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.

The Shatterpoint Explained

For those of you unaware, a "shatterpoint" is a phenomena that occurs in the extended universe of Star Wars. A shatterpoint is a moment in time recognized by those with Force precognizance to be an opportunity for massive and far-reaching change. Those Jedi or Sith who developed their ability to foresee the future saw these as moments that they couldn't hope to influence indirectly; a shatterpoint is an event that can completely change everything that was originally to follow. You can think of the climax of Return of the Jedi as a clear shatterpoint: Emperor Palpatine was a master of Force Precognition, yet he placed himself on the uncompleted Death Star and brought Luke Skywalker into his own throne room. He can't be a bad planner because, after all, he went from Senator of a Republic to an Emperor in about 10 years. Palpatine could see that Luke Skywalker had become a shatterpoint. Luke would either decide to become Palpatine's apprentice, murder his own father, and become a terrible Sith Lord and help the Emperor to stamp out the Rebel Alliance, or he would do exactly what occurred in the actual film. It was a huge risk, but Palpatine intervened hoping he could use the shatterpoint to change the future in his favor.

Well, the tabletop rpg genre is entering a shatterpoint right now. In the past couple of years Paizo's Pathfinder RPG has outsold Wizard of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons, a mainstay and veritable juggernaut in the community for 40 years now. The last year and a half has seen WotC perform an Open Playtest for the new edition of D&D, which has began its release as of last month. No doubt in retaliation, Paizo has announced for next year the book Pathfinder Unchained which will feature new and alternative rules to the system. Paizo staff have of late been candid about the fact that the system their game is built upon is nearly 15 years old and that there are a number of facets of it they feel could be improved upon. They have been hesitant to do so in the past due to the initial advertising strategy Paizo used which marked Pathfinder as a continuation of the 3.x d20 system past WotC's discontinuation of D&D 3.5. For the foreseeable future these two publishers will be at all-out war for control of the market.

Though there are still other competitors in the arena. Fantasy Flight Games have just recently released the Second Edition of their Warhammer 40k rpg Dark Heresy and are continuing to expand upon their Star Wars license with Star Wars: Age of Rebellion and next year's Star Wars: Force and Destiny. Smaller publishers have produced a number of new systems within the past year that challenge the way we gamers have come to think of the classic fantasy dungeon crawl. 13th Age, Numenara, and Dungeon World each provide a welcome and refreshingly modern alternative to the same old D&D all over again. Could one of these games find itself standing at the peak of the hobby? If Paizo could do it, then perhaps the possibility is there.

The goal of this blog from here on then will be to report on how this shatterpoint unfolds. I'll be reviewing the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook soon, along with 13th Age's 13 True Ways. You can also expect reports and analyses of my own games, those I run and play in. The future is an uncertain one, but I'm hoping you're willing to do what I plan to: just roll along with it.