[OOC] Open Discussion

[hippo]

A discussion on how to organize this as a resource for 13th Age games here on the site.

Info dump.

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About 13th Age 13th Age is a recent d20 fantasy roleplaying game from Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo, the lead developers of D&D 3e and 4e respectively. Called their “love letter to D&D”, 13th Age provides a familiar D&D experience enhanced with story-telling hooks that put players at the heart of building a campaign. I believe its combination of innovative story mechanics and streamlined combat makes 13th Age a great option for a play-by-post site like RPG Crossing.

Innovative Story Mechanics 13th Age has some innovative story mechanics that help to build interesting characters with strong ties to the campaign. One Unique Thing Each player character is unique is some fashion Icons As the most powerful NPCs in the game, the Icons are the divided and combative heart and soul of the world. The PCs are among the very few who have dedicated relationships with the Icons - either as allies or adversaries. As they reach the epic tier the PCs are also the candidates to replace them in the coming of the 14th Age. Each character has a pool of Icon relationship points to distribute among the Icons. Each relationship is either Positive, Negative or Conflicted. PCs can put all of their Icon relationships into a single Icon or spread them among a few. Throughout the course of the game (each game session in face to face play) the players roll a die for each Icon point they have. If the die comes up as a 5 or a 6 they gain some advantage during that session's play from the relationship. This could be anything from keep help to move or direct the story, to a new magic item for the character. On a roll of a 6, the benefit comes with no strings attached. A roll of a 5, however, introduces complications. The GM also uses the Icon relationships to drive the story forward - on both the adventure and campaign levels. By investing their Icons points the players instruct the GM on the sorts of things that are important to their characters and hint at the story concepts they wish to explore. Backgrounds

Streamlined Combat Mechanics Escalation Die Simplified Monsters/NPCs Fixed Damage Triggered Powers Easy to create/customize/reflavor Abstract Positioning Engaged Nearby Far away Simplified mechanics No flanking, cover, concealment

Interesting Classes Each plays differently Talents, flexible attacks, spell progression Simplified feats associated with powers Reduced min/maxing Official Classes Barbarian Bard Cleric Fighter Paladin Ranger Rogue Sorcerer Wizard Chaos Mage Commander Druid Monk Necromancer Occultist

Creating Campaigns Tales of the 13th Age Organized Play adventures Easy to convert adventures from any version (1e, 2e, 3.5/Pathfinder, 4e)

13th Age Materials Pelgrane Press/Fire Opal 13th Age SRD 13th Age Core Book 13 True Ways 13th Age Bestiary Tales of the 13th Age - Organized Play Adventures Book of Loot (pre-order) Shadows of Eldolan (pre-order) Fire Opal/Moon Design 13th Age in Glorantha (kickstarting) Glorantha Source Guide (kickstarting) Kobold Press Midgard Bestiary for the 13th Age Deep Magic for the 13th Age 13thage.org Icons Classes Races Icon Magazine Pregen Characters Adventures

[hippo]

Okay - I just simply decided to start putting in placeholders for information. hvg3 and Tilal can start editing the placeholder pieces as they see fit.

[Tilal]

What were your thoughts on the class entries? A stat dump from the SRD? A basic overview, including things like complications, things that need to be adjusted for PbP, reskinning ideas? A combination of the two?

[hippo]

I hadn't been thinking about a stat dump though the basic info might not be bad. I am not trying to mimic the SRD info - just give basics. Perhaps a listing of basic traits and talents along with special stuff.

Fighters: Skilled Intercept, Extra Recovery, Flexible Manuevers. Fairly Simple.
Bards: Spells, Songs, Battle Cries (Flexible Attacks) More complex.
Druids: Complex. Talents provide spells or attacks etc.
Chaos Mage: Random abilities each round.
Commander and Occulist: Reaction based - perhaps not a great choice for pbp unless very detailed instructions.

Things like that. It could expand to more information about them, but for now just the basics would be good.

[Tilal]

Good, I think we can leave the stats out, and just link to a hyperlinked SRD. Where is the one you were working on? I Googled 13th Age SRD and couldn't find it. I usually refer to the one at 13thagesrd.com, but if you'd prefer I use yours I'm fine with that!

[hippo]

I hadn't decided which to link to yet, or if I should just htmlize the current version and put it here. The original version is word or pdf docs. The incomplete wiki version is okay. 13thagesrd.com is probably a good place to go - but I am not fond of the advertisements. I'll think about that tonight and see how bad the quick html conversion would be - or how tough it would be to convert to bbcode.

[Tilal]

Between all of the writing you have to do Hippo, I'd advise against putting more work on your plate with the wiki right now. I'd rather have an appearance from Anaxos or have the game start earlier then have you migrate the SRD to the forums or finish the incomplet wiki, but that's just me =}

I'm gonna start putting together the main entries for your advertisement (uniques/backgrounds/Icon relationships) and see if I can finish that up quickly!

[hippo]

Yep - not planning on anything else currently. We can link to 13thagesrd.com for now for the various classes. I want a link to the official SRD download page in the resources section.

I have thoughts on a post for Anaxos in the old thread for tonight. I have gotten two Icons finished and will work on the rest this afternoon while waiting for builds at work.

Thanks for diving in with the resources!

[Tilal]

First pass at One Unique Things done, I'll try and get the other two up later today/tonight!

[hippo]

Thanks - the Uniques entry is great! I had started on backgrounds as you saw, when I had a few minutes this morning. This content is easier to whip out than the actual setting work. I need to work on my introduction for the overview section as well.

[Tilal]

Thanks! Two down, just finished the first pass on Icon Relationships, I'll try and fill out the background entry now!

[Tilal]

Alright, that's three! Backgrounds complete! I recommend against requiring that all the blanks in the reference section be filled in before you start your game application - that's all that's really needed for players to build out their character concepts you're requiring.

Anything else for your recruitment thread you'd like me to work on in the references?

[hippo]

Tilal - we should probably make clear who wrote what section. Thinking about adding a section for authors at the bottom of each post (as they all claim to be posted by me)

Added little tags to the Information thread. Should work fine.

[Aethera]

Are you still considering migrating the SRD content here, hippo? Not sure how much you've decided on, but that's the sort of administrivia that I'm capable of filling in as I find the time. I'm going to stay away from the freeform reference entries and leave that to those of you who're DMing games, but I can conquer all copy/pasting! Alternately, if there's an HTML version of the SRD already, I bet I could read through it and ask Birched if he'd give us a place to put it. My web-savvy may be minor compared to some, but I could handle that too, probably.

Also, for the classes discussion: whether or not you want SRD materials here, I'd recommend some of the text from the beginning of each SRD class entry, since they give a wide overview of both the skill level of tackling the mechanics and the characters that could suit the class. If you want to go further than that, I'd suggest a quick paragraph explaining how you could use these mechanics reflavored/reskinned for other purposes. I can offer Rain as a demo of this, how she's not a typical bard. Anaxos might be another example case, but I don't know if his shapeshifting is the only thing you've changed there. Other reskinned characters would offer insights to how a player could use these mechanics to suit almost any character concept. This might be better as an addendum "Flavoring Mechanics to Fit" post at the end of the characters thread.

EDIT: At your convenience, could you add a "Races" thread? The SRD content is pretty skimpy, I'd like to embellish a bit with excerpts from the book. Likewise, a "Character Creation Overview" thread would be something I'd like to see here (I'll try and determine what of the book is OGL and what isn't). But I'd rather see your name on the posts... unless you don't care, in which case I'll wing it.

[Aethera]

Update: I've extended the overview posts that I can and linked them all into the first post. I plugged in a few links to the SRD and copied the explanations of the abstract positioning system, but you may want to read through that and see if it's too much or could be better explained.

I've gone through the Classes thread and posted the overview text from the core book in each of the core book's classes, but I don't have 13 True Ways, so I can't help with the other six. I don't mind copying the SRD in entirety, it'd be handy to have the info on site. But with or without mechanics, I think it would be good to include a comment from one of the DMs about any trouble they've had tweaking the class for PBP. I know in his ad hippo mentioned the Commander and the Occultist(?) from 13 True Ways being mostly reactionary so not likely well suited to PBP... that should be included prominently in each class post so people are aware while they're debating character mechanics.