mtvessel | Icons and Iconoclasts

Dec 2017
13th Age - Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet – Pelgrane Press, 2013
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Roleplaying games have been a big part of my life. I started playing them as a socially awkward teenager and became rather less socially awkward as a result. Through them I have made several life-long friends whom I love dearly and who have mostly stopped me from becoming a crazed hermit. So as far as I am concerned, roleplaying games matter vitally. Which is why I am going to attempt to review one here.

I picked this one because it is co-authored by Jonathan Tweet, the designer of Everway, the game I have been running for the last twenty years. Everway has some lovely ideas - I still think the use of tarot-like cards in place of dice is inspired, and his all-too-brief notes on the city itself were enough to inspire my most sophisticated attempt at developing a fantasy metropolis - but suffers from a few flaws, particularly in the magic and experience systems. Having overseen the development of third edition Dungeons and Dragons, I was interested to see whether Tweet's follow-up game would address these issues.

13th Age is a D20 game that borrows its basic mechanics from the Open Game Licence version of D&D. These are engagingly simple. All skill checks use a d20 to which a stat-based bonus or penalty is added. If a target value (typically 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25) is reached, the skill check succeeds. Natural 1s are always fumbles and natural 20s are always critical hits. Combat uses the same system with character's weapon skill being checked against the armour class (AC) of their opponent. Successful hits cause loss of hit points - lose half and you are staggered, fighting at a penalty. If you lose all your hit points, your character will die unless treated or revived.

This game adds a few tweaks but still manages to keep it simple. Firstly, your character's level (from 1 to 10) is added to the stat modifier for skill checks, thus enabling difficult ones to become easier with experience. Bonuses can also come from relevant backgrounds (such as "street rat", "merchant" or "member of the city watch"), a nice character-based alternative to fiddly skill lists. In combat, fights are shortened by use of the escalation die, a centrally-placed d6 that is increased by 1 for each round of the fight and which gets added to the players' to-hit rolls. The escalation die can also trigger certain monster abilities when a particular number is reached. One slightly ugly area is saving throws, a feature of D&D that I have never liked. 13th Age at least gets rid of the versus system (vs poison, vs death, vs breath weapon etc.) but replaces it with Magical Defence (MD) or Physical Defence (PD) depending on whether the attack has magical or physical effects. PD is particularly confusing when you also have Armour Class.

Character creation is similar to D&D - you roll or assign your stats, choose a race (which now seems a somewhat unfortunate term - Paizo's Pathfinder game has recently adopted ancestry, which I rather prefer) and then a class, which are also deeply familiar (barbarian, fighter, rogue, sorceror, cleric, paladin, ranger etc.). There is a classic Jonathan Tweet mechanic called the "one unique thing", which as at its name implies is a feature that only your character has, for example "I am the only dwarf in the Elf Queen's army" or (one I came up with and really want to use) "I am the only one who knows where the bodies are buried".

The classes, which would perhaps be better referred to as careers, are where things get seriously crunchy. Each has a unique resource or mechanism that impacts the game - mostly, it must be said, in combat. For example, fighters can switch between manoeuvres, bards have songs, clerics choose domains of power, rangers have animal companions, and so on. These are mostly mediated by Talents, essentially class subcategories that are not explained as well as they could be, and by spell lists. In addition you choose Feats, which are bonuses that enhance particular talents or spells and which have Adventurer, Champion or Epic effects depending on your character level. The combination of Talents, Spells and Feats gives you a list of abilities which increase as you go up in level. The presentation here leaves a lot to be desired and will be deeply offputting to system-averse players. All the talents, spells and feats that your class could possibly have are presented in long boring lists which make for very dull reading. A level-based presentation akin to levelling up in a video game - "here are the cool new things you get to do at level 2!" - would be much more engaging.

So far, all this may sound very familiar. Where 13th Age really differs from D&D is in its background, and in particular its concept of Icons. These are powerful beings that rule the world. Unlike the gods, they definitely exist, and they are mortal. New Icons have arisen and there have been several versions of some of the others. They are essentially Jungian fantasy stereotypes and this is reflected in their names - the Archmage, the Emperor, the High Druid, the Elf Queen, and so on. Each has their capital and their followers, and each player character has relationships - positive, negative, or complicated - with at least two of them. For a game master, this is really nice as it provides a starting point for a web of connections and possible plots. In addition, at the start of each adventure the players roll a d6 for each of their Icon relationships and if they roll a 5 or a 6, the game master is obliged to try to work that relationship into the scenario in some way. This is perhaps not so nice for the game master if the plot they had in mind doesn't fit the relationships that were rolled, but could be the start of some interesting improvisation.

The game master section is generally fine. The monster descriptions were, I thought, a bit uninspired with a familiar range of orcs, kobolds, demons, dragons, giants and the like with few quirky or original ideas, but I liked the simplification of the stats (monsters have fixed AC, MD, PD and hit points and a couple of attacks each) which should make running combats relatively straightforward. I particularly liked the rules for scaling fights to the level of the players and the handy idea of mook mobs, a group of easily disposable monsters that share hit points and initiative. The description of the world and culture of 13th Age, however, has problems. Geographically it is okay - there is a nice map - but the history is seriously lacking. The authors say that this is deliberate to allow you to make the game your own, but given that this is the Thirteenth Age, figuring out what happened in each of the previous twelve is going to be a lot of work. Still, there are some interesting concepts to play with, such as the living dungeons that erupt from deep underground.

The final section is on magical items and doubles down on the D&D idea that they have personality. All magic items have quirks, traits that they will try to confer on their owner. For example, a pair of bracers that adds to your AC might also tempt you to take more risks in fights. This makes magic items more than just tedious stat boosters and is typical of the rules as a whole, which add ideas that encourage role-playing and storytelling to a familiar D&D framework. Like Everway, I can see some flaws - the problem of keeping the party together when the players have different and possibly conflicting icon relationships isn't really addressed, something would have to be done about the overly complicated classes for the rules-averse, and significant preparation would be needed to fill in the missing history and geography and to decide precisely what the Icons are up to - but I for one would like to give it a try.

Icons and Iconoclasts

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