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[13th Age] West Marches Style Game: Discussion and Planning- EVERYONE WELCOME!
Grunt's Ghosts
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The 13th Age West Marches Style Game Thread: Discussion and Planning
They said that we once lived in a great empire. That we had conquered the lands, ruled the darkness, and lived in peace.
It's hard to believe such lies. We only know the walls of the town. Beyond them is the Darkness, which has crawled into everything, twisting and corrupting all out there. For awhile, we never needed to go beyond our little slice of civilization. But times are changing. We have grown too fast, too far. The town is crowded, the farms aren't able to feed us all, and tensions are so thick you can't step without pissing off someone. We need heroes of old, to rise up and push back the Darkness. To help us move out and do as our ancestors did before and conquer the land. Otherwise, we will succumb to the Darkness that is already sipping into our hearts.
So this thread is to talk about and plan a West March style game using the 13th Age. The plan is to have multiple groups and GMs move in and out of places to play in a variety of one-shot missions in a connected world that the players will grow. The idea of West March game was created by Ben Robbins, who created the Microscope and Kingdom games, and it's for large groups of players to be able to divide into smaller groups that handled different threats and explore the unknown. Our game isn't going to be using the core 13th Age setting, in that we aren't in the Dragon Empire or even the 13th Age. It's going to be set in a small town/city with a few farms around it that feed the people who never travel or have a reason to because they don't know what is out beyond except monsters that are too dangerous for them to handle. Think Whiterun in Skyrim if the rest of Skyrim was just monsters. Which means that the Icons (which we will need to make) will be smaller in scale than the Icons of the 13th Age. They will have influences in the town, and are trying to spread that outwards as the adventurers conquer the Darkness around them and push Civilization out.
The idea that I have for why the players are adventurers going out there is that the town/city is growing beyond it's means and the farms aren't able to feed everyone. To help solve this problem, the Adventurers' Guild has been created to act as a hub for those wishing to explore the areas outside of the town and to act as a place to store the information they find and share with others. Icons will be able to drop off requests and missions for players and rumors might be found there too. They are suppose to help clear out ruins, clear forests and caves, and help establish outposts and new farms to help the town grow outwards.
Each adventure is suppose to be an one-shot, so players will be able to drop in and out of the game between missions. Anyone will be able to switch between being a player and GM, and could do both (but not in the same mission. No GMs running their character through their own missions). Because of the way the game is, any format is fine to use. Play by Post, Roll20, IRC, RL, email, Facebook, whatever. The only thing that matters is at the end of each mission, the players tell what happened (not the GMs) and mark on the map where they when. This creates a few things. One, what the players said is true as far as other players knows. This is like going back to the tavern and boosting about your glories. Some of it will be fishing tales, where the goblin was three times bigger than a bear, when it real life it was just a normal sized one, but as far as anyone is concerned about, this is true (unless another player contradicts them). Two, the map is made by the players, which like the tales, means they are as true as the players knows. The maps can be a detailed or vague as they want, but the GMs can say that a group trying to retrace the steps of another group can get "lost" on the way without messing up anything. I want to find a site or something where everyone can edit the map and such. It's going to be a blast to watch it grow.
This thread is also about laying down some ground rules for this style of play. A few I would like to make:
1- You don't need to be a player to be a GM. You don't need to be a GM to be a player. But you can be both.
2- As a GM, you can't run your character through an adventure you are GMing. You can have your character in another group doing things under another GM.
3- You can have multiple characters but can't run more than one character through the same session at the same time.
4- Stats are rolled 4d6 and keep the top 3 to make the ability score.
5- Any stat below an 8 is pushed up to an 8. It's still a -1 but it's not as bad as having a 3 in a stat.
6- If you have 3 or more 8s, you get to reroll your stats again. Having that much of a handicap isn't fun.
7- When a character dies, if you wish to keep playing, you have to roll a character from half your previous character's level. So level 6 go down to level 3, Level 10 go down to level 5.
8- Use the Random Encounter Chart below for traveling (This is optional but it's got story potential so it's highly encouraged to use it.)
Things I'd like to figure out-
1-Fleeing and failing missions. This is going to happen. In the 13th Age game, the idea is that fleeing is a campaign lost. I'd like to it to mean that the Darkness grows stronger, meaning enemies are a bit tougher, that what event they tried to stop happens and is a new, growing threat.
2- Ways to keep groups switching around. We don't want cliches to form, we want everyone playing with everyone at some points in time. So we need to figure out how to make that work.
3- Level Advancements. With 13th Age, there isn't EXP in the traditional sense. Instead, you get levels after so many sessions. So we need to figure out how to level our characters. I don't want one mission=1 level. 13th Age has incremental advances that act like part level ups, so we could go 1 mission= 1 incremental advances and 3 missions= 1 level but that's up for debate.
4- How to deal with characters dying. So.... WM is suppose to be deadly, so players could die to anyone, not just named NPCs. We should figure out how to handle that, creating new characters, ect. Does losing your level 6 character mean you start again at level 1? Start at half your previous level? Same as the level you were when you died? Only die to named NPCs, thus turning on easy mode?
5- Dealing with level differences in the party. WM normally has people of different levels working together. It's not unusual for a level 4 character to be running around with a group of level 2s and 1s. But that changes monsters. How do we want to deal with that, so that everyone gets to fight but make sure that the level 4 is still going to feel stronger than the lower level characters? Albino Bunny made a suggestion in the 13th Age thread of scaling defenses so that the lower levels can hit but they don't deal their full damage. It's an idea and one that should be addressed.
6- Who are the Icons, and how much power they wield. Like I said before, the idea of the game is that the world the characters know is their town and maybe a half a day's ride from it. Everything beyond that is unknown. So the Icons will be important just in the town, but as civilization pushes outwards, so too will the Icons influences. As adventurers, you'll be the ones who helps them grow and they will help you in turn. But they aren't the God-Tier people that normal Icons are. They are just really influential people in the town who have their hands in everything going on.
And much more. I'm sure others will have different ideas and I want to hear them. If you want to know more about West Marches, check out the links and videos below. I hope that we can get groups together, a few GMs willing to run some games, and make this thing grow. So drop a line, let me know who is interested, and lets see what we can do to get this rolling!
Random Encounters Chart!
Ben Ribbon's notes and ideas on the West Marches and what they are.
West Marches Resources by Steven Lumpkin
Videos
Matthew Colville explaining West Marches
https://youtu.be/oGAC-gBoX9kSteven Lumpkin running a West Marches game for D&D 5E
MAP: Grows as you edit it (Do Shift-F5 to refresh the page)
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/13HxShkOYyJiEamqkE5YCAf9Em-0HWbSCFfIf0j8cHr4/edit?usp=sharing
Grunt's Ghosts on
+2
Posts
1 - I like your idea of just doing the campaign losses by the book essentially. You flee, the world changes. Whatever thing you were trying to achieve has gone a different way. If you flee on the way to save somebody, they're dead. If you flee trying to take that outpost, the enemies have taken it and reinforced it, etc.
3 - I like the idea of after getting a full heal up gaining an incremental. This is pretty much how I do the advancement in my home 13th Age game. So every 3 or 4 combats the party gets a heal up, and an incremental advance. And every 3 or 4 heal ups they level up and get the rest of the stuff they haven't already gotten from incrementals. That being said, if you expect this game to have a lot of exploration/treasure hunting that doesn't involve combat this might not work as well.
4 - In WM games I like new characters coming in at level 1. It gives a feeling of having progression matter and playing smart so you don't get your character killed after you survive for a while.
5 - Kind of ties into 4 because of the way level scaling increases HP/+ to hit/defenses in 13th Age, but I think I'd probably just put in some sort of catch-up mechanic that would make lower level characters level up faster if they spend sessions with higher level characters. I would probably try to avoid hacking the game to make it easier for lower characters to hit monsters, and instead encourage people to consider playing classes that target PD/MD which are easier to hit, play classes like Commander who can let allies reroll attacks, etc. If I was going to do a hack, I'd probably do something like "If the average party level is 2 levels below or more the average level of enemies in the fight, the escalation die increases by two steps at a time, from 0 to +2, +2 to +4, etc. Would help PCs hit easier in those deadly fights where their lives are in a lot of danger against higher level enemies.
5- I forgot we had the escalation die. The only problem with that is monsters who use the escalation die for attacks will be effected.
And yeah, it'd definitely require doing a dive into what uses the escalation die in terms of monsters before making any changes there. It would also affect some player abilities like wizard cyclic spells that are at-will on even escalation instead of 1/battle, etc. That was just a brainstorm because escalation die is a good place to look if you're trying to help people hit. You could even not actually change what the ED is, but let lower level characters double its benefit if they're X number of levels lower than the monsters they're fighting.
Or you can just let lower level characters struggle a bit at hitting things. There are ways to help mitigate it inside the game if the right classes are in the mix. My party at home has a bard throwing out song of heroes all the time for +1 to hit for the whole party, plus a commander who gives out rerolls when big daily spells miss, etc.
Also, how do we want to handle icon relationship rolls? There are a lot of different methods; roll before, after (which wouldn't work here), and Icon Tokens.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Yeah, but I'd wait until we finalize everything.
The idea of the style of gaming is that the players can be as involved as they like to be. You can play once and never come back, you can play every time there is a game. You can come back months later and pick your character up from the last adventure and join groups. Since every game is a one-shot adventure with loose tie-ins to other adventures, you just have to give what time you can towards that one adventure, and the effects of it will shape the game for everyone else. I, personally, will be doing a few Play-by-Post adventures because that's easy for me to run, but I will break out the Roll20 when the stars align and I can do so. All you have to do is decide if you can do a short play-by-post game or a one-shot for one night.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Well, if they're predominantly local powers it could be as simple as rolling on them before an outing to see what favours they bestow on your group. Maybe the head of the adventuring guild can offer supplies, the huntsmen simple maps and so on.
I'm a fan of tokens. I'd roll relationships beginning of session, get tokens for 5s and 6s. I'd make a list of mechanical things they can be used for, attack re-rolls, auto pass skill checks(that's what I use but you could use rerolls too), restore 2 recoveries, etc. Then also let them be used for more narrative purposes if the player thought it'd be cool to spend a 6 to get some sort of help from the icon or agents of the icon, or if it's a negative relationship with a villain, they spend the token to get a benefit going against that icon.
Fighting cultists of the diabolist and have a negative relationship with the diabolist? Spend a 6 to tell the GM you found an easier approach to their camp, etc.
And yeah, I hate rolling ability scores in longer term games, but for something like this I think it's a great fit.
1- Stats are rolled 4d6 and keep the top 3 to make the ability score.
2- Any stat below an 8 is pushed up to an 8. It's still a -1 but it's not as bad as having a 3 in a stat.
3- If you have 3 or more 8s, you get to reroll your stats again. Having that much of a handicap isn't fun.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
One thing I'd put forward because I'm a fan of it for games like West Marches is rolling stats in order. Roll the 4d6d1, but it's for STR first, DEX second, etc., rather than placing them. Gives you incentive to play different classes based on what you rolled, which I like in games with styles like this one.
Do you have to take your array? Or can you trash it and roll again?
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Which building is the hookers and alcohol kept in? Just asking for a friend...
I've iffy about this as I don't want to pigonhold someone into playing something they don't want to, but... how often do we think people are going to die? Like, I know I'm going to be using Nastier Specials when I can, but will people be killed that much? And on a slightly related note, do we allow a player to have multiple characters? I see the argument for both sides, players being able to have multiple characters so they can avoid the pigonhold, but I also see it being abused so that one player or more can be in every game, taking space from other players who would have liked to play.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
But really if there aren't going to be a lot of PC deaths, then it's less enticing because you might end up playing the same character for a long time.
I have no idea how to anticipate how many PC deaths there might be. In my own game, we're 8 sessions in and I've had two times where I hit (once it was a fellow PC who was confused) a PC hard enough that it outright killed them and they were forced to use token spends to prevent the insta death. So if you're running tougher enemies out in the marches I could see that definitely happening. Getting spiked to negative half HP is really the main way you'll die though, because it's very easy even without healing magic to stabilize people to stop death saves and so forth.
I would let people play different characters in a West Marches game, just because their other character stops progressing. I see what you mean about abusing it, I think you'd just have to keep track of which players(not characters) had played in each game so different players got a shot to play.
In 13th age, it's really worse. I mean, the difference between an adventurer and a champion hero isn't even close.
If you're sticking with resetting/losing half levels on death, I'd say that everyone should use the to- hit and damage multiplier of the highest leveled character in the party.
Twitch Stream
And, what about Raise Dead and the like for characters?
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I agree that 13th Age has a very vertical power curve based on levels which screws with the concept, which is I think why Grunt's is thinking about how to deal with the level discrepancies in a way that's interesting.
@Grunt's Ghosts I was also wondering if your plan would be to use random encounters during the exploration part of the missions? It's kind of key to West Marches style IMO, but I don't think it's really come up in these discussions yet unless I missed it. I have a random encounter setup I use in my home 13th Age game for wilderness travel and it works out pretty nicely.
See, the thing about death is that it isn't something that we deal with in a bubble. If we let other players have multiple characters, then losing one and starting over at level 1 is equal to just making a new character and leveling it up like the others. But if we don't, then losing a character and starting at level 1 is really painful. But multiple characters pose their own problems. It's why we are doing this thread to hammer out which ways we want to tackle these subjects.
As far as everyone having the same to-hit and damage as the highest leveled character, I feel like that takes away the point of levels. A level 4 is suppose to feel stronger than a level 1, however, we do want to keep the level 1 useful in a fight. I think I would have Mentor bonuses. If the highest level character is an adventurer, all lower level characters gain +1 To-Hit but deal the same damage as before. If the highest is Champion, the the Adventurers gain +2 and the lower level Champions gain +1, and if the highest level character is Epic, Adventurers +3, Champions +2, and lower level Epics +1.
Lets see how that works math wise...
[th]Character Level[/th]
[th]Basic To-Hit[/th]
[th]With Adventurer[/th]
[th]With Champion[/th]
[th]With Epic[/th]
1
+1
+2
+3
+4
2
+2
+3
+4
+5
3
+3
+4
+5
+6
4
+4
N/A
+6
+7
5
+5
N/A
+6
+7
6
+6
N/A
+7
+8
7
+7
N/A
N/A
+9
8
+8
N/A
N/A
+9
9
+9
N/A
N/A
+10
10
+10
N/A
N/A
N/A
Now, of course at levels 4, 7, and 10 players get to add +1 to 3 abilities, so there could be a slight switch of a point of two, but a level 1 character would be doing Stat+4 when traveling with a level 10 character who has Stat+10. 6 degrees of separation there... I'll give it more thought...
Clerics get Resurrection at level 7 and can only cast it 4 times in their whole lives (campaign). If a Cleric gets that high and wants to go around bringing four dead characters back to life, then power to them.
As far as gear in 13th Age, the gear levels with the player, more or less. The same armor you had at level 1 will still be useful at level 10 because the game only cares if you are wearing light, heavy, or no armor. Same with weapons. Your To-Hit is based on your Stat+Level. Magical weapons give +1 at adventurer, +2 at champion, and +3 at Epic. Gold is kinda blah in 13th Age. Like they have rules for it but the thing is that magical items are rare (since they are created through their experiences instead of being forged by a wizard blacksmith or however gear becomes magical in D&D. So a sword used to slay Orcs mostly may one day "Awaken" and become a Orcslayer Sword +1) that they aren't sold and once you get to Champion level, you'll have enough gold to buy a house if it pleases you.
I wasn't planning on using them myself, however, I know many GMs who love them. Go ahead and post some link or something to your setup, I'd be interested in seeing it.
Gladiator Champion's Shield
A shield given to a champion of the Axis games, once per day when a melee attack against you is a critical hit, you can activate this power and take only normal damage instead.
Shadowmetal Dagger
When this dagger is used as a throwing weapon, you may use your melee basic attack instead of a range attack even through the attack is ranged.
Just simple stuff to find uses for gold.
Since the Warlock class got talked about in the 13th Age thread, what are our feelings on using homebrew classes from Vault of the 13th Age, ICON Magizine and other places on the internet?
Basically I roll 1d12(because I love rolling d12s) for each day of travel in the wilds(not on trade roads and what not). Basically a 16.5% chance for a random encounter each day. I limit it to 1 encounter per 5 days of travel if one happens.
Then to determine what kind of encounter, I roll 2d6 for a nice bell curve. The 67% meat in the middle are all average encounters, so basically balanced. It's not noted on my chart but these encounters are all collaboratively created with the players, and they have chances to avoid a fight if they want to by talking to what they encounter, bypassing them creatively, etc. Basically I have each person at the table create a piece of the scene we're going to use, then we zoom in and see how they avoid a fight, talk, or sometimes end up in a fight.
Then the more rare stuff at the other ends of the curve are either good things for the players or bad things.
A 2 is an obviously unwinnable fight that the party will almost assuredly need to flee from. If I got this, it'd be something like a dragon or giants that they ran face first into and had to flee, which would then become a new front on the map that the party would have to deal with later, might cause trouble in the meantime, might prompt the PCs to try to gather an army to fight, whatever. Up to them. There's only about a 2% chance of this to come up, IF there's a random encounter that day, so it may never come up.
3-4 are tougher fights that will probably start with potential ambushes.
10-11 are beneficial encounters. I had one of these in the campaign already, where the party met a traveling Gnome merchant who sold them the same consumables they can buy in towns, but at 50% off and he also gave them a couple free ones as a good will gesture.
12 would be a good super rare thing for the PCs, similar to the 2 but good. I'd probably have the party help me frame a fun scene that resulted in them getting a permanent magic item if I rolled this, (magic items are relatively rare in my game).
Our game is one where the wilds are wild so we agreed at session zero we wanted to do the random encounter during travel thing. And I know it's usually used in WM games just because it lets you as a GM not have to decide which hexes have fights in them ahead of time, etc.
The 7th Day of the Hollow End's
We were barely gone but a day from town when a dragon appeared. Half the party has been eaten, the damn rogue has disappeared and I'm stuck in a cave while the dragon breaths fire into the entrance of it. He can't seem to get me, but his flames are making me sweat. Hopefully this is the worst that can happen. Wait... what's that nois...
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I figured stacking, then it would feasibly keep the number pretty low. I just pulled that idea out of my ass though, so I haven't math checked it or anything. The main though was "something interesting, but not encounter interesting" could happen on some of the dice rolls. It also all depends on how far PCs on average would need to travel versus the chance of actual encounter and all that.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Put some of the concepts on the OP, I know we are still kinda debating multiple characters/death so that's a placeholder for now. Other things to be decided:
1- Final say on Multiple Characters/Death (Yes to MC/No to MC. Start at 1 on death/Start at half your preview levels after death)
2- Homebrew Classes allowed, Yes/No?
3- Finalize Random Encounter Chart, I'll let Joshmvii and webguy20 work that out, just let me know what the final chart is.
4- Stats rolled in order with the possibility for two to be switched? Or let them be placed anywhere the person wants?
5- ICONs! WHOOOOOOO ARE YOU! WHO WHO WHO WHO! (This can wait until the mechanical shit is finalized).
I'm kinda shocked that we didn't have to do too much more prep then this...
If people have anything else they want to put to the table, just say something.
I am working on this.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
If you get that working, I'll have your babies. Not sure how being that I'm a guy, but I'll find a wizard to do it!
GIRDLE OF OPPOSITE GENDER
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 10th
Slot belt; Weight 1 lb.
DESCRIPTION
When this magical belt is put on, the wearer must immediately make a DC 20 Fortitude saving throw or be transformed into a person of the opposite gender. The character's abilities, mind, and spirit remain unaffected; only the character's sex changes. If the character's saving throw is a natural 1, the item actually removes all gender from the wearer, giving him an androgynous, neutered appearance. The change is permanent unless undone with curse-removing magic. Once its magic takes effect, the belt can be removed without effort. A creature can only be affected by a particular girdle once, though other girdles of this type can cause another transformation.
CREATION
Magic Items any belt
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Edit: removed link, google Hex Kit or search for it on the RPG subreddit if you want to see a thing about a Hex-mapmaking tool.