Quote from: John Morrow;548396I won't make a habit of it and will pull it if he really wants it pulled.

I'm certainly not suggesting you ought to pull the one you already posted, to be clear.

Quote from: StormBringer;548418I'm not terribly thrilled with it as a power trigger, monsters or character.  I would be more likely to tack on fatigue penalties or something of the like.  Bonuses would be quite rare.

Odd choice - you're going for penalties rather than bonuses, as the mechanic is intended.  But, you know, your game, your rules.

There's also variable stuff like "roll under the current escalation die level and get X" so that it doesn't work out as a straight bonus, but you get the chance of a Brucie Bonus - and the longer you wait, the more chance you have of it coming off -but sometimes its worth the gamble earlier on.

Each to his own though, if you're not sold.

I think one of my largest turnoffs to this game is the implied setting and the fictional entities which are tied so closely to the characters. The system as written pretty much demands that you run the game in a world that includes all these entities whether they fit the campaign or not.

Thats enough of a dealbreaker without the snowflake treatment.

Pathinder was 3e with extra crunch on top.

Stands to reason that 13th Age will be 4e with extra Forge on top.

If they want to go after the 4e audience, I think they're Doing It Right.

Quote from: Melan;548179I hope the people it was designed for have metric tons of fun with it. I also hope the same people shut up about other people enjoying D&D now and forever, AMEN.

Also this. Best post ever.

Dear Lovely TheRPGsite Members,

The 13th Age pre-order is out now.

I must say that it's been a close contest for amusement value between this forum and somethingawful, though therpgsite wins on invective, and somethingawful on useful feedback. Some of the comments on the initial rpgsite thread made Rob and I laugh out loud.

signed

Special Snowflake Simon

Since the NDA has been lifted, I'll post my group's (near) full playtest feedback (with names blotted out to protect the innocent). We played a level 1 to level 3 campaign, and finished our feedback for the 'first round' (end of April 2012).

As you read this, you may or may not want to bear in mind that I'm a huge Rob Heinsoo fanboy, and over at Enworld I wrote him my special heart warming tribute back when he got fired at WotC. The playtest starts with a verdict and then goes into specifics which may or may not have been rectified in the game that you may or may not want to buy when it comes out. Nothing in the preview material released since, however, has encouraged our group to reverse their judgement, and I'll be hugely surprised if Rob Heinsoo manages to make this game into something worthwhile in the short time span he has left.

--------

Our verdict on 13th Age: Initially curious and impressed by at least some parts of the game (which we
outline below), our final verdict is that the game is nowhere near a finished design. It feels
incomplete in many parts, and the math of the game seems very, very off. Most importantly, even if
the game was polished to a much higher degree (which will take robust, lengthy playtesting up to the
highest play levels), the game offers too little new that inclines us to keep playing this game. The
ICONS relationship system is not developed very well, compared to what other RPGs like Pendragon
have to offer. The design of the combat-mechanics and PC powers is vastly inferior to 4th edition:
stripping out tactical manoevering should end up with MUCH faster combats, but does not. Combats
do NOT move fast enough to pay off for the loss in tactically interesting choices. Most of our combats
lasted 80 minutes each, unless the GM threw in some twist (e.g., a goblin shaman who has a figurine
on his neck which can conjure a green dragon – but every round there’s a 20% chance that the
dragon will attack the shaman instead of the PCs… this took down the shaman’s hp really fast PLUS
cancelled the dragon’s whole round of actions, actions which he’d otherwise use to damage the PCs).
Our overall impression is that the playtest document was released MUCH too early. We STRONGLY
advise the designers and the publisher not to release the game prematurely. If the ICONS system is
not worked out much more substantially, and the math polished, we predict the game will get played
very little beyond initial online hype.
On the upside, there are a number of mechanical innovations we are very impressed with and will
port over to our 4th edition games. But this means that, beyond dumpster diving for interesting
tidbits, we give 13A as a system a wide pass. Our group will not buy this game or supplements for it,
and we have no interest to take part in the later stages of the playtest. The game needs to have a
much more robust and complete base before design of (say) higher levels of play can even
commence, and fuller write-ups for magic items and feats and monsters can begin.

Onto specifics. These come in “Early Impressions” and “Final Impressions”. They are importantly
different. We were initially favourable towards the game, but by level 3 we knew that we wanted no
more to do with the game. I hope the comments can explain this to you and are of value to you.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS
[...]3. The cleric class does not work. We had a level 1 cleric with 0 Strength-bonus. He could hit
foes in melee as reliably as the other classes (rogue and barbarian), but he did no damage
worth mentioning (doing 2 damage when even a level 1 minion/mook has 8 hp is basically a
waste of a turn). Also, he was far too limited w.r.t. to his healing output: a daily, and then
two uses of an encounter power (like Healing Word)… where is the at-will with the healing
on-rider? So, since the class failed to deal any damage, or deal any significant output of
healing over 7+ rounds of combat… it’s basically a tank. It can soak damage, because it got
high defense values. This class needs work.

4. A class that does work, however, is the rogue. It’s momentum mechanics works excellently,
in its own right and in synergy with the other classes. Halving incoming damage by giving up
momentum – that’s an excellent defender/tank mechanics. It seems fairly well balanced (the
rogue gives up a lot in return for soaking damage), and it makes sense from an in-game point
of view: the rogue dodges damage (thus avoiding it), but loses his combat edge. Also,
mechanically, this enables the rogue to be a skirmisher on the battle field – he can afford to
move away from the cleric, whose healing requires the cleric to TOUCH the rogue. If the
rogue was more of a fragile striker, he could not afford to move out of touch range of the
cleric.

5. Stuff that really works: is the new skill system (1), and the escalation dice (2). (2) because it
avoids combats dragging out (‘grind’) – it increases PC reliability of hitting. Plus, the dynamics
it introduces at the table make sense story-wise, give a narrative progression to the battle.
We DID introduce the house rule that the escalation dice only increases when at least half of
the PC party hit successfully on their turn that round (2 out of 4 PCs) – otherwise it’d stay
static. We felt this simulates the growing escalation and increase in momentum on the side
of PCs. – (1) is great because it encourages players to come up with reasons how to involve
their background, and even which ability to use. So players will think in which situations and
how exactly to bring in their (e.g.) being a professional minstrel, and they will also use it
differently – with CHA, or with DEX, etc. The guy who was the bounty hunter will interact
socially with the bounty hunters at the tavern, even if he doesn’t have the highest social
ability modifier – gone are the days when the question was ‘so who’s got the highest
Diplomacy score?’. Something ANALOGOUS is missing from the attack maneuvers and spells
– e.g. the cleric’s melee attack (which, see above, caused to little damage): why does not IT
key into the cleric’s main ability?

6. Players disliked rolling recovery dice. At low levels, when it’s important not to get very bad
returns (rolling a 1 or 2 on the dice), the system makes it possible for characters to get
gimped for their choice of a standard action that turn. At higher levels, when the larger dice
pools create more stable average means (distribution around the mean more concentrated)
THEN the designers suddenly suggest ‘you can average the die roll result’ – but THIS
(averaging) is precisely what players would need at level 1, to be able to plan tactically when
a reserve is a good option and when it isn’t (e.g. if your chance is to recover 1d6+1 hp per
round, you aren’t going to your standard action on it but rather fight one of the 2 mooks who
causes you 3 hp loss each per turn).

7. Monster numbers are wayyyy off, and mixing monsters of different levels (as in the opening
‘Tough’ encounter) doesn’t work as easily as in 4E, because the monsters scale so wildly.
Why does a level 1 mook have a ridiculous attack bonus of +6, an AC of 16, and 8 hp? Sure,
4E minions were a laughing stock (1hp is too little, especially when area attacks come
sweeping in), but in 13A the mooks are too powerful: there’s a noticable lack of area powers
(no more minion sweeping), and the damage dealt doesn’t always wipe out more than 1
minion (sometimes not even 1). Their AC is too high – here the game seems to say ‘look, by
round 3, the escalation die is at 3, so we monster designers have to look for a sensible AC
score, and then increase it by 3, because the PCs will be hitting our monsters with +3’.

8. It’s not clear that the icons system works best when the icons (the entities the PCs relate
to)are people instead of factions. Factions seem to work better, when things like favour or
‘having a problem with’ arises: in a large campaign world it makes more sense for PCs to
have good rapport with the mages’ guild, not the archmage. Also, that way, it’s easy to see
how versatile the icons system is, genre-wise. Imagine using it in a Call of Cthulhu game,
where the mob, the police, a group of mythology sages etc. are all factions in a game, and
you can then have relations with these groups, relations which change. Speaking of, these
relationships should be things that change IN GAMEPLAY (new numerical values of strength,
and relationship type changes from e.g. conflicted to negative) – not by leveling up (‘you got
a feat, now burn it to (re)create your extant relationships’). There should be a bit more
mechanical support for relationships in gameplay. It should be something that opens itself up
to players wanting to change their relationships with the icons during the campaign – a goal
like that should translate into clear mechanical possibilities, even if the procedure is largely
story driven (say, by the player’s decisions how his PC socially interacts with the
icons/factions). – Another, completely different alternative is to envisage the icons as
spiritual archetypes, or personality profiles: players gravitate from one icon to another, or
have conflicted relationships with these profiles. Documenting and playing through these
relationship changes would replace the entire alignment system, e.g. E.g. take the crusader –
that’s the type of PC who doesn’t care about the losses, as long as the gains are right. A PC
could start out taking over that profile very strongly, then grow distant from it in the course
of the campaign. – Overall, we felt that the icons system barely touched what it could
possibly be. It’s a cool idea that instantly catches on, but then leaves you out in the cold.

Final Impressions

1. The amount of free easy healing allocated outside combat has been escalated even further
than it was in 4th edition, which makes it even harder for combats to have meaningful
consequences beyond themselves. Our group preference is that, at least inside a campaign
context, encounters should have tangible consequences on player resources.

2. Basic math. It appeared that, as PCs go up, the proportions between: PC damage, monster
hit points, and PC hit points healed per recovery – that these proportions all changed for the
game to become ever more and more swingy. So as PCs go up, any encounter they go in
could be their last, but they could also win it very quickly. And then, once the encounter was
over, the game became very boring and any tension during the encounter evaporated,
because the PCs were drowning in an over abundance of free out-of-combat healing (see
point 1.). Maybe the designers intended this, but the result does not synch with our
preferred game style.

3. Monster design is very restrictive, with all the interesting synergy effects *between*
monsters stripped out. The monsters are so simple that the GM felt bored to run any
monster more than once.

4. Escalation die, positive comments: we stuck to our house rule that the dice only goes up if at
least half of the PCs each hit at least once that round. We added the rule that if NO PC scores
a hit that round, the escalation die goes down by 1 (to a minimum of 1). – It was nice to see
monsters like the dragon use the escalation die on its attack rolls. This triggered interesting
design options, such as giving monsters their own escalation die, and then the monsters’ die
impacting the PCs’ and vice versa. So some monsters should have their own ‘escalation’ (like
the dragon getting angrier). But at no point should this become so complex that EACH
monster on the table has its own escalation mechanic – that would be too clumsy, and drag
the game too much down. – FINAL suggestion: instead of using a die, you could use an
escalation scale, with numbers from 1 to 10. At low levels, the max result is a 6, but it could
go up later (or in very special contexts only). Comparable components are: the party tension
meter in “Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay” 3rd edition, and the momentum meter in “Battles of
Westeros” (two FFG games).

5. Escalation die, negative comments: the mutual impact of monster design and escalation die
become the more noticable the more we played. Because almost all monsters did not benefit
from the (or an) escalation die, they start of (first round of combat) with ridiculously high tohit
bonuses. A level 3 monster will hit a level 3 PC when it rolls a 6 or higher. (We also
noticed that monsters have no mechanical abilities to aid each other hitting better; not that
it was needed, but it means some more tactical complexity is stripped out with has NOTHING
to do with positioning.) By comparison, PCs will score on a 8, some only on a 10, and some
even only at a 12. So the game is programmed such that PCs will only hit reliably once the
escalation die is at least at 3. This did not always deliver good results at the table. We suspect
the to-hit and defense numbers of both PCs and monsters could be much better attuned,
and the role of the escalation die re-assessed. It’s a fun mechanic that should absolutely stay
in the final product, but the mechanic should be much more robustly designed.

6. The lack of tactical positioning hurts character classes that traditionally benefit from
standing in the rear. A traditional party line up has the front line fighters guarding the rear
line glass cannons (strikers, wizards). 13A needs to provide something similar, as e.g. wizards
ARE much more vulnerable than other PC classes: first, they have much weaker recovery
dice. Take level 3. The wizard will get hit (and reliably so – see point 5.) each round by a 3rd
level monster, taking 3d6 damage. To take second wind, the wizard needs to blow his
standard action, and will heal 3d6 damage. IF, on top of that, the wizard takes ongoing
damage (which happened frequently), the wizard is out of the game and has nothing to
prevent it. This meant that our wizard player sought secure positions on the battle field,
knowing full well that if he was even momentarily exposed to melee danger, he’d be dead
meat (even if not instantly, then certainly so a couple of rounds later due to the math). What
is missing are better rules for the front line fighters intercepting incoming monsters. Because
the front liners can only engage 1 monster at a time, and once engaged cannot intercept, this
means that numerically superior groups of monsters will swarm PC rear liners. We first saw
this with the 13A “Introductory Adventure” (where we had 4 PCs against 19 monsters – as a
GM I ruled that only 1d8 of the 10 mooks engaged the PCs each round), and later encounters
made it increasingly more obvious. You don’t need to write up rules which bring back the
grid, or distance measuring, or intricate rules of partial vs. superior cover. But you need some
way of writing one PC ‘meat-shielding’ another PC back into the game.

7. Wizard Spells, positive feedback. Some magic spells work very nicely in a manner
reminiscent of 3rd edition. In one encounter 2 wights and 3 zombie ogres ganged up on the
rogue. The wizard (3rd level) got out his most powerful spell, and blasted off the whole lot (47
damage each, to creatures that averaged on 45 hp), while giving negligible/tolerable
collateral fire on the rogue (one eight, iirc). This was really nice, reminiscent of the days
when wizards didn’t have much to go by, but when they got out their big guns the DM could
basically write off one encounter (or, as here, teach him the lesson ‘never run your monsters
together into a convenient target area’). BUT, our wizard player felt differently about this
spell allocation – see next point.

8. Wizard Spells, negative/critical Why do spells only increase at odd levels? Why not have
spells that increase +1 damage die [D] at EACH level? Or how about giving the wizard spells
that give bonus effect for trading lower damage dice? In the latter case, the wizard player
could choose his spell to have one of these effects (or to have spells which, combined, give
him the following options): [D6]+stun or [D8]+push or [D10] (damage only). Also: noted lack
of area spells. And: at level 1: 2 at-wills and 2 daily’s, no encounter spells – this seemed odd,
because e.g. thunderwave (with its 0 malus) seemed more appropriate for an encounter
spell. – Final point: the spell allocation progression felt off, like mixing the worst elements of
3rd and 4th edition D&D. Either the spell levels increase or the number of spells increases…
this forces an odd choice, and the end result is underwhelming. – The basic idea, that players
could customize their spell allocation by either empowering their low level at wills or giving
that spell slot to higher level spells was appreciated (although it didn’t feel novel to anyone
having played 4th edition psions), but the implementation didn’t feel like it works yet.

9. Out of combat healing, mechanically. We did not know how to factor in the cleric’s spells for
out of combat healing – should we add his +d8 roll to EACH recovery spent outside combat?
The 13A playtest document is very unclear on this point. It needs to clarify (a) how the cleric
spells really work outside combats, (b) whether (as the playtest document suggests) the
spells are to be ‘used as rituals’… which would mean: they are free to cast, but take THREE
HOURS (!) of casting time (so: no option for short rests), and (c) whether the cleric’s spells
are regained for use in the next combat, or whether the roll to regain them only applies
AFTER a(nother) combat.

10. Cleric: his number of healing spells during combat doesn’t go up as he levels up. Healing
during combat is not that much more powerful, it’s rather the out-of-combat healing that
escalates up as PCs gain levels. (Probably a conscious design choice, but we didn’t like the
effect on play at all.)

11. Rituals: standardizing the casting time to 3 hours does not work, and effectively writes a lot
of interesting (and not overly powerful) utility magic out of the game. ‘Comprehend
languages’, ‘Floating disk’… PCs will need and want such things much quicker and not wait 3
hours.

12. Converting and customizing monsters. I ran the second half of our campaign off a monster
cheat sheet I had created, and which I attach in PDF. Having the standardized monsters
ready, apart from monsters with special abilities, simply meant that I could come up with
encounters on the fly. Also, using these numbers/abilities was easy – I could convert 4th
edition adventures on the fly. Together with the summary of the status conditions before me
on the table, and a brief list of the price and effect of the most common magic items (like
healing potions), I felt I had the entire system at my finger tips. (I would feel a 13A DM
screen could profit from containing that information.) I re-themed monsters on the fly.
Green dragon? Just take the black dragon and make it cause poison damage. Zombies? Just
take the ogre, make it non-large (reduce hp by half), and make it permanently slowed.
Speaking of, I added some 4E status conditions to convert 4E monsters: ‘slowed’ means that
it takes a PC or monster two move actions to move from one combat zone to another nearby
combat zone. (I don’t know if dividing a combat area into several combat ZONES was
intended, but that’s what I did if I ran large encounters: areas were either adjacent, or if nonadjacent
were considered ‘far away’ from each other.)

13. Traps/Environmental hazards either followed a template (given in the cheat sheet), give or
take damage type (falling damage, fire damage, …), or were improvised on the fly (‘pool of
death’, containing zombie limbs that are congatious with the black plague – would require
cleansing if not avoided, and the stench causes -2 to hit for all nearby PCs).
Traps ‘worked’, but only because I was experienced with how to handle them in 4th edition
(recall that the original 4E DMG left out the ’10 rules how to create your own traps’). The
book should contain much better advice here, on how to place triggers apart from traps, how
to combine them with monsters, and so on. It’s not D&D without the traps.

14. Campaign world: one of my earliest thoughts as a GM (even before I had read the rules) was
this. Even if the rules are not good enough to replace 4th edition for us, maybe Pelgrane will
create good adventures and campaign supplements, or further add-ons we can port over into
our 4th edition games. Sometimes only a 3PP/OGL product can accomplish what the licenser
cannot (Paizo’s “Kingmaker” campaign would be a case in point: by 2006, WotC had
abandoned making interesting, exploration-oriented and kingdom-building campaigns, so it
was great that at least some other company provided that for groups interested in it).
However, I must say, the description of the world and the intro adventures were not very
promising. The world felt very flat, apart from a handful of cool names like “Santa Cora”. It
felt like a weak rip-off of Forgotten Realms or even Eberron, often. And then there’s the time
honored ‘let’s find some arbitrary entry point for monster category X in our setting’, so we
get again a place which throws demons into the world… Demon Wastes in Eberron,
Worldwound in (Paizo’s) Golarion, etc… yarn. On a charitable assumption, maybe this section
didn’t receive much attention yet and was quickly scribbled together. In any event, IF the
ICONS description is tied to the Dragon Empire setting (or whatever it’s going to be called),
then that setting better be good.

15. Missing stuff: how to create your own ICONS. How to create your own PC mechanics, your
own monsters, your own traps. How one should write adventures for the system. This
created a deja-vus with 4th edition – simplest system ever to create custom content,
published books make a positive effort to hide that fact from you and create such tips.

16. Stuff that we never touched and that never touched us: all the hold over from Burning
Wheel. Like ‘Failing Forward’…. (pleeeeese, let groups decide themselves if they want failure
to figure in their 13A campaigns or not), or stuff like: players inventing story reasons during
the session for why they are involved with the GM’s prepped plot (hey, among us it’s totally
legit to walk away from a ‘plot’), etc etc. Sorry, not our cup of tea. We tried Burning Wheel,
and its narrative mechanics (Artha and the rest) just never did anything for us; nor, for that
matter, did Robin Laws’ attempts to port over such mechanics to 4th edition in the opening
chapter of DMG 2. So we’re just not the right group of playtesters to tell you something
valuable here… except that: thank goodness it was dead easy to strip out all this (type of)
advice on how to run the game. So here’s a suggestion: if there’s a substantial percentage of
playtest groups for whom your narrative advice does little, maybe you could consider to
present that advice in the book as a tad more optional. – The stuff on ‘what Jonathan liked…
what Rob liked…’ rubbed us the wrong way too. It’s like the intrusive authorial voice we get
in indie games. Well, we think Rob’s and Jonathan’s credentials as designers are enormous,
and that the quirks of petty indie designers should really be beneath them.

[EDIT] Cheatsheet added (created by myself for our campaign):

http://postimage.org/image/4f86cw3nn

Quote from: Pelgrane;548463therpgsite wins on invective, and somethingawful on useful feedback.

That isn't an endorsement now is it?

By the way are those files for real or are they a piss-take? I can't tell....

Quote from: Windjammer;548468Lots of good stuff..snip

I'm quite surprised that you view the game overall in the negative.

Windjammer, thank you for the most concrete information on the game that I've read to date.  

Hey Simon,
When Rob leaves and you're done laughing, you might want to remember that one thing us knuckle-dragging world-immersion types like to do way more then the storywankers - we love to make MAPS.  Not just battlemats, but campaign maps of entire worlds.  

Quote from: Pelgrane;548463Dear Lovely TheRPGsite Members,

The 13th Age pre-order is out now.

I must say that it's been a close contest for amusement value between this forum and somethingawful, though therpgsite wins on invective, and somethingawful on useful feedback. Some of the comments on the initial rpgsite thread made Rob and I laugh out loud.

signed

Special Snowflake Simon

All this game needs is a deer-hoof print on forehead to make it tied as the fruitiest game ever.  But thanks the same for the extensive play report, WJ.

Quote from: Marleycat;548479I'm quite surprised that you view the game overall in the negative.

It's broken worse than 4E on release, comes with an uninspired campaign world, and features cringe-worthy 'words of wisdom' to appease Luke Crane fanboys.

I can't even begin to imagine what people not already hugely enarmored by 4E will make of this. I mean, I'd play this over 5E, but that's a threshold you don't want to bring in.

Quote from: Windjammer;548498It's broken worse than 4E on release, comes with an uninspired campaign world, and features cringe-worthy 'words of wisdom' to appease Luke Crane fanboys.
 
I can't even begin to imagine what people not already hugely enarmored by 4E will make of this. I mean, I'd play this over 5E, but that's a threshold you don't want to bring in.

Honestly it doesn't sound like my type of game but to be that unorganized is surprising. 5e I expect to be a mess given it's just at the beginning of the playtest cycle.

Quote from: elfandghost;548476That isn't an endorsement now is it?

By the way are those files for real or are they a piss-take? I can't tell....

I am sorry - what do you mean by "those files"?

Quote from: CRKrueger;548482Hey Simon,
When Rob leaves and you're done laughing, you might want to remember that one thing us knuckle-dragging world-immersion types like to do way more then the storywankers - we love to make MAPS.  Not just battlemats, but campaign maps of entire worlds.  

I can't speak for Rob, but my favourite RPG is AD&D. I've been running what I like to think of as an immersive setting-based game for gamers who are entirely resistant to "storywank" concepts for over 30 years.  However, I enjoy a wide variety of games, and my enjoyment isn't informed by a theory or hatred of a theory.

We were laughing at the funny comments (particularly those about my "love letter" idea) rather than mocking anyone.

13th Age has the most beautiful map (we'll add it to the downloads on the pre-order), and I run ProFantasy Software. I think you can say that I'm fond of maps!