|
fosborb posted:Oof that kills me. 3 minions left... the ending is a foregone conclusion and with nothing at stake there shouldn't even be a roll for that action waderockett posted:YES. If Jackie Chan's finished off the toughest guy in the room and there are three generic mooks left, they either try to run away or surrender, or Jackie Chan effortlessly mops the floor with them in some funny or badass way. Our GM didn't really understand this is what we wanted and why we picked up 13th Age. Even though we told him. Repeatedly. The shame of it is that I ran a campaign myself with the same group and it was great! We reached a natural stopping point at the end of adventurer tier and started another campaign with this new guy running things since I had an idea for a character, and he wanted to do Eyes of the Stone Thief stuff. Things were super rough from the get-go since he pretty much always threw double strength encounters at us because otherwise he thought that the fights were "too easy". Our group is pretty experienced, so we optimized a little and managed to survive. But at the end of champion tier was our very successful slave rebellion in Fangrot Keep, and he handled the end so poorly that we quit. We're going to play Feng Shui 2 next and then maybe I can convince them to try out 13th Age again. Just not with this guy at the helm. (The character was a commander who was a theater director with her powers being acting tips, improving people's choreography, and improvising script changes. Rest in peace, Coral, Drakkenhall's greatest actor, director, and playwright.)
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2021 03:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 17:07 |
|
|
SweaterGear posted:But at the end of champion tier was our very successful slave rebellion in Fangrot Keep, and he handled the end so poorly that we quit. oh my god that's so legitimately sad. Slave rebellion in Fangrot's Keep is the best and there's so many ways you can run with it and even a few explicitly detailed in the book.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2021 03:29
|
|
|
So 13th Age has just become a contender for my next campaign, which I was not expecting. I have the core book, read it ages ago. Happy to buy more as necessary. What's the current state of the game? What's the consensus on needed house rules or rules tweaks or whatever? I don't love the D&D ability stat spread, but I saw a DTAS mod on the Vault. I also don't love racial ability scores, but I assume the DTAS mod would solve that problem? It sounds like Martials and Druids aren't great - any good fixes? Awesome homebrew classes? What do I need to know to get up to speed? My group is a wee bit fragile and I'd love to score a win right now. Thanks kindly!
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2021 22:36
|
|
|
Icon rolls are a bit of a headache as used in the book. Lots of people kind of like using them as themed fate points instead
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2021 22:48
|
|
|
With some delay on my part, thanks for the hints -- I will try and do a bit more with terrain etc, and see how things will go. Twibbit posted:Icon rolls are a bit of a headache as used in the book. Lots of people kind of like using them as themed fate points instead Having just had our overall first session, this is something I'm currently struggling with. We have 4 PCs, and there are so many rolls here. This is perhaps compounded by the fact the PCs are relatively diverse, with a wide(ish) spread of Icon Relationships, so I struggled during the first session with making Icon relationships matter while also just getting the group together into a single group. We decided to roll icon relationships for the upcoming session at the end of last session, so I can think a bit more about how to integrate them, though the spread (we got something like six 5+ results) still makes this tricky. Also, I'm still trying to find out how good (or, more likely, bad) I am at impromptu story promts and encounters. As someone not familiar with fate points, do you essentially regard them as one-time "tokens" that players can use at any point during a session to influence a given situation, letting them draw on e.g. knowledge imparted by their icon relationship?
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2021 14:44
|
|
|
Hollow Talk posted:With some delay on my part, thanks for the hints -- I will try and do a bit more with terrain etc, and see how things will go. Yup, more or less exactly that. Use knowledge or relationships with the icon and their faction to influence a situation in a way that maybe is a stretch but makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2021 15:01
|
|
|
Spend a point of Orc warlord to literally have met that orc guard before and know him
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2021 16:51
|
|
|
With a 6: Player: I know that orc. DM:... I guess you do! With a 5: Player: I know that orc. DM: Oh yes. Yes you do.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2021 17:13
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:I have the core book, read it ages ago. Happy to buy more as necessary. quote:What's the current state of the game? What's the consensus on needed house rules or rules tweaks or whatever? Icon relationships as written are considered pretty hellish on the GM to come up with effects on the fly. One way to reduce the mental workload is to roll for the relationships at the end of the session before the next so that the GM has time to prepare its effects. My group has been using a particular houserule that just makes them into a resource you can cash in for several effects as long as you can justify it in the narrative, that can be found in the Escalation fanzine, issue 9 page 31. https://escalationfanzine.blogspot.com/2021/06/escalation-issue-9-is-available.html As far as balance concerns go, probably don't let anyone take Evocation talent Wizards. quote:I don't love the D&D ability stat spread, but I saw a DTAS mod on the Vault. I also don't love racial ability scores, but I assume the DTAS mod would solve that problem? edit: Supposing you don't use Death To Ability Scores mod - in 13A, you get a stat modifier from your race, and a stat modifier from your class, with the caveat that you can't put them both in the same stat. Thus in practice you can always add a +2 to your main attack stat (since the Class will definitely provide it) and a lot of times the only thing that changes is racial powers. If you just let your players put +2 to any 2 stats they want regardless of Race/Class it honestly won't break anything. quote:It sounds like Martials and Druids aren't great - any good fixes? Awesome homebrew classes? The Martials in Glorantha are also significantly more interesting than Core stuff, and outside of one particular Berserker who's a bit too focused on killing Chaos, the other classes are fairly setting agnostic overall that you can import them into a "regular" 13A game. 13 True Ways, pretty much the only "official" player splatbook right now, offers multiclassing rules and jamming 2 "simple" martials together generally tends to make a sweet spot complexity martial, but the actual multiclassing rules is considered a bit of a mess. Despite being convoluted, unlike most multiclassing rules it generally doesn't usually produce characters that are either completely worthless or bonkers outside of a handful of outliers which is actually kind of nice. Save yourself the headache for new players though. I'm not too up on the whole homebrew classes. The Improved Monk is generally suggested if anyone really wants to play one, which suffers from MAD. I believe it mainly removes its ties to Str in favor of Dex (you would need an awkward balance of both in the original) and also tweaks its particular attack sequence mechanic a little. Aeon Summoner, which can be found linked in the SRD in 3rd party classes, is created by the author of DATP and was actually intended to be actually published with some cleanup (it has some Final Fantasy X flavor that probably has to be scrubbed out of a commerial product) except he ran out of time, so I assume that might be popular enough to give it a spin. For 3rd party classes which is close enough to homebrew classes, Abomination and Swordmage are very popular and can be found on the SRD. The Demonologist is 1st party but it's found in a random dedicated splatbook ("Book of Demons" or something), also on the SRD and very popular (and the basis for the DATP druid rework.) Davzz fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Aug 23, 2021 |
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 12:35
|
|
|
In my last game, I gave my players lists of fixed icon benefits they could spend their rolls on, in addition to free-form story effects. You could, for example: - spend two of the same rolls to find a magic item. With fives, an enemy in the next encounter would be carrying it. This item would be tied to the icon you used; if you spent fives or sixes of different icons, you'd pick one - spend a roll to make a recharge roll one step easier for an item tied to the icon. With a five you'd have to roleplay its quirk for the rest of the session. - gain a benefit custom-tailored to your particular relationship, class and general playstyle. This took a bit of finetuning, but made for some variety. It didn't see much use, to be honest. My players aren't terribly keen on the icon system in any form. One observable effect was that everyone would end up kitted out with items related to their icons and the recharge thing would feed back into that. Not sure if it was good or bad, on the whole. Oh yeah, and if you rolled no 5s or 6s, you'd get a 5 for an icon randomly chosen from all 13. If it was one of yours, you'd get a 6 instead. That actually led to a lot of cool ideas and influenced the plot more than I thought it would. (Like at one point, the neutral-to-evil party got a Gold Wyrm paladin companion, specifically tasked to observe them and see if there really was no good left in them. They ended up curbing their evil impulses in his presence and he was able to report back they weren't completely lost to the cause. Suddenly they had a potential in with the Gold Wyrm people.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 12:59
|
|
|
I should also point out that if you find the icon system more trouble than it's worth, you can throw it out without breaking anything. I've run iconless 13A and it works just fine. All you need to do is make sure no one takes talents that interact directly with the icon relationship system (like the bard's Balladeer or sorcerer's Blood Link).
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 14:37
|
|
|
I'm fine with tweaking Icons to make them less of an improv-hassle. Thanks for the advice. If I keep the ability scores (which I'm sure is fine), I assume nothing breaks if I just let players get a +2 in anything instead of telling them that Gnomes have to take it in Int/Dex, etc.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 14:46
|
|
|
For some more additional Icon related house rules, one of my current games is doing this - first, instead of the 13A Icons (Archmage Priestess etc) it's using the Runes from Glorantha, themed around concepts like Fire / Sky / Earth / Animal / Stasis etc which can be invoked by the players for a fitting narrative effect - each character gets 3, 2 themed around the character's class and one of any for their "personal" rune. Second, rolling for them was changed to a d6 1-3: You get your character assigned rune for this session. 4-6: You roll a random rune from all possible 20. If you double up on a personal rune this way, you get the rune AND a magic item effect to go with it. I kind of like it - it's more consistent (you know every character has exactly one rune to use per session), brings out creativity if you hit a random roll. CitizenKeen posted:If I keep the ability scores (which I'm sure is fine), I assume nothing breaks if I just let players get a +2 in anything instead of telling them that Gnomes have to take it in Int/Dex, etc.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 15:08
|
|
|
Just make sure they can't double up that +2 with the one from their class and that should be fine. Even if they did, 13th Age sets it up so having a good spread of scores will do you more good, as long as your main attack score is reasonably high.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 15:10
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:Just make sure they can't double up that +2 with the one from their class and that should be fine. That's fine. I'm fine with saying "Rogues get +2 Dex or Cha, and then get +2 to something else (which can be the other half of Dex/Cha". Thank you all. I can live with ability scores, but no species requirement for classes, massage Icon rules, and I have a list of good classes to be.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 15:19
|
|
|
I don't even know if I'd say species requirement, there aren't that many cases where a class clearly needs two ability scores to function. Mostly it's, you take +2 to your attack stat from race or class, then you supplement another score but that score is probably mostly where you want a bit more PD or more HP. It's nowhere near 4E levels of "A is your attack stat, and how well your powers work keys directly off B, C or D". Gnomes getting CHA/INT is gnome flavour more than anything. That being said the class bonus should always cover the attack stat and of course having more options for where to put the race bonus isn't a bad thing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 15:27
|
|
|
Has Pelgrane ever said anything about going for a second edition? It seems like the demand is there.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 15:28
|
|
|
Nothing on a second edition that I've seen. They're still releasing splat books and adventures. Some of the more recent/upcoming ones: Book of Demons' Demonologist is a wonderful class, good to hear it's apparently in the srd. Book of the Underworld is only really useful if you're looking to set adventures underground or want more inspiration for the kinds of stuff you'd find there. Shards of the Broken Sky has a good set of disparate adventures that can be strung together or used on their own. Very magic oriented though which may or may not fit your campaign. A few player options and some new monsters, which can be useful. Book of Ages has lots of player options and new monsters, and is centered around a fun way to create the history for your world. Drakenhall: City of Monsters is going to be a sourcebook centered on the town in question, still in development. Crown of Axis, Elven Towers, and Behemoths Paths of the Koru are all adventure leaning, but I believe Behemoths will be a bit more of a source book than the others. Of these crown of Axis is the only one that's been released. As far as 'must haves' beyond the core book, True Ways is great, and I use Glorantha all the time and really like the classes in it. I use the info on the dm screen all the time as well as a quick encounter creation reference and reminder of status effects. As far as homebrew classes, looking at 13thage.org, i like all of Ryven Cydrelles classes, The Elementalist, the Seeker, and the Stalwart. I made a Witch class myself, so I'm not an unbiased source on it, and it's not had too much iteration yet. But it's worked well in my campaign so far, and the feedback I've heard since posting it had been positive - at least as much as people have shared. /Shrug I've not been a fan of almost any of martin k's classes, but people seem to like what he did in dark alleys and twisted paths I guess.
|
|
#
?
Aug 23, 2021 16:25
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:I have the core book, read it ages ago. Happy to buy more as necessary. DISCLOSURE: I freelance for Pelgrane, mostly on 13th Age, and I write the 13th Sage column for their blog. I used to be their marketing person but it felt too much like my day job and I wanted to do more game design. Depending on your budget, I'd strongly recommend getting 13 True Ways (mainly for the classes), the GM Screen and Resource Book (we asked GMs what they most needed in terms of rules clarifications, expansions, and advice, and put those things in the book), and at least one of the 13th Age Bestiaries (monster design has come a LONG way since the core book). The "Battle Scenes" books by Cal Moore don't get the attention they deserve, IMO—they show how to build fun battles using the system's mechanics in creative ways. Eyes of the Stone Thief is a phenomenal campaign set in a living megadungeon. I plunder Book of Ages constantly. 13th Age Glorantha is a great source of class variants and a different icon system that I'm using in a homebrew I'm working on. CitizenKeen posted:What's the current state of the game? There are three (?) upcoming books in the design and development pipeline now: Drakenhall: City of Monsters, Behemoths: Paths of the Koru, and Icon Followers (a working title that might be changed). Elven Towers is out in both print and PDF. Pelgrane recently released a set of free Quickstart rules. CitizenKeen posted:What's the consensus on needed house rules or rules tweaks or whatever? Unless I'm improvising the whole adventure and using icon relationships as inspiration, I don't use the players' icon rolls to customize adventures on the fly. However, I do find the icon relationship system incredibly useful as a player resource and campaign-building tool. I use the icon relationship rolling method from 13th Age Glorantha: players roll d6s as normal, a 5 or a 6 means they can get some kind of advantage from the relationship during that session. If a player "spends" an icon advantage they roll a d20: on a 1-5, that advantage comes with a complication. Like a lot of folks I have my players treat icon advantages as "break the rules and do something astonishing" points. I hand out these icon tokens from Campaign Coins, so the players have something shiny and valuable-looking to remind them they have an advantage to spend: https://campaigncoins.com/products/13th-age-icon-token-set-13 My players have used them to heal a wounded forest, turn back vengeful undead elves, and pull a huge burned-out structure down onto themselves and their enemies. CitizenKeen posted:It sounds like Martials and Druids aren't great - any good fixes? I've run a ton of 13th Age at home and at conventions and I rarely see people unhappy with martial classes at the table. BUT just because someone likes playing a class in a 4-hour convention game doesn't mean it would hold up well for them over time. My campaign's ranger player loves the class's simplicity because the only tactical choices he wants to make are are "Where do I move and who do I shoot at?". On the other hand, the paladin player got really bored with the lack of tactical options. He multiclassed with commander and has been very happy with that combination. CitizenKeen posted:My group is a wee bit fragile and I'd love to score a win right now. In my experience, 13th Age really delivers when: - you do collaborative world-building with players using their characters' backgrounds, icon relationships, or One Unique Thing - at least one of the monsters in any fight is designed to do really bananas things when the dice land a certain way - everyone plays with the Big drat Heroes mindset, proposing/saying yes to buck wild schemes, stunts, and badass moves
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2021 02:29
|
|
|
That is some fantastic stuff. Thank you. If I wanted to run 1-10, and I wanted to run Eyes of the Stone Thief, how have you all wrapped Eyes of the Stone Thief in other material? What did the players do from 1-3 (if the GM knew they wanted to run EotST), and how did you foreshadow 8-10?
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2021 18:42
|
|
|
Sooo many angles to lead into Eyes of the Stone Thief. I'd say one of the main things you should do is establish a place for the characters to call home and care about. Might be a good idea to introduce a few concepts - strange cult activity, rumours of places disappearing, and maybe one or two of the NPCs from the council section as a party patron, or archenemy. Might also be worth it to build towards the party retrieving a particular object and frame that as the adventurer tier capstone, only to have the Stone Thief erupt and swallow it. (They still retrieve it in their first run and whoever gave them the task says, thanks, it really helps a lot, but also, much bigger fish to fry now.) Also take a look at places from the campaign on the surface and try to incorporate them, if only as background detail. One low-level adventure could revolve around a village near the Koru trail being raided by the barbarians from the behemoth. Introduce members of the rival party, too. As for epic levels, that will depend a hell of a lot on what the party eventually does with the Stone Thief. If I was running it I wouldn't even plan anything for epic until I had a good grasp of the party's take on the situation and their plans.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2021 19:07
|
|
|
How do double-strength and triple-strength enemies feel in play? They don't appear to gain any extra actions, so my instinct is that they'll crumble a little faster since they're disadvantaged in the action economy. My instincts have been wrong before.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2021 19:33
|
|
|
It's been a while since I ran it, but they generally worked fine for me with the caveat that I almost always wrote them to mitigate the chance of them having a totally wasted turn, whether that's through multi-target attacks, miss damage, or quick-action attacks . I usually gave them some way to spread the damage around so they were less likely to completely splatter a PC on a crit.
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2021 21:23
|
|
|
It really feels bad to get hit by a triple-strength monster and lose most of your health, especially when you didn't know the enemy was triple-strength because your GM doesn't believe that the system is information transparent. (Most of our icon dice were spent arguing our way out of death, typically at the hands of the surprise 2x and 3x bad guys.) Maybe our group had no damage mitigation and our GM definitely overused them but the 3x monsters feel like a big resource drain. Also, I've never been a fan of monsters getting access to critical hits like players do and 3x monsters definitely shouldn't have double damage on crits, IMHO.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2021 07:50
|
|
|
Dropping a lone up-leveled triple-strength as a 'boss fight' doesn't really work most of the time (but it's cool so people do it all the time anyway). Other than that, I've found they play pretty well. They're a bit more vulnerable to things like stuns and conditions in general, but they also put out more spike damage, take longer to wear down, and fight at full effectiveness for the whole of their health bar.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2021 09:46
|
|
|
"Is staggered" is a status, "becomes staggered" is a trigger, yeah?
|
|
#
?
Aug 31, 2021 23:32
|
|
|
Generally, yes. Purely from a grammar/editing point of view it's conceivable that it doesn't always hold up and there's a line floating around somewhere like "if the target is staggered [implied: by this attack] it also..." but "is = status, becomes = trigger" should do you fine unless an ability just seems to work weird that way. I did a quick search of the SRD and all the entries not from third party material are pretty unambiguous. Are you looking at any power or item or description in particular? My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Sep 1, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 1, 2021 08:07
|
|
|
Looking at your most powerful Champion or Epic character, how many of their feats are applied to Talents and Class Features, and how many of their feats are applied to Powers/Abilities/Spells?
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 03:03
|
|
|
Wiseass answer, but that probably depends on whether I've played more rogues and wizards or more barbarians and paladins.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 06:40
|
|
|
Hollow Talk posted:With some delay on my part, thanks for the hints -- I will try and do a bit more with terrain etc, and see how things will go. I am currently running my second 13A campaign, and the party just hit level 5 this go around. The last time my players rolled Icon dice I had something like 10 different 5's and 6's to deal with. A couple things I have learned about Icon rolls:
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2021 08:24
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:Looking at your most powerful Champion or Epic character, how many of their feats are applied to Talents and Class Features, and how many of their feats are applied to Powers/Abilities/Spells? the players have been generally following the level 1 through 10 pregens Pelgrane has, the two builds per class ones. the war wizard for example is a mix of evocation feats and pumping up force salvo and fireballs. I think most of the builds my players went with are a mix: druid, wizard, rogue, necromancer the exception is probably the crusader who multiclassed into paladin. that has been mostly talents and class features
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2021 13:53
|
|
|
waderockett posted:the paladin player got really bored with the lack of tactical options. He multiclassed with commander and has been very happy with that combination. commander/paladin multiclass is really, really special. it's probably the most engaged player at my table, and I'm frankly jealous i've never been able to play the class combination myself. everyone else will literally roll and pause, waiting for him to chime in on if he can fix their lovely rolls, and i've had to create a counter icon/table in roll20 just for him so everyone knows at a glance how many command points he has (and then had to increase it to 20 loving command points because 9th level is bonkers) STONE THIEF play check in the story has been running outside of the book for months at this point. I'm still pulling in elements like the spellblight, but the party long ago finished every above land quest hunting for ingredients for Grommar's Masterwork. For the soul ingredient, they've gone back in time (using a bunch of the Book of Ages content) to swap out the Wizard King's phylactery at the moment of his defeat so that the Lich King's soul is now infused within. They've now traveled back to the future, having left the Masterwork marinate for awhile in the Lich King's vault, and are in the process of looting the vault again to get the Masterwork back to destroy the Stone Thief (deepest they've been is the Pit of Undigested Ages). oops, secret masters have been loving with the Lich King's dreams for who knows how long:  The cultists are being protected by squads of 4 spellblights. They're still at their 200hp, but I'm treating them as minions. The spellblight do a cool thing where 1 can build up power for another to do a big attack, or 2 can let go of their actions for a really big attack. Running them in packs of 4 minions lets them really show off those big spells, and encourages the party to take at least 2 out of each pack and spreads out their actions. If they have at least 3 spellblight in a group they can do one of two things: Mindburn, where they do a flat 150 damage + hampering for the rest of the battle (no save), +16 vs MD, but the player can chose to lose access to any number of backgrounds or class features until their next full heal up, to reduce damage in 50-point increments or avoid the hampering. shutting down player options at the class feature level like this is frankly loving awesome or, Spellquake, where they fundamentally alter the encounter terrain in some way. I've been a fan of walls of flame that push PCs into nearby positions, or launching the mansion they're in a couple of miles into the sky (temporarily) Spellblight are cool. And after a random supposition of one of the players, their numbers per encounter multiply on base 2 (time travel adventures revealed they are the corrupted mechanizations of the Princess of Cogs and Wheels) With the time travel, we've been exploring if this universe is linear time or quantum time. Were the changes they made in the past always there and they didn't notice? Or did the present fundamentally change but only the party remembers how it "really" was? I've gone with linear time, and I think its been successful, but it definitely required the willing participation of the entire group and also an upfront talk about "don't worry about creating paradoxes -- it will all work out because I dont want to sit through the theorycrafting over stepping on a butterfly." So at the end of the day it's been collectively solving mysteries like "oh, that's why it's called the Blood Wood." I will say doing this in a world where people assume tolkein elves live for thousands of years requires a ... suspension of disbelief when the party is 80% elf with lots of Elf Queen relationships. But hey, it turns out the lizard creatures they adopted as party NPCs a year ago are actually members of a religion they started about themselves centuries ago during their time travel and so everyone's happy and no one thinks too hard about it Stone Thief level balance. there's way too much content in the book to keep them at max level 8 if your players are completionists, and yes, spells like teleport at 9th level make dealing with the Stone Thief in the story more complicated. Do you let them trivialize getting into and out of the Thief? Or do you arbitrarily constrain a huge spell they've been building towards for literally years? If you're feeling pressure to level up, we're doing okay so I'm not going to say don't do it, but I've definitely had to punch the Stone Thief content way, way up to provide a challenge. Just adding HP is okay in a pinch, but at level 9 you really need to start constructing layered encounters involving moving from room to room to preserve the escalation die, or multiple phases in each fight-- or the drat wizard evokes and fucks it all up. ASH LAW seriously did too good with that drat War Wizard pregen progression. That said, that recent humble bundle provided lots and lots of content to challenge the 9th and 10th level parties, and, well, hidden behind that mass of tentacles, once the final cult priest fell, was 
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2021 07:14
|
|
|
I have started to lead my players down into the underdark. Recently, I have been playing a lot of cyberpunk, and really liked the idea of Web City. I created a small document going a bit into the lore of Web City in my world, and figured you folks might want to make use of it. I have made notes where my own campaign lore interacts with lore from 13th age or generic fantasy stuff. The City Imagine going into an abandoned barn. Webs, old and new, sprawling across the walls and ceiling. A million spiders’ nests built on top of each other, unable to tell where one ends and another begins. Now imagine the barn is a metropolis, and the spiders are as big as people. Welcome to Web City. Where secrets are currency and names are earned. But be careful, there is a fragile balance that is held together between the gangs, the sects, and the runners. And you wrapped up in the middle. The Sect of She Who Spins in Darkness, or simply spinners as they are called in the city, sell their poison to the masses. They collect secrets from those on the sunbaked surface, and spin them into Tales, or Yarns. A web covered paper talisman. Placing it over your eyes will send you to live the secret as if you were there. Every smell. Every pinprick of pain. Every mind blowing ounce of pleasure will be felt as if you were living it. The halls of He Who Weaves with Joy echo with the ringing of bells. A constant reminder of time ticking away. A place of progress or so claim the weavers who work there. They have their own use for your secrets. Forming the essence of your secret into a Word of Power called Scripts. Similar to the Yarns in form, but completely different in function. Those with a script can summon some of the primal forces of the universe granting them super strength, or speed. Manipulation of the real. Even go invisible. A shotty script will have only a few uses, or cause backlash on the user. Almost everyone in Web City has some script on their person. Many will ask how the yarns and scripts work. The sects will tell you they are prayers to their respective God. Those who run in the dark parts of the web will tell you that is only half the story. Join one of the two majors sects in the underdark. Become a Spinner, turning secrets into Tales to sell to the lowly masses, whispering with She Who Spins in Darkness. Or laugh, and boast along with He Who Weaves With Joy as they bring Words to those who have none. Last, you can join one of the many gangs. Make your own family through blood, sweat, and theft. Or weave your own destiny, and become a mercenary. Whatever you decide, try not to get wrapped up in Web City. The Web All of Web City is connected through the webs. A city wide entanglement of all the different spiders and ettercaps weaving and spinning the largest webbing in the world. Now, top it all off with the ethereal weave; a mysterious web created by the Phase that acts as a sort of glue holding it all together. They say anyone who breaks the ethereal weave gets “phased”. Hauled away by the enigmatic Phase Spiders, and their ettercap riders. Some places, tucked in the shadows of the city, are separated from the Web. Secure locations like vaults where the web doesn’t spread, or is culled so it can not reach. Vaults in the Sects, or secret secure locations the gangs have set up. Locations and information kept secret from the web, and we all know what secrets are worth in Web City. While Ettercaps use the web to speak to each other in their vibrations, there is another use for it. To identify people moving along the web. Webwatchers; etcaps who specialize in reading the distant vibrations of the webs. Sects, and even gangs, employ watchers to secure their secrets. A watcher can tap into the web in a building or cave, and identify every creature that enters the building via the vibrations of the web keeping their secrets safe from the prying eyes of outsiders. But, there are ways around that, especially in Web City where secrets never stay secrets for long. Webrunners. Etcaps that focus on hiding their vibrations from Watchers. Runners are able to nullify their vibrations and the vibrations of their team, rendering them invisible to any Webwatcher listening in. A game is played between the Runners and the Watchers, a game of cat and mouse, or more accurately spider and prey. Lastly, each building will have a series of Anchor Lines. The main web that ties that building to the Ethereal Weave and to the main hub of Web City. Most buildings or tunnels will only have one Anchor Line. Some of the more well defended places might have an Anchor Line on every floor, or every branch of a tunnel. If a runner manages to find the Anchor Line they are given root access to the entire floor, being able to identify the location of every creature that creates a vibration, and more importantly they are able to hide the vibrations of their allies without having to be near them. The importance of the Anchor Lines is well known, so they are very well defended with a Watcher jacked into it listening to your every step. An exceptionally talented watcher or runner with access to an Anchor Line can really cause havoc on a team. Some can even cast spells through the web, or create false vibrations to distract security teams. The full power of a truly talented runner is still unknown as new techniques are being discovered. The Neon Glow of the Underworld Advertisements line the streets of Web City. Neon webbing flickers in the dark whispering promises of a better you. A you that is more handsome. Stronger. Faster. Why have a regular hand when you can have a metal one? Learn secrets that no one is privy to, all for a price. Specialized spiders created by He Who Weaves In Joy can make you neon webbing with the right price. Able to create any sort of image in any color you can imagine. Half of Web City is covered in glowing neon webs. Upside Web City is split into two main areas. Upside is the top half of the Web. Both of the Sects have their main headquarters in Upside. It is where most of the up and up business takes place. Clean Markets, and rich houses line the web streets. The more reputable Derro Augmentors, those who haven't gone completely mad, have shops here. The place is kept clean by the Boot, a gang of Drow who have a contract with both sects to keep the place running smoothly, and they do so with violent relish when given the opportunity. Downside The rest of the city. A place of dingy dive bars, and trash filled streets. But don’t be deceived, there is more life down here in the shadows than those Upside assume. Food Carts can be found everywhere. Children playing in the streets. And music felt all over the downside. Though, Gangs split the districts up among themselves through deals, or sometimes violence. The Sects would have you believe that they are too clean for Downside. They also would have you believe they do not lie. There are plenty of blacksite or hidden fortresses downside that the sects would rather you not know about. The Citizens Ettercaps These make up the majority of the people in Web City. From the lowly street vendor to a head of a Sect. They are humanoid spiders who found Web City in ages past. A perpetual war fought in the webbing between the two sects has created massive opportunity here in Web City, and the Etcaps are at the foundation of it all. Most Etcaps talk through the vibrations of the city. If an Etcap focuses they can talk to any single other Etcap within the city no matter the distance, as long as the other party is also touching the web. When they have to use their fangs and pedipalps to create sound it comes whispery or quiet. Though, there are some who have adapted to the language of foreigners, and have mastered the spoken language.
Derro Dwarves that have fallen to the calling. The darkness of the underworld has twisted and warped their minds and souls. Though, some have fallen farther than others. You will quickly be able to determine how far gone a Derro is at a quick glance. Something about the eyes, like the amount they have generally. Derro are the masters of biological augmentation. Looking for a third arm to get an Upperhand in combat? Find a Derro Augmentor. Some ironically call them Mentors as taking advice from a Derro, even a sane-ish one is the idea of a crazy man.
Drow The Silver folk who live in Web City generally come in two varieties: those looking to hide from the Elf Queen, and those who call Drowfort their home. A people who have become accustomed to the more dangerous side of the underdark has given the drow a unique advantage in Web City. In the district of Upside you can find Drowfort. An ancient fortress that claims to have been here before the first webs were spun. They have a truce with the Sects, and such work the streets of Upside protecting the city and the sects, sometimes even from each other.
Everyone Else Outside of the three main races, there are plenty more lurking in the webs of the city. Fungaloids. Serpentfolk. Every race under sunbaked topside. And many other underworld creatures. Don’t be surprised if you find someone who once called the Overworld their home, now toiling away in the maze of Web City. The Sects She Who Spins In Darkness. Come work for the Spinners. Topside, the Spinners collect secrets from anyone willing to spill. But down here, in the neon cob of Web City, those same secrets are turned into Tales. Live any life you want, in someone else's shoes, just to get away from your own problems. Live the greatest highs, and experience the most violent a person can be, from the safety of your own bed. Join the Spinners and you too can spin the yarns that move the city. He Who Weaves with Joy Weavers just wants to help the city progress. They collect secrets, much like She Who Spins In Darkness, but Weavers actually search for something more valuable to them. Knowledge from the sunbaked. Specifically lost knowledge. Anything on the verge of collapse calls to the weavers. They use secrets, and lost insight to create Scripts to help the citizens live easier lives. Ease pain. Make travel quicker. Solve problems easier. Enhance the people and they will enhance the city. Work with He Who Weaves with Joy to create the scripts that will propel Web City into the future. The Gangs The Bloody Razor Those who see their normal biology as broken or weak. Each member of the bloody razor has undergone extensive body augmentations. Mixing flesh and steel and more flesh and some more steel. It's a mess but potent. If you want an augmentation done cheap and quickly, a Razor will gladly help you out. But you’ll be lucky if you get only what you ask, as they have been known to throw in some extra steel you never asked for, and expect payment upon awakening. The Boot A violent gang of Drow. They call their base of operations simply Drowfort. Located in Upside, the Boot police their web with violent authority given to them by an alliance between the two sects. They may be all bad, but they have their uses. Anytime Web City is under threat from an outside source The Boot has managed to repel the attackers. Their reach extends far beyond Web City, placing many smaller communities under their martial law. Followers of the Pulse Ettercaps who claim they can hear the city itself speak. They worship a sort of Web City consciousness that they hear in the vibrations in the webbing that they call the Pulse. Seeking answers and prophecy the Followers bring a zealotry like fervor to Web City that even the spinners and weavers do not have. While a majority of the members are etcaps, there are plenty who are not. People who seek answers that the two sects do not promise. Some of the most talented runners and watchers are found in the fold of the Pulse, but what do you expect from a gang that spends all its time listening to the vibrations of the city. The 33rd Radii A smaller gang, located on a single webway in the Downside. What they lack in territory they make up for in ferocity. It is said that not even the Phase will step foot on their block. The Phase Strange and enigmatic. The Phase are ethereal spiders and ettercaps that have a strange connection to another place. They live in the inbetween. No one really knows much about them. Those who go searching always go missing. The Phase have been seen working with both Sects but very irregularly. Reports claim the phase help transport etcaps to the sunbaked, but that is as far as their relationship seems to go. Also, sometimes they appear to haul away dead bodies. No one knows why certain people are phased and others are left to be eaten by the spiders. The Phase are a mystery to everyone in Web City. The Edge of Finality The largest of all gangs in Web City. Some members think there is a meaning to the name, but most just think it sounds cool. Despite the name, the gang is dangerous. They claim the most territory and have the largest numbers. They pay their gang well, and keep their territory clean. Though, they tend to be a bit harsh with the citizens under their authority, forcing them to pay ridiculous protection fees. Rumors are that one of the two sects are secretly funding them. City Life Upside Hub Central market district in Web City. Located dead center of the city. It is equidistant from both He Who Weaves and She Who Spins. A truce of neutrality allows Hub to prosper. It is said anyone who breaks the peace in Hub gets Phased. Drowfort A massive sprawling fortress built into the stone of Web City itself. Made from mostly obsidian and quicksilver, the fortress is indestructible. One of the largest buildings in Web City. In Fact it is an entire district in itself. Tucked in the fortress are their own schools, engineers, libraries, teleportation cirlces, and hospitals. Drowfort is a city within a city and you are not welcome. For more info on Drowfort, check out page 52 in The Book of the Underworld for 13th Age. The Belfry: Weaver Headquarters The Belfry is the main center of worship, and place of work for those who follow He Who Weaves With Joy. A massive behemoth of a building, with many floors. Each one has bells that ring at different intervals. These bells work as both a reminder to those working, and as additional security. They mask vibrations coming from the Belfry. Only Watchers with high enough clearance are trained in the techniques required to ignore the bell’s vibrations. Every Etcap or braced worker is rendered mute and deaf in the web while working in the tower. This stops spies, as well as forces etcap weavers to learn how to speak common. Which also helps with their work in the sunbaked. The Library: Spinner Headquarters Where the art is made. A quiet place, where silence is necessary for both their work, and to keep the vibrations in their webbing to a minimum. The Library is made of a network of intertwining and maze-like tunnels. It is said it goes all the way below downside deep into the etterpit, but who would be willing to test that theory? Downside Radii Radii are roads or webways. They start in the center of Web City and spread out from there. They pass through both Upside and downside. A few distinct radii that you should be aware of:
The Moorings Located along the outskirts of the city. An insect would say this is the place where the dredges of society are living in destitution and filth. This is also where most of the illicit fun happens. The people here aren't well off by any means, but they are far from broken despite what a bugger told you. It got this reputation because of the Razor, a derro gang that calls the Moorings home turf. New Point One of the newest sections of downside. At one time it was home to a Fomorian cult, but before a dead god could be risen the Boot, aided by the Phase, burnt the whole district to ash. Now the web has been rebuilt on top of the rubble of the old. Some say the curse of the dead god’s still linger, and there are secrets tucked away in the shadows waiting to be found. Blackrock Park Once a small suburb mostly left alone, now a burgeoning hellhole. The demonic forces localized in this area have caused much of this district to become warped.The walls talk, and the web itself has started to become corrupt. Rumors are the Phase are preparing to move in and clear the area, but for some reason they haven’t, and that has spread even bigger rumors. Technology Augmentations For the right price or juicy secret you can pay someone to alter your physical body. Add blades in your forearms or weave mithral under your skin. This has become so common that almost every citizen of Web City has had some sort of work done. If you are desperate you can always go to a Derro Mentor and gamble with their sanity, and eventually yours. Spidertech Both of the Sects have found ways to alter the biology of spiders through secrets and magic. One example is the bracer, which allows skeds to interact with the vibrations in Web City. Another is to create webbing that glows neon in the darkness. They have created spiders that you can ride, and even ones that are partially invisible. Tales and Scripts Both sects create the Tales and the Scripts. People from around the underworld, and even topside come to Web City to watch some tales or acquire a script. There is a catch, they do not work so well away from Web City. You can experience a tale, and learn the secrets within, then move on, but if you try to watch a tale while basking on a beach in the midland sea you will find yourself sorely disappointed. Similar goes for scripts, they will get one good use outside of Web City before they disintegrate. And still, the demand for them outside the city is high. Key words Anchor Line Give a Runner access to a building's or local area’s internal webwork. Often is protected, or being used by security runners. A whole building or tunnel may only have one anchor line, while some more secure buildings may have one per floor or branch. Bracer A specialized spider that can attach itself to the wrist of a Sked, giving them access to the same vibrational communication that Etcaps enjoy. Tale or Yarn A web covered paper talisman with Etcap logograms written on it. When worn over the eyes it lets someone experience the secret first hand, as if they are living it themselves. A major form of entertainment in Web City, but also has a million other uses. Some are not so innocuous. Script or Fab A web covered paper talisman with Etcap logograms engraved on it. When attached to the body it grants the user access to a specific and temporary use of Primal Word. Some Fabs are more potent than others, and can be made permanent. Note: In my Dragon Empire I use a system I call a Primal Word. In mechanics it behaves exactly like an Icon Relationship die. Each creature is made up of 3 Primal Words. Each word is an action verb. When the player wishes to use their Primal Word, I ask them to use it in a sentence to describe their character's action. Then have them roll the die to see how well it worked. Even on a 1 I give them a little something. It is another way that the players are given narrative control over the game. In my lore the Scripts act as fake Primal Words Ethereal Weave Webbing created by the Phase. No one knows the true purpose of the Ethereal Weave, nor can many people even see it. It runs through all the web in Web City. Should the Ethereal Weave be damaged at all the Phase will retaliate with prejudice. Runners Etcaps that specialize in infiltration. They are capable of interacting with the web in such a way they remove others' vibrations. Essentially allowing people to move undetected in the city, specifically in secure locations they aren't supposed to be in. They are essential to any sort of merc work. Watchers They focus on countering Runners. They are as capable of interacting with the web in the same way as runners, but they often do so in a manner to protect assests. To keep secrets safe from would-be thieves. The Sunbaked or Topside Anyplace not in the underdark. Also used as an insult. Slang Insect Anyone who is in either of the Two Sects. Bugger see Insect Phase To die, or to go missing. Called this due to the odd occurrence of Phase Spiders removing specific people, and more often phasing out dead bodies. Spinner Anyone who works for She Who Spins in Darkness. Weaver A worker for He Who Weaves with Joy Brace To call someone on their Brace Spider. Sked Anyone who is not an Etcap. Come from an Ettercap word that means "prey caught in the web unaware it is food." Huckabee Sting fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Nov 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2021 07:20
|
|
|
Used the mass combat rules waderockett posted waaaay back in 2015 https://pelgranepress.com/2015/03/05/13th-sage-pc-focused-mass-combat-rules/ It was perfect as our Eyes of the Stone Thief campaign finally wraps up. We've been playing ~3 hours weekly since before covid, taking the party from 3rd level to 10th (and having to do a bit of adjustment to the campaign materials because of it)  did a bit of the battle of the 5 armies. Most of it was the players' doing -- they had marshaled most of the Empire for this particular point in time. The session started with each army hidden, to be revealed as they entered the battle. There had to be a bit of a last minute change though -- when only one army was unrevealed, one of the players said, "that better be our lizard cult we started when we were time traveling" and at that point, yes, of course that's the lizard cult you started when you were time traveling. It was never the slightly racist dwarves you helped out a year ago. The mass combat rules do a really good job of keeping the chaos of the battle up and relevant to the heroes and it kept the entire session feeling really dynamic and fast paced. Each NPC faction gets a number of d6s equal to their strength on the board. On their initiative, roll the d6s. On a 6, they materially change the battle in a way that directly impacts the heroes in line with that factions goals. The Elf Queen's armies roll a 6? They flank the undead hoards from Necropolis that have been pinning down the players' airship and unable to aid up to that point. It tied together a bunch of prep the players had done and made the entire sweeping battle feel connected to the arc of the campaign, while also not needing me to play 80% of action time trying to figure out detailed moves, defenses, etc. I rolled some d6s, narrated a bit, and moved on to the much more interesting player stuff. Also, prep was dead simple. Once I remembered the mass combat rules, most of the prep was google image search and then making new tokens with Token Stamp 2 (https://rolladvantage.com/tokenstamp/). Took maybe an hour before the session started, which while pretty long for me at this point, seemed light for a 3 hour war game in the penultimate session of a 3 year long campaign.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 06:37
|
|
|
Oooh... Thank you very much. My group is in a Stone Thief prelude (level 2), and I'm currently working on setting up all the foreshadowing I need in case I want to continue post level 8 Stone Thief. This is delightful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 17:20
|
|
|
When I ran Stone Thief for my group, i wound up ending stone thief at the normal level 8, and then continued with the story that had been proceeding outside the Thief to level 10. Very cool to see people's adaptations for a post 8 Thief campaign.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 18:02
|
|
|
Question about the SRD. It was last updated with 13 True Ways. Are the mechanics from the book of ages and book of demons also in the SRD? This excerpt is from the Book Of Demons. My legalese isn't perfect but it sounds like the mechanics, sans setting, are explictly stated to be part of the open game content for 3PP to use as they see fit. Covok fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Feb 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 21:53
|
|
|
Covok posted:Question about the SRD. It was last updated with 13 True Ways. Are the mechanics from the book of ages and book of demons also in the SRD? The Demonologist isn't in the classes section of the SRD on their website, so it probably wouldn't hurt to shoot them an email or tweet to confirm one way or another.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2022 22:00
|
|
|
Saturnine Aberrance posted:When I ran Stone Thief for my group, i wound up ending stone thief at the normal level 8, and then continued with the story that had been proceeding outside the Thief to level 10. Very cool to see people's adaptations for a post 8 Thief campaign. so.... they are hitting level 10 which means, taking on an Icon. honestly this feels like a miss in the rules. By the time PCs hit the end of level progression, ascension really is taking out an icon and ushering in a new Age. It's discussed a bit in the core book, but every game I've taken to level 10 it's very, extremely clear that all players are expecting to take out at least one Icon. in our campaign, its the Lich King I'm going to use something similar to what's statted out here: https://13thage.org/index.php/icons/663-icons-statted-out Has good survivability skills that line up with what they saw earlier in the Stone Thief, and in particular, the "Master over all Necromancy," while maybe obvious, is just a fantastic idea for our group. Lich King gets all of the Necromancer spells and can use them as often as it likes. One of the PCs is a necromancer themselves, so it should be easy to telegraph spells before they hit. This will be important, because one of the necromancer's spells is an instant death if you are under 320 HP. None of the PCs have more than 320 HP. But that's okay, because they have lots of tools to deal with that. The necromancer herself can die and pop back up just fine. The Rogue has a method to fake his death (that's an easy Icon point to use in place of the spell). The crusader/paladin has straight up Resurrection. The Druid pops healing like crazy. They have so many potions as a party....... They've never really had to go all out with those skills and items, so I'm really looking forward to this final showdown. Current plan is to put them into the small village below the Lich King's manor, but magically locked off from the rest of the world by the Lich King. I will be in particular encouraging them to use houses, etc to gain cover while they strategize. That said, they are PCs, so they may just stand in place and rocket each other in the face for 10 rounds.  And we are wrapping up the 3 year game, so it's time to start shipping these out:    thanks again, waderockett, on finding the last few deluxe editions. they are going to flip
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2022 00:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 17:07 |
|
|
fosborb posted:so.... they are hitting level 10 which means, taking on an Icon. are you giving them all hardbound copies of the campaign? that's amazing!
|
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2022 00:43
|
|
