too?
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Apr 18, 2018 06:40
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It just has an impulse it pushes onto the owner, as an optional thing.
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Apr 19, 2018 05:29
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Oh... Welp, that's not how I run it, but that makes a lot more sense.
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Apr 19, 2018 10:04
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The impulse is the only mechanical element, but it is pretty strongly implied that items have personality and some measure of sentience and it's up to you to what degree you make that a factor in your game, much like anything else in 13th Age. I'm really struggling to come up with good ideas for my games lately, and I'm not sure if that's because I'm so used to 4E and have to get to grips with how 13th Age runs things first (most importantly the inability to rely on combat filling most of the game time), or if I'm just generally not creative right now. e: I've also more or less stopped playing video games so maybe I just don't have any more plots to steal
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Apr 19, 2018 10:15
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Race to Starport has "travel montages" at the beginning of sessions. One player states a problem that occurs during their travels, the next player states how their character solved it. Go around the table clockwise until everyone has stated a solution to a problem. No one rolls for the solution; it's just a quick narrative icebreaker that also gets characters from point A to point B. I just used that concept to open a Fate game where the "travel" was hauling rear end in a car chased by a van full of vampires with machine guns. Each player's solution netted them a related tag, and the montage ended at rolling initiative for a combat. It worked out really, really well. fosborb fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Apr 20, 2018 |
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Apr 20, 2018 05:44
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You can sub in a skill challenge for a combat encounter if the fail condition is "take damage" and if players can turn a fail into a success by Hulking through the trap and spending a Recovery.
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Apr 21, 2018 02:36
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I'm getting a little more confident about running this, had some montages yesterday and they worked out really well. The most background details came from a player who usually struggles to come up with something on the spot, that was pretty cool. Another player is a smart guy who answers "okay, what's some of the stuff you guys saw or did on the way here" with "we found the magic sword of ultimate annihilation +7." While I was still considering how to "yes, and" that one, another player carried on "... but we immediately lost it." Clearly I now need to foster a running gag where the party periodically finds and loses the magic sword of ultimate annihilation +7, always during the same montage.
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Apr 22, 2018 14:35
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Every first montage they see the Sword being carried out by a new bearer. The Sword itself is the Enemy of an Epic Monster or villainous Icon. During the next montage the party sees it being carried back to its resting place by the ghost of the bearer they saw. If they ask around about the sword tell them that anyone who picks it up is immediately driven to fight this Epic beastie despite the fact that a mortal has no chance. Half the bearers are guards and stable boys who picked up the sword in a moment of desperation and then had to go on some stupid quest to kill all the River Devils or something. Let one of your players touch it, hear a voice say "not yet." when they try to attune to it, and then have them immediately lose it.
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Apr 22, 2018 20:14
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Razorwired posted:Half the bearers are guards and stable boys who picked up the sword in a moment of desperation and then had to go on some stupid quest to kill all the River Devils or something.
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Apr 23, 2018 10:53
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Alternately, you find the +7 Sword of Annihilation. It deems you unworthy of its power and puts on a prima donna act about how you must learn and grow as a person, deigning to add in one +1 per Virtue of True Heroism you learn to its satisfaction. There is your OoT: Your abilities going up as you level are a combination of you getting better and a magic sword tricking you into relentless heroic self-improvement. It will later reveal the true hero was you all along in a sappy speech, but by that point you knew it was coming.
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Apr 23, 2018 13:52
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So, compared to 5e, is this a more rules/stats light game, or is it considered more on the order of Pathfinder? I like the aesthetic of D&D, but it seems like it has very complicated rules and moves slowly. Is this more of a streamlined experience?
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Apr 23, 2018 14:47
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No if you're looking for "D&D but more streamlined" this is pretty much the first place you should go. It's got the D&D traditions like six basic stats and classes and spells, but it also does away with a lot of traditions like exact skill lists/points and precise positioning in combat that tend to slow things down. What it mostly adds to the table is a huge narrative focus - players get to define details about the setting, their own characters, and regularly get to come up with events during a play session.
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Apr 23, 2018 15:09
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D&D, especially in 5E, is the true middle in this respect. Pathfinder delves deep into the number crunch and bogs itself down in combat with cover, half cover, different combat postures and such. 13th Age uses essentially 3 ranges and can be easily done without a map or hexgrid. I like to call 13th Age 'Bullshitting the GM' due in part that you can use a background for just about anything (if you can explain it to your GM why it would work and they go with it) whereas Pathfinder has so many stats one of them will fit into something you're looking to do.
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Apr 23, 2018 15:45
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Combat wise it’s a little akin to 3.5 with a better solution to gridless combat, but with more buffs and abilities available to melee classes. Which is to say it’s designed to avoid pixel bitching about distances. Aoe spells just hit a certain number of enemies, the question of “can I run up and hit” is established and nearly always yes. In play the various classes have either powers or reactions based on their roll. Those classes that start and end with “I attack” tend to have situational buffs (though paladin gets called out as having the fewest options). As for non combat stuff, Backgrounds mean all characters have at least some pull with skill checks, and Icon Dice can be a way to pull some narrative weight too. Magic classes have access to various non combat spells, though rogue gets its amazing swashbuckle talent to stand up to that. So I’d hesitate to call it streamlined or rules light in comparison to things like dungeon world or fate, but it explicitly forgoes the very granular skill systems and assigned DCs of pathfinder and 3.5.
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Apr 23, 2018 19:03
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I honestly think that Paladins have more options than people give them credit for considering they get access to Cleric Invocations and spells via talent. Some of the niche Domains like Trickery become really nice when you put them on a tank. Still simple compared to melee Bards, but I'd still put them above Barbs and Rogues.
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Apr 23, 2018 20:37
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Pollyanna posted:So, compared to 5e, is this a more rules/stats light game, or is it considered more on the order of Pathfinder? I like the aesthetic of D&D, but it seems like it has very complicated rules and moves slowly. Is this more of a streamlined experience? The core of the game is more streamlined than 5e. The classes have a wide range of complexity, with some being very simple and others quite complex. The spellcasters never need to juggle as many spells as they do in 5e and the layout of the book makes choosing and using spells dramatically easier. Combat is much faster than Pathfinder or 4e. Overall, it's easy for a GM to run and players to learn, while the options are there for complex PCs if particular players want that.
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May 5, 2018 01:54
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Books by Pelgrane Press have done more than anything else in life to convince me that I need one of those mailboxes that you can't stuff a book into bent in half.
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May 5, 2018 02:01
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Pollyanna posted:So, compared to 5e, is this a more rules/stats light game, or is it considered more on the order of Pathfinder? I like the aesthetic of D&D, but it seems like it has very complicated rules and moves slowly. Is this more of a streamlined experience? 13th Age has more rules than D&D 5e by ... gross weight, but the rules that do exist are more carefully thought out and designed, and the final output is a game that generally plays better and flows better than D&D 5e
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May 5, 2018 09:11
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For an example of "More rules, but they make sense" here's a list of Conditions in 13A. Its more extensive than. "Grants Advantage/Disadvantage" but they still fit on an index card taped to my DM screen and players have access to a few of them at level 1:quote:Conditions
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May 5, 2018 14:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:13th Age has more rules than D&D 5e by ... gross weight, but the rules that do exist are more carefully thought out and designed, and the final output is a game that generally plays better and flows better than D&D 5e Razorwired posted:For an example of "More rules, but they make sense" here's a list of Conditions in 13A. Its more extensive than. "Grants Advantage/Disadvantage" but they still fit on an index card taped to my DM screen and players have access to a few of them at level 1: I'm not understanding this. 5e has 15 different conditions (rather than 9 for 13 Age). It also has specific rules for things like light and vision, cover, hiding, jumping and traveling, and has to explain how exactly each type of area effect spell (cone, cube, cylinder, line, sphere) works because the specific details matter. 13 Age, on the other hand, seems to be less finicky within combat, and out of combat just treats everything as a simple ability/skill check with the GM merely deciding whether the task's difficulty is normal, hard, or ridiculously hard. It seems that 13 Age has significantly fewer core rules than 5e.
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May 6, 2018 20:48
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Sorry, I was unclear. My point is that every one of those rules comes up in play with 13A. Sure 5e likes to pretend that it has rules for light, but low light vision is so common it's practically forgotten. Or how 5e insists that carry weight is important but then makes Bags of Holding so ubiquitous the UA Artificer got one for free. To go back to conditions take Incapacitated. If you added "While stunned a creature cannot take actions or reactions" or a variant Incapacitated wouldn't really NEED to be a condition, its a condition for other conditions to reference. You could edit it out, Which 13A mostly does by keeping the Condition list small and universal and letting their combination/skinning be the reason they're distinct when each monster does them.
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May 7, 2018 09:42
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I'm not going to contend that 13th Age is also lighter than D&D 5e on top of being better designed, so if that's what you think, go right ahead.
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May 7, 2018 09:53
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Hey there! I'm looking for some feedback on these monsters because it's been a good while since I've run some 13A and I want to make sure I'm not making any terribly stupid design decisions. I started with flavor, rather than mechanics. Also, anyone else playing some 13A at GenCon? Almost every game sold out super fast, but I was fortunate enough to land myself in a regular game AND Rob Heinsoo's 13G game. I have no idea which class I'm gonna play for the latter, I have like, 5 I want to experience.
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May 11, 2018 21:46
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Does 13th age have good pre-made stories? I only saw two in the op, but don't really know how they hold up.
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Jun 14, 2018 01:24
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Spikes32 posted:Does 13th age have good pre-made stories? I only saw two in the op, but don't really know how they hold up. Hell yeah, this thread helped write one of adventures in 13 True Ways. The Organized Play adventures are pretty good. I still use the opening montage in about every game I run. I also really enjoyed running the mega dungeon The Eyes of the Stone Thief.
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Jun 14, 2018 01:43
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That's good to know. I'm having trouble figuring out what is in each book. Essentially I'm wondering whether there are campaign style stories already written and not just ideas and specific battles like most of the battle scene books seem to imply. Id be a new dm, but like 13th age over 5e dnd. Ideally I'd like a really flavorful or well themed story that's good level one to 5 or 6 maybe? If you're familiar with it, curse of stradh in 5e dnd is kinda what I was imagining.
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Jun 14, 2018 02:33
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There isn't a standalone book right now like the 5e adventure paths that is a whole campaign, but this year they should release Shards of the Broken Sky which will cover all ten levels.
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Jun 17, 2018 01:59
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The Book Of Ages is available for pre-order. It provides procedures to collaboratively flesh out the past ages before you start a campaign. This looks like a fun way to further customize your game world and get the players invested before you begin. The book also has a bunch of sample ages you can use if you just want to drop one into an existing campaign.
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Jun 17, 2018 02:34
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HomegrownHydra posted:The Book Of Ages is available for pre-order. It provides procedures to collaboratively flesh out the past ages before you start a campaign. This looks like a fun way to further customize your game world and get the players invested before you begin. The book also has a bunch of sample ages you can use if you just want to drop one into an existing campaign. Microscope (http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/) is great for this and any system, too. Oh and Eyes of the Stone Thief can take you from 4th to 8th level and is just generally loving awesome.
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Jun 17, 2018 02:41
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HomegrownHydra posted:The Book Of Ages is available for pre-order. It provides procedures to collaboratively flesh out the past ages before you start a campaign. This looks like a fun way to further customize your game world and get the players invested before you begin. The book also has a bunch of sample ages you can use if you just want to drop one into an existing campaign. Allow me to gush about this. The Book of Ages is an extremely solid buy. We went through half of the Engine of Ages last week, and the stories that came out of it were absolutely phenomenal. Most of my players are completely new to tabletop games; for at least half, this is their first, and they still absolutely crushed it. In our history, we learned of the rise and fall of anthropomorphic Squirrels, defenders of the Wild Wood who have been around since the 2nd Age, peaking in the 6th Age (the Age of the Wild Reign) where, through their efforts, forests covered the entirety of the Dragon Empire, and "civilization" was pushed back to tiny corners of the map. They fell in the 9th Age to the Terrible Emperor's war machine, but a few still live deep within the wilds. We also learned that the first Undead were not created by the Lich King, but were druids who partook of a particular extract of a magical plant. Long before the ol Wizard King came back, they were lead by the increasingly mad Eternal Archdruid, culminating in his slaying of the first Priestess (who was the last best hope against a demonic onslaught, leaving the Empire indebted to the Archfiend, a Devil icon to solve the problem), and resulting in all-out war on the undead. All in all, over a couple hours, we told very cool stories, and ended up with a bunch of seeds to grow magic items, adventuring hooks, dungeons, and overall flavor for the world. That's not to mention that the book has sample ages galore, in case a DM wants to introduce relics from a past where everything was pirates, or a spaceship crashed into the Empire. Overall, highly recommend, we had a great time with it.
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Jun 18, 2018 02:42
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