The Golden Puddle of Tollgate Square - Leaving Room for Icons in 13th Age

By Photo: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

While I ran the Strangling Sea to start my 13th Age campaign, for the second full session, I ran a homebrew adventure. Previously the party had determined that there were three NPCs who might know a secret worth trading to an Ettercap temple in exchange for information about a 2nd Age Sage who studied the Stone Thief. Those three NPCs were

• Elizabeth Clawchoke, Lich Baroness residing in Drakkenhall
• Malaggar Lyme, Dark Elf emissary to the Emperor, currently visiting the court of Drakkenhall.
• Corgak the Bruiser, Half-Orc thief and thug who killed an agent of the Prince of Shadows and stole a magical key.

After some discussion the PCs choose Corgak, and so headed off to Drakkenhall to locate him.
Now, as GM, I had a few objectives, which were:

• Leave room to adapt the adventure based on Icon Rolls.
• Provide a few social interaction encounters.
• Introduce Tollgate Square as a place, with a distinctive feel, locations and NPCs.
• Steal shamelessly from Voltron.

So how did I attempt all that? Why is Manneken Pis the image header? Keep reading to find out... (Minor Voltron Legendary Defenders Season 2 spoilers at the end of the post)

Shattered World - Ruby Visions - partial Manlorette recap

As I confessed in my last State of the Blog post, I wasn't certain how to proceed with my Shattered World D&D game, we'd nearly reached the climax of the campaign, but with the scheduling issues it began to feel less and less climactic.

To recap briefly, the players a while back had decided to go to the "Sacred" library, and having found and "borrowed" their own elven solid silver flying stealth ship, finally had arrived. They had also learned, in the interim, that a great artifact, The Heart of the World, an enormous ruby that could be used to reshape reality, was kept at the library. Once there, they discovered a magical force field encasing the central Sacred tower, generated by four smaller towers, the Pearl tower, controlled by Blunanda, the Silver tower, controlled by Brontë, a servant of the dwarven wizard Silverhands, the Oak Tower, controlled by Dunsain Joon, a lieutenant of the Elven Princess of Charm and finally the Moon Tower, controlled by followers of Moonbiter. The PCs had run errands for both Dunsain Joon and Brontë, securing the assistance of those two towers in opening the force field long enough for them to secure the Heart of the World. They'd also cleared out the Pearl Tower, vanquishing the marid, sea hags, sharks and Water Monolith (taken from the very excellent Elemental Magic of Zakhara) left by Blunanda and closing off the oceanic portal that had been filling it with water.

So, just one tower left, right? But unfortunately, part of the reason the Oak Tower had been left for last was the player whose PC has the strongest (and only, actually) connection to Moonbiter, has been unable to make it due to a hectic work travel schedule. We were also missing the player of the Cleric of Thor, who seemed to have (at least to me) the strongest vision for what the party might do with the Heart of the World, even if that vision was partly just 'listen to what Thor says' (runner up plan being the swashbuckling rogue's plan to 'steal the Heart of the World').

So, two PCs down, the climax imminent, but forestalled as the players wanted the Moonbiter affiliated monk with them. What to do? Fortunately I thought of an Adventure Time episode I'd seen recently and to the gimmick Thomas had stolen from Curse of Strahd to run my Manlorette D&D game and then I jotted down a few notes and hoped it wouldn't all come off as too much of a Dirty DM Trick.

The Shattered World - Pitch and Icons

Back in June I started a new D&D 5E game, or D&D 5E-ish game... See, 13th Age has thoroughly corruped me, so I shoe-horned in 13th Age Style Backgrounds (using a ridiculously complicated system that I may post later), the Escalation Die and 13th Age Icons and also Numenera style GM Intrusions in place of the default (and uninspired, in my opinion) Inspiration rules.

The setting was a reboot/homage/hack of the last D&D 4E campaign I ran and I pitched it to players as "Final Fantasy Airships meets Isla's Mist Sea meets Zombie Apocalypse meets Battlestar Galactica meets Mad Max with some Glen Cook Black Company/Garrett PI tossed in too" and "so you're stuck on a giant flying airship that the 'good guys' only have partially under control, there are sections of engineering that are infested with undead, sky pirates attack and you have to drive them off". (Isla's Mist Sea is the 4E campaign where the PCs were on a wizard's floating Island).

The final setting pitch ending up being: Pre-Shattering the world was in the midst of a war between powerful wizards over silver mines and hordes. Wizard rulers/generals were taking ever increasing gambles, raising hordes of dead and making war machines to fight while they floated above the earth in flying castles and city sized flying ships. I deliberately had the PCs put into stasis by a "neutral" wizard during the actual apocalyptic Shattering so that they awoke three years after into a strange world and players wouldn't need to worry about detailed setting information and would get to discover things along with me.

A portion of the Airship dungeon explored during the most recent Shattered World game.

With that loose premise, I decided to make my own Icons and since I was also running an Apocalypse World game and drawing on Apocalypse World's flavor/tactics for some of my inspiration, I decided to base the Icons on the AW Scarcity/Lacks that AW provides as motivating factors.

• Hunger
• Thirst
• Ignorance
• Fear
• Decay
• Despair
• Envy
• Ambition
• Greed

But the new realization I had with Icons is how it serves the GM's interest to set up a PC's relationship with an Icon as a choice about game narratives. For example, one of the Icons I created is Father Machine and I set up the PC choices of Positive, Ambiguous and Negative relationships as follows.

• Positive: You want to work to spread the machines as replacements for the old arcane magic, you are a warforged who is visted by Father Machine in your dreams.
• Ambigious: You find the mechanical devices and innovations of Father Machine and his followers useful, but worry about what Father Machine plans. You are a warforged who wants to break free of Father Machine.
• Negative: You blame the machines and warforged for the Shattering just as much or more than you do the Wizards.

So as the players choose Icon relationships they were also telling me something about how their PC's would react to the world. So far this has worked well, as I can remind myself of the Icon relationships and weave in scenese, places, items and NPCs to bounce of them.

You can see all the Icons here, or rather all but one as I still need to write up my Icon version of Blunanda the Kelp Queen, who was stolen shamelessly from Thomas.

Expect more about the Shattered Worlds as I continue to run.

Shattered World Icons

Plucking the Stars from Distant Systems - Stealing Rules for Fading Suns Pt. 1 Icons and Bonds

One of the things I’ve learned about myself and GM’ing is I that as much as I enjoy running D&D, I enjoy running D&D more when it’s not the only thing I’m running. Strangely, running a non-D&D game concurrently with a D&D game or two helps keep me from getting bored with my D&D game(s) and strangling them in a bathtub or otherwise abruptly ending them. Earlier this year I ran a three session mini-campaign of Apocalypse World and not only did it change the way I ran D&D by letting me see how another system handles issues in games, but it also provided at outlook for ideas and energies that would not have had a place in either of the two D&D Next campaigns I’m running.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 3 - Rocket Sled to Failure

Long time no podcast... but I finally returned to the lair of the Ginger Giant.

Discussed herein: The depressing end of my Apocalypse World game, things I'm stealing for my Fading Suns game, my online Vampire the Dark Ages influence game and a long tangent on player assumptions leading to wild conclusions.  Oh, we also touch on my blog post about Failure.  Also, other things, but I forget.

Episode Three: Rocket Sled to Failure

We also recorded a second secret podcast that may never see the light of day or the ears of listeners.

PS.  Thomas, who is taking over GM duties on future Online Influence Games, started a new blog: A Game of Influence  If you want to read all about our continuing adventures in attempting to improve influence style games, which I touched on tangentially in my "LARP's Lessons Lost" post, then you'll enjoy his new blog.  I expect to be a regular commentator.