Why did they scrap Orcus?

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 2:20 am

...To say nothing about how skills should evolve and expand with experience.

Growing up on the streets implies a certain array of abilities. Street urchin 'come Merchant Prince implies a differing array of talents and abilities than street urchin 'come Assassin, Master Thief or any other significant development of character.

If I get halfway through a campaign and still have to rely on abilities my character learned on the streets as a child and only those abilities then I am going to be an unhappy player.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 2:59 am

[*]No grid but still structure enough to keep combat from going off the rails.
[*]No XP system, so you can do other things with monsters and treasure than kill and steal them and not be penalized.
[*]Its focus is story and roleplaying, not combat.
[*]Skills are flexible and intuitive.
[*]Prep is minimal: GMs can create monsters on the fly, and the rules place a big portion of creating adventure hooks and world building on the players as they play

So, Tweet and Heinsoo don't use most of the rules they wrote over the years, and here's a version with all that dead wood removed. I am a proponent of that idea in general. Still, experienced DMs do have an easier time of these rules-light results, so it may be worth adding a simpler rule than getting rid of one at times, which you also seem to be doing. Cool.

Mad props for going all the way back to AD&D for your secondary skills. My background is as a polymath super-genius Olympic decathlete who can do everything. You might argue that means I can't do anything very well, but as a polymath super-genius Olympic decathlete I totally can do it all better than everyone.

I'm guessing there's also a rule somewhere says I can't be a dick. :Smile:

[*]Combat goes faster and is simpler

That seems to be the same thing promised with 4e, but OK, it's not hard to go faster than 4e. It's just, I don't like to trust people who've already told fibs on that exact same topic.

[*]The classes are different from one another: a fighter's abilities do not operate the way a wizard's abilities do.

But this doesn't seem to be an example of rules the designers really use, just something they hope might fix a conceptual problem with 4e. That's the risky part, as variety isn't automatically good, most new subsystems over the years haven't been much use.

For instance "rolls an attack and then based on the outcome chooses which maneuver they want the attack to use" reads like it will be rather slow and anti-immersive compared to choosing before your turn. A mechanically sound power randomiser, sure, but it puts the cart before the horse with the dice and prevents you planning anything outside your turn. Unless you roll outside your turn, which is weirder still.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 3:09 am

...To say nothing about how skills should evolve and expand with experience.

If all you've got are MTP meta-skills, then your actual experiences add to the skills you have automatically. Instead of just having fought in the battle of whatever in your background, you've also fought in all the battles you really fought in and can play off them as well. Saved the princess is obviously going to make for some regal leverage.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 3:09 am

Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you just advertised "Make it up on your own. We've got a bunch of vague rules to keep the game existent, buy it from us!"

And that's bad. I made it through about half the schpeal before I just gave up.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 4:40 am

Simon Rogers wrote: These questions dive straight into the matter of taste and it depends on your view of 4e.

Why would someone who hates 4e because 'It doesn't feel like D&D', 'Fighters cast spells', 'it breaks versimilittude', 'It is a tabletop MMO','It neuters imagination, want to try 13th age?

Why would someone who enjoys 4e, because 'Fighters can pull their weight' 'Casters are reeled in' 'combat is tactically satisfying', 'i can make effective characters without heavy optimizing' want to try 13th age?

What problems of 4e, 'hit point bloat', 'padded sumo', 'too many classes with little differentiation', 'feat tax', 'skill challenges don't work', 'everyones powers feel the same' does 13th age fix?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 4:52 am

waderockett wrote:
I will also ask Rob if he thinks there are 4e problems that 13th Age fixes, but he may answer that "fixing 4e" wasn't a goal for him. One of the first things he told me when I signed on was that he wanted to design a game based on what he and Jonathan play at their table now. That's the actual game he's reworking into 13th Age, not what he designed for WotC -- although obviously there are elements in common.

Cool, thanks! I look forward to it.

waderockett · Post by **waderockett** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 5:19 am

Avoraciopoctules wrote: From what I can see, monsters seem to be just a collection of combat stats. Can 13th Age model somebody finding a magic ring with a genie bound to it and using that genie's powers to build a palace in the desert?

Can demons do interesting things out of combat? If "is a Fiend of Corruption" is the only thing you have to go on when figuring out what a demon can do besides stab people in the face, that seems like it could mean drastically different powers in different GM's minds. That could be really problematic if people are trading the role of GM back and forth.

I actually forgot one of the big things that distinguished the game from 4e to me: how it handles magic items, which are weird and unique and priceless, and are frankly dangerous to own. So yeah, you could absolutely find a ring with a genie in it, and use the genie's powers to build a palace in the desert. But the genie has its own agenda, and if you carry so many magic items your will begins to weaken, it will begin to manipulate you.

At the moment, most monsters in the book are collections of combat stats, but the more-finished monsters such as the minotaur have more to them: relationships with icons, rumors about them, variants and story hooks.

Chamomile wrote:So, right now I'm struggling to see how this game differs significantly from just doing totally freeform roleplay, the sort you'll find if you punch in "forums RP" into google. I get the numbers are there, but they don't really seem to do anything.

Also, I struggle to see why "level up every fourth time you heal" would possibly be a preferable solution to "gain XP for completing quest objectives."

Backgrounds and unique features don't involve numbers; the icon relationships are something you roll on, and the degree to which you succeed in invoking them affects what sort of benefit you get.

Regarding leveling up, the imaginary 4e-hater I'm trying to sell this to just grabbed a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia off my shelf and angrily pointed out that in 4e you don't just gain XP when you complete a quest, you consult three different tables. On one you cross reference the threat level of a monster you overcame with its rating as a standard, minion, elite or solo monster. Then you go to the Skill Challenge Rewards table and cross-reference each skill challenge's level with a complexity value of 1 through 5. Then you go to the Quest XP Rewards table, look up your level, and determine whether it was a major or minor quest. When you accumulate enough XP, you level up. The imaginary 4e hater loathes this amount of bookkeeping. He's also upset that experience is only awarded when his character succeeds. Can't he learn from failure? In 13th Age, the GM can decide that a "successful quest" is one in which the PCs failed in a really interesting and entertaining way.

Stubbazubba wrote:...apparently only combat encounters matter, since healing is the basis for XP. Diplomacy is a loser's game.

Good point. Unless I post the entire game here, what I say about it is going to be less informative than actually reading it, so let me clarify that. The introduction to leveling up says, "We generally let the characters advance a level after three or four full heal-ups, or in other words, between 12 and 16 serious battles." So to begin with, it's qualified by "we" and "generally," rather than saying something more set in stone like, "PCs advance a level after four full heal-ups." But on the next page you get a section titled, "Extraordinary Experience: A Level-Up Story Rule" which reads, "To level up, your character needs some extraordinary experience that helps them solidify their gains and acquire new capabilities. This experience could be outside information, special training, access to ancient tomes, a spiritual experience at a holy site, unexpected insight in the middle of a victorious (or losing) battle, etc."

So if I want to run a 13th Age campaign that's more like D&D, I can use combat as a measure of when the party levels up. If I want a more story-focused game, I can decide that the party has had enough in-game experiences to warrant a leveling-up, and either I or the players can come up with that extraordinary experience. Or if I prefer a campaign that blends both approaches, I can rely on combat to trigger an opportunity to level up but require a good story to make it happen.

Winnah wrote:If I get halfway through a campaign and still have to rely on abilities my character learned on the streets as a child and only those abilities then I am going to be an unhappy player.

All your skill checks increase by 1 when you level up. You can also move one background point around among your current backgrounds each time you gain a level, or swap the point into an entirely new background.

tussock wrote: I'm guessing there's also a rule somewhere says I can't be a dick. :Smile:

I searched the PDF for "dick" and do not see a rule covering that. I'm assuming that allowing you to be a dick at the table or not is GM's discretion.

tussock wrote: [*]Combat goes faster and is simpler

That seems to be the same thing promised with 4e, but OK, it's not hard to go faster than 4e. It's just, I don't like to trust people who've already told fibs on that exact same topic.

Acknowledged. I'm hoping that someone whom you do trust will try it out and let you know whether it really is faster or not. My players and I certainly find it so.

tussock wrote: [*]The classes are different from one another: a fighter's abilities do not operate the way a wizard's abilities do.

But this doesn't seem to be an example of rules the designers really use, just something they hope might fix a conceptual problem with 4e. That's the risky part, as variety isn't automatically good, most new subsystems over the years haven't been much use.

To the best of my knowledge, everything in the book is something the designers actually use. Playtester response to various subsystems has been mixed, but if I'm trying to sell this game to a 4e hater, I'm betting one of the things he hates about it is the perceived sameness of the classes. So I'm going to play up its variety. Whether he likes how that variety is achieved is another kettle of fish, but we won't know until he tries it. (In my playtest group, the fighter's main problem was that the conditions that trigger certain maneuvers rarely happened so he didn't get to do much of the cool stuff available to him. I suspect that will be changed.)

...You Lost Me wrote:Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you just advertised "Make it up on your own. We've got a bunch of vague rules to keep the game existent, buy it from us!"

And that's bad. I made it through about half the schpeal before I just gave up.

It will definitely be too vague for some people. In this case I'm trying to pitch the game to someone who hates 4e but I don't know why, so I'm taking the tack that maybe he hates the fact that 4e tries to cover as many things as possible with a rule so that players and GMs can just look up how a certain situation should be handled. I will tell him that 13th Age is more free-form and improvisational by comparison. He might come back and tell me that no, he likes games with a lot of rules, he just thinks 4e's rules suck.

OgreBattle wrote: Why would someone who hates 4e because 'It doesn't feel like D&D', 'Fighters cast spells', 'it breaks versimilittude', 'It is a tabletop MMO','It neuters imagination, want to try 13th age?

Why would someone who enjoys 4e, because 'Fighters can pull their weight' 'Casters are reeled in' 'combat is tactically satisfying', 'i can make effective characters without heavy optimizing' want to try 13th age?

What problems of 4e, 'hit point bloat', 'padded sumo', 'too many classes with little differentiation', 'feat tax', 'skill challenges don't work', 'everyones powers feel the same' does 13th age fix?

Hey, thanks! I think I addressed all of the points in the "hates 4e" category except "It doesn't feel like D&D." (Let me know, though.) Whether 13th Age feels like D&D or not is a fascinating question to me, and one I've been reluctant to ask play testers because I want them to think of it as a game that grew out of D&D rather than as a variety of D&D. But I do have thoughts on that, which I will get into later because I have to sleep now.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 5:32 am

waderockett wrote:
Chamomile wrote:So, right now I'm struggling to see how this game differs significantly from just doing totally freeform roleplay, the sort you'll find if you punch in "forums RP" into google. I get the numbers are there, but they don't really seem to do anything.

Also, I struggle to see why "level up every fourth time you heal" would possibly be a preferable solution to "gain XP for completing quest objectives."
Backgrounds and unique features don't involve numbers; the icon relationships are something you roll on, and the degree to which you succeed in invoking them affects what sort of benefit you get.

Regarding leveling up, the imaginary 4e-hater I'm trying to sell this to just grabbed a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia off my shelf and angrily pointed out that in 4e you don't just gain XP when you complete a quest, you consult three different tables. On one you cross reference the threat level of a monster you overcame with its rating as a standard, minion, elite or solo monster. Then you go to the Skill Challenge Rewards table and cross-reference each skill challenge's level with a complexity value of 1 through 5. Then you go to the Quest XP Rewards table, look up your level, and determine whether it was a major or minor quest. When you accumulate enough XP, you level up. The imaginary 4e hater loathes this amount of bookkeeping. He's also upset that experience is only awarded when his character succeeds. Can't he learn from failure? In 13th Age, the GM can decide that a "successful quest" is one in which the PCs failed in a really interesting and entertaining way.

That's even worse. Instead of a terrible rule for character advancement, you have no rules at all and couple it with a terrible suggestion for character advancement. You have done very little to convince me that there are any actual rules in your product that would make it worth real people monies, as opposed to a bunch of mostly meaningless numbers whose only rules are things like "roll 1d20 plus your background bonus, then ignore the result and decide whether or not it works based on DM fiat."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 5:47 am

Previn wrote:
The game's background rules let a player say, "My character is a low-ranking street thief in the city of Glitterhaegen" and from then on, the PC is assumed to have skills that match the background.
I have a big problem with this. If I'm going to have a skill system, I want those skills to be pretty well defined so I'm not arguing with the DM or a player, about what being a street thief means or able to move from group to group, and know what being a "a low-ranking street thief in the city of Glitterhaegen" actually does so that when my old group let me detect traps with the, my new one says that 'street' thieves don't have that experience.

The 4e skill challenges had a design goal that people would be able to use skills in "creative ways". Now as it happens, there is absolutely nothing creative that you can do with a skill called "Perception". You just can't. It lets you notice stuff, and that's all it does. You can't climb a wall with perception, you can't fix a broken wagon with perception. You can spot a clue and you can spot an ambush, and that's it. If you had the design goal that players should be bargaining with the MC to use skills in different scenarios, then those skills have to be free-form skills with ambiguous utility.

So one player puts "Sailor" on their sheet and another player puts "Street Rat" on their sheet, and they both try to justify how such a character trait implies that they can climb something in a hurry. That is how you fulfill that design criteria.

Of course, it happens that some backgrounds are obviously way better than others. Being a "super spy" let's you do pretty much anything you could do with any criminal, social, law enforcement, or technical background. In games with fixed skill lists, James Bond or Batman have a lot more skills than other characters. But in a game with nebulous backgrounds, writing "Is James Bond" or "Is Batman" on your character sheet simply gives you way more real abilities than writing "Is a tailor" or "Is a pickpocket" does. And of course, it's fantasy genre, where we know that "A Wizard Did It" is something that can literally be used to explain anything at all. And thus, writing "Is a Wizard" on your sheet is even more intrinsically multivariously useful than writing "Is Batman".

Freeform skill systems are useful and entertaining, and in no way new. But the whole thing where one guy is James Bond and another guy is James Blake is a well known problem with the concept. And it disturbs me that they are trying to get me excited about the fact that the skills are freeform, and not that they have actually done anything to address any of the well known weaknesses of a freeform skill system.

More interesting to me is the tacit acknowledgement that Rob doesn't play 4e, and the implication that he really never did. This goes hand in glove with the other evidence we have of all the designers being caught flat footed by the fact that Skill Challenges didn't work at all - something they would have known if they had actually tried playing the game they wrote.

This goes up right next to the Keith Baker testimony that he had all kinds of secret houserules for Skill Challenges and never used them "as is" during the entire playtest period. Only in this case it's the implication that the design lead for 4e couldn't be fucked to actually try any of the game's grid rules.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 6:05 am

Ogre's list of things people like about 4e seems reasonable and the list problems of 4e as well.

However the 'hatelist' is bizarre and I suppose redundant with the problems list, since the reason someone dislikes 4e is almost certainly because of its problems. I think it should be "Why would someone hates 4e because of its problems (see below) want to try 13th age?"

A couple of the hated things aren't even problems, as far as I can tell.

Not feeling like D&D is too nebulous to be helpful in any manner, considering everyone's feeling of D&D is likely to be different. I wouldn't bother trying to address it even. Now, not feeling like an RPG and more like a miniatures battle game... that is a serious complaint, but already redundant with the Tabletop MMO problem.

Fighters casting spells... is awesome. If people hate that, then they are wrong. And bad people. Probably terrorists. PCs being identified as fighters is what sucks. PCs being locked out of magic in a fantasy setting is balls and a half.

The complaint of verisimilitude-abuse is legitimate but also related to the problem of neutering imagination. They both largely stem from 4e having battle-only powers which completely break the 4th wall and lead to incredulity during the off-battle segments. Various failed iterations of skill challenges also share some blame for this as well I suppose.

My least favorite aspect of 4e was everyone's powers were similar and unimpressive. I felt more like I was in control of a game piece than an adventurer. I like playing tactical board games, but I expect different things from my RPGs.

I didn't play enough to get into the HP bloat and feat taxes of higher level play, but I can imagine that those would have bugged me all the more if I toughed it out and kept playing.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 6:44 am

erik wrote:Now, not feeling like an RPG and more like a miniatures battle game... that is a serious complaint, but already redundant with the Tabletop MMO problem.

I disagree here. The thing where 4e feels like a miniatures board game is a valid complaint and completely different for the similarly valid complaint that the game feels like a shallow knock-off of an MMO.

It feels like a board game because you spend all your time counting squares and moving little +/-2 chits around for one turn at a time. It feels like a board game because you say "Tide of Iron! Go back 3 spaces." It feels like an MMO because you're locked into repetitive "role defined" actions in order to grind away at mobs only to have them drop completely arbitrary treasure that had nothing to do with what the monster was or did. It feels like an MMO because you say "The bear dropped better tanking boots."

These are both valid complaints, but they don't go hand in hand. It sounds quite likely that 13th Age will not feel like Chutes and Ladders because they removed the grid. But I haven't heard anything that makes me believe it won't feel like an MMO. The whole "monsters only exist when you fight them" mentality seems to be going strong in here - what with the fact that we're still in the territory of Ogres having completely different stats when they come in large groups to fight higher level opponents than they do when they come in small groups to fight lower level opponents.

-Username17

chaosfang · Post by **chaosfang** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 9:50 am

OgreBattle wrote:Why would someone who enjoys 4e, because 'Fighters can pull their weight' 'Casters are reeled in' 'combat is tactically satisfying', 'i can make effective characters without heavy optimizing' want to try 13th age?

What problems of 4e, 'hit point bloat', 'padded sumo', 'too many classes with little differentiation', 'feat tax', 'skill challenges don't work', 'everyones powers feel the same' does 13th age fix?

I can't answer the first part since I'm not a 4E-hater, but as a 4E-liker, I think I can answer these parts.

As a 4E-enjoyer, I want to try 13th Age because
* it inspires beyond the grid.
The concept of Icons, the outright removal of the already-negligible alignment and replacing it with direct plot power by your relationship with the Icons and/or their organizations [relationship dice]
* it has a better background/skill system
As mentioned above, try being creative with Perception outside of "I try to see X". Try being creative with Religion outside of "I try to pray to Y" and "I know about religious stuff Z". In fact, 4E backgrounds were already halfway there -- with the suggestion in PHB2 to possibly acquire greater bonuses from the DM based on background when particular situations come up -- but because there was so much metagaming going on with the blatantly-3.5E-ish skill list, the resulting compromise of +2/training in one skill combined with the training's +5 bonus resulted in silliness like getting +10 to Stealth in Scale armor at level 1 from Racial + Background + Training bonus alone [not even from Skill Focus and with only 10 DEX]. 13th Age's skill system isn't perfect from the looks of it, but since character creation in general is a DM-player collaborative effort in the system, should be fine anyway.
* New things to see!
Personally I've already tried making a "classless 4E", with melee stuff being triggered-on-a-hit and spellcasters being "cast as a standard action". The fact that they've incorporated something like that and more makes it very, very interesting indeed, especially considering that, while you do see similarities between classes if you abstract it well enough -- you'll still see the AED sort of power segregation, but in different forms -- the very execution and presentation is very refreshing AND better captures the feel of those classes
* Alternative rules
It's interesting how you have at least two options for a variety of things: static and rolled recoveries are both found as suggestions, a variety of crit options are found, even various options on how to deal with damage is mentioned, and the fact that you have the ability to fully determine your class features AND THE OFFICIAL SUGGESTION/OPTION FOR DMs TO BE ABLE TO SWAP AT LEAST ONE CLASS FEATURE BETWEEN CLASSES AS DEEMED APPROPRIATE FOR A CHARACTER makes for a very, VERY interesting ruleset
* If in 4E reflavoring is king, in 13th Age reflavoring is a deity
With classes defining weapon damage instead of weapons (showing how even the smallest of weapons are deadly to a trained warrior, and how even the most finely crafted weapon is cumbersome and useless to a full wizard), and just about everything is either abstract or encouraged to be renamed and reflavored, it is easier to create let's say a powerful swordmage gish who creates lightning and thunder with every strike of his weapon, while using the Fighter class template, especially when you consider how only in particular cases would either lightning or thunder actually matter (even in 4E). The only restriction is that the DM has the final say on the matter, basically.
* One Unique Thing
It's perhaps THE differentiating factor of 13th Age from most TRPGs (although I must admit I have a very limited exposure to TRPGs so that statement can be considered colored by my perception). With the DM and the fact that most of the time you can't pick a direct combat benefit for your unique thing as your only limiting factors, this is an even greater gateway to awesomeness than anywhere else.
* Even if you don't want to switch over completely, you can always steal stuff from it and incorporate it into your game

I mean, even if you take none of the rules at all, you can at least take the setting and ask your players how they relate to the Icons or their organizations. But the fact that they took quite a number of good non-combat rules from a variety of indie TRPGs and made them work quite well in this system can probably make 13th Age a good jumping point when introducing indie TRPGs to people who are used to D&D.

I'm pretty sure you can have 5 characters in 13th Age, all using the Rogue class template only, but each so flavorfully different that in the long run the players would probably call one "Thief", another "Warlock", another "Ranger", another "Warrior", and another "Diplomatic Merchant Scum" without realizing that all of them are just the same Rogue class.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 1:05 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
erik wrote:Now, not feeling like an RPG and more like a miniatures battle game... that is a serious complaint, but already redundant with the Tabletop MMO problem.
I disagree here. The thing where 4e feels like a miniatures board game is a valid complaint and completely different for the similarly valid complaint that the game feels like a shallow knock-off of an MMO.

These are both valid complaints, but they don't go hand in hand.

Firstly, my bad. Ogre's hate reason was the more nebulous "does not feel like dnd" and I was trying to refine it into a more useful phrasing at the risk of putting words in his mouth. Certainly his vague assertion had overlap with the MMO one.

However, as for mmo vs mini board game... random nonsensical treasure rewards certainly have prior art in board games vs MMOs. At the very least they both do it and it is not a point of difference.

Tanking, controller and other roles are mmo concepts but I do not think 4e actually succeeded in making those roles applicable in play. 4e wished it was a mmo in its terminology and stated design, but was a boardgame in practice, I think.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 5:37 pm

chaosfang wrote: it is easier to create let's say a powerful swordmage gish who creates lightning and thunder with every strike of his weapon, while using the Fighter class template, especially when you consider how only in particular cases would either lightning or thunder actually matter (even in 4E).

Does 13th Age's combat engine differentiate between thunder/lightning damage and non thunder/lightning damage? If not, then you're gravy. If so, then does your gish example have some feat that lets him in any way actually do thunder/lightning damage? If so, then you're gravy.

If not, then you have a serious verisimilitude problem. Reflavoring and refluffing is a genuinely great concept for more generic games like D&D. Really. But you still have to follow the limits imposed by your mechanics. Otherwise there is no sense of determinism, cause and effect, or consistency in your game. And that makes it impossible for players to do anything but say "I stab the enemy in the face." If It's a similar problem to Exception Based Design, really. Only even more tragic, probably.

waderockett · Post by **waderockett** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 5:07 am

Blicero wrote:
chaosfang wrote: it is easier to create let's say a powerful swordmage gish who creates lightning and thunder with every strike of his weapon, while using the Fighter class template, especially when you consider how only in particular cases would either lightning or thunder actually matter (even in 4E).

Does 13th Age's combat engine differentiate between thunder/lightning damage and non thunder/lightning damage?

Lightning and thunder are indeed damage types. chaosfang, I'd be interested in hearing more about how you might build that PC. Right off the bat my first thought is that they'd do their choice of thunder or lightning damage with each sword strike, and they'd have the Lightning Fork sorcerer spell as a class talent so once per battle they'd have a chance to do chain damage to other enemies. (Recharge 16+ after battle per the spell.)

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 5:30 am

waderockett wrote: Lightning and thunder are indeed damage types. chaosfang, I'd be interested in hearing more about how you might build that PC. Right off the bat my first thought is that they'd do their choice of thunder or lightning damage with each sword strike, and they'd have the Lightning Fork sorcerer spell as a class talent so once per battle they'd have a chance to do chain damage to other enemies. (Recharge 16+ after battle per the spell.)

Does 13th age associate certain effects with different damage types?

Say "thunder damage can deafen a foe"
or "Lightning has a 30% chance of inflicting paralysis"

could I decide something like "Lightning drills through anything, my attack with this Lightning infused fist will pierce through his earth barrier"?

waderockett · Post by **waderockett** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 6:11 pm

OgreBattle wrote:
Does 13th age associate certain effects with different damage types?

Say "thunder damage can deafen a foe"
or "Lightning has a 30% chance of inflicting paralysis"

The rules don't assign mechanical crunch to the different damage types aside from creatures being vulnerable or resistant to those types. I would actually like that section to include some guidance on how you could use damage types in more interesting mechanical and narrative ways, and now that you've brought my attention to it, I will bug Rob.

I think that a section with optional, crunchier rules for damage types would either be a great addition to the core rules, or a good inclusion in a supplement.

Your second question is an example of what 13th Age does well:

OgreBattle wrote: could I decide something like "Lightning drills through anything, my attack with this Lightning infused fist will pierce through his earth barrier"?

If you and the GM agree that such a thing would be awesome and wouldn't break the campaign, then of course. This could come up during character creation: you might tell the GM that you want to make a character who's a storm wizard, and his lightning attacks have these sorts of effects.

The two of you then determine how that works to your mutual satisfaction. At the end of it, you might have established that in this campaign you are the only wizard who can do these things, or one of a handful. Maybe you've introduced the fact that storm wizardry is a school of magic with its own fortress academy in the northern mountains, and the school has recently fallen out of favor with the Archmage which gives you a Conflicted relationship with him.

Or maybe your character is just a normal wizard or a sorcerer, but during a battle you ask, "Hey, could I use my lightning spell to do X?" To which I as a GM would answer, "Mmmmmaybe. Let me think about that for a second." I'm inclined to let people do cool and creative things, and depending on what those things are, either adjust to the new reality that lightning bolt does X (my preference), or in more extreme cases propose to the player that Ragnar the Wizard can use that effect cinematically: definitely yes now, maybe or maybe not later, depending on the circumstances.

Now, this is going to raise a major red flag with Previn:

Previn wrote:If I'm going to have a skill system, I want those skills to be pretty well defined so I'm not arguing with the DM or a player, about what being a street thief means or able to move from group to group, and know what being a "a low-ranking street thief in the city of Glitterhaegen" actually does so that when my old group let me detect traps with the, my new one says that 'street' thieves don't have that experience.

Yep, that downside to this approach is that your storm wizard who can use lightning to drill through earth barriers may not be appropriate for every 13th Age campaign.

This leads me to one of OgreBattle's questions: "Does it feel like D&D?" It feels like some kinds of D&D. Your mileage may vary, but to me it feels like a new version of the game I played when I started out.

When I came into the hobby in 1980, D&D was largely whatever a group wanted it to be. I did not expect the phraint ranger I made for my usual DM's campaign to be automatically accepted by the guy who ran the Saturday games at the local hobby shop -- I could try and make the case that he would not mess up his game, but he could legitimately tell me that I had to create a different PC for his game. So I personally do not give a fuck about enforcing consistency.

But for the past several decades D&D has been trying hard to make it so you don't have to think about those things. You can walk into a game anywhere and know what to expect. That's not a bad thing. It places a lot of creative constraints on me as a player and a DM, but on the other hand I can play with strangers and there is a rulebook that tells us whether an action is legit, or whether an interpretation of the rules is correct.

I have not yet tried to play 13th Age with anyone other than people whom I like and trust. I get the sense from the kinds of questions you guys ask that you often play RPGs with people who as players see the GM as an enemy to be overcome by finding loopholes in the rules. I've certainly played with some people like that. 13th Age for the most part doesn't combat confusion or assholery with math: it combats it by stating explicitly that it is a game that puts responsibility on the players to make the adventure enjoyable for the other players and for the GM.

I also mentioned that the magic items are weird and special, which feels very D&D to me but was not my experience in 4e.

There's one big thing that does NOT feel like D&D to me: you're not trying to rack up as much XP and coins as possible in order to level up. In every D&D game I've played, loot was very important. In 13th Age, loot is not very important. The weird thing in my playtest session was that my players were all very familiar with D&D and didn't know loot was unimportant; and yet when they killed a bunch of kobolds on a staircase in Bolstrike Pillar, they didn't ransack the corpses looking for coins and daggers.

Instead, the backgrounds, unique features and icon relationship rules made them focus on the intangible rewards they might get from killing kobolds. The down-on-his-luck mercenary captain was able to impress the local wizard militant, which could lead to future command opportunities. The street thief had gotten a close look at the interior of one of the Archmage's magical nodes, which could be of great interest to the Prince of Shadows.

FrankTrollMan wrote:More interesting to me is the tacit acknowledgement that Rob doesn't play 4e, and the implication that he really never did.

Nope, for their primary fantasy RPG, Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet play the homebrew game that is being released as 13th Age. I don't have any special insight into how 4e was playtested during the design process, nor do I know whether Rob ever ran 4e for his group outside of work. Some designers prefer to keep their professional projects separate from what they and their friends play for fun, so maybe, maybe not.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:20 pm

waderockett wrote:definitely yes now, maybe or maybe not later, depending on the circumstances.

:/

Yep, that downside to this approach is that your storm wizard who can use lightning to drill through earth barriers may not be appropriate for every 13th Age campaign.

That wouldn't be so bad ... but what you suggest above is that you basically never know if something is going to work.

I get the sense from the kinds of questions you guys ask that you often play RPGs with people who as players see the GM as an enemy to be overcome by finding loopholes in the rules.

Or simply players who want a strong tactical aspect to combat ... you can't make tactical decisions if you don't have a good idea about the probabilities of success and effects of your actions.

The weird thing in my playtest session was that my players were all very familiar with D&D and didn't know loot was unimportant; and yet when they killed a bunch of kobolds on a staircase in Bolstrike Pillar, they didn't ransack the corpses looking for coins and daggers.

Why if they are trying to harken back to old school D&D do they make such an incredibly large change from it?

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:26 pm

waderockett wrote:Your second question is an example of what 13th Age does well:

OgreBattle wrote: could I decide something like "Lightning drills through anything, my attack with this Lightning infused fist will pierce through his earth barrier"?
If you and the GM agree that such a thing would be awesome and wouldn't break the campaign, then of course. This could come up during character creation: you might tell the GM that you want to make a character who's a storm wizard, and his lightning attacks have these sorts of effects.

The two of you then determine how that works to your mutual satisfaction. At the end of it, you might have established that in this campaign you are the only wizard who can do these things, or one of a handful. Maybe you've introduced the fact that storm wizardry is a school of magic with its own fortress academy in the northern mountains, and the school has recently fallen out of favor with the Archmage which gives you a Conflicted relationship with him.

Or maybe your character is just a normal wizard or a sorcerer, but during a battle you ask, "Hey, could I use my lightning spell to do X?" To which I as a GM would answer, "Mmmmmaybe. Let me think about that for a second." I'm inclined to let people do cool and creative things, and depending on what those things are, either adjust to the new reality that lightning bolt does X (my preference), or in more extreme cases propose to the player that Ragnar the Wizard can use that effect cinematically: definitely yes now, maybe or maybe not later, depending on the circumstances.

That's a lot of words to say "Well, you'd just have to make shit up and see if it flies with the GM."

Which is how it works in every RPG when you try something thats not in the rules. So how is this something that "13th Age does well"?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:33 pm

Wade, you're trying to sell us 13th Age by telling us that it has a GM who can improvise things. I have about seven or eight different RPGs on my hard drive and three or four more lying around in physical format, and every single one of them has a GM who can improvise things, so how is "your GM can make something up" a selling point or even notable at all?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:36 pm

I am actually amazed at the hubris of telling me that the fact that I don't want to have a fucking Mother-May-I session when resolving something as basic as "using an attack power to attack an object" indicates that I must consider myself to be in an adversarial relationship with the DM. That's horse shit. Having a Mother-May-I session is a waste of my fucking time, and a waste of the time of every other person at the table. It's inevitable in an RPG, but it should only happen when someone wants to do something complex or perform a rare or unexpected action. Using attack powers to "make attacks" can't possibly count as either complex or unexpected. That shit had fucking better be in the rules or the rules are telling me explicitly that they intend to waste my fucking time. Repeatedly.

-Username17

waderockett · Post by **waderockett** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 10:17 pm

MfA wrote:
waderockett wrote:definitely yes now, maybe or maybe not later, depending on the circumstances.
:/

Yeah, you're right, that would be stupid. I was thinking of times that I've run games that were basically improv sessions with dice, and "You can do this but only when it advances the story," was a ground rule people could get behind. If I say that lightning bolts ignore force fields in one scene, lightning bolts clearly ignore force fields, period. Related: it's possible that I'm a shitty GM.

Or simply players who want a strong tactical aspect to combat ... you can't make tactical decisions if you don't have a good idea about the probabilities of success and effects of your actions.

True. There's a good discussion of the tactical aspects of 13th Age on the Wizards boards: https://community.wizards.com/go/thread ... h_Age?pg=7 --

Why if they are trying to harken back to old school D&D do they make such an incredibly large change from it?

I'll ask Rob and Jonathan if one of them will add it to his list of blog posts to write for the Pelgrane site. When Tweet is interviewed, he always describes the game as "story-focused" which may be the answer right there. He's interested in satisfying stories and adventure hooks rather than amassing wealth.

Wade, you're trying to sell us 13th Age by telling us that it has a GM who can improvise things. I have about seven or eight different RPGs on my hard drive and three or four more lying around in physical format, and every single one of them has a GM who can improvise things, so how is "your GM can make something up" a selling point or even notable at all?

It's not a selling point - it's an answer to OgreBattle's question, "could I decide something like 'Lightning drills through anything, my attack with this Lightning infused fist will pierce through his earth barrier'?" If we were talking about Champions, my answer would also be yes, and I'd describe how you build specific powers by applying modifiers to generic powers and then spending points to buy them.

Red_Rob wrote:Which is how it works in every RPG when you try something thats not in the rules. So how is this something that "13th Age does well"?

I think it does it well for a couple of reasons. One is that if you're making shit up that's not in the rules, the rules support creating a solution on the fly that works well within the framework of the game. The other is that in 13th Age, making shit up invokes other rules that lead to the world being built out in various ways -- again, the example of the storm wizard, where a player's desire to have lightning do something interesting creates a slew of adventure hooks. You could do that in other RPGs, but in this game, that's the point.[/url]

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 12:49 am

As a person who hates 4E for this particular kind of thing I have to point out that you, wade, are dancing delightfully around answering the question. You responded to Red_rob by saying that the point of your system is to make up rules and add them to the game. I KNOW that I can do that with any system. Exactly what, in this system, makes this easier? You're going to have to at LEAST provide an example or something because your answers thus far are vague at best.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:28 am

MGuy wrote:You're going to have to at LEAST provide an example or something because your answers thus far are vague at best.

Or else!

Now, I could see a free-form mechanic like spending a fate point to do something like have a piece of equipment appear when you need it (a handyman forgot his ladder near the 2nd story window you need to break into, or just to do something non-standard with your spell), but certainly you need to provide guidelines for that kind of thing not to devolve into pure Mother May I.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:58 am

erik wrote: you need to provide guidelines for that kind of thing not to devolve into pure Mother May I.

Do most D&D players actually get bothered about that though?