So, I started actually making up 13th Age characters the other day, just to get my hands dirty. If nothing else, it's a pleasantly fast and dirty job. The skills and one unique thing end up being almost necessary though, because the rest of the mechanics are not quite so grippy.
Not saying they're bad, but stats, class, talents and feats dont' tell much of a story. Some of that I'm ok with - Stats and class are kind of expected to be blandly interchangeable, and it's overall a good thing that they are, since they're kind of foundational.
Jury is still out on talents. I like them mechanically, but I'm not yet sure if they say enough about how my fighter is different from your fights, especially if we can't otherwise describe that difference in terms of differences in gear.
But feats...man, feats always break my heart. I really want my feat selection tot ell me something unique and interesting about the character, and it doesn't.
This is not 13th Age's fault - this is a problem I've had with pretty much every incarnation of feats from 3e on. And it's a problem with two big roots.
First off, there's something of a historical divide within feats that demands that they can have meaning in the setting or be mechanically potent, but not both. There are a handful of exceptions, but by and large if a feat ties you into the setting, the reward is probably a (non-stackable) +2 to two skills.
There's a good reason for this. The more mechanically desirable a feat is, the fewer constraints you want to put on it. So many different types of characters are going to want to use two weapon fighting that you don't want to limit it in any way, so it's built to be generic.[1]
Second, feats tend to be a little bit too small. Feat _chains_ (usually 2 or 3 feats) often tell a story (even if that story is 'I'm a two weapon fighter') but a given feat usually just teases at what it could be. Again, there's a good reason for this - small rewards can come more frequently which is fun for players.
Intellectually, I acknowledge the good reasons for the way feats are, but they always result in some disappointment on my part. I always want them to be a little bit more.
There are ways to fix this, of course. Lots of different ways. But that's it's own post, and one that may wait until we see the 13th Age SRD.
1 - Most exceptions to this are racial, and that's true in 13th Age as well. That's a serious bit of D&D legacy which is, I think, almost habitual by now. It's also a tacit acknowledgment that it's hard to make races awesome and balanced at the same time, so a lot of racial awesome gets offloaded to feats.
Showing posts with label 13thAge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 13thAge. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Quick 13th Age thought
The obvious hack for 13th Age + Eberron is to make the 13 Dragonmarked houses into the icons. Yeah, sure, you'll want some feats for Dragonmarks[1], blah blah blah, but that's the easy part. I'm more curious what happens when you refocus Icons in this fashion.
The most self-evident change may be the least important. Yes, replacing the Icons as individuals with organizations removes the possibility of a personal relationship, but as I've noted before, Icons are also their organization, and that organization is the part players will usually interact with. With the switch to houses, that part remains the same. Now, you'll probably need to populate the houses in a way that interests your players (since names and faces are still critical) but that's a good practice anyway.
What intrigues me is that in doing this you are explicitly *not* encompassing the world with the Icons. The Dragonmarked houses are just one axis of the setting, and using them (rather than, say, the various kings and such) makes a statement about what kind of game this will be. That is, it is a game that is going to center around the intrigues, conflicts and alliances of the great houses. The other setting elements still exist, but they will be encountered through this lens.
This fascinates me. It takes the broad, kitchen sink nature of the average setting, and pare it down to a thematic core. Want to use the setting again for a different type of game? Use a different set of icons!
Now, there's something similar that happens when you look solely at the subset of icons that players choose, and one might argue that you could offer any number of icons in a setting, then focus on using only the ones that players choose. This definitely makes for a strongly player-directed game, but I don't like it quite as much as the great houses approach because it produces too clean a dataset. There's nothing thematically tying the players interests together, and there are no rough edges of things that are important to the game, but not personal to the players.
Why does that matter? It provides a necessary contrast. When a setting revolves too strongly around players, it can start to ring false. One good safeguard against that is to make sure that the setting has elements that are important, but not personal to the PCs. Not too many, of course, but enough to make the world feel alive.
Anyway, I keep thinking of other ways to apply the Icons model, and for some reason, Eberron popped into my mind today, and I figured I'd capture it.
1 - And while we're at it, make them cool. Dragonmarks were always much more interesting as described than as mechanically implemented.
The most self-evident change may be the least important. Yes, replacing the Icons as individuals with organizations removes the possibility of a personal relationship, but as I've noted before, Icons are also their organization, and that organization is the part players will usually interact with. With the switch to houses, that part remains the same. Now, you'll probably need to populate the houses in a way that interests your players (since names and faces are still critical) but that's a good practice anyway.
What intrigues me is that in doing this you are explicitly *not* encompassing the world with the Icons. The Dragonmarked houses are just one axis of the setting, and using them (rather than, say, the various kings and such) makes a statement about what kind of game this will be. That is, it is a game that is going to center around the intrigues, conflicts and alliances of the great houses. The other setting elements still exist, but they will be encountered through this lens.
This fascinates me. It takes the broad, kitchen sink nature of the average setting, and pare it down to a thematic core. Want to use the setting again for a different type of game? Use a different set of icons!
Now, there's something similar that happens when you look solely at the subset of icons that players choose, and one might argue that you could offer any number of icons in a setting, then focus on using only the ones that players choose. This definitely makes for a strongly player-directed game, but I don't like it quite as much as the great houses approach because it produces too clean a dataset. There's nothing thematically tying the players interests together, and there are no rough edges of things that are important to the game, but not personal to the players.
Why does that matter? It provides a necessary contrast. When a setting revolves too strongly around players, it can start to ring false. One good safeguard against that is to make sure that the setting has elements that are important, but not personal to the PCs. Not too many, of course, but enough to make the world feel alive.
Anyway, I keep thinking of other ways to apply the Icons model, and for some reason, Eberron popped into my mind today, and I figured I'd capture it.
1 - And while we're at it, make them cool. Dragonmarks were always much more interesting as described than as mechanically implemented.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Iconic Examples
So, here are a few specific tricks you might want to consider to build an interesting Icon set:
The Icon Deck
One interesting thing about the existing 13 Icons is that they're not hard to map to half of the greater arcana of the Tarot deck. Some of that is probably intentional, but it's also almost inescapable because fortune-telling and iconic characters use the same kind of broad, recognizable strokes that it's easy to map from one to the other.
So, given that, pick the method of your choice: Tarot Cards, Viking Runes, the I-Ching - whatever floats your boat, and assign the existing Icons to it. Then, look at the unassigned elements, and start creating Icons based on those, using some of the guidelines I talked about yesterday (specifically, put some thought into the places each one suggests). I like Tarot for this, but that's just me.[1]
When you're done, you'll have more Icons than you can use, and that's great. Now pick 13 of them at random, and figure out what kind of world that creates. Or if you want some collaboration, have each player pick one, then select the rest at random. The idea is to create unexpected combinations and see if they ignite the spark of creation.
The Family
One of the first things that struck me about the Icons model was how easily it mapped to the Amber DRPG. For the unfamiliar, characters in Amber are the children of the Princes and Princesses of Amber, all of whom are potent, iconic characters in their own right. Amber is very nearly the definitive "characters as setting" game, since almost everything else outside the characters is subject to redefinition. Now, while a lot of the strength of Zelazny's character's came from his ability to sketch with a few bold strokes, there's nothing that says you can't attempt to steal his thunder a bit. A game where the Icons are a fairly tightly knit group (like a family) can have a really strong interpersonal dynamic.
Curiously, with just a small tweak, this applies just as easily to supers. It would not be hard to pick 13 Icons from DC or Marvel and use them as the basis for a game. Obviously, which 13 you pick will say a lot about your game, but that's half the fun of it.
The Old Ones
When 3e came out, White Wolf released a very interesting setting called The Scarred Lands. One of its core conceits was that the defeat of the Titans by the gods was not terribly long ago, and the dead or bound titans cast a huge shadow across the setting. For example, one's heart had been ripped out and he'd been chained at the bottom of the sea. Because the wound bled constantly, that whole area of ocean was red with it, and tainted with his essence.
If you were to model this with Icons, you would have a very interesting arrangement because these Icons would explicitly not be active, but they would still have factions surrounding them (lingering worshippers, those tainted and so on). What's more, it would be a very lopsided set of icons, since the real story is how the world manages to move forward while still bearing the burden of these things. By making them the icons (rather than making them SOME of the icons, but also putting icons at odds with them) then you make them central to play, but often in an unwelcome way.
Turned up a notch or two, this is also a great way to use Icons in a horror context. If all the Icons in your game are Great Old Ones or Lords of Ravenloft, then it's pretty clear the odds are stacked way the hell against you. The bulk of play is in opposition to these forces, but the sheer scope of them means that maybe it's worth risking a complicated (or even positive) relationship with a perceived "lesser evil" in order to fight on.
Hidden Icons
Suppose not all the Icons are known to the players at the outset of the game. They will be revealed over time and as a result of events in play, and it's expected that player's relationships will change or evolve over time. This is particularly useful for two sorts of game.
First, this is a great way to model a world in flux, such as is the case in the classic Dragonlance adventures. The existing Icons are in a rough sort of stasis, but the introduction of new Icons throws everything into disarray.
Second, it's a good way to model characters whose eyes are opened to a deeper, secret world, as is appropriate for many conspiracy or espionage focused games.
It should go without saying, but in both of these cases, players should know what's up. Even if they don't know what new Icons wil be revealed (though many players can handled that out of character knowledge quite well) they should know what the GM has planned in broad strokes. You're trying to make for a cool experience, not trick the players.
One other subtrick for this - you can occasionally use a proxy icon when you have a mystery threat, where the apparent Icon is actually the servant of the Real Icon. If one Icon is the main villain or threat of your game, this basically allows you to treat that icon as a procession of bosses, which might be cool, especially if you're feeling kind of video-gamey. And speaking of which...
The Crew
So, I was thinking about Mass Effect, and what Icons I would use for that. A few obvious ones jumped out - Harbinger, Hacket, The Shadow Broker, The Illusive Man, The Council and such, but I eventually petered out. And that lead to the weird realization that I would probably round out the list with Garrus, Liara, Tali, Wrex and the others, and that suggested something weird.
It's almost an inversion of the Old Ones model, but imagine if the Icons (or more aptly, Anchors) for your game were those people closest to you. It upends the relationship, putting the hero in the primary position, and making the Anchors primarily responsive/reactive. It's a really weird idea, unless you've played any Bioware RPGs, in which case you're pretty comfortable with the idea that your relationships with the NPCs around you is one of the major avenues of play.
So, yeah, this is kind of a weird, one, and maybe not a great match, but I want to call it out because it has me thinking.
*****
I may have one more 13th Age post in me. We'll see after I've gotten some sleep.
1 - If you have a real dedication to this, using an Everway fortune deck would be three kinds of awesomesauce.
The Icon Deck
One interesting thing about the existing 13 Icons is that they're not hard to map to half of the greater arcana of the Tarot deck. Some of that is probably intentional, but it's also almost inescapable because fortune-telling and iconic characters use the same kind of broad, recognizable strokes that it's easy to map from one to the other.
So, given that, pick the method of your choice: Tarot Cards, Viking Runes, the I-Ching - whatever floats your boat, and assign the existing Icons to it. Then, look at the unassigned elements, and start creating Icons based on those, using some of the guidelines I talked about yesterday (specifically, put some thought into the places each one suggests). I like Tarot for this, but that's just me.[1]
When you're done, you'll have more Icons than you can use, and that's great. Now pick 13 of them at random, and figure out what kind of world that creates. Or if you want some collaboration, have each player pick one, then select the rest at random. The idea is to create unexpected combinations and see if they ignite the spark of creation.
The Family
One of the first things that struck me about the Icons model was how easily it mapped to the Amber DRPG. For the unfamiliar, characters in Amber are the children of the Princes and Princesses of Amber, all of whom are potent, iconic characters in their own right. Amber is very nearly the definitive "characters as setting" game, since almost everything else outside the characters is subject to redefinition. Now, while a lot of the strength of Zelazny's character's came from his ability to sketch with a few bold strokes, there's nothing that says you can't attempt to steal his thunder a bit. A game where the Icons are a fairly tightly knit group (like a family) can have a really strong interpersonal dynamic.
Curiously, with just a small tweak, this applies just as easily to supers. It would not be hard to pick 13 Icons from DC or Marvel and use them as the basis for a game. Obviously, which 13 you pick will say a lot about your game, but that's half the fun of it.
The Old Ones
When 3e came out, White Wolf released a very interesting setting called The Scarred Lands. One of its core conceits was that the defeat of the Titans by the gods was not terribly long ago, and the dead or bound titans cast a huge shadow across the setting. For example, one's heart had been ripped out and he'd been chained at the bottom of the sea. Because the wound bled constantly, that whole area of ocean was red with it, and tainted with his essence.
If you were to model this with Icons, you would have a very interesting arrangement because these Icons would explicitly not be active, but they would still have factions surrounding them (lingering worshippers, those tainted and so on). What's more, it would be a very lopsided set of icons, since the real story is how the world manages to move forward while still bearing the burden of these things. By making them the icons (rather than making them SOME of the icons, but also putting icons at odds with them) then you make them central to play, but often in an unwelcome way.
Turned up a notch or two, this is also a great way to use Icons in a horror context. If all the Icons in your game are Great Old Ones or Lords of Ravenloft, then it's pretty clear the odds are stacked way the hell against you. The bulk of play is in opposition to these forces, but the sheer scope of them means that maybe it's worth risking a complicated (or even positive) relationship with a perceived "lesser evil" in order to fight on.
Hidden Icons
Suppose not all the Icons are known to the players at the outset of the game. They will be revealed over time and as a result of events in play, and it's expected that player's relationships will change or evolve over time. This is particularly useful for two sorts of game.
First, this is a great way to model a world in flux, such as is the case in the classic Dragonlance adventures. The existing Icons are in a rough sort of stasis, but the introduction of new Icons throws everything into disarray.
Second, it's a good way to model characters whose eyes are opened to a deeper, secret world, as is appropriate for many conspiracy or espionage focused games.
It should go without saying, but in both of these cases, players should know what's up. Even if they don't know what new Icons wil be revealed (though many players can handled that out of character knowledge quite well) they should know what the GM has planned in broad strokes. You're trying to make for a cool experience, not trick the players.
One other subtrick for this - you can occasionally use a proxy icon when you have a mystery threat, where the apparent Icon is actually the servant of the Real Icon. If one Icon is the main villain or threat of your game, this basically allows you to treat that icon as a procession of bosses, which might be cool, especially if you're feeling kind of video-gamey. And speaking of which...
The Crew
So, I was thinking about Mass Effect, and what Icons I would use for that. A few obvious ones jumped out - Harbinger, Hacket, The Shadow Broker, The Illusive Man, The Council and such, but I eventually petered out. And that lead to the weird realization that I would probably round out the list with Garrus, Liara, Tali, Wrex and the others, and that suggested something weird.
It's almost an inversion of the Old Ones model, but imagine if the Icons (or more aptly, Anchors) for your game were those people closest to you. It upends the relationship, putting the hero in the primary position, and making the Anchors primarily responsive/reactive. It's a really weird idea, unless you've played any Bioware RPGs, in which case you're pretty comfortable with the idea that your relationships with the NPCs around you is one of the major avenues of play.
So, yeah, this is kind of a weird, one, and maybe not a great match, but I want to call it out because it has me thinking.
*****
I may have one more 13th Age post in me. We'll see after I've gotten some sleep.
1 - If you have a real dedication to this, using an Everway fortune deck would be three kinds of awesomesauce.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Icons and Anchors
So, one fun thing to do with the Icons system from 13th Age is to start mapping it onto fiction and game settings you like. I've done it several times, and I encounter an interesting pattern - the first few Icons of any setting tend to be very easy to come up with, but somewhere before the half-dozen mark, I run out and start grasping at straws.
At first blush, this seems like a problem with the model and that maybe 13 Icons is too many, but I suspect there's a bit of a trick to that: if, say, 3-4 is the "normal" number of Icon-equivalents in fictions, then each character has enough for their own story to be complete, and there's a big enough pool to make sure that every player has a distinct combination.[1] Still, even with that in mind, I found myself bumping against a limit in using the Icons model for certain sorts of setting, but still wanting to use the model.
See, the thing that sets the Icons model apart from other approaches is the implicit importance of the Icons. As I noted yesterday, they're definitive of the setting, and they have implicit infrastructure surrounding them which the characters hook into. Icon creation _is_ setting creation, and that's really awesome.
But it's big. And while big and sweeping can totally rock at times, sometimes you want a little bit less scope, and in such a case, I would use Anchors.[2] That is to say, suppose that rather than picking 13 people who defined the world, you simply picked 13 people? The connection to them does not necessarily bring with it great scope, but it does open the doors to more personal connections. If one of the 13 is your mom, but also someone else's romantic conquest, then you have a dynamic right there.
Anchors also work if you want to take the Icons idea down to a smaller scale - the idea that I am perhaps most excited to do is to use the model to build a single city. Rather than being the movers and shakers of the world, consider the important folks of the city: Merchants, crime bosses, mayors and mercenaries. Like Icons, they create implicit infrastructure and put faces on the factions of the city (sooooooper important) but they do so on a much smaller scale.
Now, functionally, isn't that the same as Icons? Yes, kind of, but the issue of scale is not entirely sleight of hand. Icons are more or less untouchable - impacting or changing them redefines the game. Anchors are closer to the ground (and, well, a bit less iconic) and while they may be powerful or important, they're not untouchable. They also may or may not be essential to their faction. If an Icon dies, it should devastate the group it represents. If an anchor dies (depending on circumstances) they may simply be replaced.
Hell, you can mix and match if you want - If you ran a Waterdeep game with 12 Anchors and 1 Icon (say, Khelben Blackstaff), it could work fine so long as the icon is at rough parity within the scope of Waterdeep (this model probably applies to most of the Forgotten Realms, as I think about it).
Also, it's not necessary that the anchors be even locally powerful. All that really matters is that they be tied into the story/setting at hand. Hell, there's no reason you could not use Anchors as the basis for adventure design, depending on much more disposable relationships and characters.
So, this is me shamelessly stealing the ease-of-explanation of the Icons model to use it for some other approaches to setting and adventure design I dig. It's not the only hack the model supports, but it's definitely the first one in my mind. And tomorrow, we'll start breaking out some more concrete hacks.
1- If they want to. One obvious bit of game setup foo is, of course, the question of overlapping Icons. I suspect the number of overlapping Icons has a very concrete impact on a game, and mandating certain connections (like, each player must have 1 Icon in common) can build certain types of relationships and games (much the same way you could, in 3e, have everyone have 1 level of the same class to represent some common background)
2 - Yeah, there's hubris in naming it, but it makes it easier to talk about.
At first blush, this seems like a problem with the model and that maybe 13 Icons is too many, but I suspect there's a bit of a trick to that: if, say, 3-4 is the "normal" number of Icon-equivalents in fictions, then each character has enough for their own story to be complete, and there's a big enough pool to make sure that every player has a distinct combination.[1] Still, even with that in mind, I found myself bumping against a limit in using the Icons model for certain sorts of setting, but still wanting to use the model.
See, the thing that sets the Icons model apart from other approaches is the implicit importance of the Icons. As I noted yesterday, they're definitive of the setting, and they have implicit infrastructure surrounding them which the characters hook into. Icon creation _is_ setting creation, and that's really awesome.
But it's big. And while big and sweeping can totally rock at times, sometimes you want a little bit less scope, and in such a case, I would use Anchors.[2] That is to say, suppose that rather than picking 13 people who defined the world, you simply picked 13 people? The connection to them does not necessarily bring with it great scope, but it does open the doors to more personal connections. If one of the 13 is your mom, but also someone else's romantic conquest, then you have a dynamic right there.
Anchors also work if you want to take the Icons idea down to a smaller scale - the idea that I am perhaps most excited to do is to use the model to build a single city. Rather than being the movers and shakers of the world, consider the important folks of the city: Merchants, crime bosses, mayors and mercenaries. Like Icons, they create implicit infrastructure and put faces on the factions of the city (sooooooper important) but they do so on a much smaller scale.
Now, functionally, isn't that the same as Icons? Yes, kind of, but the issue of scale is not entirely sleight of hand. Icons are more or less untouchable - impacting or changing them redefines the game. Anchors are closer to the ground (and, well, a bit less iconic) and while they may be powerful or important, they're not untouchable. They also may or may not be essential to their faction. If an Icon dies, it should devastate the group it represents. If an anchor dies (depending on circumstances) they may simply be replaced.
Hell, you can mix and match if you want - If you ran a Waterdeep game with 12 Anchors and 1 Icon (say, Khelben Blackstaff), it could work fine so long as the icon is at rough parity within the scope of Waterdeep (this model probably applies to most of the Forgotten Realms, as I think about it).
Also, it's not necessary that the anchors be even locally powerful. All that really matters is that they be tied into the story/setting at hand. Hell, there's no reason you could not use Anchors as the basis for adventure design, depending on much more disposable relationships and characters.
So, this is me shamelessly stealing the ease-of-explanation of the Icons model to use it for some other approaches to setting and adventure design I dig. It's not the only hack the model supports, but it's definitely the first one in my mind. And tomorrow, we'll start breaking out some more concrete hacks.
1- If they want to. One obvious bit of game setup foo is, of course, the question of overlapping Icons. I suspect the number of overlapping Icons has a very concrete impact on a game, and mandating certain connections (like, each player must have 1 Icon in common) can build certain types of relationships and games (much the same way you could, in 3e, have everyone have 1 level of the same class to represent some common background)
2 - Yeah, there's hubris in naming it, but it makes it easier to talk about.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Personal Icons
Ok, so now that you've got the idea of icons, what can you do?
First and foremost, you can use them. The 13 in the rules are rock solid, and the text provides lots of interesting guidelines on customizing them. As is the nature of iconic characters, you have a lot of leeway around the core concept that can let you do a whole hell of a lot with the tools on the table.
But for many of us, the urge to create is too strong, and the first and most straightforward thing to do is to roll your own. This may be because you want to translate the ideas to a familiar setting, and there are existing NPCs who seem like they could fill the Icon's roles, or it may be just because you want to create something new from scratch.
If you're doing this for a setting you already know and love, I don't have a lot of advice. You presumably are already invested enough in the setting that you have a good sense of what you want to see out of your icons. My only piece of advice is to really buy into the Icon model (or at least into Anchors). A lot of settings have very well fleshed out factions, and your job as a GM is to replace the faction with its Icon. This can sometimes require doing a little bit of violence to the concept of the faction, since most are usually written up with the idea first and the leader second, but so long as you really buy into it, you can do it.
Similarly, don't hesitate to prune a bit. Many really interesting setting have more factions and potential icons than you really want to have in play all at once. 13 is a good number, and I'd be careful going too far afield from it.[1] Not every faction necessarily needs to have an icon, especially if the factions themselves are major subgroups. For example, I'm very fond of Fading Suns, a wonderful dark sci-fi game. By memory, it has an emperor, 5 noble houses, 5 merchant guilds, 5 church factions, 2 major friendly alien races, 1 major unfriendly alien race, 1 not friend/not enemy alien race, plus diabolists and two flavors of barbarian. That would be over twenty icons, which would just be crazy.
In that situation, figure out how to aggregate a few of them, and take advantage of the multiple factions to underscore the politics of things - if you have 2 Icons who are nobles, then you have implicitly created the lines along which the nobles have lined up. If you have one Icon for The Church, that encompasses all the sub-factions, but if you pop out one sub-faction (say, the Inquisition) then you'e just highlighted what will be important in your game. Don't intend Barbarians to come up much in your game? Don't bother giving them an Icon at all. As you make these choices, you are answering questions of what your game is going to be about.
If you're doing it from scratch consider a few of the subtleties that went into the existing icons.
First, each one has a concrete, pursuable agenda (or, barring that, a very active modus operandi). This means that while it's important what Icons are, what they do is even more important. Why is this important to designing a new Icon? Because it means you don't need to sit down and calculate some kind of sophisticated relationship map to make sure all your Icons interact properly. If they are driven, then the points of overlap and conflict will make themselves apparent, and that dynamism will evolve organically.
Second, and perhaps most obviously, no Icons exist in a vacuum. They have agents, followers, servants or the like - they are the faces of the most important factions of the world. When you think about an Icon, think about the people that surrounds it (and by extension, why the icon would want to interact with adventurer types).
Last (and this is a great trick) notice that Icons built the map in 13th Age. Most of the Icons are tied into one or more locations, and when you introduce an Icon, you're going to want to think about the impact on geography. At the very least, most Icons have a seat of power, but many Icons also imply locations by their existence. The Dwarf King, for example, implies the existence of the lost dwarven kingdoms as well as his current city. Sometimes the locations aren't locations s much as features - the Archmage is tied to the system of geomantic wards, for example, but the idea holds.
Note that the locations are not all unique. Both the Emperor and the Lich King suggest an empire. The Elf Queen (via dark elves) and the Dwarf King both suggest an underdark. The Diabolist and the Great Gold Wyrm both suggest the Abyss. Bear this in mind when you remove or add an Icon - what locations are you removing ties to, what new locations are you introducing, and what existing locations are you changing the dynamic on? Consider, for example, how the Abyss changes if you keep the Diabolist but remove the Great Golden Wyrm.
Anyway, those are things to keep in mind if you just want to hack the existing 13th age model. Tomorrow, we're going to hack it a little further with the idea of Anchors.
1 - I say to you right now, the one concept I will cheerfully accept 16 Icons for is this: Plansecape. One for each faction, plus the Lady of Pain herself. I have no words for how well that could work.
First and foremost, you can use them. The 13 in the rules are rock solid, and the text provides lots of interesting guidelines on customizing them. As is the nature of iconic characters, you have a lot of leeway around the core concept that can let you do a whole hell of a lot with the tools on the table.
But for many of us, the urge to create is too strong, and the first and most straightforward thing to do is to roll your own. This may be because you want to translate the ideas to a familiar setting, and there are existing NPCs who seem like they could fill the Icon's roles, or it may be just because you want to create something new from scratch.
If you're doing this for a setting you already know and love, I don't have a lot of advice. You presumably are already invested enough in the setting that you have a good sense of what you want to see out of your icons. My only piece of advice is to really buy into the Icon model (or at least into Anchors). A lot of settings have very well fleshed out factions, and your job as a GM is to replace the faction with its Icon. This can sometimes require doing a little bit of violence to the concept of the faction, since most are usually written up with the idea first and the leader second, but so long as you really buy into it, you can do it.
Similarly, don't hesitate to prune a bit. Many really interesting setting have more factions and potential icons than you really want to have in play all at once. 13 is a good number, and I'd be careful going too far afield from it.[1] Not every faction necessarily needs to have an icon, especially if the factions themselves are major subgroups. For example, I'm very fond of Fading Suns, a wonderful dark sci-fi game. By memory, it has an emperor, 5 noble houses, 5 merchant guilds, 5 church factions, 2 major friendly alien races, 1 major unfriendly alien race, 1 not friend/not enemy alien race, plus diabolists and two flavors of barbarian. That would be over twenty icons, which would just be crazy.
In that situation, figure out how to aggregate a few of them, and take advantage of the multiple factions to underscore the politics of things - if you have 2 Icons who are nobles, then you have implicitly created the lines along which the nobles have lined up. If you have one Icon for The Church, that encompasses all the sub-factions, but if you pop out one sub-faction (say, the Inquisition) then you'e just highlighted what will be important in your game. Don't intend Barbarians to come up much in your game? Don't bother giving them an Icon at all. As you make these choices, you are answering questions of what your game is going to be about.
If you're doing it from scratch consider a few of the subtleties that went into the existing icons.
First, each one has a concrete, pursuable agenda (or, barring that, a very active modus operandi). This means that while it's important what Icons are, what they do is even more important. Why is this important to designing a new Icon? Because it means you don't need to sit down and calculate some kind of sophisticated relationship map to make sure all your Icons interact properly. If they are driven, then the points of overlap and conflict will make themselves apparent, and that dynamism will evolve organically.
Second, and perhaps most obviously, no Icons exist in a vacuum. They have agents, followers, servants or the like - they are the faces of the most important factions of the world. When you think about an Icon, think about the people that surrounds it (and by extension, why the icon would want to interact with adventurer types).
Last (and this is a great trick) notice that Icons built the map in 13th Age. Most of the Icons are tied into one or more locations, and when you introduce an Icon, you're going to want to think about the impact on geography. At the very least, most Icons have a seat of power, but many Icons also imply locations by their existence. The Dwarf King, for example, implies the existence of the lost dwarven kingdoms as well as his current city. Sometimes the locations aren't locations s much as features - the Archmage is tied to the system of geomantic wards, for example, but the idea holds.
Note that the locations are not all unique. Both the Emperor and the Lich King suggest an empire. The Elf Queen (via dark elves) and the Dwarf King both suggest an underdark. The Diabolist and the Great Gold Wyrm both suggest the Abyss. Bear this in mind when you remove or add an Icon - what locations are you removing ties to, what new locations are you introducing, and what existing locations are you changing the dynamic on? Consider, for example, how the Abyss changes if you keep the Diabolist but remove the Great Golden Wyrm.
Anyway, those are things to keep in mind if you just want to hack the existing 13th age model. Tomorrow, we're going to hack it a little further with the idea of Anchors.
1 - I say to you right now, the one concept I will cheerfully accept 16 Icons for is this: Plansecape. One for each faction, plus the Lady of Pain herself. I have no words for how well that could work.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Icons and d20Tech
So, please take it as a given that 13th Age is going to be a great game. It's got some great minds behind it, and it really feels like it takes d20, combines a few of the good lessons from 4e, and makes a "good parts version" of d20. The last d20 game that made me stand up and take notice to this extent was Blue Rose (the precursor to the excellent True20 line from Green Ronin).[1]
So, given that, it's still curious that the most powerful idea in it has very little to do with the rules, and that is Icons. You can read more about them at Pelgrane's site (and in other place - it's a popular topic) and I want to draw a circle around it as an important idea that's going to see a lot of emulation down the line.
The Icon model is a logical extension of the idea of NPCs as setting. This is not a new idea, but it's a very clever implementation of it which presents the idea so clearly that I suspect it will become the common parlance for the concept. In short, there are 13 powerful, iconic being in the setting and each PC is connected to at least two of them (for good or ill). These icons are tightly tied to the setting - so much so that the setting itself can be sketched rather thinly around them. They are not remote beings or gods - they are tightly tied to the day to day world, and the tie to the PCs means that PCs are similarly close to the centers of power.
At first glance, this is interesting, but maybe not compelling. However, there are some subtleties baked into this that really flesh it out.
The first, and probably most subtle, is the fact that the connection does not always manifest directly. This is backed by the mechanics (you can call upon a connection in situations where the icon would never just show up) but the concept is straightforward - that connection implicitly includes a connection to the entirety of that Icon's "faction" - whatever organization, allies or otherwise they may have. And note, those factions are loosely sketched at best - they're an avenue for GM and player creativity, which is a nice bonus.
Now, in the hands of a lame GM, this could be an excuse to undercut the whole connection mechanic, by perpetually keeping PCs at arms length from the Icon in the worst traditions of clan-based play, but the risk of misuse is the price you pay for any good tool. As presented, it is a means to flesh out the setting in line with player needs AND to draw the player into the world.
The second thing is that it drives a very interesting choice: the game does not guarantee that PCs will be powerful, but it does guarantee that they will be prominent. Not to say they can't also be powerful, but by necessity, they will be drawn into matters of grave import, as absolutely suits the particular flavor of fiction that 13th Age embraces. This is an upshot of the icon-centric setting design, and it's pretty powerful mojo.
Now, I mean no sleight to the specific Icons of the 13th Age setting, but I know that my very first instinct is to build my own setting around a different set of Icons, and I suspect that impulse is far from uncommon. In addition to building an interesting, playable world, 13th Age is presenting a tool for setting design which - to my mind - pushes setting technology forward dramatically. Other games (Dresden Files, Burning Empires) have made similar pushes, but 13th Age has managed to do it in a way that is easy to illustrate, explain and (most importantly), re-use. That is a big deal, and I am duly impressed.
Which is, of course, no reason not to hack it some more. But that's another post.
1 - D20 evolution has an interesting cycle which I will grossly generalize as follows: A small number of games push the boundaries of what the game is, and a larger number of them expand and refine on the model. Games like Blue Rose and 13th Age push things, and things like Pathfinder refine them. This does not make the "push" games better - refinement and expansion is also essential - but it does make for a difference in what to expect from the game. It also invites debate regarding which games push and which ones refine, and there's a good chance that the ones that a given player think push are the ones the like best, but that's neither here nor there. The bottom line is that I feel that 13th Age pushes d20 forward, and (assuming they feed back into the OGL) improves the technology for everyone.
So, given that, it's still curious that the most powerful idea in it has very little to do with the rules, and that is Icons. You can read more about them at Pelgrane's site (and in other place - it's a popular topic) and I want to draw a circle around it as an important idea that's going to see a lot of emulation down the line.
The Icon model is a logical extension of the idea of NPCs as setting. This is not a new idea, but it's a very clever implementation of it which presents the idea so clearly that I suspect it will become the common parlance for the concept. In short, there are 13 powerful, iconic being in the setting and each PC is connected to at least two of them (for good or ill). These icons are tightly tied to the setting - so much so that the setting itself can be sketched rather thinly around them. They are not remote beings or gods - they are tightly tied to the day to day world, and the tie to the PCs means that PCs are similarly close to the centers of power.
At first glance, this is interesting, but maybe not compelling. However, there are some subtleties baked into this that really flesh it out.
The first, and probably most subtle, is the fact that the connection does not always manifest directly. This is backed by the mechanics (you can call upon a connection in situations where the icon would never just show up) but the concept is straightforward - that connection implicitly includes a connection to the entirety of that Icon's "faction" - whatever organization, allies or otherwise they may have. And note, those factions are loosely sketched at best - they're an avenue for GM and player creativity, which is a nice bonus.
Now, in the hands of a lame GM, this could be an excuse to undercut the whole connection mechanic, by perpetually keeping PCs at arms length from the Icon in the worst traditions of clan-based play, but the risk of misuse is the price you pay for any good tool. As presented, it is a means to flesh out the setting in line with player needs AND to draw the player into the world.
The second thing is that it drives a very interesting choice: the game does not guarantee that PCs will be powerful, but it does guarantee that they will be prominent. Not to say they can't also be powerful, but by necessity, they will be drawn into matters of grave import, as absolutely suits the particular flavor of fiction that 13th Age embraces. This is an upshot of the icon-centric setting design, and it's pretty powerful mojo.
Now, I mean no sleight to the specific Icons of the 13th Age setting, but I know that my very first instinct is to build my own setting around a different set of Icons, and I suspect that impulse is far from uncommon. In addition to building an interesting, playable world, 13th Age is presenting a tool for setting design which - to my mind - pushes setting technology forward dramatically. Other games (Dresden Files, Burning Empires) have made similar pushes, but 13th Age has managed to do it in a way that is easy to illustrate, explain and (most importantly), re-use. That is a big deal, and I am duly impressed.
Which is, of course, no reason not to hack it some more. But that's another post.
1 - D20 evolution has an interesting cycle which I will grossly generalize as follows: A small number of games push the boundaries of what the game is, and a larger number of them expand and refine on the model. Games like Blue Rose and 13th Age push things, and things like Pathfinder refine them. This does not make the "push" games better - refinement and expansion is also essential - but it does make for a difference in what to expect from the game. It also invites debate regarding which games push and which ones refine, and there's a good chance that the ones that a given player think push are the ones the like best, but that's neither here nor there. The bottom line is that I feel that 13th Age pushes d20 forward, and (assuming they feed back into the OGL) improves the technology for everyone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)