# Jonathan Tweet talks "13th Age"



## Morrus (May 17, 2012)

Jonathan Tweet took some time to answer a few questions about the upcoming RPG _13th Age_, authored by Tweet and Rob Heinsoo. Tweet, as you may recall, was one of the lead designers of _D&D 3rd Edition_ (along with many other things), while Heinsoo was heavility involved with _D&D 4th Edition_. _13th Age_ is being billed as their "love letter to D&D".

So first things first. "13th Age" - presumably the title ties into the setting fiction of the game world; could you share what the title means, and how you decided upon it?

Thirteen is a powerful, ominous number, but there’s more to it than that. In the 13th Age setting, civilization has gone through twelve distinct ages, each one different from the others. This idea plays into a core concept in 13th Age, which is customizability. During the twelve preceding ages, civilization has taken different shapes. In some ages, the dwarves and the elves get along. In others, they are mortal enemies. There is no one right way for the rulers and enemies of civilization to interact. Implicitly, then, the GM or the player is allowed to customize the setting. That’s the way things are “in this age,” different from the norm. No two 13th Age campaigns are the same, or even really can be. 

Metaphorically, Rob and I hearken back to roleplaying in an earlier age. You might say we’re returning to the “pre-grid” age. 

When you refer to a "free-wheeling style of old-school gaming", are there any particular games which formed the majority of your inspiration? For example, would it be fair to say that the game is mainly inspired by earlier editions of D&D, or by other game systems?

Thirteenth Age is inspired by earlier editions of D&D, where everything wasn’t all spelled out, and you didn’t have to play on a grid. It tries to recapture some of the hobby’s early freshness, when RPGs were less professional but perhaps more genuine. That said, Rob and I draw on a large number of games that we have created, worked on, playtested, or played for fun. Indie games have taught us both a lot of creative approaches designing game rules creatively. 

RuneQuest has always been a major influence on my RPG designs, and 13th Age’s icons are direct descendants of RQ’s Gloranthan cults. Like the pagan religions in RuneQuest, the icons ground player-characters in the game world. PCs have distant but useful relationships with the mighty icons, giving them allies, enemies, resources, and obligations. 

Rob and I admire a lot of game designers. Personally, Robin Laws has taught me a lot about RPG design over the years. 13th Age, for example, has its own take on the mook rule that Robin introduced in Feng Shui.

Some of your verbiage - particularly phrases like "a toolkit of rules that you can pick and choose from based on the kind of game you want to play" strongly echoes much of the stated design goals of WotC's 5th Edition D&D. Is this game designed to capture the same market as D&D Next?

With 13th Age, Rob and I have the distinct pleasure of writing for gamers like us: GMs and players who like to make up cool stuff. Fifth edition, like First through Fourth, will be expected to normalize the game experience. That way, a player can take their official D&D character to any official D&D game and play it. Thirteenth Age, on the other hand, is designed to inspire GMs and players to customize their campaigns and characters. Your “wood elf ranger” with the elaborate back story might not fit in the campaign next door, if the GM or players there have defined elves or rangers differently.

We are not 5E. We’re a lot more like Arduin Grimoire by Dave Hargrave. If you want to keep playing Pathfinder or 2E or whatever, you can still lift subsystems out of our game and drop them smoothly into your campaign. Incremental advances give PCs the chance to improve a little from session to session instead of all at once when they level up. The escalation die helps pace combat better. The icon system connects PCs to the game setting. You can use subsystems like these in whatever d20 game you’re playing. Especially ours. 

You have a D&D 3E designer and a D&D 4E designer working together - two design approaches which appear to generate more friction with each other than most. What do each of you bring to the table, and how do you resolve fundamentally different design styles?

Rob and I have different styles, but we both have a soft spot for D&D-style coolness. That’s why our publisher calls 13th Age our “love letter” to D&D. 

It was easy for us to mesh our different styles because we were creating a new system. Thirteenth Age isn’t halfway between 3E and 4E. Instead, it hearkens back to 1999, before 3E turned D&D into a game you played on a grid. We take the good rules and concepts from 3E, 4E, old-school games, and indie games, and we pump all that goodness into a setting that honors grand old D&D tropes. 

Lucky for us, our styles are not just different but complementary. Neither of us could have created 13th Age alone. Rob likes players to have a good time, and I like them to suffer, so together we’ve got it all. In addition, Rob and I have known each other since the 80s and have been gaming together since the 90s. We’ve played all sorts of games together: Everway, Feng Shui, Sorcerer, a parlor larp, Omega World, HeroQuest, several editions of D&D, plus our own experimental systems. We’ve worked together on various card games, board games, and miniatures games, and we’ve played plenty more. We’re a good team. 

Could you explain a little more about the "Icons" which seem to feature heavily in the game? From the ad text, I'm getting the sense of a framework similar to that of traditional deities.

Mortal civilization is ruled by several mighty icons, such as the Archmage and the Elf Queen. The fates of these virtual demigods are bound up together. Threatening civilization are the Lich King, the Diabolist, and other villainous icons. The icons define the action in the campaign at the “world” level. The wars or plagues or enigmas of the campaign setting are the business of the icons. These thirteen icons anchor and focus the setting. They are in dynamic tension with each other. The natural forces of the High Druid, for example, strain against the arcane constraints of the Archmage. The Priestess and the Crusader are both allied to the Emperor, but they are opposed to each other. With the icons locked in a complex balance, there’s always the possibility that a stalwart band of heroes could accomplish great deeds and tip the balance one way or another. Such is the stuff of legends—and of 13th Age campaigns.

These iconic NPCs—Archmage, Lich King, etc— are already familiar to your typical roleplayer. When a game setting is familiar, it’s easier to improvise. GMs are expected to play some of the icons at least a little differently from by-the-book. When players create their characters’ back stories, they invent parts of the world to fit. We even kept the titles of the icons pretty generic, to leave more room for GMs and players to define them. This is the game world designed less to show you how cool our ideas are and more to ask you how cool your ideas can be. 

Icons are the secret sauce that connects the player characters to the game setting. As part of character creation, you define how your character relates to one or more icons. If you’re a dwarf fighter, maybe your entire clan was exiled by the Dwarf King, while your own personal deeds have brought honor to him. The relationships come into play as relationship dice, which players use to gain advantages in the game world. Relationship dice can get you helpful allies, secret intelligence, divine blessings, arcane knowledge, imperial authority, criminal assistance, and more. Each advantage you gain is something that exists in the game world, not as a bonus on a die roll or that sort of thing. It’s where role-playing meets roll-playing. Relationship dice also sometimes introduce complications into the plot. Being related to a mighty icon can get you out of trouble, but sometimes it gets you into a different sort of trouble at the same time.

If you had to pick one thing, what do you think is the biggest thing which really makes 13th Age stand out from other RPGs in the fantasy genre?

Rob’s class designs are really something else. His class features bring out the exciting and endearing qualities of each class. The class-based attacks, powers, and spells give players plenty of crunchy bits to use in combat. These classes stand out because they’re both crunchy and evocative. On one hand, it’s clear how to use their features mechanically. On the other hand, Rob designs games with a great sense of fun, and there are countless class traits that are a joy to play.

Sometimes a story-oriented RPG leaves out the crunchy bits, but Rob sure hasn’t. 

How are you approaching the combat portions of the game? Are they designed to work with tactical battlemaps and miniatures, or are they geared towards the "arena of the mind"? How tactical would you say the combat portion is?

Thirteenth Age is story oriented, but fast, fun combat is still a key element of the game. We’ve played a lot of different games together, and we know how important it is for a game like this one to have exciting battles. For one thing, we took combat off the grid to make it looser and more dynamic. Players spend more time imagining the battles in their heads and less time counting squares. In 2000, the 3E design team put D&D on a grid partly to unify game play. With tightly defined combat rules, a player could play any official D&D game anywhere and know how combat worked. With 13th Age, we’re really only concerned with how the game runs for you and your friends in your personal campaign. Some groups will run combat more tactically, other more cinematically. GMs will have house rules, and no two tables will run combat exactly alike. That’s as it should be.

Rob and I put a premium on exciting combat. Player characters have an array of interesting class features, powers, and spells to use in battle. Monsters do, too. Magic items feature powers designed to add fun options to combat. Our escalation die shifts the pace of battle, adding more energy to later rounds, when combat otherwise tends to drag. Without the grid, combat moves faster, packing more action into less table time. 

What innovation are you most proud of in 13th Age?

Don’t make me pick a favorite, but our mook rule is pretty sweet. The rule hearkens back to a version of combat popular in the early years of the hobby. Back then, when you attacked monsters in a mob, you just attacked the mob. If you hit, your damage was applied to the first monster, and excess damage spilled over to the second, and so on. You didn’t figure out which orc you were swinging at. You just swung at the orcs. Our mook rule is like that. A “mook” is a low-grade monster, with lower hit points and damage than normal. Against mooks, damage is applied to the mob as a whole. As a GM, it’s nice to have a dozen mooks on the board but only track one hit point score. As a player, it’s fun to take mooks down by twos or threes. 

You're currently playtesting with about 200 groups worldwide. Do you plan to open up playtesting further?

The second rounds or playtests is underway, so we’re well over 200 groups now. We're looking forward to seeing what both first-round players and new players have to say about the latest manuscript.

As a side note - the artwork is gorgeous! I love the feel it evokes! Is the artistic style a conscious choice? Are you trying to evoke any particular feel or style in particular? For me, it makes me think about the AD&D 2nd Edition era, for some reason.

The art revealed so far has focused on the icons, so it tends to feel especially… iconic. We are trying to give the D&D fan something they will really like. We’re using familiar archetypes to activate memories and call up associations. We’re trying to evoke a sense of wonder from jaded gamers.


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## KesselZero (May 17, 2012)

Not gonna lie-- this sounds pretty cool to me.


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## Argyle King (May 17, 2012)

It all sounds pretty good to me.


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## Ed_Laprade (May 17, 2012)

Yep, sounds very interesting. But something occured to me. If the Icons and Relation Dice are so important, what happens if you don't like any of the Icons and want to play an atheist character? Are they screwed or even disallowed? Yes, I realize that the GM can run them how s/he wants, and that a good group will work together to make them fit, but what if that still leaves a player who just doesn't care for any of them?


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## pauljathome (May 17, 2012)

Ed_Laprade said:


> Yep, sounds very interesting. But something occured to me. If the Icons and Relation Dice are so important, what happens if you don't like any of the Icons and want to play an atheist character? Are they screwed or even disallowed? Yes, I realize that the GM can run them how s/he wants, and that a good group will work together to make them fit, but what if that still leaves a player who just doesn't care for any of them?




The Icons are NOT Gods, although some come close. They represent individuals and organizations tied to those individuals.

Given the number of Icons, how nebulously they're defined, and the fact that several different kinds of relationships are possible it would be a rare player that would find nothing sparking their interest.

That said, it wouldn't exactly be a disaster for a player to essentially ignore that part of character creation. They'd have to make sure that their character had other ties to the world and the campaign.


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## Greatwyrm (May 17, 2012)

The more I hear about this, the more I like.


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## Scrivener of Doom (May 18, 2012)

I read the occasional piece of news about D&DNext and go, "meh". I read the occasional pieces of news about 13th Age and I start thinking, "This rocks!"

Messrs Tweet & Heinsoo seem to be capturing my attention!


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## Spinachcat (May 18, 2012)

13th Age is far more interesting than anything I've heard about 5e.  Between this game and the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, I am excited about the new stuff in our hobby. 

There is something very powerful in design when you don't have to create something hamstrung by the commercial need to appease everyone. 

But on the other hand, 13th Age will need to spend $$$ on marketing and advertising to have enough sales to achieve an ongoing game line.


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## gdmcbride (May 18, 2012)

13th Age does sound amazing.  I wonder...is it going to use the OGL?

Gary McBride
Fire Mountain Games


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## Morrus (May 18, 2012)

gdmcbride said:


> 13th Age does sound amazing. I wonder...is it going to use the OGL?




Yes.

(Well, at least "an" open game license; I'm assuming that means_ the_ open gaming license).


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## Mercurius (May 18, 2012)

Wow, this is sounding very interesting. I'm getting the sense that they're going for a bit f a high-brow, indie-flavored 5E - a game for those that want something a bit off center of 5E. Sign me up.


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## TwoSix (May 18, 2012)

I have to admit, I'm intrigued.

I don't know if they're going this direction, but I'd pony up if their work needed a "kickstart".


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## UngeheuerLich (May 18, 2012)

I like, that 3e and 4e people can work with one another. Can play together and do so. Open minded people are great.

Why can´t gamers get along with each other on forums equally well?

I hope this game will be great and appeal to some gamers. I will check it out!


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## ColonelHardisson (May 18, 2012)

Even if Tweet had only worked on Ars Magica and nothing else, my interest would have been piqued. The amount of D&D experience of these two designers makes it even more intriguing.


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## Maccwar (May 18, 2012)

So when are they hoping to release this?


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## TarionzCousin (May 18, 2012)

When Jonathan Tweet posts something on Twitter, is it called a "Tweet Tweet"?


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## pauljathome (May 18, 2012)

Maccwar said:


> So when are they hoping to release this?




Its currently in the second round of Playtest. They state on their website that
"*Editors’ note: We aim to publish it in August."


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## Matrix Sorcica (May 18, 2012)

This thread on rpg.net goes into detail about the game and is well worth a read.


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## El Mahdi (May 18, 2012)

TarionzCousin said:


> When Jonathan Tweet posts something on Twitter, is it called a "Tweet Tweet"?




It's a "Tweet Tweet on Twitter"...

Now say it 5 times really fast.


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## Rhenny (May 18, 2012)

*"13th Age" a New Hurdle for D&DNext?*

D&DNext is an attempt to provide all D&D players with one rule set/game that all D&D players...past and present can play and enjoy together.

"13th Age" seems to be targeted to players and DMs who favor an old school, theater of the mind, less standardized, less balanced, more free form D&D gaming experience.

When I look into my crystal ball, I see more fragmentation of the D&D playing (and buying) community.

How many of you will give "13th Age" a try?


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## Transformer (May 18, 2012)

Could you explain briefly what makes this a more significant release than any other relatively obscure OSR-type system? Maybe I'm just very ill-informed.


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## Doug McCrae (May 18, 2012)

Transformer said:


> Could you explain briefly what makes this a more significant release than any other relatively obscure OSR-type system?



That it's by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo.

I believe it's only partly old school, it pulls in ideas from all over.


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## ForeverSlayer (May 18, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> That it's by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo.




With those two at the helm, I am definitely going to try it.


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## B.T. (May 18, 2012)

From what I've read about 13th Age, it's very storygamey and pushes hard for more Precious Snowflake Sue characters, so I'm not interested in it.


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## Transformer (May 18, 2012)

> That it's by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo.




Indeed, I just noticed that. Makes sense.



> I believe it's only partly old school, it pulls in ideas from all over.




"They all say that," is what I'm tempted to think, but they're great designers, and I'll have to keep an eye on this.


Anyway, I don't think any system is going to take a significant chunk of 5e's market share all by itself. Pathfinder rode a perfect storm in taking away so much of Wizards' market share. Any other circumstance, or any other company besides Paizo in the same circumstance, probably couldn't have done it.


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## thzero (May 18, 2012)

KesselZero said:


> Not gonna lie-- this sounds pretty cool to me.




Not going to lie, this sounds horrific to me.  Perhaps I'm just a gronard that has been playing AD&D+ ON BATTLEMAPS since the early 80s, but this thing sorta irks me right off.  "Players spend more time imagining the battles in their heads and less time counting squares."  That is just closed minded in its own way.  If they are so interested in just allowing me and my gaming group to have fun, why are they forcing us to play in their style?  Because of it, I'll just stick to 3e/Pathfinder/M&M/GURPs/etc.

Yes, I have played in plenty of games without maps and in general the combat goes to hell in a hand basket quit quickly, and without fail.  Even a simple map with simple markers just helps things quite nicely.  Why put some much time and effort into interesting combat, but don't bother to account for spatial relations between the combatants and their environment?  That is just as important as some fancy move with a sword or a spell.


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## Umbran (May 18, 2012)

This thread is apt to be far more about 13th age than it is about D&DNext.  So, moved to General


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## Crothian (May 18, 2012)

Neechen said:


> How many of you will give "13th Age" a try?




If someone is going to run it and teach me the game at Origins, Gen Con, or a Game day I might it a try.  But I doubt I'll buy it without playing it unless it gets same damn good recommendations by some of the gamers I know and trust.


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## Jools (May 18, 2012)

I know a little bit about this for, err..., some reason (I'm keeping this as vague as I can!) and let me just say this: It really is pretty cool.


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## wingsandsword (May 19, 2012)

Neechen said:


> D&DNext is an attempt to provide all D&D players with one rule set/game that all D&D players...past and present can play and enjoy together.
> 
> "13th Age" seems to be targeted to players and DMs who favor an old school, theater of the mind, less standardized, less balanced, more free form D&D gaming experience.
> 
> ...




I hadn't even heard of 13th Age before this thread.  The Internet can provide the illusion that a niche product is a much bigger deal than it really is.

Heck, I remember certain ENWorlders swearing up and down that Castles and Crusades was such a big hit that it was making a big dent on D&D sales.


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## waderockett (May 19, 2012)

Morrus said:


> Yes.
> 
> (Well, at least "an" open game license; I'm assuming that means_ the_ open gaming license).




At the moment it means _an_ open game license. What will be open and what won't be is still in the works.

Also, hello all! I'm with the 13th Age team. I co-manage @13thAge on Twitter and +13th Age on Google Plus, and give whatever help I can to bloggers and podcasters who are talking about the game. PR stuff.

I also work for Kobold Quarterly/Open Design, so you might know me from there.


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## Gundark (May 19, 2012)

A Hurdle? Not the word I would have chosen.

There isn't the demand for 13th Age like there was for Pathfinder


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## Morrus (May 19, 2012)

I'm merging this with the existing _13th Age_ news thread.  One big thread is more useulf to folks than multiple itty bitty threads!


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## Kzach (May 19, 2012)

> With 13th Age, Rob and I have the distinct pleasure of writing for gamers like us: GMs and players who like to make up cool stuff. Fifth edition, like First through Fourth, will be expected to normalize the game experience. That way, a player can take their official D&D character to any official D&D game and play it. Thirteenth Age, on the other hand, is designed to inspire GMs and players to customize their campaigns and characters. Your “wood elf ranger” with the elaborate back story might not fit in the campaign next door, if the GM or players there have defined elves or rangers differently.



I can't help but feel... put down by this. I almost feel insulted by it as if they're saying I'm not imaginative or creative if I like playing 4e or if I'm excited by the prospect of 5e. There just seems to be an underlying current of "this is the RIGHT way to play D&D" to this that irks me.


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## Walker N. Waistz (May 19, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I can't help but feel... put down by this. I almost feel insulted by it as if they're saying I'm not imaginative or creative if I like playing 4e or if I'm excited by the prospect of 5e. There just seems to be an underlying current of "this is the RIGHT way to play D&D" to this that irks me.




I don't see it that way at all. It simply sounds like they're talking about design goals. It seems to me that members of the design teams for both 3rd & 4th editions are competent to talk about those game's design goals with authority, and state that theirs differ *for this particular game*. 

Any time decisions are made in a game-- wrong or right-- they leave space for games with different design goals. To oversimplify an example, it is similar to how D&D focused (rightly, obviously) on PCs killing monsters, creating an opening for a game where PCs are the monsters-- which was Vampire: the Masquerade.

Given the number of weird, niche games both these designers have been involved in (Over the Edge! Feng Shui!), before and after their work for WotC, it seems clear that they are not using this game to lecture the world on wrongbadfun. This seems more like a love-letter to a specific era and a specific style of play. This is almost certainly not the last entire RPG either one of these two is going to design, and I highly doubt either one things this is "the one RPG that gets it right."


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## Matrix Sorcica (May 19, 2012)

Matrix Sorcica said:


> This thread on rpg.net goes into detail about the game and is well worth a read.



I really recommend anyone wanting to know more about the game to read the linked thread, where a poster does a read-through of the playtest document. Good stuff.


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## mkill (May 19, 2012)

Said rpg.net poster is also an enworld regular...

13th Age is great for a certain D&D playstyle, which happens to be the way I like to run my games. It's old school if your old school is "make  up as we go along". I wouldn't call it "storygamey" - "campaign-focused" is a better word.
It definitely doesn't try to be everything to everyone. I recommend to give it a shot. Even if you don't adopt it, it has many interesting ideas that can be stolen for your favorite D&D edition / derivate.


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## Transformer (May 19, 2012)

I am genuinely interested in seeing this game, but I'm not really convinced yet.

For example, in the FAQ the interviewer asks what makes Icons different from a traditional deities framework, and then Tweet takes 3 long paragraphs to explain that basically, yeah, it's like a traditional deities framework. Various civilizations are (abstractly-speaking) rules by different Icons, and do geopolitical things in those Icons' names, but you can't actually fight the Icons and you don't really meet them, and some Icons don't like each other so their people tend to fight each other. You can use words like "dynamic tension" all you like; it doesn't make what you're saying anything more than "the followers of this god Icon are generally the enemies of that god Icon, so you can count on them not to get along."

The real problem is more general: Tweet emphasized over and over again that the point of the system is to get tailored to each particular group, in mechanics as well as setting. But how, exactly, does the system encourage that? Does it just leave out crucial setting details and tell me to "make this part up"? Because that's not helpful and it's not encouraging customization; it's just being incomplete. I can play 4e or Pathfinder and just replace anything I don't really like. What's more, it sounds like this Icon system is pretty hard-wired into the 13th Age setting. Well, that's not more customization, that's less. If my group thinks the deities in 4e are stupid, I can ignore them easily. But it sounds like if my group thinks these Icons are stupid, it would throw off a lot of what 13th Age has to offer if we threw them out. Who's encouraging more customization now?

Anyway, a system designed by these two designers will (at least) be very good, and a system 100% committed to gridless combat sounds good. I'm just not convinced, from this interview, that the system's gonna be any more implicitly customizable than any other system.


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## pauljathome (May 19, 2012)

Transformer said:


> For example, in the FAQ the interviewer asks what makes Icons different from a traditional deities framework, and then Tweet takes 3 long paragraphs to explain that basically, yeah, it's like a traditional deities framework. .




The ICONS are definitely different from the traditional deities framework. They all represent actual individuals who live in the world, they all represent actual organizations that live in the world all of them being allied with and in conflict with others.

One certainly COULD create a traditional deities framework with similar features but most campaigns are NOT so structured. The big difference is that the 10 ICONS represent the most powerful active forces and organizations in the world. So, a campaign world where world spanning religions with clear agendas were far and away the most powerful AND active agents would be similar. Never played in that campaign.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2012)

Walker N. Waistz said:


> I don't see it that way at all. It simply sounds like they're talking about design goals. It seems to me that members of the design teams for both 3rd & 4th editions are competent to talk about those game's design goals with authority, and state that theirs differ *for this particular game*.
> 
> Any time decisions are made in a game-- wrong or right-- they leave space for games with different design goals. To oversimplify an example, it is similar to how D&D focused (rightly, obviously) on PCs killing monsters, creating an opening for a game where PCs are the monsters-- which was Vampire: the Masquerade.
> 
> Given the number of weird, niche games both these designers have been involved in (Over the Edge! Feng Shui!), before and after their work for WotC, it seems clear that they are not using this game to lecture the world on wrongbadfun. This seems more like a love-letter to a specific era and a specific style of play. This is almost certainly not the last entire RPG either one of these two is going to design, and I highly doubt either one things this is "the one RPG that gets it right."




Quite true. Guess I can't XP you again, lol. 

Remember guys, this is a niche game. It is small press and while Rob and Jonathan are pretty well-known RPG designers it isn't like this game is going to be all over the place and one you're going to feel like you almost have to relate to, like say 5e might. Take a look at it, decide for yourselves what you think of this game's particular mix of elements, and play it or not based on your own tastes, or at least decide if some of the ideas presented are interesting enough to snag and use in some other context.

My own experience with it is that they've managed to package together some pretty classic elements with some other things in a way that is somewhat unique. It isn't a ground-breaking game but it has its own sensibilities and puts a bit of a twist on some old ideas. It certainly isn't the game I would design, nor the game I have been thinking I'd want, but there's stuff in here to think about and it certainly can be fun to play. I'm also pretty sure that you will be able to rework it in various ways if you want. Icons for instance could be easily left out, or transformed into a more general relationship framework. You could certainly play out combat on a grid or with minis and a map and a ruler if you wanted, etc. 

Anyway, I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I'm sure the game will be solid. It may not become a lot of people's goto FRPG, but at the very least it is worth looking at as an example of and experiment in combining RPG elements in a fairly original way.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2012)

pauljathome said:


> The ICONS are definitely different from the traditional deities framework. They all represent actual individuals who live in the world, they all represent actual organizations that live in the world all of them being allied with and in conflict with others.
> 
> One certainly COULD create a traditional deities framework with similar features but most campaigns are NOT so structured. The big difference is that the 10 ICONS represent the most powerful active forces and organizations in the world. So, a campaign world where world spanning religions with clear agendas were far and away the most powerful AND active agents would be similar. Never played in that campaign.




Right. I don't think it is exactly like "just having gods and organizations." For one thing the whole relationships thing brings the focus much more onto how the PCs and the Icons DIRECTLY interrelate (even if at a distance for low level PCs most likely). You CAN certainly do that same thing and fluff it as 'gods' (or whatever else) instead of Iconic NPCs. The thing about the Icons is they represent kind of a flexible ground. They are NPCs, but they are all strong archetypes. Each one is very sharply drawn and distinct from the others. IME it is hard to get the same thing from the fairly nebulous organizations, epic NPCs, and generally kitchen-sink pantheons of most settings. 

For one thing the setup will tend to draw in the PCs. They have these relationships, so they are going to use them (or be confronted with them by the DM). Since all the Icons interrelate with each other there's a lot of ground there for story interactions of all kinds. While it does impose a good bit of structure on the campaign, it also provides a lot of potential bang for that buck. 

In any case it is an interesting and slightly idiosyncratic design feature. Games need that if they're going to stand out at all. While removing the Icons or recasting them as gods certainly wouldn't make 13a exactly 'generic' it would remove an interesting element and make the game somewhat less of an interesting contribution to the current stable of FRPGs.


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## Transformer (May 19, 2012)

pauljathome said:


> The ICONS are definitely different from the traditional deities framework. They all represent actual individuals who live in the world, they all represent actual organizations that live in the world all of them being allied with and in conflict with others.
> 
> One certainly COULD create a traditional deities framework with similar features but most campaigns are NOT so structured. The big difference is that the 10 ICONS represent the most powerful active forces and organizations in the world. So, a campaign world where world spanning religions with clear agendas were far and away the most powerful AND active agents would be similar. Never played in that campaign.




I'm still not seeing it. I got the distinct impression that you can't fight the Icons and that the system assumes you'll never actually meet one. So it's all the same to the players, really, whether they're actually gods or individual people in the material world or offices that are filled by different people at different times; either way, they're the indistinct justification for factions and alignments and world events and such that you never really meet or interact with directly. They're the vague background justification for why this group of dwarves the PCs just found are fighting that group of elves they met last week. A distinction without a difference, judging from the little I've read so far.

I also didn't get the impression that the 13 Icons represent 13 distinct extremely powerful organizations which control the world. That would be an interesting and unique setting (though, I think, a little artificial, and not at all conducive to the kind of radical group-to-group customization Tweet is aiming for). But no, I get the impression that all the standard nations and clans and guilds and such that you'd find in any fantasy organization are around, but most of them have some vague background connection to one of the Icons. So, e.g., the thieves' guild (which the party rogue is a member of) is ultimately somewhere in the chain of command of one of the Icons, and that serves as an arbitrary justification for stuff the DM wants the thieves' guild to do ("You say it doesn't really make sense that the thieves' guild would do that? Well, it's part of the mysterious plans of an Icon; of course the party doesn't understand"). Or maybe the party runs into a cult that worships the Lich King Icon as a god (even if he's not). But it makes little difference to the players; they would still have to recover the McGuffin from the undead cult whether it worshipped an Icon or a god or nobody at all.

In fact, the more I hear about Icons the less I like them, because they sound more and more like a hard codification of the annoying "all-powerful NPCs who control everything and who are the real movers and shakers and whose esoteric goals and plans can be used to justify absolutely anything the DM wants to happen." I don't like that. I like my D&D decentralized, with lots of smaller heroes and villains and rules, all with clearly-defined goals and actions, not vague NPC-gods who control everything and who don't have to have clear and logical motivations for what they do.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 19, 2012)

Transformer said:


> I'm still not seeing it. I got the distinct impression that you can't fight the Icons and that the system assumes you'll never actually meet one. So it's all the same to the players, really, whether they're actually gods or individual people in the material world or offices that are filled by different people at different times; either way, they're the indistinct justification for factions and alignments and world events and such that you never really meet or interact with directly. They're the vague background justification for why this group of dwarves the PCs just found are fighting that group of elves they met last week. A distinction without a difference, judging from the little I've read so far.
> 
> I also didn't get the impression that the 13 Icons represent 13 distinct extremely powerful organizations which control the world. That would be an interesting and unique setting (though, I think, a little artificial, and not at all conducive to the kind of radical group-to-group customization Tweet is aiming for). But no, I get the impression that all the standard nations and clans and guilds and such that you'd find in any fantasy organization are around, but most of them have some vague background connection to one of the Icons. So, e.g., the thieves' guild (which the party rogue is a member of) is ultimately somewhere in the chain of command of one of the Icons, and that serves as an arbitrary justification for stuff the DM wants the thieves' guild to do ("You say it doesn't really make sense that the thieves' guild would do that? Well, it's part of the mysterious plans of an Icon; of course the party doesn't understand"). Or maybe the party runs into a cult that worships the Lich King Icon as a god (even if he's not). But it makes little difference to the players; they would still have to recover the McGuffin from the undead cult whether it worshipped an Icon or a god or nobody at all.
> 
> In fact, the more I hear about Icons the less I like them, because they sound more and more like a hard codification of the annoying "all-powerful NPCs who control everything and who are the real movers and shakers and whose esoteric goals and plans can be used to justify absolutely anything the DM wants to happen." I don't like that. I like my D&D decentralized, with lots of smaller heroes and villains and rules, all with clearly-defined goals and actions, not vague NPC-gods who control everything and who don't have to have clear and logical motivations for what they do.




From what I read of the PT material and a quick game I don't think the Icons are that strongly defined in terms of how they will fit into an individual game. I could see games where the Icons are distant figures that pull strings and supply plot hooks. I could see them as powerful figures that the PCs interact with, indirectly at first and then more directly, and I could see them as highly active "BBEGs" (or patrons) where defeating one (and even becoming one) might well be important parts of the story arc of a campaign. Things just aren't that tightly spelled out.

You could interpret the setting as one where the Icons are pretty much running the whole show and everything else in the world is tied to them, or one where they are just examplars of a type and important NPCs. It just isn't that nailed down (at least as I read it). 

I'm pretty sure you could run a game where the Icons are pretty much irrelevant too. You'd have your relations with them, but you could use that almost more like alignment than anything else. Maybe once in a while the DM uses it to justify a plot hook. That would get you a setup that is pretty close to most D&D settings.


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## fjw70 (May 20, 2012)

Matrix Sorcica said:


> This thread on rpg.net goes into detail about the game and is well worth a read.




Thanks for the link. 

It looks interesting. I will probably pick it up if the price isn't too steep.


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## Gold Roger (May 20, 2012)

This doesn't sound like a game I'd ever want to play.

However, it also sounds like it has some neat ideas and inspirations. It also sounds like it is designed to be picked apart and canibalized for elements to port over and adapt. 

That is something I'm very interested in.


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## Plane Sailing (May 20, 2012)

Morrus said:


> The relationships come into play as relationship dice, which players use to gain advantages in the game world. Relationship dice can get you helpful allies, secret intelligence, divine blessings, arcane knowledge, imperial authority, criminal assistance, and more. Each advantage you gain is something that exists in the game world, not as a bonus on a die roll or that sort of thing. It’s where role-playing meets roll-playing. Relationship dice also sometimes introduce complications into the plot.




This bit attracts my attention. It reminds me of the relationships which you can have in Heroquest, which had a mechanical influence on stuff which worked nicely.

In addition, it seems that the interrelationships between the icons may be drawn from the Runequest cults matrix which allowed for a rich web of interrelationships which could affect party dynamics nicely - rather than the simplistic good vs bad which most systems have run by.

Cheers


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## john112364 (May 20, 2012)

Without seeing more of the actual rules I can't say for sure whether I would play it or not. I will say that I light the setting that I see so far. Even if I don't like the system there is plenty of material to be mined here.


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## Keefe the Thief (May 21, 2012)

"It tries to recapture some of the hobby’s early freshness, when RPGs were less professional but perhaps more genuine."

Yeah, well... I admit i rolled my eyes when i read that. Not as much as at the constant "D&D 3e grid noo!", but still. Trying to recapture "genuine freshness" by taking stuff from earlier editions,  3e, 4e, Runequest, Everway and Indiegame Whose Name You Likely Forgot (TM) will be hard. And i admit that i don't know what a "genuine" RPG is, but shouldn't it be something totally new and innovative?

Still, will be interesting to watch how this develops.


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## Walker N. Waistz (May 21, 2012)

Kzach said:


> I almost feel insulted by it as if they're saying I'm not imaginative or creative if I like playing 4e



Actually, there is a lot of 4E in there. According to that thread Matrix Sorcica linked to, 13th Age''s playtest had healing surges, melee basic attacks, at-will/encounter/daily powers, standardized attack / defense scaling, level tiers, and dragonborn.

So I am pretty sure "let's fix D&D `cuz 4E sucks" is not the motivation here.


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## Alphastream (May 24, 2012)

13th Age is a very cool game. Our group participated in the first playtest and we are now participating in the second round. Two of our group are part of the Going Last podcast and recorded an interview found here.

When playtesting I don't like to share details until a game is released, even when allowed to do so. Much can change.

At a very high level, the icons really are fantastic. I hope the finished product really speaks to that further. Really, reading the icons just filled me with "cool!" the way few RPG books have over the last twenty years. I wanted to play immediately.

Like any game in playtesting, there were things that needed to be worked through. 13th Age has even shared some of them (such as multiclassing), which speaks to how effective playtesting can be and also to the game being improved.

How much we liked 13th Age varied across our group. Some of us really dug what we saw and wanted to really play it a ton. Some of us saw it as being a cool side game we play from time to time. I think all of us would expect it to improve and based upon that would recommend its purchase. 

The game really is well suited to story and RP heavier games, but it doesn't require that. While pulling from 4E, it doesn't seek to use a grid and using a battlemat is entirely optional. We didn't (our choice) when playtesting. 

For certain, 13th Age has a nice blend of innovation, 4E, and previous editions. It doesn't feel like a clone of D&D Next at all (though I of course can't state the reasons). It has its own approach at blending editions and this may appeal to different gamers for different reasons. 

Bottom line: I find tons to like with this game and I recommend that gamers check it out. This is likely to be a very cool game. Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo should be really proud of what they have done here.


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 24, 2012)

Walker N. Waistz said:


> Actually, there is a lot of 4E in there. According to that thread Matrix Sorcica linked to, 13th Age''s playtest had healing surges, melee basic attacks, at-will/encounter/daily powers, standardized attack / defense scaling, level tiers, and dragonborn.
> 
> So I am pretty sure "let's fix D&D `cuz 4E sucks" is not the motivation here.




There are definitely some things that feel '4e-ish'. OTOH my observation is that there is really not a trace mechanically of 4e in the game. Recoveries (HS-like mechanic) works quite differently, you get a number of them, much like HS per adventure. You can use one automatically as an action. Beyond that you have to make checks to access more during that encounter. Recoveries use a die plus CON bonus for what you recover, so they decline in value quickly as you level up (though there may well be some ways to scale them). There is 'Recovery based healing'. I think the overall feel of that mechanic (and damage/healing in general) is probably the most 4e-like aspect of the system.

There are 'MBAs', but the system doesn't really have 'attack powers', at least for weapons. Any weapon attack you make is generally based on your basic attack with sauce added, though maybe the monk is structured a bit differently. Basic Attack is also not standardized, but is a feature of each class. The cleric for instance attacks with WIS + Level vs AC; W+STR damage on a hit, level damage on a miss. Naturally every class HAS such an attack, but they are all slightly different. Some classes like wizards won't generally rely on them. 

There really is no AEDU type system in the sense that 4e has. Every class has its own specific mechanics, so there's nothing to base such a system on. Some character abilities ARE either at-will, encounter, or daily (I guess, I didn't really see a daily, but I'm pretty sure many/most spells can only be cast once). The result is much more like AD&D in that sense than anything you would compare to 4e. 

To-hit does scale by level, but this is true of all editions of D&D. There are tiers, to an extent, but they are more a story guideline from what I could see. There are some 'standards' to the tiers in that stuff you get at level 4 and some advancements at the 'tier break' are more powerful. It is hard to actually compare 13a here to other D&D-likes, the level system is quite different from any edition of D&D. 

Yes, there are dragonborn, which is cool. That was IMHO the biggest clear nod to 4e in the game though. 

In some ways 13a does build on 4e concepts. Characters are pretty tough right off from level 1, DEFINITELY not 'average joes looking to make good'. Probably more so than in 4e. Recoveries are similar to HS. There are defenses instead of saves, though they work a little differently. I think 4e inspired some of 13a, but I think mechanically most of it owes more to late 2nd edition than 4e. MCing is pretty much AD&D style, and the fighter with his maneuvers is VERY reminiscent of the 2e options + tactics book fighter. Some classes are a lot like a hybrid of 2e and 3e concepts, like the bard (which has no less than 4 different power systems in one class!). 

Overall it feels a bit like playing mid to high level AD&D characters, but without all the magic at level 1. Leveling is probably the most unique thing. With only 10 levels each one is a BIG jump in power. OTOH with no XP and using the incremental gain rule (you get part of your level benefits over the course of the previous level) I suspect it feels a good bit different. The DM could stretch a game out to be like a long epic scale campaign ala 30 levels of 4e or compress the whole thing down to 3 months of play with a new level almost every week.


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## Zaruthustran (May 25, 2012)

thzero said:


> Not going to lie, this sounds horrific to me.  Perhaps I'm just a gronard that has been playing AD&D+ ON BATTLEMAPS since the early 80s, but this thing sorta irks me right off.  "Players spend more time imagining the battles in their heads and less time counting squares."  That is just closed minded in its own way.  If they are so interested in just allowing me and my gaming group to have fun, why are they forcing us to play in their style?  Because of it, I'll just stick to 3e/Pathfinder/M&M/GURPs/etc.
> 
> Yes, I have played in plenty of games without maps and in general the combat goes to hell in a hand basket quit quickly, and without fail.  Even a simple map with simple markers just helps things quite nicely.  Why put some much time and effort into interesting combat, but don't bother to account for spatial relations between the combatants and their environment?  That is just as important as some fancy move with a sword or a spell.





Tweet said 13A doesn't require a grid. He didn't forbid you from using one, if you wish. One of the key features he kept mentioning was that 13A is designed to be customizable to your specific group's playstyle. So if you like a grid, you're welcome to use one. 

And, remember the pedigree of Tweet and Heinsoo. They made 3rd and 4th, and D&D Miniatures (among many other games). It would be very... _unusual _ for them to create a game that didn't "account for spatial relations between combatants."


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## AbdulAlhazred (May 25, 2012)

Zaruthustran said:


> Tweet said 13A doesn't require a grid. He didn't forbid you from using one, if you wish. One of the key features he kept mentioning was that 13A is designed to be customizable to your specific group's playstyle. So if you like a grid, you're welcome to use one.
> 
> And, remember the pedigree of Tweet and Heinsoo. They made 3rd and 4th, and D&D Miniatures (among many other games). It would be very... _unusual _ for them to create a game that didn't "account for spatial relations between combatants."




Yeah. I think 13a combat seemed a bit quick (in rounds) to support deep tactics. I don't remember there being mention of things like 'combat advantage' or even a rule for surprise (maybe there is one, I only skimmed the combat rules since I wasn't the DM). Tactically I think the game is oriented around emphasizing cinematic action type sequences vs tactical play. We DID drop some minis on our map and move them around for reference, which worked fine, though probably for a lot of fights it isn't really doing a ton for you. If the DM wants to push tactics a bit more then I'd say granting a bonus for say flanking an enemy and various things would work fine and is in keeping with the general concept of the game. I agree with the sentiment that for more elaborate combats using minis is a help. OTOH for your average "party beats on a small number of orcs" kind of combat they're probably redundant (and 4e could really have benefited from a way to go with that).


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## Aehrlon (Jun 3, 2012)

Hmm, well all speculation aside, I'm going to give it a try.  I'm very intrigued by the Icon/Faction having impacts on the over-riding story, character background, etc.  I should disclose that I've always done pretty detailed backgrounds for most of my Fantasy RP characters and will continue to do so.  In a system that actively encourages you to do so... Um, yeah, sign me up.  So far, I like what I'm hearing/seeing about this new game more-so than I've seen on 5E D&D... no disrespect implied or intended.  It has it's merits too (I've run a play-test of it).


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## Isaac Chalk (Jun 12, 2012)

Finally, the NDA has been lifted, and all us playtesters can talk about *13th Age!*

I'm doing so, here.


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