So... 13th Age. What is your experience?

[ProudGrognard]

I tried to find similar recent threads, but I couldn't so I thought I should start one.

Basically, what the title says. What is your experience with 13th Age? I have been reading through the pdf and so far, the following strike me.

-Basically, its DnD 4th Edition light, with leanings towards freeform. The way they do it is 'remove cumbersome rules and add the "Do it awesomely" clause". If you do not like D&D 4th Ed, you do not like freeform, and you do not like the premise of 'The characters are special snowflakes that fate has decreed will change the world', you will not like this.
- I find the implied campaign a bit... generic, in a bad way. Elves are in the forest, they fight with the orcs and they have a truce with the dwarves. Humans have an empire and there is an Archmage. Ooooook. Some of the details are awesome, but still...
- I cannot judge the class balance. It does seem to me that mages are a bit too versatile, but hey.
- I am not sure how I feel about the general 'things are made on the fly' thing. Perhaps it is my sheltered upbringing with very structured RPGs. Skills as background I can see, but the 'Roll relationship dice to see what icon popsup mid adventure' would infuriate me as a DM.

So, that is so far. What do you guys and gals think?

[Kiero]

There are ways in which I really wish is was more like 4th edition, but it does a good job of being a 4e-lite in many respects. My group is rounding out our 4th edition game (done as three short 8-12 session chapters in amongst other things in our schedule) right now to move on to 13A as a proper long-term game.

I don't like the classes in the main, or at least the "martial are simple, arcane are complex" split. Fortunately, making your own classes is pretty easy to do. Our GM has jumped into this with gusto, coming up with three custom classes and a variant on the Wizard class for his homebrew setting.

I'm also not a fan of Backgrounds (I prefer discrete skill lists - like 4e's short, broad one) for measuring capability, but that's something I'll just have to live with. I should note this is a general issue I have with "define your own" traits, and I come from a background of having played Wushu, Risus, PDQ# and others where you do that.

[Garimeth]

You'd get more feedback here:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=305084&page=2

But yeah my group loves it. And we did NOT like 4e. We have a Grog that is all about 2e, a guy who loves 3.5, and a bunch of guys who are new to TTRPGs at all. Its a blast to DM.

I like the idea of flexible melee attacks and talents, and it is pretty easy to make up classes. I do wish they had more spells in the book though, but then I am old school like that.

As for the implied setting....I don't mind it, but Definitely changed a lot of it for my game.

[ProudGrognard]

Hey, thanks for this!

[Rushalt]

I enjoyed it, however I noticed as a wood-elf rogue with shadow walk and sneak attack I can one shot most things at lower lvls (1-3) and if they don't die on that first hit i still have the chance to attack them again if i rolled a 2 because of dual wield then the wood-elf trait of a chance to get another action every round. My view on backgrounds is really based on how lenient the DM is the ones I took were one with nature at a 3 master of the city at a 5 and then ranking member of the thieves guild at a 5 (from rogue class feature) so most situations I could find a way to link one of my backgrounds to whatever I was trying to do to help me out but that was because our dm was being lenient with me since I was the only one with pen&paper experience.So if the dm wasn't as lenient then backgrounds wouldnt be as useful so its really up to the dm to keep that in balance.

[Teucros]

Loved it, and so did my players, despite their different backgrounds and tastes (3,5 lovers, 4e lovers and a D&D newbie). The icons and the One Unique Thing took them a little time to get used to but after the first hour they worked like a breeze.

I'll agree with Rushalt that the Background system is very dm-dependent, although I would prefer "open-minded" to "lenient" :smallsmile:. My players certainly enjoyed finding ways to have their skills be relevant, which also served to get into their characters a liiiiittle bit more every time [for example, in a check that would be a Skill(Taxidermy) in more classic terms, it turns out that our Barbarian "Chieftain of the Bouki tribe" had to kill a bear, skin it and create his own fur coat before appearing to the tribe's elders and officially be recognised as the heir. Our most farfetched example, actually, but also one of the most distinctive ones].

As for the setting...I certainly had the same impression as you did. Then our first session began...and then it clicked. See, it is intentionally half-finished and sometimes vague, more concerned with interesting snapshots than the complete picture. The DM and players have to fill in the blanks, so to speak, and you are certainly encouraged to make changes, even expected to I might say.

The Icons, combined with the backgrounds and the Unique Things, can help a lot here, informing the DM of kinds of conflict that the players are interested in(For example, I got many negative Emperor and pro High Druid and Orc Lord positive relationships s in an one-shot adventure, showing clearly that the players were looking to fight the establishment and pushe the agenda of the "wild" versus the "civilised", willing to underplay certain enmities in the process. Now, I love to improvise but from what I hear it is quite common for DMs of a more stuctured, as the OP puts it, style to have the players roll relationship dice at the end of the session and have them apply in the following one, or even a roll barrage for an adventure of, say, 3 sessions. It certainly does not have to be mid-adventure of you if you don't have to...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I should note that it's actually closer to 3.5 than to 4E, in terms of the structure of your abilities. But it's closer to 4E in the "mundanes get nice things" aspect.

I love the way the structure of the game is at once improvisational and built-out. You build up the setting piece by piece (drilling down into backgrounds or relationships as needed...not to mention the One Unique Thing) and then tilt it up with character choices and icon rolls.