13th Age - Anyone Tried It?

[Zinegata]

And was it good, bad, awful?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... d-dragons/

[phlapjackage]

Sorry, haven't tried it.

This "review" is horrible and obviously is just an advertisement. The author almost wets his pants in adulation for the game.

Contradictory quotes like:

"While 13th Age doesn’t abandon miniatures (they’re optional) it does abandon the grid."

yet

"If an orc is near enough, you can charge him. There’s less minutia, though attacks of opportunity and other similar rules remain intact."

make me want to hit some(thing/body).

[Zinegata]

Sorry, haven't tried it.

This "review" is horrible and is obviously just an advertisement. The author almost wets his pants in his adulation for the game.

Contradictory quotes like:
"While 13th Age doesn’t abandon miniatures (they’re optional) it does abandon the grid." yet "If an orc is near enough, you can charge him. There’s less minutia, though attacks of opportunity and other similar rules remain intact." make me want to hit some(thing/body).

Why do you think I'm asking people here, and went good, bad, awful?

[...You Lost Me]

I played a one-shot of it. All of the relevant and written powers are sad in a 4e D&D sort of way, and the interesting bits are that you get skill points in [whatever you want] and so when it's time to make a check you argue with the DM whether or not you deserve to put your skill into that check. It brings up the whole "my background is batman" v. "my background is a farmer" problem, in that batman will basically be good at everything a farmer is good at, plus more.

The "Why did they scrap Orcus?" thread is where a 13th Age dev came in and fought off various denners poking holes in the advertised stuff. The short answer we managed to glean was that it's not really special, and I wouldn't recommend paying more than $10 for a whole core set if you can.

For whatever reason, my computer won't load that Forbes link.

[Username17]

That thread was Here. We got a brief invasion from supporters of 13th Age, who were apparently people from the Something Awful Goonsquad. The things they said were just as stupid as the things they always say.

The Something Awful Goonsquad also had a public 13th Age playtest. It was a war crime. Basically everything that was wrong with 4e, plus a bunch of people having stupid discussions about whether they could apply their "Former Bird" skill to things. That isn't even an exaggeration, they actually had some dumbass write "Former Bird" as one of their skills, because you can write down anything you fucking want and he wanted to write down things that were stupid.

The Pros:

• The skill system is more functional and more interesting than 4e's ill-begotten skill system.
• The escalation dice mechanic does make combats end much faster than 4e's do.
• The Icons do create a more interesting and interactive world than the bland bullshit that 4e had with Nentir Vale.

The Bad:

• The skill system is hugely prone to abuse ("I am Batman: +5"), and sometimes game paralyzing in its vagueness ("I want to use my 'Is an Interesting Person' skill to paint a picture, because I think that would be interesting").
• The escalation dice mechanic makes the division between PCs and NPCs even more insulting and in-your-face than 4e. Seriously, it's worse about PCs not using the rules that apply to other people in the world than 4th edition D&D.
• The Icons enforce a level of special snowflakiness and destiny that most people are not comfortable ascribing to a 1st level character in a D&D game. Also, getting the permanent enmity or friendship of someone who is too powerful to have stats at first level is severely disempowering and undermines the purpose of gaining levels in the first place.

The Pathetic:

• Basically, it's still 4th edition D&D when it comes to the combat section. And the combat section is the part of the game that has rules other than "roll a d20 and argue with the MC".
• The powers available are even more insufficient than 4e's were on release. The designers try to hide that by asking you to reflavor every which way, but this is no more satisfying in 13th Age than it was when 4rries tried to convince us that reskinning a Ranger's pet wolf as a zombie butler was sufficient to cover the Necromancer concept.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

[*] The powers available are even more insufficient than 4e's were on release. The designers try to hide that by asking you to reflavor every which way, but this is no more satisfying in 13th Age than it was when 4rries tried to convince us that reskinning a Ranger's pet wolf as a zombie butler was sufficient to cover the Necromancer concept.[/list]

-Username17

Blargh. The game's totally not redeemable then. Thanks.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Has anyone tried to twink out on 13th Age yet?

[Ancient History]

I don't think there's much of a point. It's less interesting to twink out than, say, Unknown Armies.

[Voss]

Has anyone tried to twink out on 13th Age yet?

Why would anyone bother? Its a bad 4e clone.

What a weird, damn waste of necromancy.

[Bihlbo]

I played a one-shot at PAX last year, the Rob-who-isn't-Heinsoo ran it. I found most of the mechanics to be ignorable enough that I don't remember anything beyond that impression. But it had two good things going for it:

1. Your One Thing - this was a good chargen idea that is easily stolen for use in any other rpg. Basically you have one thing, it's unique and only marginally defined, and once you come up with it you build some backstory around it and it can be used by the GM. Mine was a single, large gold tooth. I didn't know how it got there, I just woke up with it one day. It replaced two of the teeth I used to have in my head. Rob asked some questions about how my character feels about it and some other stuff, and that helped me think a little deeper about the person I was trying to roleplay. He then introduced a little thing halfway through the game where an NPC claimed to know all about it, then activated it with magic to cause it to start casting some strange spell.

There you go, 13th Age's one cool thing is now a cool thing you can copy and stuff. It has nothing to do with the game or system itself, it's just a tool to help with character development. Strangely, when I stopped by the 13th Age booth at PAX this year they all wanted to know about my One Thing from the time I played. I'll give it to them for accurately recognizing that it was a very memorable part of the game. It's a shame the rest wasn't memorable.

2. The World looks pretty cool. They have accomplished writers working on it, notably Robin Laws. All those leader-like entities ("icons") offer something attractive for pretty much every character concept. I'd consider stealing portions of their setting stuff for my game.

[Username17]

The "Your One Thing" is really a whole lot like "Your Melodramatic Hook" from Feng Shui. Which was written by Robin Laws and Rob Heinsoo. Seriously. Not only is the one cool idea here something that really has nothing to do with the rest of the game, it's a cool idea that these people already created and sold to the public... in 1996. This game idea of theirs is actually old enough to vote.

-Username17

[Corsair114]

As GM, you can tell players of adventurer-tier PCs something like, “You wouldn’t want to fall into that crevasse, it’s a champion tier environment. And if the demons in the crevasse happen to be off-gassing? Then it’s epic tier.” And if they get caught in the crevasse anyway, you’ve got the champion and epic tier DCs and damage numbers to draw on from the chart below.

Does that sound like horrible advice to anyone else?

[hogarth]

As GM, you can tell players of adventurer-tier PCs something like, “You wouldn’t want to fall into that crevasse, it’s a champion tier environment. And if the demons in the crevasse happen to be off-gassing? Then it’s epic tier.” And if they get caught in the crevasse anyway, you’ve got the champion and epic tier DCs and damage numbers to draw on from the chart below.

Does that sound like horrible advice to anyone else?

I don't know because I don't know what it's saying.

In a tabletop RPG, it's a good thing to have the players understand the laws of physics of the game world, so from that perspective saying "your PCs know that jumping into a crevasse full of off-gassing demons would do 347 dice of damage which is way more than enough to kill them" would be a good thing. But if they're just suggesting that you should throw in random super-powerful environmental hazards in order to herd your players in a particular direction, that's lame.

[phlapjackage]

As GM, you can tell players of adventurer-tier PCs something like, “You wouldn’t want to fall into that crevasse, it’s a champion tier environment. And if the demons in the crevasse happen to be off-gassing? Then it’s epic tier.” And if they get caught in the crevasse anyway, you’ve got the champion and epic tier DCs and damage numbers to draw on from the chart below.

Does that sound like horrible advice to anyone else?

Well, the advice is sound (don't fall in the crevasse). It's the way the advice is presented that's beyond dumb

Seriously, if a GM is describing things to the players using terms like "champion tier environment", he's already failed.

ps. demons are off-gassing? What the fuck?

[Cyberzombie]

13th Age looks like 4E with all the tactical wargame bits stripped out of it. But you can still expect a gelatinous cube to be tougher to hit than an ogre.

[Corsair114]

I don't know because I don't know what it's saying.

In a tabletop RPG, it's a good thing to have the players understand the laws of physics of the game world, so from that perspective saying "your PCs know that jumping into a crevasse full of off-gassing demons would do 347 dice of damage which is way more than enough to kill them" would be a good thing. But if they're just suggesting that you should throw in random super-powerful environmental hazards in order to herd your players in a particular direction, that's lame.

Ah, my mistake. I should have quoted a bigger section. It's basically saying "If you fall into the crevasse you'll face DC's that are higher than your current tier along with appropriate monsters, and if you slide further into it, you'll face even higher tier monsters and DC's to climb out."

[TarkisFlux]

I don't know because I don't know what it's saying.

In a tabletop RPG, it's a good thing to have the players understand the laws of physics of the game world, so from that perspective saying "your PCs know that jumping into a crevasse full of off-gassing demons would do 347 dice of damage which is way more than enough to kill them" would be a good thing. But if they're just suggesting that you should throw in random super-powerful environmental hazards in order to herd your players in a particular direction, that's lame.

Ah, my mistake. I should have quoted a bigger section. It's basically saying "If you fall into the crevasse you'll face DC's that are higher than your current tier along with appropriate monsters, and if you slide further into it, you'll face even higher tier monsters and DC's to climb out."

The language that they use annoys me, but the message itself doesn't. It's a directive to use DCs appropriate to the challenge and not the PC's level, to issue "here be dragons, really" warnings and then stick to that. And I'll take that over the 4e scale the DC model everyday.

[hogarth]

The language that they use annoys me, but the message itself doesn't.

That's about the size of it.

To use a 3.5E D&D example:

• "Being submerged in lava does 20d6 damage each round and 10d6 damage the round after you get out" --> a useful warning for the players
• "Being submerged in lava does Challenge Level 13 damage each round and Challenge Level 7 damage the round after you get out" where Challenge Level 13 damage = 20d6 and Challenge Level 7 damage = 10d6 --> still useful, but needlessly complicated

[...You Lost Me]

It's also a warning to the players instead of the characters. A player doesn't know what a Champion-Level environment is, so saying "don't go there because it's Champion-Level" is super-metagamey an disassociates you from the game.

[tussock]

Not dissociate. Wrong word. It's ... immersion-breaking. If there's a word for that. A trigger for ye olde Sense Of Disbelief.

But maybe not anyway. They're always going to need some sort of practical code-word for "that place is too high level for you", and just using the game's default terms for tiers probably isn't that bad.

I mean, ideally your world includes reliable window-dressing, so you have

[*] rats, vermin-crap, and musty smells at low levels,
[*] bubbling crud, draltha bones, grass that eats rabbits, and a trail of some gargantuan beast's passing at mid levels,
[*] labyrinthine geometry by M.C.Escher, winds that beg forgiveness, seven impossible things on the first door: that's high level D&D.

So if the crevasse has gigantic claw marks in the wall, it's Champion; but if it hurts your head to look into because the seething, wailing, purple blob orbiting near the bottom(side?(above you, somehow?)) makes you feel inside-out, it's Epic.

[Avoraciopoctules]

13th Age has an SRD.

http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=13316

I googled, and this came up as well:

http://www.13thagesrd.com/

[Atmo]

This "review" is horrible and obviously is just an advertisement. The author almost wets his pants in adulation for the game.

True, but...

Contradictory quotes like:

"While 13th Age doesn’t abandon miniatures (they’re optional) it does abandon the grid."

yet

"If an orc is near enough, you can charge him. There’s less minutia, though attacks of opportunity and other similar rules remain intact."

Positioning rules are very good, as they don't need a grid to move your characters BUT you need to know whose guys your players and monsters are engaging, not engaging and AoO'ing.

Nevertheless, is better than 4e. Miles better.

[Cyberzombie]

I haven't tried them yet, but I liked what I saw about 13th Age's positioning rules. That's probably because I'm at a phase where I'm burned out on tactical combat.

[silva]

Yup, I see the abstract positioning as an advance over the old method too.

[Windjammer]

I was a playtester and exchanged emails with Heinsoo early on, about fairly generic stuff e.g. how the game document had not (yet) done a good job explaining why people should bother with it when they already own any other d20 game. I think the book version does that fairly well.

Anyhow, the playtest was a fiasco. We were super enthusiastic about the game in the early sessions, but as you scale in levels you realize that the game breaks down entirely because it's 4e padded sumo wrestling, with inflated hp and non-scaling damage progression, except WORSE.

Think 4e when Divine Power came out, and the excessive amounts of surge-free healing. By level 12 or so your cleric had three Daily's each of which negated an encounter because it created a zone for the entire party healing 25+ hp for every party member per round (sustain minor until end of encounter). Since no monsters at those levels - or even far beyond - could dish out damage, Divine Power broke the game entirely. Then the errata that came out and undercut surgeless healing to dial this back. Still, I think 4e is one of those games which don't ever seriously threaten the party, to create a 'heroic' feel (except... not).

Forward to 13th Age, which dishes out immense amounts of free healing because the surge values are so ridiculously off the charts. Going by the example in the rule book,

"For example, a 5th level barbarian with a Constitution of 14 (Con modifier +2) has been cut up pretty badly. She uses a standard action during the battle to heal, rolling 5d10 and adding double her Con modifier, in this case 5d10+4."

And that PC can do this 8-9 times a day (or more, since he'll be level 5). But let's go for 8 times, shall we?

So, that's 40d10+32 free hitpoints of healing per day, right out of the gate, per character in the party. Multiply by four (assuming 4 PCs in the party), and you get 160d10+128 hit points per adventuring day, on top of existing hit points.

So to even begin to hurt a party, a DM has to create 1008 hit points of damage in a single adventuring day before he begins to touch the non-surge hps of the party. Which is pathetic, if you look at the monster stat blocks (it's 4E's first problem, all over again).

And that's just level 5. It scales crazily from there on.

And even when a DM dishes out those 1008 hp, he better do so in a single fight, because even if the PCs run out of surges ('recoveries') they still have an infinite supply of surges, except the amount of hp you get is halved, and there's an attendant -1 penalty on defenses. From the rulebook:

"No recoveries left?: In the corner case in which you’re supposed to use a recovery to heal and you have none left, you get half the healing you should get and take a –1 penalty to all defenses and attack rolls until you get a full heal-up. This penalty stacks if you burn multiple recoveries you don’t actually possess."

I had to houserule 4E so badly because healing vs. incoming damage was balanced so poorly (make that: add level to monster damage, halfing PC hp, surge values, surge numbers, reign in stacking rules on healing etc. ) before it became interesting.

But 13th Age is of a different magnitude altogether, and I'm a tad disappointed they didn't use the playtest results to prevent this.