Five Alive!

In a fearsome feedback loop that threatens the very fabric of not much at all, Adam at Barking Alien followed up on my first five role-playing games post with a post about the five rpgs he's thinking about most right now. Or then, when he wrote the post. That seems like an excellent idea. Let's have at it!

• 13th Age. I'm often thinking about 13th Age because I think it's an excellent game and I very much enjoyed running it in the past. I read 13th Age Glorantha the other day -- I backed as a Kickstarter in 1873 or thereabouts and never got around to reading -- and while it's massively incomplete, it has a lot of very good ideas. It's another layer of complexity on top of the base game -- I refer to it as Advanced 13th Age to no one because there's no one else here -- so I don't know if I'd run it, but it did make me excited to play 13A again, in some form.
• Break!! I've got an idea for subverting the bright and cheery feel of Break!! with an apocalyptic horror campaign influenced by The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Kingdom Death, and few other bleak and depressing things. I can't quite decide if this is a terrible idea, or bold and exciting. Perhaps I will play it to find out!
• Call of Cthulhu. I am almost always thinking about Call of Cthulhu. It has been too long since I last played.
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This is a bit of a cheat as I'm working on a couple of books, but I am thinking about it and it is an rpg, so...
• Star Wars d6. I've got a rough idea for a pirate campaign, a mix of original content and some published adventures I've got lying around that would fit well with a bit of bodging. This also ties in with another post I really need to get around to publishing one day. This day? No.

Dragonlance: Thirteenth Age

Here's an idea, combining two of my favourite role-playing games.

It's completely untested; we're learning as we're doing. Let's go!

Let's first of all generate the Icons we're going to use for this hypothetical campaign. We'll arrange them in the traditional three-by-three "alignment" grid, and for this purpose nine Icons work well, but there's no reason you can't have fewer or more.

Then we'll draw our Icons from the Fate Deck, like so:

I like the idea of drawing "in order" rather than shuffling them around to fit, but that's the Old-Schooler in me; if a "good" character is sitting in the Chaotic Evil spot, then that's interesting and worth exploring. The Icons don't necessarily map to those alignments, because neither 13th Age nor Dragonlance: Fifth Age really have alignment in the exact same way D&D has, but if it's useful to think of them, um, aligning in that way, then go ahead.

(The DL5A cards have black, red, or white icons that map to the good, neutral, or evil factions/moons/wizards; you can use these as a guide.)

The characters on the cards can be the actual Icons if you want -- which would make for an interesting alternate Dragonlance setting -- or they could be an example -- eg, Chot stands in for a generic Minotaur Warlord Icon, or Goldmoon is the Barbarian Priestess or something -- or it can be someone completely different that just shares those personality traits, or it can be any combination of the preceding. Go wild.

Make a note of this Icon grid. Maybe take a photo. Those cards need to now go back into the Fate Deck.

Icon Relationships

Now we have our Icons, player-characters can define their relationships with them. This can be done as normal, with starting PCs spending up to three points on positive, conflicted, or negative relationships with Icons of their choice. Those definitions should be obvious, but if not have a look at the 13A Icon rules.

(13A has limits on how to spend the points, depending on the alignments of the Icon and the PC, but I'm ignoring those as I don't like them. If you want to put all three points into a negative relationship with an "evil" Icon, go for it. The 13A limits can be seen at the above link if you want to use them.)

"Rolling Relationship Dice"

As a GM, use a PC's icon relationships three different ways, just as in 13A:

• At the start of a session to generate ideas about which Icons will be involved in that session's events.
• During a specific important event or moment, to determine if an Icon is involved, or if the PCs can get an advantage or assistance from an Icon.
• As a "sting" to see if an Icon is somehow involved with a "random" plot event.

Each player draws cards equal to their points with the relevant Icon:

• If the suit matches that of the Icon, then it provides an umambiguous advantage or benefit, the 13A equivalent of a 6. Unless it is a Dragon card.
• If the card is a Dragon, then it is advantageous as above, except there is also a complication, like an obligation to a "good" Icon, or unwanted attention from an "evil" Icon. The equivalent of a 13A 5 result.
• If the card drawn is the Icon card itself, then the Icon makes a personal intervention! Let's call it a 7; in 13A the Icons are not really supposed to appear in person, but drawing the Icon's actual card seems like it should warrant a special effect.

(The probabilities are a bit lower here than in 13A but they are not massively off, and the addition of the third, "7", result feels like it balances things. A bit. Ish.)

Combinations of results are allowed and encouraged! A 5 and a 6 is interesting, a 5 and a 7 even more so!

I think cards should be shuffled back into the Fate Deck after each Icon "roll", or at least after each player has had a go, except perhaps with the exception of any direct interventions, but this probably requires testing.

Changing Relationships

When a PC gets to Hero reputation -- 16 to 21 Quests -- they get an extra relationship point to spend. They can also switch an existing relationship point to a different or new Icon, as long as it makes sense within the context of the campaign.

At Archetype -- 29 Quests! -- reputation a PC again gains a new relationship point and can again switch one point around. At this stage a single relationship can be increased to a new maximum of four, to reflect the PC becoming a VIPI.

(A Very Important Person Indeed!)

SAINT SEVURDAPOY'S ARROW

This is an arrow made of some sort of lightweight but strong metal. The name "Saint Sevurdapoy" is carved along the shaft.

• Feels icy cold -- almost painful -- to the touch.
• Counts as enchanted for purposes of immunity to normal weapons.
• Bursts into cold black and blue flame when fired.
• Flames do not start fires, but do provide dim blue light.
• Vanishes after use, but reappears at midnight. At the point it disappeared. I hope you remember where you shot it!
• No special effect versus red dragons.

13th Age:

• Standard bow damage +1d4 cold damage (+2d4 at Champion, +3d4 at Epic).
• Does 1d4 cold damage to the archer when fired.
• When hit, the target must make a normal (11+) save or one random magical effect or spell affecting them is suppressed until the next noon.

Quirk: Your manner is abrupt, brusque, and curt. To-the-point, one might say.

B/X:

• Standard bow damage +1d4 cold damage.
• Does 1d4 cold damage to the archer when fired.
• When hit, the target is affected as if Dispel Magic has been cast on them, with the archer's level standing in for casting level.

Fighting Fantasy:

• Standard bow damage + 1 cold damage.
• 2 STAMINA damage to archer when fired.
• AFF: When hit, the target is subject to Counter Spell; assume the archer has a Magic skill equal to her SKILL, modified by the STAMINA cost of the original spell.
• Troika: When hit, the target is subject to the Undo spell; roll versus the original casting, using the archer's SKILL.

CHOMPA

This small, scrappy shield -- almost a buckler -- is made from the stretched face of some hideous swamp-dwelling creature, and was created by an insane goblin wizard, or so the story goes.

• Growls and jabbers all the time, never forming coherent words, but making stealth pretty much impossible.
• The gob leads to an extra-dimensional space but everything there is consumed; this could be annoying or useful.
• Goblins recognise CHOMPA as an important cultural artefact, and will be predisposed to be at least neutral to the wielder.

13th Age:

• +4 Hit Points.
• On a natural attack roll of 8, CHOMPA bites a mêlée opponent for 1d4 damage per level.

Quirk: You are always peckish.

B/X:

• +1 Armour Class.
• On a natural attack roll of 8, CHOMPA bites a mêlée opponent for 1d4 damage.

Fighting Fantasy:

• +1 SKILL.
• On a natural attack roll of 8, CHOMPA bites a mêlée opponent for 1 STAMINA damage.

(I am inclined to restrict the extra damage to a roll of double 4 but this seems a bit churlish in comparison to the other systems, so you may allow it on any roll of 8, although that may be too far the other way.)

LIMB OF WOE

This is a withered severed leg with dirty bandages wrapped around the stump.

• Two-handed club.
• The wielder counts as unarmed for any relevant effects or purposes. For example, if they are a character that normally must fight bare-handed, or if they are casting a spell that requires touching a target. That sort of thing.
• The wielder also registers as undead to abilities or effects that detect or track the living dead.
• The knee joint gives it a wild, unpredictable swing.
• The LIMB OF WOE has a strong smell of something like old leather and pickling.
• Every morning at 2am, it twitches for two long, creepy hours.

13th Age:
+1; small, two-handed.
The wielder has a 1 point conflicted relationship with the Lich King, in addition to their other relationships. If they already have a negative or positive relationship with the Lich King, then things just got complicated!
Quirk: Tap your foot constantly.

B/X:
+1 to hit and damage.

Fighting Fantasy:
+1 SKILL and +1 to the club row on the damage table.

It's Been Ages

Stuart asked me a question about the 13th Age Rogue class yesterday and to answer I dug out my copy of the rulebook; I also found my GM notes for the campaign I ran back in 2014. The campaign went on hiatus as my group moved on to other things but it did not finish; what surprised me most as I looked over my notes again was how much was going on!

Characters in 13th Age each have One Unique Thing, some aspect of themselves that no other character in the setting shares. Stuart's character Sartheen was the only red dragonspawn. Manoj played Amras, an elf wizard who was in fact not an elf at all, but a sort of flesh prison for the soul of the Devil, imprisoned in an earlier Age. Ben played Ne-0n, a robot monk -- well, he was a monk-flavoured sorcerer as the monk rules weren't out at that point, despite there being a monk on the cover of the rulebook! -- with a sort of cosmic awareness that allowed him to see the underlying structure of reality; I imagine this was probably represented in binary code.

13th Age characters also have relationships with the Icons of the setting; these are the sort of powerful NPCs that every fantasy setting has, like the Archmage, the Orc Lord, and so on. Player-characters can have positive, ambiguous, or negative relationships with certain Icons, and there are various ways the relationship can play out in terms of mechanics; there's more detail on Icon relationships here.

I tended to use the relationships as background plot devices. The Three, a trio of powerful dragons, were interested in and a little scared of Sartheen, because there weren't supposed to be red dragonspawn. The Diabolist was watching and sort of protecting Amras, in case something happened and the Devil got out. Ne-0n was a servant of the Great Gold Wyrm, except the robot had suspicions it was being manipulated and, for the greater good or not, this clashed with the mechanoid's desire for self-determination.

(This led to a wonderful statement of intent for the second half of the campaign, as Ne-0n emerged from a period of meditation with an intention to free the player-characters -- and perhaps the world as a whole -- from the influence of the Icons. This kicked things into a higher gear and I was excited by the prospect of the players seizing control of the campaign narrative, but then we stopped playing.)

There's no alignment in 13th Age; rather the Icons have relationships with each other, and the player-characters' relationships with the Icons in turn suggest where they stand in terms of the larger philosophical and physical conflicts in the world. The Three and the Elf Queen were engaged in a cold war of sorts, so the elves were interested in the fact that the dragons were interested in Sartheen; as such they asked Amras to spy on his ally. The Great Gold Wyrm and his servants -- even disgruntled servants like Ne-0n -- stand against demonic incursions, but the robot was unaware of what was inside Amras. The players were under no obligation to go along with their Icons' plans, but all this going on in the background made for interesting dynamics.

That's just a brief summary. There were a couple of other characters, each with their own Unique Things and Icon relationships, and Sartheen, Amras, and Ne-0n had other relationships I haven't discussed. Even so, you can see how a tiny handful of numbers and words on a character sheet generated a complex web of histories and politics, none of which was planned when I started running the game. It's very old-school in a way.

Even if I never play 13th Age again -- and I do hope that is not the case -- I will have a serious think about pinching the One Unique Thing and Icon mechanics for the next game I run, because they generate so much potential fun.

Hashtag and Eggs

Oh okay then, let's have a look.

I'm not going to do one a day; no one wants to see that. Let's bash through the whole lot in one fat hit.

Here we go!

1. What published rpg do you wish you were playing right now?

What, right this moment? I'm okay thanks. I like games but I don't want to be playing every moment of every day, like some sort of...

Oh.

I want to play Mutant Year Zero. It's been sitting in my reading pile for a year or so but I haven't got it to the table yet.

2. What is an rpg you would like to see published?

I may write a longer blog post about this but I think it's fascinating that computer rpg series like Final Fantasy spit out a complete ruleset and setting every couple of years and then move on; would anyone buy or play these games if they were released as tabletop rpgs? I would be interested, at least.

3. How do you find out about new rpgs?

I don't follow any news sites or anything like that, so I tend to pick up on new releases when people get excited about them on Google+.

4. Which rpg have you played the most since August 2016?

I am a sad loser and I have logged everything I've played and because these things are true I can tell you that it was the Frankenstein patchwork d100 game I used to run The Dracula Dossier. Thirteen sessions in all.

5. Which rpg cover best captures the spirit of the game?

That's a great question. I can think of lots of covers I like but do they capture the spirit of the game? Fifth edition Call of Cthulhu has a wonderful cover but I don't think it's indicative of how the game plays, as such.

Of the games I own, I'm going to go with the second edition of Shadowrun; it's not the best image in the world -- the composition is a bit flat and that drain is given so much prominence that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a main character -- but does a great job of showing what the game is about.

6. You can game every day for a week. Describe what you'd do!

Assuming I've done all the preparation and I'm ready to go, I'd probably try out a bunch of games and play a different one each day. Maybe two a day, one after lunch and one after dinner.

I know. Rock and roll.

7. What was your most impactful rpg session?

"Impactful" is a horrible word. Eurgh. Stop it.

Anyway, probably the most influential -- much better, see? -- session was the first time I played Call of Cthulhu. I'd played other rpgs before that, and it was Shadowrun that probably got me hooked, but that first CoC session was a profound and enlightening experience.

8. What is a good rpg to play for sessions of 2hrs or less?

"2hrs"?

Good gravy.

(Mental note: stop being an arse.)

Anyway, two hours doesn't seem long enough to get going, once you've taken into account making the tea and moaning about what the Tories have done this week, but I'd go for something quick and easy, like Fighting Fantasy. I imagine you could rattle through a lot of content in two hours with that game.

9. What is a good rpg to play for about 10 sessions?

Most campaigns I run last about ten to twelve sessions, so the easy answer is "any of them" but that's not very helpful.

There's a suggestion in 13th Age to run a campaign in which everyone gains a level with each session and characters have ten levels in that, so you get this focussed and neat sort of "zero to hero" thing. I don't know if that means 13th Age is a good rpg to play for about ten sessions, but I'd like to give it a try some time.

10. Where do you go for rpg reviews?

Reviews from R'lyeh is good, as is tenfootpole. Ramanan Sivaranjan knows what he's talking about, and I will always pay attention to what Patrick Stuart or Zak Smithsabbath like, although our tastes can often vary.

11. Which "dead game" would you like to see reborn?

TSR's Saga System -- the one with the cards -- was ahead of its time and had a lot going for it, but died when TSR did. I'd love to see a new version.

12. Which rpg has the most inspiring interior art?

Death is the New Pink or Troika! because Jeremy Duncan is a genius. So are Jez Gordon and Zak Sabbathsmith, but I don't think there's a published rpg out that features their work. Yet.

(I also have some pictures in DitNP but if you're looking at my stuff instead of JD's then You Are Doing It Wrong.)

13. Describe a game experience that changed how you play.

I was going to blog about this. Maybe I did. I'm old and can't remember everything. Hrm. It was when I was running The Enemy Within II: The Enemy Within and the Temple of Doom and I noticed that WFRP2 sort of expects you to build non-player-characters according to the same rules as player-characters and I remember thinking "no, I'm just going to do what I like" and made up the statistics.

It's sort of obvious and everyone else has probably been doing it for years but it had never occurred to me before and now I do it all the time.

14. Which rpg do you prefer for open-ended campaign play?

I'm not sure how to answer this one because every open-ended game I've played has fallen apart at some point. I would imagine that the best sort of rpg for this kind of campaign would be something where characters don't change much in terms of power level; perhaps something like basic D&D, the Chaosium d100 rules, or Traveller.

15. Which rpg do you enjoy adapting the most?

I don't understand the question. Is this asking if I enjoy hacking games? If so, then I don't do it often because if I have to change a ruleset in order to run something then there's a good chance that there's already a different ruleset that's better suited to what I want to do.

That said, I am a big fan of the Chaosium d100 rules and I find them easy to tweak and modify, so maybe that's my answer.

16. Which rpg do you enjoy using as is?

See above. I'll drop rules if they make no sense or slow things down but for the most part I'm not much of a hacker. Fighting Fantasy and WFRP2 are both games that I run without changing much, if anything.

17. Which rpg have you owned the longest but not played?

Probably Lacuna Part 1: The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City. I've had it since 2009 and I've never got around to playing it. I find it interesting and I'm excited to play it but I also find it a bit intimidating and all I can imagine is making a right mess of running it.

18. Which rpg have you played most in your life?

Ooh, crikey. I've played a lot of Pathfinder in recent years, and I played a stupid amount of Shadowrun when I was but a wee sprogling, but I reckon it's probably Call of Cthulhu. I've run three big-ish campaigns and have played double figure one-shots.

It may be Pathfinder because that takes ages to play, but I don't like it nearly as much as I like adore Call of Cthulhu and I would be sad if I have played it more often.

19. Which rpg features the best writing?

Small but Vicious Dog.

20. What is the best source for out of print rpgs?

I get mine from eBay because all the shops that used to sell ancient rpg books have closed down around here.

In the brief time during which I lived in Minnesota, the local Half Price Books was like a treasure trove of old rpg stuff, but I wasn't gaming at the time so I didn't pick anything up. Tsk.

21. Which rpg does the most with the least words?

Probably one of these twenty-four hour games or two-hundred word rpgs but I don't think I've read any of them.

Troika! is quite lean but also good. Let's go with that.

22. Which rpgs are the easiest for you to run?

I have no patience for fiddly games any more so I only run games that are easy to run. This is one reason I like 13th Age; for the players it's like AD&D in terms of complexity and options but for the GM it's more like Basic D&D.

The easiest for me is probably Call of Cthulhu because the d100 system is super simple to use, and almost everything is on the character sheet.

Then they ruined it by Pathfindering the seventh edition but I've already moaned about that.

23. Which rpg has the most jaw-dropping layout?

Rifts.

Oh, did you mean jaw-dropping in a good way?

24. Share a PWYW publisher that should be charging more.

I don't know of any PWYW publishers off the top of my head. Lamentations of the Flame Princess sometimes does it but it seems to work for James, so what do I know?

25. What is the best way to thank your GM?

I think it depends on the GM. I always appreciate it when the players tell me they enjoyed the game and would like to play more.

Alas, they tend to tell me this either (a) after the final session of the campaign, or (b) years after the game dribbled away into nothing because of -- I thought -- a lack of interest.

Fist-shaking bitterness and tearful self-doubt aside, it never hurts to just say "thank you, I had fun".

26. Which rpg provides the most useful resources?

What?

Does this mean the core rules, or anything published for it?

I use the d1000 mutation tables from Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness whenever I can, but that's not an rpg.

27. What are your essential tools for good gaming?

Whahuh? These are getting vague and weird now.

A game and some people to play it. Anything else is optional. I mean, it doesn't even have to be a good game as long as you have good people.

I keep thinking of when I played Mutant Chronicles when I was seventeen and it was terrible so we drank whisky as we played and I was sick in a bush.

28. What film/series is the biggest source of quotes for your group?

We don't do quotes. Stupid comedy accents, on the other hand, we do a lot. Comedy German is a popular one.

(Sorry, Germany.)

29. What has been the best-run rpg Kickstarter that you have backed?

The standard for rpg Kickstarters seems to be set so low that "deliver what was promised and on time" is considered some sort of achievement, rather than basic competence. That said, the Mutant Year Zero people know what they are doing and the Hubris Kickstarter was run well.

30. What is an rpg genre-mashup you would most like to see?

I'm not a singer as I lack both the ability and the confidence, and it would probably be insufferable torture to watch in action, like a thousand Frozen Youtube videos in one, but I reckon there's potential in an rpg in which singing is used as some sort of resolution mechanic.

31. What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018?

That's a bit odd. Why not "the next twelve months" so it ties in with the next time everyone does this?

(Mental note: remember the first mental note.)

Anyway, the thing I'm most excited about is that there will be not one but two new editions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay coming out soon. One will be based on the first and second editions and the other will be based on the absurd high fantasy of Age of Sigmar; I'm keen to see both. I have no idea if they will be out in 2018 but let's say they will be just to end this on a positive note.

Die Drop Campaign Maps at the Whistle Stop Cafe

In 13th Age, the icons are the setting's powerful non-player characters. They are not the Drizzt types who go off and have adventures at the expense of the player-characters, rather they are the rulers and wizards that send the player-characters on quests, or that send agents of their own to thwart them. An icon could be an end-of-campaign boss, or an ally against one.

Each player-character gets a number of relationship points to allocate to the various icons, so Alice of Zengis could have a two point relationship with the Dwarf King, for example. Each relationship is also defined as positive, ambiguous, or negative; if Alice's relationship with the Dwarf King is negative, it suggests that she hates dwarves, or he has betrayed her, or umpteen other potential disagreements.

For each relationship point a character has they get a six-sided relationship die; these are used in a number of ways but one of the more common is to determine which icons are going to be involved in that session's adventure. Everyone rolls their dice and each die that comes up as a 5 or 6 means that the relevant icon has taken an interest in events; a 6 means that the player-character will receive some sort of benefit from their relationship, while a 5 means that the benefit has some sort of cost.

The benefit could be something as prosaic as a bag of cash, or it could be something more narrative based; perhaps the wraith recognises the player-character as an agent of the Lich King and so lets him pass untouched and unleveldrained. Negative relationships tend to suggest that the benefit comes at a cost to the icon; Alice may use her Dwarf King 6 to recall that she knows a secret entrance into a dwarven fort, for example, allowing the party to bypass the guards. Ambiguous relationships could go either way, depending on context.

When I run 13th Age I tend to ask for these rolls at the end of a session so that I have some time to tie them into next week's adventuring, but the other day I wondered about using them at the start of a campaign; I was also thinking about die drop tables and the combination of the two trains of thought has resulted in this hideous chimera.

First of all grab a map from somewhere. You don't want too much detail, as the dice will be telling you where to put things.

Then each player -- or the GM on the player's behalf, but I think it would be more fun to involve the players -- takes it in turns to roll their relationship dice on the map. You want to know which dice are associated with each icon; roll them in separate chunks or use different colours, or something like that. Each die's final position determines a location associated with the relevant icon.

A 6 indicates that the location is some sort of stronghold of the icon. It could be a literal stronghold, or it could just be a town where everyone thinks the Crusader is a swell guy. A 5 suggests that while the place is associated with an icon, there's something else going on; perhaps the location is a new fortress and the local area has not yet been tamed. A roll of 1 to 4 indicates that the location is associated with the icon, but that there is little of campaign-level interest there, although something may come up in an individual adventure.

A negative die probably indicates that the location has been abandoned, or is in fact associated with one of that icon's enemies, or something like that. An ambiguous die suggests that the icon's control and influence over that location is not absolute; perhaps it's been conquered and the locals aren't too happy with the new regime.

Then you do the same again for the next icon.

If dice from two -- or more! -- separate icons share the same space then things get even more interesting. Perhaps that location is held in an alliance between two icons, or perhaps it's the site of a conflict between them. Maybe their forces are fighting a guerilla war in the streets of a ruined city, or the location is a dungeon into which both icons are sending adventurers to look for a great treasure.

Carry on until all the player-characters have rolled all their icon dice and you have something like this.

Bosh! There's your campaign map. You know where the major points of interest are, now it's time to tidy it up and expand as desired. If you started with a blank map, you could put forests wherever Druid or Elf Queen dice landed, or mountain ranges wherever the Dwarf King or Orc Lord dice fell.

Like the relationship dice themselves, this should be easy enough to use outside 13th Age; all you need to do is define your important factions and then give your players a number of points to spend on positive, negative, and ambiguous relationships with those factions. I suggest using at least seven icons so that there's plenty of potential for complexity.

As ever, if you do give this a try, let me know how you get on!

Eyes to See You

I always liked the way that Earthdawn explained its dungeons as apocalypse shelters now overrun by the same soul-eating monsters from which the former inhabitants were hiding. I'm not one of those people who demands a rational explanation for everything in a fantasy world -- sometimes fantasy should be allowed to be fantasy -- but I appreciated the effort.

In 13th Age some dungeons are alive. They are like parasites or cancers, burrowing up from some unknown underworld and breaking out on the surface to spew monsters into the world; the fact that some have what look like wooden doors -- but aren't -- and are populated by what look like kobolds or goblins -- but aren't -- is all part of their strange and inexplicable nature. The dungeons just are. It's sort of the opposite approach to Earthdawn; "a wizard did it" on a greater scale, with a bit of Lovecraft chucked in for added gribbly flavour.

The average living dungeon erupts into the surface world and aside from some regeneration of damage or perhaps a small rearrangement of its internal structure it stays as it is, a violent idiot spitting out monsters until some adventurers delve into it and destroy its heart.

The Stone Thief is different. It is intelligent, it bears grudges, it moves, and it is hungry. It pops up to devour a castle, a town, or even another dungeon, and then digs back into the ground to appear somewhere else, often thousands of miles away. What a great idea.

Spoilers follow.

Eyes of the Stone Thief is a mid to high level campaign for 13th Age that was I believe pitched as "what if Moby Dick were a dungeon?"; the bulk of the 360 pages is devoted to a description of the dungeon itself while the rest of the book discusses the kind of campaign you can construct around it, complete with ideas for sidequests, hunting the dungeon, and multiple solutions to the apocalyptic threat it poses.

It's a big book but it's not as intimidating as I thought it would be, because it's written with a light touch and plenty of wit, and it is well organised. Monster statistics are included in the area in which they appear, which does increase the page count when they turn up in multiple sections but I imagine will be quite handy at the table, and each part of the complex is illustrated with an excerpt from the larger dungeon map so it's always clear which text is referring to which section. Well almost; there are a couple of places where it seems that smaller subsections were supposed to be labelled and the labels are missing, but it's not too difficult to match the picture and text.

I can imagine that the maps will be a sticking point for some players as they tend to show the general arrangement of the most important locations on that level, rather than showing each and every room and corridor; for those who prefer mapping out every five-foot square there will be some work required to translate the dungeon to that style of play. I don't think it would be an insurmountable task but as a result the dungeon has less out-of-the-book utility for players of that stripe.

On the plus side, the focus on the important locations means that a lot of work has gone into making each of them interesting and exciting. Of course, some areas are better than others but not one of them is dull and some of them are so good that it's frustrating knowing that the players will have to fight and puzzle their way through umpteen levels before they get to them.

Here are some examples. If you're going to play -- and I know my group reads the blog -- stop reading now.

Early on -- although the dungeon can rearrange its own levels -- there's the Gauntlet, a patchwork of monsters and traps, including a minotaur that's both immortal and in agony because the magic sword stuck in its heart can kill death itself, a lava jumping puzzle, and a suicidal medusa at the centre of a maze with invisible walls. Great fun.

Later on there's part of a swallowed library, complete with undead librarians that are polite and helpful unless the adventurers are noisy, killer books that have what is more or less a paralysis ability but one that's portrayed in a fun metagamey way, and a sneaky WFRP reference.

Nearby there's an ancient dwarf dungeon that's been assimilated by the Thief, and it's so old that it's presented in the AD&D1 adventure format, complete with a Futura typeface, boxed text, and Russ Nicholson art.

Later still the adventurers may discover a saw shau sagwa shugaw sguhaw fish person temple at the heart of which is an incomplete demonic ritual; if the player-characters finish the ceremony it opens a gateway to hell in the guts of the dungeon and that could be helpful in defeating the Stone Thief, but on the other hand they are opening a gateway to hell. What the campaign may lack in left-right choices it makes up for it with lots of moral decisions like this one.

There are plenty of factions within the dungeon too, including a cult that worships the dungeon and wants to guide it to apotheosis, an orc army sent to capture the dungeon but that decided to live within it instead, a witch who allowed the dungeon to devour her mansion so she could study it from within, and of course the Stone Thief itself. All are dangerous -- even the friendly ones -- and all have their own plans and goals, some of which clash with each other, creating plenty of opportunity for sneaky players to create alliances and engage in all sorts of political intrigue backstabbing, and that's before the influence of 13th Age's icons is taken into account. In short, there is plenty for the players to do within the dungeon even when they're bored of killing things.

(Ha ha ha. They will never get bored of killing things.)

Eyes of the Stone Thief is quite different from any other megadungeon I've seen but then a traditional approach wouldn't have been the best example of what makes 13th Age different from other Dungeons and Dragons variants. That said there's nothing revolutionary here, nothing that will make you think "all dungeons should be like this forever", but what you do get is a lot of well-written content, well organised, and with lots of good ideas; almost every section has some room or monster or trap that makes me want to unleash it on my players right this second, and if that's not a sign of a good adventure, I don't know what is.

It also features a manticore that thinks it's a cow. You can't go wrong with that.

My Top 10 Role-playing Games Ever (in 2014) #5

As should be more than apparent by now I'm not a Dungeons and Dragons man. I didn't start with it and I didn't play much of it until recent years so the game doesn't have the same hold over me that it does other of my blogging peers; even so it is the original fantasy role-playing game and there is such a thing as the D&D style of play and that's something that even I have wanted to try now and then.

The problem is that I never found a version of D&D that I liked. I played a couple of fun sessions of AD&D2 and-

Hang on, this is all a bit familiar.

If Lamentations of the Flame Princess is my favourite "basic" D&D variant then 13th Age is where I go for my "advanced" jollies, although that's not the most accurate label as most of the complexity is on the players' side, and the rest of the game is quite simple. Indeed, that's what first attracted me to the game; I was looking for a compromise between the lighter D&D variants that I prefer and the more complex approaches that are popular with others in my group.

Having now run a campaign -- or rather half of one; I hope to revisit it in 2015 -- I can say that 13th Age is a successful compromise, although I know a couple of my players are not as convinced as I am. I haven't experienced it as a player yet -- Stuart has hinted at running a few sessions -- but as a gamemaster it is almost perfect.

Half of the ruleset is a light and uncomplicated variant of the d20 system with the stacks of modifiers and situational mechanics stripped back to a minimum, almost to the level of Basic D&D. Monsters are even simpler in terms of numbers, having only five or six statistics rather than a full statistic block; 13th Age uses the space saved to give each monster a unique and interesting special ability that is easy to remember and -- in most cases -- fun for the gamemaster. I keep banging on about the 13th Age kobolds but they're an excellent example of the system's approach; I have never had as much fun running monsters in a fantasy game as I have in 13th Age.

The other half of the game consists of airy fairy storytelling mechanics of the sort one would expect to see in Fate rather than the offspring of D&D. Every character gets One Unique Thing, a non-mechanical feature that places them in the setting as someone special; in 13th Age everyone is a Special Snowflake and I should hate that but in play it involves the players in creating the setting, involves the player-characters in the setting, and helps to generates story. Each character also has a number of relationship dice representing their connection to powerful non-player-characters in the setting; these have various effects, from generating story details on the fly -- who sent the assassins? -- to giving the GM hints about what could happen in the next session. I will be honest and say that this is one part of the game that I found difficult to grasp and exploit to its full potential but I think that's a problem of explanation rather than concept; the rulebook needs more examples of how the relationship dice are supposed to work at the table.

All this results in a game that is recognisable as a version of D&D but with a lot of back-and-forth at the table, not in the sense of rules arguments -- hello Pathfinder! -- but more in terms of a series of "what if this happens?" or "how about my character does this?"; this is what makes role-playing games unique and what they should always be about but I think a stricter ruleset can obfuscate things and one can forget to have fun. D&D4 was designed to be robust and fair but 13th Age tells you to buy the biggest d6 you can and slap it down in the middle of the table to use as the Escalation Die and add tension to battles. I know which approach I prefer.

Next: rampant Savagery!

Man (Robot) Fights Dog

There they were, the heroes of the 13th Age, on the top floor of a rickety wooden tower in the middle of a town that was literally alive, in a stand-off with a fireball-chucking wizard and his angry-looking dog, and all Amras had on his mind was that the wizard about to immolate them all seemed very familiar.

The party inched around the room in an attempt to surround the wizard Hallas without provoking him and as a distraction Amras attempted to engage him in conversation. The party discovered that Hallas had odd gaps in his story; he didn't remember arriving in Shadow Port and while he did remember the box -- in which they had assumed the item they had been sent to retrieve had been kept -- he had no memory of its contents. This was all very suspicious and odd and then the dog said "Get out of here now and you may live", which was something of a surprise.

Ne-0n pointed at the talking dog and asked Hallas what was going on. Hallas indicated that he heard nothing but a bark. The dog bit Ne-0n on the leg, crumpling the robotic sorcerer's metallic skin. Then there was a big fight.

Hallas' spells either failed or were countered by Amras' own magical abilities and the dog was hacked and blasted into bits. Literal bits, as it exploded into rainbow coloured light when they got it to zero hit points; they began to suspect that it was not a normal dog. Meanwhile Hallas was beaten into unconsciousness and the party was just about to tie him up and loot his study when the tower shook as something huge approached. Poking their heads out the window they saw a gigantic shadow thing -- perhaps some sort of amalgamation of the smaller creatures they had fought earlier -- half-stomping and half-slithering towards them.

GIANT BLOBBY SHADOW THING THAT CRIES

Huge 6th level spoiler
Initiative + 11
Vulnerability: light (yes, I know there is no light damage type in 13th Age, so what?)

Inky black tentacles +11 vs PD (3 attacks) - 21 negative energy damage.
Natural roll is above target's Constitution: the target loses a recovery as they feel their life force draining away.

C: Shadow Wail + 11 vs MD (2d4 nearby enemies) - targets are stunned (save ends) as each of the thing's masks lets out an agonised moan.

AC 22    PD 20    MD 20    HP 270

Ooh! A boss monster! Ooh! A boss monster that couldn't roll above a five and so missed with each and every attack except for the wail and that was no good if it couldn't follow up with any other attacks. Never mind then.

At some point during the one-sided mugging of the Giant Blobby Shadow Thing Hallas woke up and tried to crawl into a corner to hide from the enormous monster smashing holes in his house, but Amras executed him with a ray of frost, an act that seemed a little disproportionate.

As the wounded and helpless wizard froze to death a strange magical burst erupted from his body and shattered the windows of the tower; Sartheen the Red was occupied chopping the Giant Blobby Shadow Thing to bits but did feel the weight of the Blue's geas lift as Hallas expired. Was the geas that bound the Blue to the Emperor's service somehow contained, not in the wooden box Sartheen had seen, but in the human being Sartheen had seen carrying the box?

(Spoiler: Yes.)

Then came the looting and as the party ransacked Hallas' study they uncovered a strange and lifelike statue of an armoured half-orc, with a silver vial on a cord hanging around its neck. They opened the vial and poured the contents into the statue's mouth, and to the great surprise of no one the statue transformed into a real little boy a confused half-orc paladin. Before anyone could ask the half-orc who he was or why he had been petrified and stood in the corner of a wizard's study, the whole tower began shaking as the sentient town took control of it and tried to crush the party inside.

They escaped the tower just as it shaped itself into an enormous fist and tried to squash them, then they legged it to the edge of town -- Amras' keen intelligence helping him to plot a course through the shifting streets -- where a group of shadow things blocked their path. Amras teleported past the mob and ran into the woods while the rest of the party hacked their way through the shadows.

Once in the relative safety of the hills above Shadow Port, the party -- and their new addition, Gothrog Thickskull, paladin of, er, Communism -- discussed their next move. Some wanted to return to the cave with the magic portal but others pointed out that this would take them straight back to the Blue. Shadow Port was on an island so the only other way off -- given their current resources -- was to steal a boat, but that would have required returning to town and they were about as keen to do that as they were to face the Blue again.

Sartheen suggested a third option. He knew -- via an Icon relationship roll -- of a small gang of smugglers who had tried to circumvent the established order of things in Shadow Port and while the smugglers themselves had been forced into early retirement by the thieves' guild it was possible that their hideout -- and their boats -- would be intact. The dragonspawn's hunch paid off and the party escaped the island in a sloop with Rarity falling back on her skills as a former pearl diver to guide them to a safe port. Alas, those skills were a bit rusty and by the time they slouched into Glitterhaegen the party was battered, bruised and half-drowned.

They knew that they had burned their bridges with some Icons and made enemies of others, so they booked into an obscure inn far from the main thoroughfares of the city and kept their heads down. As the party convalesced, Ne-0n meditated and when he emerged from his trance, days later, the robot announced that he was tired of being manipulated by powerful beings and that it was time to take the Icons on.

With the summer holidays upon us and regular attendance due to become sporadic as a result we decided that we'd arrived at a good point to pause the campaign. The characters have reached fifth level and so a new tier of play has opened up; when we return to the 13th Age in the autumn we'll see how the player-characters intend to oppose the Icons. Until then it's board games for us and we may even have a go at this new Dungeons and Dragons thing everyone's talking about.

Street Fighter

The party were in Shadow Port -- the 13th Age's generic hive of scum and villainy -- searching for a box that they believed to contain some sort of focus for the geas that kept the Blue -- the sorcerous dragon overlord -- on the side of civilisation and decency. After battling some ruffians -- and seeing Jordan Young beheaded -- they had found the box but they had found it empty.

They found this a bit puzzling. Ne-0n attempted to interface with the fabric of reality around him in order to glean some clues about the box but was soon assaulted by an overwhelming presence that threatened to drown his psyche. No closer to having an answer, the party decided to head back to the portal through which they'd been sent by the Blue; as they left the temple they spotted a gloopy shadowy thing following them at a short distance.

This shady -- ho ho -- fellow seemed to be some sort of scout and didn't put up much resistance when the group assaulted it. Moving on, they got lost again and this time noticed that the streets were reshaping around them and seemed to be herding them towards the centre of the town; Amras floated up to the rooftops to get a better look and was attacked as more of the dark blobby things pulled themselves from the shadows.

SHADOW THINGS NOT AT ALL LIKE THAT ONE FROM SPIRITED AWAY

6th level spoiler
Initiative + 11
Vulnerability: light (yes, I know there is no light damage type in 13th Age, so what?)

Inky black tentacle +10 vs PD - 18 negative energy damage.
Natural roll is above target's Constitution: the target loses a recovery as they feel their life force draining away.

AC 21    PD 19    MD 19    HP 72

The creatures proved to be a bit more effective in a group, until Amras dropped a fireball on them. One hundred points of damage will tend to discourage resistance from even the most tenacious of opponents.

After the battle the party was beckoned into a house by a portly fellow; they were of course suspicious but the alternative was a series of running battles with energy-draining shadows through streets that were always changing. A spot of tea and cake with a rotund stranger seemed like the lesser evil.

As the party ducked inside the man's cottage he introduced himself as Robul the Holy -- or Robul the Wet -- a priest of "the sea god"; Ne-0n spotted a small shrine in one corner of the living room devoted to a vaguely anthropoid deity with an octopus-like head and a mass of feelers for a face, and knew right away what kind of sea god Robul worshipped. This revelation didn't make anyone feel any safer.

The interior of the house was covered in all sorts of charms and symbols; Robul explained that these were intended to keep him hidden from agents of the Prince of Shadows. As the priest shared his dinner with the party -- glancing at Amras' burning third eye with considerable suspicion -- he explained that he had been sent by the Priestess to keep an eye on Shadow Port but that he also had a personal goal; to reconsecrate the temple from which the party had fled.

Robul told them that the town was alive -- 13th Age has living dungeons, so why not? -- and had taken a disliking to the party for some reason, and that while they would be safe under the protection of his charms, he wouldn't be able to help them escape. He did recognise the description of the albino man who Sartheen had seen carrying the pyramidic box; this was a wizard named Hallas, who was not associated with the Shadow Port thieves' guild but dwelled unmolested by both the guild and the living settlement in a ramshackle wooden tower towards the centre of the town.

After a night's rest under the many watchful eyes of Cthulhu the party decided to further investigate the box. Sartheen thought the best way to test if it was indeed the object of their quest was to smash it -- if it was the focus of a geas, the dragonspawn surmised, it would resist destruction -- but Ne-0n argued that tampering with a geas would be dangerous and Amras made up some guff that demonstrated that he hadn't paid any attention during geas lessons at wizard school.

The box was smashed to bits and nothing happened. Sartheen felt that the geas the Blue had placed on him was still active and so the party decided that they would visit the wizard Hallas, hoping he would know more, but were in no mood to venture out into the malevolent streets. Sartheen used his helm of communication to check in with Drakkenhall and request aid, asking first for a dragon -- a bold opening gambit -- but he was told by a black, assassiny-looking dragonspawn that there was a squad of assassins hiding out in the same cave that contained the portal through which the party travelled, and that they were ready to help.

Having realised that they had murdered their own extraction team the day before, the party decided to sneak towards Hallas' tower to see if the town reacted against them. They left Jordan Young's body with Robul for a proper burial, but Sartheen kept some of Jordan's toes, according to the custom of his tribe; he planned to have them with a honey mustard sauce when the party stopped for lunch.

Shadow Port seemed to unaware of their exit from Robul's safehouse -- or its attention was elsewhere -- so the party made good progress towards Halls' home, but were interrupted as a fiery mass fell screaming from the sky, shattering a nearby building. As they picked themselves up the party watched a figure stride from the smoking crater. It seemed to be a suit of black armour topped by a black skull wreathed in bright green flame; the blazing skull turned to Ne-0n and cackled.

Amras tossed a spiky seed pellet he'd found in a previous adventure and thorny roots, er, rooted the skull-thing to the spot. It stopped cackling.

The party then blasted the creature to bits. The armour survived the onslaught, a sure sign that it was enchanted; it seemed to be a good fit for Ne-0n but when it was identified as being made of halfling skin, the robot sorcerer declined the opportunity to wear it. He did keep the garment though, because player-characters never turn down loot, even on moral grounds.

After the briefest of rests the party staggered at last to the base of Hallas' tower without any interference from the sentient settlement -- eat your heart out, Stan Lee! -- and rang the door bell. No answer came and so the player-characters spent a few minutes discussing whether to break in before realising that yes, they were player-characters in a Dungeons and Dragons variant so of course they were going to break into the wizard's tower.

The building was of unusual construction, in that all the rooms were stuffed into the top two floors and the five storeys below that were empty save for a rickety wooden staircase looping around the inside walls. The stairs were trapped, of course, and the party suspected as much and so were careful about checking for traps as they went. Although Rarity spotted the traps, their magical nature meant that Sartheen could not disarm them and so instead I asked the players to roll a single d20 each as they stepped over the glyphs; on a one, they would slip and set off the trap.

Stuart has appalling luck -- although I would challenge him in the next session -- and seems to roll at least three or four ones each session; these had been saved up for the stair climbing and so by the time the party reached the top, Sartheen the Red was more Sartheen the Crispy Fried. After passing through some living quarters the party reached the top floor of the tower and a wizard's study, complete with a wizard cooking up a fireball in each hand and demanding to know why they were in his house.

Pyramid-Shaped Box

This session happened two weeks ago but I didn't think enough happened to merit a discrete post, so I was going to combine it with the next summary; as it turns out my waffling got a bit out of hand and the combined post was far too long, so here's that session from two weeks ago anyway.

Having stepped through the portal in Drakkenhall a somewhat dazed party appeared in a dark and damp cave. Behind them was a vast carving of a skull, its mouth wide open in a scream, or perhaps a Skeletor-like chortle; a few specks of magic sparkled in the mouth of the skull as the portal's energy dissipated. As the adventurers recovered from teleportation sickness they spotted a cloaked figure watching them from the opposite side of the cave. They pursued the figure and ran into his friends, a group of black dragonspawn, all of whom were slaughtered without mercy, for some reason.

Emerging from the cave onto a wooded hill, the party looked down to see the lights of Shadow Port below. Sartheen the Red had been to the town many times before and it was on one of these occasions that the dragonspawn had seen an albino man with bright red hair carrying a pyramidic box to a temple; Sartheen's understanding was that the box contained the focus for the geas that bound the Blue -- one of the powerful dragon lords of the 13th Age -- to the service of the Empire.

The group scrambled down the hillside, sneaked into town, and soon got lost. Sartheen remembered that Shadow Port had some sort of mystical protection against raids by hostile powers and assured his fellows that his inability to find the old temple building was a result of this power, and not his poor memory or even worse perception rolls.

The group approached an old washer woman for directions and Jordan Young the bard-brawler-pirate offered her a gold piece for information. The woman explained that she had a husband to feed, so Jordan produced another coin. She also had children who were hungry, so Jordan flicked another gold piece her way, and another when she mentioned the starving dog she had taken in just the other day. Jordan started to get suspicious around the time the woman mentioned the peckish cousin of the dog's children, but in a rare moment of restraint for this group, they allowed the shrewd old woman to go on her way rather than eviscerate her and take back their money.

Amras took over negotiations as they collared a filthy street urchin and offered him one coin to take them to the temple and another if he'd wait for them outside. This proved to be a more effective approach as the blatant Victorian stereotype led them to an empty and overgrown square at the centre of which was a murky pool and a grey stone building spotted with moss and grime.

The great bronze doors of the building screeched like a krenshar in heat as they were pushed open -- stealth is not this party's strong point -- and inside the group encountered a trio of untrustworthy bandit types. It was no surprise that a fight broke out, but rather more surprising was Rarity -- the tiefling barbarian and the party's meat shield -- being blasted into unconsciousness by a wizard wearing those circular sunglasses that were all the rage in the 1990's, and most surprising of all was the beefy swordsman with whom Jordan was duelling rolling a triple critical, lopping off the bard's head, and sending it bouncing around the room.

Jordan had acquired an enchanted orcish helm that gave him a sort of second wind when suffering a fatal wound but we all agreed that it wouldn't work if it was worn on a head that wasn't attached to a body.

Mister Sunglasses rifled through Rarity's pockets and stole one of her magic items before vanishing with a smirk, while the rest of the party chopped his friends into bits. Victorious but battered, the adventurers mourned the passing of Jordan Young for about fifteen seconds before looting the temple. The upper floor of seemed to be some sort of store room for artefacts, and among the treasures Amras spotted a circlet emblazoned with the symbol of the Diabolist -- one of the bad guys and an Icon who had taken an interest in the elven mage in a previous adventure -- and so of course he picked it up and tried it on. The circlet vanished but the elf felt a boost to his magical abilities; also, a fiery third eye appeared in the centre of his forehead but he considered that to be a fair trade.

Meanwhile the rest of the party -- sans Jordan -- pocketed a few bits of jewellery and after a while found the object of their quest, the strange -- and not at all like the Lament Configuration, no way Jose -- wooden box Sartheen had seen on his prior visit to Shadow Port. The box was locked but after a bit of trial-and-error and pass-the-parcel the mechanism was bested and the lid flipped open, releasing a puff of toxic green gas into Sartheen's face. As the dragonspawn coughed and spluttered the rest of the party peered into the box, only to find that it was empty.

Oiling the Bone Sword

Last time the player-characters made a daring raid on the Archmage's floating prison Highrock in order to rescue the famed pirate captain Morgan -- oh dear -- who turned out to be a medusa. Still, a legendary sailor is a legendary sailor whether or not they have snakes for hair and can turn you to stone with a glance, so the team started planning their voyage into the uncharted east to search for Jordan Young's great treasure. Before they could set out there was the small matter of a brewing conflict between the Elf Queen and the Three, dragon overlords of ultimate evil.

The party were asked to investigate an abandoned abbey thought to be a nesting site used by the dragons and destroy any eggs found there, in an attempt to dissuade the Three from further attacks against the elves. Amras the elf wizard, always more of a politician than a warrior, decided that instead they would capture the eggs and hold them as insurance, which seemed to everyone to be a much more sensible idea.

Why were the dragons hiding out in an abbey? Well, because it tied into the players' relationship dice rolls from the previous session but as they made no attempt to research the place -- this lot would be terrible at Shadowrun -- and sneaked in by a secret entrance they didn't really engage with any of it.

As an aside, there's an interesting tension here. The Icon relationship rolls are supposed to drive story and to tell the GM what sort of elements will come up in a session, but if the players wander off and don't interact with the rolls, is it better to let them miss out if that's their choice or have the rolls impact the game anyway? I'm inclined toward the former and that's how I played it -- so among other things they never met the travelling cleric who was looking for a saint's bones -- but the game itself seems to suggest that the Icon rolls are treated as a sort of Quantum Ogre, and so the cleric -- or someone else associated with the Priestess -- should have popped up anyway. This is part of the game that's worth further thought I, er, think.

The abbey, its grounds, and the saint's remains were borrowed stolen from "A Box of Old Bones" from White Dwarf #71. I stuck it on the little island to the east of the Spider Wood on the 13th Age map as that seemed like a nice place close to both the Elf Queen's wood and the Three's headquarters in Drakkenhall, and it gave the player-characters an excuse to use their brand new sailing vessel. Along the way there was a brief argument between the party and their new captain over who was in charge of the ship and as a result they demoted Morgan to first mate. Attentive readers will remember that Morgan was the only one who could take them to the island on which the precious treasure was hidden, and was also a medusa, so that's not going to come back and bite them at all.

They spotted an obscured cave at the base of the island and decided to investigate it as a potential entry point to the abbey. Leaving "first mate" Morgan in charge they rowed over to the island -- in broad daylight! -- and then chucked a couple of light spells into the cave, alerting the guards to their presence and setting off all the alarms. If you're thinking "well gosh, this doesn't seem to be a very stealthy approach" then you would be correct. I'm still not sure what the plan was but so be it; it allowed me to have some fun with kobolds.

Kobolds in 13th Age are a great laugh. They're the same low-level humanoid sword fodder of other D&D variants but they also get a wonderful bonus ability; if a kobold rolls over an opponent's Wisdom score with an attack roll then they also activate a hidden trap -- generated on a random table -- that causes a little bit of extra damage and sometimes a minor negative effect. It's not much but it adds a little bit of fun unpredictability to the little dragon-dog things and guess which set of player-characters chose Wisdom as their dump stat? Yes, there is an element of the Quantum Qobold about all this as the traps don't exist until they're triggered but I was having too much time to care. The resulting battle in the caves beneath the abbey was one part Viet Cong and one part Road Runner and it was ace; I have now fallen in love with kobolds and my players fear them so all is well in the 13th Age.

Moving on to the crypts beneath the abbey the player-characters ran into some black dragonspawn who mimicked Sartheen the Red's sneaky backstabbing abilities, and after killing them -- responding to the sound of something pounding on a door nearby -- set free one of the former abbots, who had turned into a ghoul at some point in the preceding decades. They found the bones of a saint and looted the tomb of a famous warrior -- both would have tied into relationship rolls if they had pursued the matter -- coming away with a pair of fancy duelling swords, a set of magic gloves and some magic oil. Even with all his knowledge of magic Amras couldn't discover any particular use for the oil but the party's enchanted items began to cry out to be slathered in the strange glowing liquid, a clamouring that continued until Jordan Young doused his bone blade in the oil, the sword letting out a contented sigh.

A set of narrow spiral stairs led up to an impressive but ruined church and three blue dragons who looked on with much amusement as the player-characters placed all their attention on the ground and never once looked up until it was too late. Not that the element of surprise mattered much as this party seems to have quite the aptitude for killing dragons. After a bit more exploration and some more Tom and Jerry kobolds the player-characters found the central courtyard of the abbey and around thirty dragon eggs, there for the taking; Sartheen, Jordan, and Rarity stepped out into the open and with a loud "POP!" vanished into thin air, leaving the two spellcasters alone with an unknown number of kobolds, dragonkin, and dragons lurking nearby.

Amras and Ne-0n then engaged in some Olympic level faffery as they tried everything they could think of to avoid leaving the relative safety of their building, thinking that the other three had been disintegrated. They did manage to confirm that the dragon eggs were in fact a powerful illusion but that didn't help them solve the more pressing problem of what to do next.

Meanwhile the others had not been turned into a cloud of fizzy atoms but instead had been transported a hundred miles or so south to Drakkenhall where they found themselves in a large hall and face-to-face with an enormous blue dragon. This was of course the Blue herself, who explained that she had come to an agreement with the Elf Queen; if Sartheen was delivered to the Blue, then all hostilities between the two Icons would cease. This was because the Blue was very interested in studying Sartheen -- the only red dragonspawn in the entire world -- although Sartheen got the distinct impression that "studying" in this context meant "dissecting".

The elf and the robot turned up at this point -- having summoned up the courage to step into the teleportation effect -- and Amras attempted to negotiate with the Icon, although his terms seemed to revolve around leaving the red dragonkin behind while the rest of the party returned to the abbey. With things getting desperate Sartheen's player traded in his relationship die with the Prince of Shadows to have Sartheen recall a time when he was in Shadow Port -- hive of scum and villainy, city of thieves, etcetera -- and saw an unusual pyramidic box that contained -- or so he was told -- the geas that bound the Blue to the Emperor's service and kept her off the path of evil. Sartheen could get this box for the Blue, he said, if she let them all go.

Clever little dragonspawn.

The Blue accepted the terms and with the wave of one enormous clawed hand slapped a geas of her own on Sartheen, and with the wave of another opened another portal, this time to Shadow Port.

Highrock, Prison in the Sky

Here is a pdf of my game notes for the flying prison of Highrock; it's written for 13th Age because that's what I've been playing for the past few weeks but the notes are light on mechanics and should be easy to convert to other game systems. In my game the player-characters went there to break out the notorious pirate Captain Morgan -- oh dear -- so that she could help them find a mysterious island to the east, where it was rumoured that a great treasure was hidden.

Through his connection to the Prince of Shadows Sartheen the Red knew that one of the wizard-judges of the city of Horizon was involved in some dubious activity involving an orphanage run by vampires -- that's player-driven storytelling in action! -- and so the party blackmailed said wizard into giving them the amulet they required to access the floating island and bypass the guards upon it.

They didn't explore much of the complex, in part because 13th Age doesn't reward exploration in the same way that older editions of D&D do, in part because they were focussed on the mission, and in part because they got beaten up by a squad of flying robots on the second level and wanted to get away as soon as they could. The latter was the result of robot sorcerer Ne-0n's attempt to interface with the island's local code -- he perceives reality as strings of data and can manipulate that data to a certain extent -- going a little wrong and alerting the guards instead of providing the location of Morgan's cell. Oops.

They also had some trouble with the Archmage's quarters, blundering into the fireball trap over and over again, but were rewarded with a fair bit of loot once they staggered past, all blackened and blasted like Warner Brothers cartoon characters; most of the players converted their relationship dice results into items at this point and as a result the Archmage's study held a plethora of magical stuff.

Morgan was freed and the party also let prisoner #666 -- the demon Zeddas -- free while binding him to Amras the elf wizard's service. Or so they think, anyway. They decided not to explore the third level, having been warned by the wizard-judge that death awaited them, and jumped on their waiting air taxi -- another relationship die traded in -- for a quick escape. With their navigator secured the player-characters were ready to go after their treasure, but first the Elf Queen had a job for them: to raid a nesting site used by the Three and destroy the unhatched eggs found there.

They Keep Killing the Dragons

Despite the relative negativity of my previous post about 13th Age my group and I have been playing it each week since then, give or take a couple of breaks due to player absences. The starting adventure is a mess but the central conflict between the Three -- a triumvirate of powerful dragons -- and the Elf Queen -- er, the queen of the elves -- has given us a good spine for the campaign, as the players find themselves embroiled in a cold war between the Icons that may about to tip over into something a bit warmer. This has led to something of a mission-based structure as the player-characters zip about the map on black ops, er, operations for the elves, although the last couple of sessions have seen a bit of a digression as they have been pursuing a plot thread about a treasure buried on a distant island.

The party consists of Jordan Young, a bard and former pirate and the instigator of the treasure quest; Sartheen, knife-chucking rogue and the only red dragonspawn in the world; Rarity, a tiefling barbarian who remembers legends everyone else has forgotten; Ne-0n, a robotic sorcerer who is able to perceive the underlying structure of reality itself; and Amras, an elf wizard who is the reincarnation of the Devil.

The way I've been running the campaign is to use the player-characters' One Unique Things as the ongoing background plots -- Sartheen's background in particular ties in well with the aforementioned cold war -- and in the first few sessions I was using their Icon relationship rolls to give me an idea of what sort of things may occur and which non-player-characters may be involved in each session. I am still doing that but as we've got more used to the game the players are becoming more confident in claiming those Icon rolls themselves and using them to shape the narrative; in our most recent session Sartheen's player Stuart used his Prince of Shadows relationship result to tell us all that Sartheen knew of a smugglers' hideout nearby and that the smugglers there -- being part of the Prince's network -- would be able to assist the party in outfitting a ship with the crew and equipment needed to go sailing after this mysterious treasure.

I don't know if it's necessary to have this kind of thing built into the rules mechanics but it's quite fun being surprised when the players roll their relationship dice and then I have to find a way to involve their Icons in the next session. It's sort of a random encounter roll for the GM and I'm sure it's sharpening my improvisation skills.

Anyway, in the first adventure -- the dodgy one from the rulebook -- the player-characters witnessed an attack on an elven fortress by a blue dragon and other minions of the Three; although the party's cleric was half-eaten during the fight -- and the other half was later consumed by Sartheen as a "sign of respect" -- the party did kill the dragon and they were welcomed into the Elf Queen's court as heroes. A bit of nudging from the Diabolist -- as a result of Amras' relationship roll -- led to the party speaking out in support of retaliation against the Three and so they were sent to a town under the dragons' control to assassinate the mayor, who just happened to be a white dragon.

They laid out an elaborate plan reminiscent of my old Shadowrun days -- and as I don't get to play Shadowrun any more this was quite a welcome piece of nostalgia -- and infiltrated the town, killing the mayor and half of his hobgoblin bodyguards while disguised as undead minions of the Lich King, hoping to implicate Old Boney in the assassination. After that they returned to the elven court and waited around for a bit before deciding to follow up on Jordan's stories of treasure, their first stop a series of elven ruins on the coast and the ships rumoured to be hidden there.

Over the next couple of sessions they found and explored the ruins and the secret underground harbours beneath them, fought some banshees and skeletal dragonspawn and a giant psychic crab, discovered a magical helmet that seems to allow communication with a temple in the Three's capital city, and befriended a gang of sahoowagin sawaugin sahuagin, in a scene that I found familiar.



The player-characters now have an ancient elven ship and a somewhat reluctant crew who will only sail with them into the uncharted east if they can find the infamous Captain Morgan -- oh dear -- to lead the expedition. The only problem with that is that Morgan is said to be under lock and key in Highrock, the Archmage's flying prison island. I hope there are no dragons up there.