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[13th Age] Crown of the Lich King IC/OOC: The New Seven Scoundrels
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BrostoyevskyMadison, WIRegistered User regular
BrostoyevskyMadison, WIRegistered User regular
13th Age: Crown of the Lich King
You got your storygame in my D&D! You got your D&D in my storygame! Two great playstyles that play great together.
13th Age is the latest twist on a long series of heroic fantasy games, an indie game equal parts D&D and storygame. If you are familiar with D&D, you'll find that 13th Age is a game where you are given ample opportunities to influence the path the story is taking, on both a micro and macro level, with mechanics that model how you, with your character's ties to the world as a proxy, are on equal storytelling footing as the GM. If you are familiar with storygames, you'll find that 13th Age marries collaborative storytelling with the combat crunch of modern D&D, allowing for heroic action without getting bogged down with a huge set of rules.
Its brand of d20 will be most familiar to fans of 4e, with doses of inspiration from 3e. It comes from lead designers of those editions, on that note.
We have a gang of seven right now, so new signups are closed. If you're interested, you can reserve a spot. The current adventurers are:
What We'll Be Playing
Crown of the Lich King is a story told by means of the glorious enterprise of adventuring. Your characters have been hired/encouraged/blackmailed to swipe a crown belonging to the Lich King, which naturally involves vaults and undead and whatnot. It begins with the party assembling and beginning its quest, though the nature of the details and the characters' involvement is up to you, the players.
But I Don't Have A Book!
That's okay, I think we can get by with materials Pelgrane Press has released. There's a player game aid that gets the point across, linked at the end of this post, and if you're satisfied to play a customized pregen, we've got those too.
Characters
You have two options for characters: roll your own or pregen.
If you have the 13th Age book(s), you can create a 2nd level character using anything that's published by Pelgrane Press --- that includes the playtest monk class and the playtest tywyzog race (you have PDFs of these if you ordered online). Do whatever you feel like doing. There's a PDF character sheet below, or you can just render your character in text. Follow the process from the core book, and ping the thread if you need pointers or have questions or whatever. You can roll abilities or use point buy --- but if you roll you're stuck with your "interesting" results unless they're horrible. Just do point buy unless you want to live on the edge.
You can find pregens at the bottom of the post; they should be enough to get by without a book. They're mostly mechanical, leaving the one unique thing, icon relationships, and backgrounds to fill in on your own. As a reminder:
Linkage
Style and Guidelines and Whatever
Mission Start
Here's the basic setup for you to work with in creating your characters. Have at it!
Be it by intent, mistake, coersion, or just pure chance, you have found yourself in a small clearing among other adventurers. You may have traveled with some, but this is the first meeting for the entire group. Finding each other at least momentarily tolerable, you agree to a common goal --- entering one of the Lich King's vaults in Necropolis, a city of undead, in order to steal a crown that is the phylactery of a lich called Baron Voth. Your first step is to find Jont Urner in nearby Roachdale, a half-orc treasure hunter and the only one who knows how to safely enter Necropolis.
It may have been demanded by your order, or come to you in a vision, or just a moment of inspiration that flashed before your eyes as you traveled the woods, but deep down, something tells you that for the moment you are on the right path...
It's not required, but odds are strong that a representative of one of your icons approached you with this task. Start filling in the blanks as you create your characters. Introduce yourself!
You got your storygame in my D&D! You got your D&D in my storygame! Two great playstyles that play great together.
13th Age is the latest twist on a long series of heroic fantasy games, an indie game equal parts D&D and storygame. If you are familiar with D&D, you'll find that 13th Age is a game where you are given ample opportunities to influence the path the story is taking, on both a micro and macro level, with mechanics that model how you, with your character's ties to the world as a proxy, are on equal storytelling footing as the GM. If you are familiar with storygames, you'll find that 13th Age marries collaborative storytelling with the combat crunch of modern D&D, allowing for heroic action without getting bogged down with a huge set of rules.
Its brand of d20 will be most familiar to fans of 4e, with doses of inspiration from 3e. It comes from lead designers of those editions, on that note.
We have a gang of seven right now, so new signups are closed. If you're interested, you can reserve a spot. The current adventurers are:
- Leper - Gog, Half-Orc Paladin / Self-promoting bounty hunter/con artist
- DevoutlyApathetic - Darian Ayastar, Human Bard / Dryad-blooded balladeer of the Crusader
- Ardent - Cullen Two Graves, Half Elf Rogue / "Principled avenger of wrongs" or "murderous murderface", depending on context
- tzeentchling - Shar Silvermane, Dark Elf Sorceress / Former charitable pirate captain seeking more power
- poshniallo - Tomas Acieno, Human Rogue / Foppish book collector and aspiring icon manipulator
- wildwood - Mitch, Wood Elf Cleric / Ex-con who's seen the light, overall a pretty cool dude
- Grog - Julius Tembo, Human Fighter / Former bodyguard and current proprietor of the Drelmond Monster Safari Park
What We'll Be Playing
Crown of the Lich King is a story told by means of the glorious enterprise of adventuring. Your characters have been hired/encouraged/blackmailed to swipe a crown belonging to the Lich King, which naturally involves vaults and undead and whatnot. It begins with the party assembling and beginning its quest, though the nature of the details and the characters' involvement is up to you, the players.
But I Don't Have A Book!
That's okay, I think we can get by with materials Pelgrane Press has released. There's a player game aid that gets the point across, linked at the end of this post, and if you're satisfied to play a customized pregen, we've got those too.
Characters
You have two options for characters: roll your own or pregen.
If you have the 13th Age book(s), you can create a 2nd level character using anything that's published by Pelgrane Press --- that includes the playtest monk class and the playtest tywyzog race (you have PDFs of these if you ordered online). Do whatever you feel like doing. There's a PDF character sheet below, or you can just render your character in text. Follow the process from the core book, and ping the thread if you need pointers or have questions or whatever. You can roll abilities or use point buy --- but if you roll you're stuck with your "interesting" results unless they're horrible. Just do point buy unless you want to live on the edge.
You can find pregens at the bottom of the post; they should be enough to get by without a book. They're mostly mechanical, leaving the one unique thing, icon relationships, and backgrounds to fill in on your own. As a reminder:
- The one unique thing describes something rad and interesting about your character
- You have 3 icon relationship points to spend on 1-3 icons; each point is a d6 to roll for relationships, you're hoping for 6s and can (probably) live with 5s
- You get 8 background points, each point is a +1 to a roll when you make an ability check where the background is relevant --- these describe what your character does and did, and should inform us of his/her history alongside implying his/her skillset
Linkage
- 13 Facts about 13th Age (describes the one unique thing, icon relationships, and backgrounds, among others): http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=8583
- 13th Age Resources (player game aid, 2nd level pregens, 13th Age character sheets): http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=8764
- Summary of the icons: http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=7790
Style and Guidelines and Whatever
- As a collaborative storytelling game, you the players are encouraged to fill in the details or nudge the plot in a certain direction. This can happen directly through icon relationship rolls, either if I ask for them or if you have banked story-guide results, but I'll often leave things a bit open-ended as a prompt to elaborate or embellish as you see fit. Maybe the town you're at the border of has a thing against half-elves, or a couple years back you ran the mayor out of town. Make the story our own!
- Time is hard --- I'm aiming for poking the thread at least once per night (I'm US Central time), but I know that random crap will come up so I don't expect daily stuff from the players either. Weekends are anyone's guess.
- Crown of the Lich King is 13th Age's first organized play module. It leaves a lot of room for personalization and fluidity, as befitting the system, so it's not going to be a by-the-numbers thing. If the action goes weird places I'll do my best to run with it. But, since this is an organized play adventure, we won't work ahead of the OP schedule, which is a session per week (not that I think we'd go that fast in the first place).
- Dice rolling: geth
- This is my first PbP so be gentle.
Mission Start
Here's the basic setup for you to work with in creating your characters. Have at it!
Be it by intent, mistake, coersion, or just pure chance, you have found yourself in a small clearing among other adventurers. You may have traveled with some, but this is the first meeting for the entire group. Finding each other at least momentarily tolerable, you agree to a common goal --- entering one of the Lich King's vaults in Necropolis, a city of undead, in order to steal a crown that is the phylactery of a lich called Baron Voth. Your first step is to find Jont Urner in nearby Roachdale, a half-orc treasure hunter and the only one who knows how to safely enter Necropolis.
It may have been demanded by your order, or come to you in a vision, or just a moment of inspiration that flashed before your eyes as you traveled the woods, but deep down, something tells you that for the moment you are on the right path...
It's not required, but odds are strong that a representative of one of your icons approached you with this task. Start filling in the blanks as you create your characters. Introduce yourself!
3DS: 2466-2307-8384 PSN: bssteph Steam: bsstephan Twitch: bsstephan
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
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Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Also, everyone can feel free to ask me questions. Been running/playing this since it went into early playtesting.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
I'm one of the two names at the bottom. I'll let you guess which!
Edit to add I'll make a character. This evening. I promise.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
I'm out all day today but I'll finish him off later.
Awesome. I've found that too, it's a system that really gives you a lot of room to truly come up with a concept first, and then introduce the mechanical choices. Hope it works out!
In core, they're not Realms-y to the point of being implied villains, and rather they cover a spectrum of completely evil to just your standard every day cruel. But, they still participate in the Queen's Court, and aren't irredeemable or uniformly untrustworthy. Beyond that, it's up to us, that's the fun of 13th Age. Maybe we'll say they're generally considered to have just been "born that way" and are definitely doubted, but there are examples of perfectly nice Silver Folk who, rather than just being outliers and exceptions, have actually maybe started some mass acceptance. Or you can consider your drow in a Realms interpretation, where they're outcasts and one of a few of their kind to make it on the surface. Work in what you want! If that's the angle you want, being a rare exception (either way) can be a perfectly good one unique thing and also defines what the norm is.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
It's interesting, I've been doing a few sets of 4d6 rolls just for inspiration from randomness, and even after I bring the truly crap rolls up to an 8, it still always falls short of a 28 point buy.
e:After looking at the enthusiasm there is to play this, I probably won't get a shot :P
However, I wouldn't mind it at all if someone were to start another game
Thanks.
I drafted up a Half-Elf Rogue from Concord who looks like he'll be a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll have someone willing to take on Wizard!
Mod + level. It looks like page 31 is the most verbose description. You can peek at the pregens for examples and rough checks of your work, too.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
13th Age: Where all NPCs are racist.
Hey now, only in my games...wait...umm...yah....
* monastic and serene magical punch-f***er
* blind-but-not-blind (a la Daredevil) bounty hunter
With seven people and nine ten classes, there was a pretty good chance of some overlap. It's up to you, though, of course. If part of your concept was going to be the rogueiest rogue that ever rogued, you might have some competition.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
For those of us with a couple thoughts bouncing around in our noggins, it might make one stand out. For folks with a good concept already it could always inspire a bit more detail or something.
Archmage, Conflicted: "You have a debt to the Archmage that must be repaid. You have no idea why the wizard wants the crown or who it really belongs to, and don’t much care."
Dwarf King, Positive: "Baron Voth was once a dwarf, and the crown that is now his phylactery is an ancestral relic of the dwarven people. If anybody should have the crown it is the Dwarf King." (There's nothing that really requires that Baron Voth be a dwarf, so if someone wanted to make him an elf, well, that's what we decided to do, if it doesn't conflict with anything, so this is kind of an example of how the group can just kind of wing it and come up with some lore.)
Emperor, Negative: "The former dwarf Baron Voth helped build the capitol of Axis. He knows all its architectural secrets and if somebody had his crown they could force him to give those secrets up." (Another cool "we're making up the lore of the setting as we go" example.)
Lich King, Positive: "The crown belongs to Baron Voth, who lately has been less than entirely subservient. By having it ‘stolen’ and then ‘recovering’ it the Lich King will show Voth and his supporters that without the Lich King’s protection they are nothing." (This one's just kind of cool and shows that even intra-faction relationships need not be black and white.)
Priestess, Conflicted: "You need somebody resurrected (or maybe you have done evil deeds and want to safeguard your place in the afterlife). The priests in Santa Cora promise you that they will bring that person back to life (or assure you of a good afterlife) if you fetch the crown for them."
Prince of Shadows, Positive: "Taking a crown from a king, how delicious..."
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Julius Tembo, Human Fighter
Having spent 20 years as bodyguard to Petirr Drelmond, second cousin of the Emperor and owner of the Drelmond Monster Safari Park, Tembo was looking forward to a well earned retirement when the old man finally popped his clogs. It came as a shock, then, that Petirr had named his "faithful bodyguard" as heir to all his wealth and estate, on the condition he personally run the Park.
Needless to say the Drelmond family were most displeased with this surprise, so Julius decided to make a break for it before they could sharpen their knives. Convinced that this trickery was the work of the Prince of Shadows he's on the hunt for proof- and the latest he's heard is that the Prince is interested in Baron Voth's crown.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
Icons are something I wasn't 100% sure on, so I kept it general. Naturally the High Druid isn't going to like someone involved in a hunting safari club, while his relationship to the Empire and the Prince follow on from the background.
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site
If anyone thinks anything needs more explaining, let me know.
13th Age doesn't use a grid, but for when we get to the point that we're doing combat, would it be helpful to have a map per round or something so that we see where everyone is in relation to everyone else? There's going to be a lot of PCs and consequently a lot of things trying to perforate/puree/immolate/etc the PCs. I'd probably just make tokens for you all and just snap a .png of a roughly laid out map. (So, headshots of your characters would be dandy.)
Tabletop:13th Age (mm-mmm), D&D 4e
Occasional words about games: my site