Droll Initiative

I love 13th Age. It’s my favorite fantasy d20 game to run, and though I haven’t played it yet, I think it would be a hoot to play (I’m looking yearningly at you, Occultist and Chaos Mage). One thing, however, has vexed me as a GM, and that’s a core concept of the game: Icon Rolls.

For those unfamiliar with 13th Age, Icons are the NPC movers and shakers that war for power and control behind the scenes – you know, your Elminsters and whatnot. The game gives them a way to influence the game through the Icon Roll – roll a number of d6es equal to the number that the player has allocated to that particular relationship, and count fives as benefit with complication and sixes as benefit. I’ve tried a few approaches but neither worked for me or my table particularly well over a campaign:

• GM control of the results produces a more “traditional” game, where the GM uses these ideas to guide the narrative. I don’t like this approach because it increases my GM workload, and I try to keep as low-prep as I can. I also feel the need to use every triggering roll, and that is overload for me.
• Player control of the results produces a more narrative game, which some of my players liked and others didn’t so much, as they were not so keen on treating their relationship with their character as a detached author. I think a lot of it is how the rolls were handled – I got them to roll at the start of the session, so they knew how many “story points” they had going into the session, but more importantly, what type of story points they were.

So here are some options I’m mulling over:

• The players roll them when they want the chance to have the roll change their fortunes. Pro: this gives more surprise at the table. Con: there’s no guarantee that the player will roll a hit.
• This is more complicated, but interesting nonetheless: the players roll at session start, but fives and sixes both count as potential story points to cash in at the appropriate time. Upon point expenditure, the GM rolls a single die – odds add a complication of the GM’s choosing. Pro: this encourages the players to use their “story points” more confidently, since the possibility of complication is not already declared. Cons: this still keeps it more in the “narrative game” camp, which has mixed results at my table. It also introduces a tiny bit more stuff the GM has to do.

I bought Whitehack the other day and I’m still absorbing it. The campaign setting and adventures remain unread, but here are some notes that I’ve had rattling around.

• Three archetypes + Professions allows for a great variety of character concepts.
• It somehow has both 5E-style Advantage (double positive rolls) and 4E-style Advantage (+2 AV). Neither is exactly the same, but it’s kinda cool to see the inspiration.
• Speaking of 4E, I see you, standardized monster math. I missed you.
• HELL YEAH CORRUPTION TABLES
• Man, I’ll have to see how Auctions work in-game, because while I like the system (I think), I can see them being a little irksome. (It also took me forever to realize what the author meant by “Quality”, so YMMV.)
• The death rules seem a bit more forgiving than OSR games typically are, which I’m more than Ok with.

That’s about it. It’s a weird, quirky little game, but I think I like it a lot.

An RPG.net thread about ability score generation led me to this clever little method. It blends the surprise of random rolls with the balance of point-buy.

It’s seriously clever, and it’s a must-get since it’s PWYW!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/196729/Barflip

(Disclaimer: I don’t know the author, nor am I getting any sort of direct or indirect kickback for this. I just think it’s really cool.)

I’m still learning the platform, and I’ve realized my Blogger Mind is way out of shape. I’m still messing around with how I want to handle these posts. Apologies for the dust.

OK, well then. As a reward for achieving a few exercise goals, I picked up Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Until recently, I don’t think I would have considered myself a 5E fan. I probably still wouldn’t call myself a fan, but my stance on it has softened.

Maybe I came at 5E from a different place than so much of the D&D community. I burned out hard back in the 90s, having grown up on being bewildered by a Blue Box copy my parents picked up in a yard sale, slowly stumbling through AD&D 1E, and finding a comfortable adolescent niche playing and running 2E games. I completely skipped 3.xE, thanks to a blend of contrarian spite (embarrassing in hindsight), a disinterest in fantasy (eh, it happens), and some strong concerns about some of the rules (I still think that Prestige Classes were a bad idea). I spent my time playing other games (mostly White Wolf, because it was the late 90s-early 00s and that’s what you did), eventually landing with a group of neighbors who were friends through my now-wife who played all sorts of games. (We still do. Hi if you’re reading this.)

This all leads up to one Sunday night, after getting increasingly frustrated with a campaign of the Descent board game that we’d been trudging through. One of our group suggested we give 4E a try. So I held down my D&Disdain and rolled up a Wizard.

We had an absolute blast. I had an absolute blast. Mostly by absolutely blasting things.

This love affair continued for the entirety of 4E’s lifecycle. I was well aware of the anti-4E attitude of a good chunk of the gaming Internet. I saw their “It’s not real D&D!!” and “It’s just a boardgame!!” and I didn’t care. I was playing really cool, complex characters on amazing and badass adventures, and combats, though admittedly longer than they ought to be, were still a ton of fun.

So I was hesitant to move on, especially with all of the murmurings of the next edition of D&D jettisoning a lot of what I felt made 4E special. And when I got the game, my heart sank. Where’s the tactical combat? Where are all of the options for people who don’t like big spell lists? Where’s my freaking Warlord?! So I played other games. I latched onto 13th Age as my go-to d20 game, since it included most of the elements I liked from 4E.

This brings me to Xanathar’s Guide. It’s a lovely book, full of interesting and oddball class options, some encounter-building tools that actually seem fun to use, and a whole lot more. It’s worth picking up if you haven’t done so already and you like 5E. However, I wouldn’t have purchased it if I hadn’t had a change of heart about the game.

Even when I was less charitable to 5E, I liked a lot of the core concepts. I thought Inspiration was a simple way to encourage good role-playing, and it seemed obviously inspired by Drama Point systems of other games I liked. I also liked the Backgrounds system. It was the “Y Axis” of character design that I didn’t realize a game like D&D needed. And the Quick Builds section of each class is a godsend for hitting the ground running with minimal fuss.

The other parts – the parts I didn’t like? I’ve come around on some of them. The tactical combat is largely gone, but there are more class options to allow for interesting tactics at the table (and you can still use a grid map for battles). I still think they didn’t do the Warlord justice by smooshing it into the Fighter, but thankfully well-designed third-party classes exist. As for spells? Still don’t like how they’re organized, but I’ve got options. Spellbooks is a clever smartphone app, and there are always those spell cards Gale Force 9 makes. I was initially put off by the idea that I would have to shell out even more money to play archetypes that I like to play, but then I remembered that I gladly plunked down a bunch of money – yearly! – for access to the D&D Character Builder.

Is it my favorite edition? No, it never could replace the place 4E holds, and 13th Age currently maintains. But is it good enough? Sure, I’ll play it. It’s got a lot going for it, it’s got a few pretty glaring missteps, but it’s overall a pretty agreeable release.

Hello! I just found out about this platform and thought this would be a good thing to play around with. Who knows if it’ll stick, but hopefully I’l occasionally throw words up here.

But what kind of words? Why would you want to read this? Well, if you’re interested in tabletop games, especially RPGs, you might want to stick around. I have a feeling that this is what’s going to be the focus of this blog.

We tabletop folks like to lump ourselves into different groupings and tribes, and while I’m sure I exist somewhere in the taxonomies, I don’t think that’s an entirely accurate or healthy exercise. It is, perhaps, better to list my tendencies, independent of whether or not I’m an “OSR guy” or whatever. (I guarantee that I am not, for the record.)

• I like lighter, more extemporaneous games, mostly because I don’t have the head for internalizing these sorts of things anymore. I’m getting old, y’all.
• I have no problem with player-authorship, but I do like some constraints on it if I’m GMing.
• I still haven’t read The Forge’s Glossary, although I have it bookmarked. Take that as you will.
• Currently, my favorite game is Blades in the Dark.

Anyway, howdy. Let’s do this thing.