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I had the (dis)pleasure of playing a 13th age module at gencon called "Swords Against Hell". First encounter: Five level 2 characters against 20 mook demons + 4 flying demons + 1 pitbeast. within one round everyone had died at least once. Either through gm meddling or sheer luck we managed to chain recoveries onto each other and pop up for a single round before landing back into death. The DM claimed the adventure was run by a "known grinder who writes adventures like this". After four hours of slog I checked other conventions its been run at and they all said "you will be given a level 4 character or can bring your own".  anyway that's my story thanks for reading
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Aug 5, 2019 17:41
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Sorry to hear that - it doesn't sound fun at all. You could perhaps contact Pelgrane and let them know. I have no idea how they'd respond, but they do want people actually, you know, having fun at their games. Also, having run games for them - they straight up give you the adventure and pregen characters. So if said GM was running through Pelgrane's GM program they tossed those pregen characters to give you the level 2 ones. Which would be both weird and dickish. I had a good game (The Folding of Screamhaunt Castle) myself. In general 13th Age isn't about grind adventures at all - none of the other scenarios I've played or run are written that way. Sionak fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 17:54
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Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:The DM claimed the adventure was run by a "known grinder who writes adventures like this". Run by or written by? Because 'run by,' uh, that one's the DM being weird and speaking in the third person about their tendency to run meatgrinders.
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Aug 5, 2019 22:23
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Sionak posted:Sorry to hear that - it doesn't sound fun at all. You could perhaps contact Pelgrane and let them know. I have no idea how they'd respond, but they do want people actually, you know, having fun at their games. Man I never even thought of just emailing them and asking for adventures to run at conventions, I'm figuring out what to run next year so i'll just do that
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Aug 5, 2019 22:50
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xiw posted:Man I never even thought of just emailing them and asking for adventures to run at conventions, I'm figuring out what to run next year so i'll just do that I recommend it! I've run games for ArcDream (Delta Green, a couple years back) and Pelgrane Press. Both are great to work with. Specific to Pelgrane Press: if you're in town on Wednesday evening, there's a little GM orientation event where you get to meet the authors and get some advice on running con games. You also tend to get some swag - stuff like a T-shirt and a little signed booklet in addition to the adventure and pregens. They're happy to have you running games and try to make it as easy as possible. They do recruiting way back in February-March since GenCon events go up early. But some GMs drop out and Pelgrane Press are often looking for people to run those games at the last minute, too. I picked up 13th Age Glorantha at the con - I am curious if anyone in the thread has experience or comments on it. The classes seem considerably more involved than the corebook or 13 True Ways from my first read through, and more targeted for experienced 13th Age players. Sionak fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Aug 6, 2019 |
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Aug 6, 2019 17:01
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Sionak posted:I picked up 13th Age Glorantha at the con - I am curious if anyone in the thread has experience or comments on it. The classes seem considerably more involved than the corebook or 13 True Ways from my first read through, and more targeted for experienced 13th Age players. My group has started playing it a bit. So far it's fun. One of the things I really recommend is having the person run the game be very familiar with the setting. There's a lot of heavy-lifting done by backgrounds in 13th age, and in Glorantha a lot of the magic is out of combat magic, which means they're covered by those backgrounds, maybe with some flavor from the runes you have active. So you really need to make sure everyone knows beforehand just what effects are covered by "Earthshaker Temple Initiate" or "Orlanthi RuneLord" or "Chosen of Eurmal" or whatever else. I'm playing a trickster because I wanted to try it out, and that simplifies things for me, because Chosen of Eurmal is pretty much just "Bullshit and Shenanigans with maybe a tiny bit of Illusion even if the rune isn't handy". From the playtesting, one of the other things to bear in mind is that the classes tend to be more fragile. There's not a lot of in-battle healing on the Glorantha-specific classes everyone will want to play, although everyone can help people get back up when they're down. Defenses also tend to be lower than in 13th age for a lot of the classes. So if you're bringing monsters over from other settings, expect higher lethality and less combats back to back.
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Aug 6, 2019 18:27
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Sionak posted:
I have played a storm bull from levels 4-6 until his untimely demise (big shoutouts to the confused status effect  ) and am currently playing a trickster about to enter the epic tier. I definitely agree with you that the 13G classes are more involved; in fact I'd probably call the hell mother the most complex class in the game, depending on what options you take.I guess the trickster is the only 13G class I can really speak on with anything resembling authority. It's not especially complex (the most complicated thing about it is switching a talent every long rest, which I resolved by using a deck of cards with all the talents on them) and revolves mainly around buffing and debuffing. You don't have a lot of direct damage options, but the ones you do have tend to have a lot of synergy with other moves (Fuster Cluck in particular synergizes beautifully with anybody who can manipulate roll results, especially you if you're a gnome) and if you have a heavy hitter melee party member, sticking with them for protection plus feckless damage and Dance of Blood and Slapstick is a good strategy. The tool I made the most of is a champion tier power called Disruption - it targets MD at range, which is great (especially at 20 charisma), inflicts Hampered, and as long as you're not rolling too low, you can keep it active indefinitely with your quick action and use your full action to do other stuff. I've locked down enemy casters for entire fights with it. The downside is that you're super luck-dependent and really need to stick with the party; it is an absolute feast-or-famine class depending on what the dice give you and if you try to lone wolf it, you will get wrecked. I feel anybody who willingly chooses to play a literal clown with minimal direct damage options is going to be okay with most of those things, though, so it's a moot point. Fun from an RP perspective, too. I don't do anything that'll rebound too badly on my party so they usually laugh at my antics. Just the occasional minor hijinks, like always wasting the final question of our necromancer's Speak With Dead to ask the spirits if it's weird to kiss your dog on the mouth. (So far the spirits we've questioned are at 3 yes, 1 no, and 2 "the corpse animates and attacks the trickster".)
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Aug 6, 2019 18:50
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Thanks for the feedback! That squares with my first reading. I'll be running the game for just the second time and my players are new to it (though familiar with d20 principles). So I think I'll start by sticking with the core classes and wait for now on the Glorantha material. I was especially curious about the Trickster and how it goes at the table, so that's useful. I'm also just getting into the Glorantha lore myself, so it sounds like it's worth taking the time to absorb that in order to explain it well.
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Aug 7, 2019 16:53
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Question for the Pelgrane folks in the thread: Are there any plans for more 13Glorantha material? Seems like even within the standard Orlanthi setting there's still a lot of room for things like Elmali, Issaries, Lankhor My, Chalana Arroy, etc etc.
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Aug 8, 2019 16:25
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Besides the Emperor's dragon bodyguards and the city of Drakkenhall, are there any other prominent examples of monsters integrated into society? Planescape style where you can reasonably run into them at a bar, or acting as servants for a deity at a temple/running organized crime rings? It may be a strange question to ask given 13th Age's toolbox approach to setting creation, but it was a thought that came to me.
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Aug 9, 2019 00:11
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Yessod posted:Question for the Pelgrane folks in the thread: Are there any plans for more 13Glorantha material? Seems like even within the standard Orlanthi setting there's still a lot of room for things like Elmali, Issaries, Lankhor My, Chalana Arroy, etc etc. Nothing has been announced and I think it was kinda Jonathan Tweet’s project, so unless some more stuff gets announced I don’t think there’ll be any more Glorantha stuff for 13a.
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Aug 9, 2019 00:14
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If any future projects for 13th Age Glorantha are like the release of the main book, it'll be in five years after being in a development quagmire.
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Aug 9, 2019 14:44
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Yessod posted:Question for the Pelgrane folks in the thread: Are there any plans for more 13Glorantha material? Seems like even within the standard Orlanthi setting there's still a lot of room for things like Elmali, Issaries, Lankhor My, Chalana Arroy, etc etc. Despite the incestuous nature of the release, I don't think this is a Pelgrane Press release n I believe that the game was officially released under "Rob Heinsoo Games." It looks like Chaosium is handling much of the sales of the game ) see Drive Thru), although Pelgrane is selling print/PDF.
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Aug 12, 2019 17:09
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Yeah. I think Chaosium is in the lead on that. They were the ones selling 13th Age Glorantha at GenCon. While there's some kind of partnership, Pelgrane didn't have any for sale at their booth.
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Aug 12, 2019 17:39
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I'm finally gearing up to run a Shards of the Broken Sky game for a party of mostly first-timers. Glad to get back into the system; my online game kinda crashed and burned due to a lot of incredibly bad luck. We ended up with an Engine of the Ages that fundamentally rewrote the history of the Empire as we know it, so that's going to be pretty fun. The party consists of a Shapeshifter (mostly reskinned Halfling) Sorcerer, a Forgeborn Chaos Mage, an Aasimir Flame Demonologist, and a Human Cog-Knight Alchemist. Definitely seems like a weird mix, but I'm excited to see how they fare.
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Aug 13, 2019 02:20
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Wait is Shards actually out? It's still showing as pre-order on Pelgrane's site.
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Aug 13, 2019 02:39
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Yup! I have my physical copy already and everything. I think it might just be a matter of updating the site. As per Pelgrane's usual, you get the PDF as soon as you buy it, though.
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Aug 13, 2019 02:44
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Man, I haven't run 13th Age in like three years but this is pretty dang tempting.
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Aug 13, 2019 03:37
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How exactly does it work when a Chaos Mage takes their incremental advance on 2nd level to take a 3rd level spell early since, uh, Chaos Mages. Anybody know? Me and the player playing it are both a bit baffled about it.
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Aug 15, 2019 18:48
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SpiritOfLenin posted:How exactly does it work when a Chaos Mage takes their incremental advance on 2nd level to take a 3rd level spell early since, uh, Chaos Mages. Anybody know? Me and the player playing it are both a bit baffled about it.
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Aug 15, 2019 20:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:The official rule is buried way deep in 13 True Ways' index of all places, along with the respective druid rule, and it says you pick one spell only to be 3rd level. It makes the most sense to pick an attack or defense spell, then, and probably the at-will one, since those will come up far more often than any iconic spell. Thanks. No way I'd found that without help, seems like a really obscure place to hide a rule that important.
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Aug 15, 2019 22:30
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It's really baffling, that definitely would have belonged in the class entries where they introduce the mechanic of casting all spells at your level. I'm also not at all sure it's even a good rule for classes where it isn't up to you what spells you're able to cast (if you're a terrain caster druid, at least), but then a spell upgrade is by far the most powerful advance you can take, maybe that's how it balances out (+1 to skills/1 extra magic item being tied for most feeble advance by a similar margin).
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Aug 16, 2019 07:22
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Anyone played/ran any of: At Land’s Edge Assault on the Dungeon of the Pognomancer! Swords Against Hell Swords Against Owlbears Swords Against the Dead and have any comments about which are good? I'm eying up pognomancer just because it has a dwarf wizard called Owlbeard .
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Sep 6, 2019 00:23
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Finally got to be a player again, feels good. ... but since I can never just be happy with anything I have to say: kinda disappointed in the low level Chaos Mage. It started feeling a bit gimmicky around the second battle of the session, by the third I dreaded seeing the Defense token. Might have been because we have a pretty decent cleric around for healing and support. I get why no feature of the Chaos Mage touches the general setup with two attack, two defense and two iconic tokens in the bag, but I feel like there's room for a houserule where in a party with already decent support you're allowed to put one more attack and one less defense token in the bag, or vice versa. e: or I just switch a talent for defensive warp so that poo poo at least gets interesting
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Sep 14, 2019 18:55
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My Stone Thief campaign has taken some interesting turns after the party played the opposition against a dragon on their secret council that they basically just didn't like the sight of, and managed to kill both the dragon and half the opposition (after they softened each other up, but still at level 5) as well as get away with an eye. Of course, since their opposition is an imperial special task force, they're now basically the Empire's Most Wanted shortly after the Stone Thief itself. Not remotely how I expected the session to go, but I'm glad they made a plan that was all their own and pulled it off. I'm debating the merits of resurrecting the two slain opposition members vs. picking two new ones from the Vengeful Company pool. Resurrection makes sense, changing things up is cool.
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Oct 13, 2019 10:02
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xiw posted:Anyone played/ran any of: I don’t have any experience with any of these but Owlbeard is an extremely good name
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Oct 13, 2019 10:12
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Decided on picking two more from the pool, just so it's Haron, Laurende, Azanth and the Gilded Singer, and I can play Haron as slowly going insane as his only company are a wizard cursed to be mute, a naturally taciturn assassin and a construct with no voicebox at all
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Oct 13, 2019 14:55
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Shards of a Broken Sky is running pretty well so far. We ended up with a vastly altered Empire due to our Engine of the Ages, which resulted in an Emperor who only came into power like 8 years ago after toppling the long-reigning arcane fascist government of the Magician King. All in all, I'm really happy with how it turned out, although we're already off-book because there's a section on a fallen icon called the Dark Trickster, whose city was frozen in time by magic and the book pretty much says "yeah, the Palace of the Dark Trickster is actually just empty except for some goblins" instead of "The Palace of the Dark Trickster is a living dungeon that is actively out to clown on anyone that enters it", so I fixed that.
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Oct 22, 2019 20:32
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I’m making pre-made characters for a one-shot I’m running and I had the wonderful idea to make as many as them as possible multi classes, because I enjoy character creation too much and also apparently hate my friends
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Nov 3, 2019 14:15
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A new sandbox adventure just released: Shards of the Broken Sky.
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Nov 8, 2019 11:33
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thetoughestbean posted:I’m making pre-made characters for a one-shot I’m running and I had the wonderful idea to make as many as them as possible multi classes, because I enjoy character creation too much and also apparently hate my friends If you really enjoy character generation, you can make simpler versions of the same characters to give your players more choices. (Also multiclassing in 13A sucks butt)
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Nov 11, 2019 05:51
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Mystic Mongol posted:If you really enjoy character generation, you can make simpler versions of the same characters to give your players more choices. I am just getting into 13th Age and haven't made a multiclass character or had a player do so. What don't you like about it?
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Nov 12, 2019 19:21
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13A multiclassing hybridizes you between two classes and keeps the class powers separate. So you can't make like a Ranger/Paladin and use Smites on double attacks since one is a Ranger Attack ability and one is a Paladin. It limits your options somewhat. Your weapons also step down a damage die unless your Multiclassing two classes from the Strong Warrior Lists. In general Multiclasses outpace mono classes on even levels and lag on odd. And while there are a few notable builds like Palamander it's pretty easy to build an incompatible MC.
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Nov 12, 2019 20:34
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Yeah, it's heavily reliant on system mastery. If you don't know what you're doing then the multiclass will probably be under powered, if you do it will be over powered. You need a good sense for how your separate actions will synergize. I've had fun with it though, and it makes some of the lamer classes more viable (except for monk, they really hate monk).
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Nov 12, 2019 21:50
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If they make a 13th Age 2nd Edition and they don't buff the monk, I will be so sad. gently caress, they can take my loving class fix uncredited. Just fix it. Anyhoo, 13th Age multiclassing is pain in the old keaster for a newbie. Its built with system mastery in mind, as has been said. The only good thing about it is you can take boring class like Ranger or Paladin and make them fun to use. Like, my Cleric/Paladin that I call the "3.x Paladin."
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Nov 13, 2019 00:47
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The classes I would like them to take a long hard look at if they do a second edition are definitely monk and druid. Both are messes.
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Nov 13, 2019 04:01
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Multiclassing in 13th Age was an afterthought and it shows.
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Dec 1, 2019 16:36
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Eastmabl posted:Multiclassing in 13th Age was an afterthought and it shows.
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Dec 1, 2019 16:50
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Evil Mastermind posted:It's pretty much an afterthrought in any game it's in apart from SotDL. Or Warhammer Fantasy. But it's a horrible idea in 13th Age that's only in the game because 'well it was in D&D'. And like everything that's in 13th Age solely because 'well it was in D&D', it would be better in a bin.
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Dec 1, 2019 16:52
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Pretty much. I get why they did it the way they did, but it really sucks.
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Dec 1, 2019 17:04
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