My Background in Tabletop Gaming: Part 3

My regular online Pathfinder group includes a guy whose handle is Volin, and he's responsible for getting me into 13th Age. I wasn't intending on jumping straight to 13th Age but I'm just that excited about it all the time, so there you are. 13th Age is a table-top fantasy RPG created by the Lead Designers of two past incarnations of D&D: Jonathan Tweet of 3rd Edition and Rob Heinsoo of 4th. If you've ever wondered what a 50/50 amalgamation of those two games would look like, it's Star Wars Saga Edition. But if you wanted to know what a fantasy d20 system with heavy influences from those games but eschews the clunk and adds new narrativist mechanics which themselves work just as well within this system or as houserules to whatever d20 system you're using...then you are clearly already very much familiar with 13th Age and just sort of leading us all on.

Now I don't intend this to be a review of 13th Age but, again, love at first sight, so let me quickly tell you why Backgrounds are the best mechanic. With 3rd, 4th, and 5th you resolved attempts at doing tasks outside of combat with skill checks. You have a number called a skill modifier which is drawn from your Ability Scores (like Acrobatics being affected by your Dexterity), so you roll a d20 and add together the die roll and your modifier. If your number is higher than the DC (Difficulty Class) that the DM decides this task has, then you succeed.

With 13th Age you don't have a standardized list of skills. You have 8 Background Points, and you can assign as many as 5 to any background you come up with. Are you a dashing Troubadour who loves to relax in his off time fishing? Well then you'd assign more points to the Troubadour background you decide on than the fishing one; maybe 5 in one and 3 in the other. But you don't just make "Troubadour" and "Fisher" your backgrounds, because that's boring. These are yours to come up with, so you fashion a quick little anecdote which is clearly related but sounds like part of a much bigger and very interesting story. So instead you have 5 points in "My Trobar leu's bring all the girls to the yard...though half of them have weapons." And during play you decide you want to recite a saucy bit of poetry at the festival. First you roll your d20 and then you convince your DM that you have a Background that's relevant. In this case, obviously your 5 point Background should apply so you add 5 to the roll.

The thing is, that's just the simplest way of utilizing Backgrounds. The real fun comes when you try and use them in less obvious situations, like trying to help a Duke write up a response to allegations that he's had a string of affairs. You turn to your DM and say "Look I write for a living. I can help him," but your DM isn't convinced. He says lyrical poetry and political proclamations are too different for you to be much help. But if you'd phrased it like, "I've caused plenty of political scandals with my satires. I should at least be able to point out anything likely to raise ire." Maybe that sounds more convincing and you get your bonus to the roll. +Ash Law lays this out really well in his 13th Age Organized play documents.

With Skills you're dealing with pure mechanics. The lists are long and kind of vague in the hopes of covering anything a character would try to do. Lying about your religious affiliation? Bluff. Overemphasizing the martial prowess of your buddy? Bluff. Roll the die and add a number. Meet the DC. There's no inherent creativity in that subsystem. Backgrounds though? You create your list, you create the justification that allows you to use it to influence your roll, and then you add a number to a number to meet a DC. You arrive at the same endpoint, but you got to use your imagination along the way.

I've been collect the books throughout this past year and I'm looking forward to running it next year here at the college campus. If 13th Age sounds neat to you, look into ordering it at the Pelgrane Press Store. If you'd rather look at the system before committing cash then the Archmage Engine is an SRD you'll want to check.

I'll be wrapping up this look at my past as I talk about my experience with D&D 5e in the next post, and from there I'll do a writeup on the live session I ran at the college community center.