13th Age - The Strangling Sea Review and Recap

(Find it at... Pelgrane Press  / Drivethru RPG / Amazon)

I choose The Strangling Sea to kick off my new Eyes of the Stone Thief campaign, not just because it was a published 1st level adventure that I could run without much prep but because it is an excellent adventure and tailored towards GMs who are new to running 13th Age. While I am not new to running 13th Age, it was still nice to have the extra advice in the adventure to guide me as I gear up to running an ongoing campaign that I hope will cover 1st through 8th levels.

Major spoilers for The Strangling Sea adventure follow, obviously. I'll do the review first and the recap of my players second, so that readers who just want a review of the adventure don't have to stick around for the hi-jinx of my players.

Corpse Chewer - Or a semi-improv, low prep 13th Age One shot you could run too

After the election my wife asked me to run a combat heavy one shot RPG as a distraction, I've been burnt out a little on 5e D&D lately, so I decided to run 13th Age instead.

I like 13th Age for this kind of adventure/monster fighting combat heavy game because...

• It's basically D&D. I mean, it's not official Wizards of the Coast branded D&D(TM) but it's got a unified d20 mechanic like recent D&D, the classic classes, races and a lot of the feel.
• It's good at what it does and focuses on that. It's not the game I'd run if I wanted to run a social intrigue game (probably, right now, V20 Vampire the Dark Ages would win) or the game I'd run if I wanted a gritty game where the PCs struggled to survive (for now, that would probably be Shadow of the Demon Lord) but for a combat heavy game where PCs will have cool stuff to do during combat and you want a high fantasy feel it's an excellent choice. 
• 13th Age PCs are surprisingly simple(ish). For the game I just used some pre-made 4th level characters (and recommend you do too) and they all fit onto a single page without needing a magnifying glass to read the type. Even if players make their own PCs, they really only need their class write up at hand to play and won't need to flip between multiple sections of the core book the way any of the spellcasting classes in 5e D&D do (and remember that 5 of the 12 classes of 5e have spellcasting and gain or can gain spells, though that Totem Barbarian who gets two spells as rituals won't need the book as much as the wizard, but still...)
• Icon Relationships, Backgrounds and One Unique Things encourage player investment, even for one shot characters.
• A few memorable one unique things from when I ran this...
• Renowned as a 'fuck-up'.
• Attracts random cats when she sings.
• Half of his face looks like a corpse.

So, without further ado, here is Corpse Chewer, a semi-improv, low prep 13th Age One shot. It's semi-improv because I'm providing the skeletal sketch of the plot arc and combat encounters but you can improvise the description of the dungeon and environs itself and some of the flavor bits can be tailored to the icon relationships the players pick.

Crushing on 13th Age

I’m a little in love with 13th Age. Thomas has been running an online 13th Age for John and I and it is all kinds of enjoyable, enjoyable enough that I am more than happy to get up at 6:30am on a Sunday morning to play regardless of whether or not I was up until 1:30am drinking and playing boardgames the night before or that I had 8 hours of Numenera to run later that afternoon. (You can find more on my initial thoughts here).

Go read Thomas’ last post on running 13th Age, he covers a more story/montage based technique that he took from a 13th Age module that I quite enjoyed. This post will be here waiting for you when you get back.

So, what do I love about 13th Age? Using backgrounds as the skill mechanic, One Unique Thing, the Icons, the setting (more on that later in a later post), the approach to classes where each is distinct in flavor and in mechanics. The introductory adventure, Blood and Lightning, which is one of my favorite adventures I’ve read, played or run. Previously I had complained about my Rogue not having enough choice of powers, but hitting 3rd level really fixed that issue (and were I to make another rogue or advise someone making another rogue, I’d recommend that they not double up on powers/class features that did similar things, as I ended up with the Tumble feature and Tumbling strike).

But until this last week I didn’t have my own copy of the hardbook, just a copy of the pdf (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118994/13th-Age-Core-Book?term=13th+age) and previous experience has taught me that it’s often better to have a hard copy of at least the core rule book at the table when I run the game, even if I’ve got the PDF that I can pull up on one of them newfangled tablet thingies. But I really wanted to run Blood and Lightning, so I ran it using D&D 5E, porting in the 13th Age Background/Skill system and Icons, with their attendant mechanics. I also used the GM Intrusion for Inspiration mechanic discussed in this post.

To my amazement, it all worked pretty well, I had 4 players who created 3rd level characters and we played through the entire adventure (with character creation) in about 6 hours. Integrating the 13th Age background/skills mechanic into 5E went a little smoother than last time, partly because many of the players had been exposed to it before and because it was my 3rd D&D 5E game running/playing with that mechanic. The Icons worked into the game easily as well, I continue to be impressed at how well they impart a sense of setting and tone even when only briefly introduced, but I suppose that they are, well, Iconic. All in all an excellent time was had by all.  And now I really want to run 13th Age itself (and have the core book in hardcover to do so), especially since I want to run Eyes of the Stone Thief for my Sunday group after I finish my Numenera run, because it looks so incredibly cool (warning for my players, you shouldn’t look too much because spoilers). But I’m going to be good and hold off on pulling the trigger on the pre-order until I get my group to decide if a 13th Age MegaDungeon hunt is what they’d like to do next.