Setting-wise I’m presently grooving on the 13th century in Europe and central Asia, but Rome is always flirting with me from across the dance floor.  So who knows.

The problem though is that my current love, 13th Age, doesn’t handle historical fiction well, at least not unless I really abuse the “historical” part. I’m not looking for elves and dwarves and fireball-throwing wizards and holy healing clerics. I’ll probably want magic to be a thing, but very very rare and forbidden and difficult and dangerous. Elaborate rituals where you risk your immortal soul or worse.  I want people to be courtiers and mercenaries and spies and scholars and whatnot but not the standard fantasy race/class spread. Something more like Abercrombie or Lynch or KJ Parker’s work than Tolkein.

So I find myself wondering what system could really work for this. I looked over my shelf and remembered that I picked up Burning Wheel Gold edition. From what I remembered of that it seemed like it could work well. I listened to a handful of episodes of an actual play podcast that unfortunately convinced me it’s not the game for me. There’s a heck of a lot of crunch going on there, and the scripted combat thing rubs me the wrong way (although interestingly, I read back to my Blogging Wheel posts and I was much more positive about it. Am I judging too harshly?). I really love the lifepath character generation and the Duel of Wits for this kind of game.  Are there pieces here I can strip away and crash together with 13th Age’s freeform OtE-style Backgrounds and simpler combat system? How much homebrew heartache am I in for if I try? Can you even graft a lifepath system (preferably one with a randomized element like the old FASA Trek system, where your performance rating in one assignment affected whether you got a more or less desirable posting for your next cruise) even work well with a freeform skill system rather than a fixed skill list?

Or are there other games out there that can deliver what I’m looking for out of the box? As I’m typing this post I’m wondering what the two Game of Thones rpgs that were made are like.

The good news is that this next game is probably a good 6 months away. I have about 6-8 sessions left in my current game, and my work situation means launching anything else before next summer would be a bad idea. Maybe  can at least throw together a Burning Wheel oneshot or something before then.

So early in the playtesting there was a Monk class in the core rulebook. There were rules up to about level 5 Rob and Jonathan decided to pull it out because they felt it wasn’t ready for prime time. It will be included in the Kickstartered (and awesomely overfunded) 13 True Ways supplement due out next year.

But here’s the problem: I’m switching my campaign over from 4e to 13th Age, and I have a Monk in the party. Because my characters were about to enter the Epic tier, we converted over at 8th level.  And as I noted above, the draft stuff only went as high as lvl 5, and even that wasn’t complete (it is a beta document after all).

Which meant it was up to me to homebrew some extra stuff. I present it here in case anyone else finds themselves in the same boat, wanting to run an epic tier monk and not willing to wait until 13 True Ways drops to satisfy that itch. It’s not a full-on expansion to bring the class up to full options, but it’s one Epic tier Talent and a 7th level Form, and a handful of feats. It was all I needed for my campaign at present but I may make some other things up later.

Feel free to swipe,  but if you do please add a homebrew talent, feat or form of your own here.

(and no, I won’t post the partial Monk stuff from the earlier playtest.)

Monk Talent: Epic Tier

Run upon the treetops

One battle per day you gain flight. You must end each turn on the ground but can move freely throughout the battlefield without consideration to terrain and gain a +4 bonus defensive bonus against opportunity attacks.
Epic feat: you are immune to opportunity attacks while this talent is active.

7th Level Form

Whisper in the Graveyard

At-Will

Opening Attack: Sun’s last light lingers
Effect: Make a basic melee attack. If your natural attack roll is even your foe cannot take a move action on its next turn.

Flow Attack: Spirits in the dusk will feed
Melee Attack
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity + Level vs. AC
Hit: 1d8 per level + Dexterity damage, and any conditions you are suffering are transferred to the target until the end of their next turn.

Finishing Attack: Unseen and hungry
Before making the attack you may teleport as a move action to anywhere on the battlefield.
Melee Attack
Target: One Creature
Hit: 2d6 per level + Strength damage, and you may teleport the target to the location you vacated at the start of the Finishing Move.

Epic Feat:  Conditions transferred by the flow attack are save ends.

Various Assorted Feats

Way of the Seven Weapons

Adventurer Feat:  Increase the # of targets for the Flow attack to 1d4+1.
Champion Feat: You don’t take damage on an even roll on the opening move.
Epic Feat:  Finishing attack also dazes the foe until the end of its next turn.

Hunting Crane

Champion Feat: Secondary damage/miss damage from flow attack applies to all engaged foes.
Epic Feat: The crit range expansion from the opening move is now cumulative.

Tiger In Storm

Champion Feat: When making a flow attack if the 2nd attack hits, make a third attack against another foe.
Epic Feat: Increase secondary lightning damage from finishing move to 2d6/level.

Recently I came across some the sets of Terraclips at a local store and fell in love all over again. Configurable heavy cardboard terrain. They had a set of Buildings, Streets and Sewers out, and 3 Dungeon based sets dropping in late August (some really awesome pictures and info here). I liked the first 3 sets but didn’t love them – I thought the usefulness of streets and sewers to my personal game was limited, and the buildings were all wooden inn-like structures. But the “Vaults of Ruin” set from the new Dungeon Rise line really caught my eye. The “Dungeon Essentials” had a lot of the basics but was heavy on traps and such. The “Prison of the Forsaken” was full of torturey goodness but seemed a little specific. but Vaults had lots of crumbling walls and archways and I could see using it either for dungeons or as an outdoor ruined temple or a dozen other things. To my eye it had the greatest versatility, so I started there.  I ordered a set from my Friendly Local Game Shop, and here’s what I got.

The sets retail for about $50 each, and you need at least one set of clips ($18 MSRP) to hold them together. Miniature Market has them cheaper, but once you factor in shipping it’s not that great a savings.

For the money, the box is satisfyingly heavy.  And it holds a lot of pieces.  Here it is all laid out:

Each stack here has 4 or so pieces in it, some more.

Floors are large square, small square, long rectangle and half ruined/collapsed floors in two different sizes. There are a variety of tile designs – some are blood-spattered, some look like they have magical patterns, some have collapsed pillars and rubble on them. A good variety.  All the floor pieces are marked out with 1″ squares, but they’re not super obtrusive (I also think I could use the sets of D&D dungeon tiles or Descent tiles I have as floors or even walls with very little difficulty.)

Then there are short wall pieces and tall wall pieces. There are arches and columns (you put together 2 pieces to form an X-shape). There are a bunch of little piles of rubble. There are sacophogi. There are bridge ends and railings.

And stairs. The stairs are way cool.

And if you spin the wall around you get even more precarious stairs.

Not OSHA approved

And there’s a spiral staircase. I’m not 100% sure I put it together correctly, but it is very sweet.

I put a bunch of bits together really quickly and threw some minis into it. The pieces go together with the clips very easily and hold fairly sturdy.  There are notches built into the pieces to guide where the clips go.

I had a little trouble with placing figures on squares where the clips were – the leaned a little precariously.  But overall no complaints.  It all went together very easily, although this was a very basic setup.  I look forward to putting together more elaborate ones as I get more used to the set.

Storage is a little problematic. In theory the pieces all fit back into the box. I separated my pieces by type and put them into sandwich bags (the larger pieces went into gallon freezer bags) and I could just get the box closed so long as I left out the one box of large floor tiles.I can live with that. If I used fewer baggies and just put the pieces back in they’d probably fit better. Oh, and I’m keeping the spiral staircase set up. Once I confirm I have it correct, I’m gluing that puppy.

I’ll use this for a couple of D&D sessions to see how I like them before I buy another set, but I’m overall impressed.

At one point the characters were on an airship that was plummeting to the ground, out of control.

Len (whose character had taken the ship’s helm and was looking for a place to crash land): “Is there a body of water nearby? or some woods?”
Me: “Well, there’s the Queen’s Wood…”
Len: “Do you think she’d mind?”

Next up for us is converting the characters from our 4e game!

2. Support the Kickstarter to fund the first supplement (which will include the Monk, Druid and Chaos Shaman classes as well as some really sweet setting stuff like Living Dungeons, which are awesome).

3. One thing my players didn’t like was the character sheet. The defenses are on the front (or page 1) but the basic attacks are on the back (or page 2), leading to constant flipping. So the redoubtable John O’Brien cut and pasted up a one-page version from the one that was provided. Since it was directly derived from their sheet I checked with Rob Heinsoo before posting it, and he said okay, 13th Age- New Sheet!

4. Dan – you remember Dan? From the last post? – played a demo at GenCon. Here’s his report:

The 13^th Age demo was held at the Pelgrane booth; in the fires of Mount Doom itself, if you will. We all squeezed in, and Rob gave a quick 5 minute overview of what was to come. Everyone at the table had some idea as to the basics of 13^th Age, and all were eager to get this ride started. So Rob reached into his notebook and took out that which we were all waiting on: the character sheets.

I have learned one thing at GenCon about RPGs and pregen characters: unless I have a burning desire to play a particular character/class, I sit back and let others choose first. Why? That way the players at my table are happy with their choices and no one is being grumpy, sad, whatever. Hell, I can have fun playing a merchant named Sandy who sells sand in the middle of the Sand Desert.

As the choices disappeared, the Halfling rogue eventually fell into my lap. All right then, let’s learn more about rogues in the 13^th Age world. Scanning the sheet, scanning, scanning…

There, I’m a Halfling! And a rogue! Okay, looks like a standard d20 point-buy system build for stats. HPs, to hits, damage bonuses, defenses … no equipment? The hell am I doing 2d8+5 damage with? Am I wearing leather armor, bracers, cloth…? I have no skills, and neither does the Halfling character (HEY-O!). Hrrm. I look up a tad confused, as do the other 5 players. “Uh, Rob. Some things are missing.”

“Yes. Yes they are.”

Remember in my 13^th Age seminar entry when I wrote about how Jonathan Tweet stated that backgrounds and story now matter in the game? Essentially we were now moving into the CHARACTER creation, if you will, as the math was provided for us.

Let’s chat about the equipment bit first. Here’s a perfect example of how the actual equipment names/type mean more to flavor and story and are not a determining factor to the math. The barbarian-druid decided his damage would be dealt with a gigantic cudgel. No two-handed axe for him, and this made perfect sense when you consider his background. In my world, his character became more real, more defined, and more importantly, the player was quite pleased with this nuance. This is clearly a way to bring more characterization into the game via a stated and defined rule.

And then Rob explained how “My One Unique Thing”, backgrounds, and icon relationships work. He encouraged us all to think of something, and stressed that this is the part of the game that essentially dictates how the game will play out moving forward. This is where the players get to take hold of this newly created game world and actively shape it.

I had a problem with that, apparently.

Whenever I play a game where grand statements are required to define your character, I am always disappointed when someone picks the “Superman” option, attempting to break the system with some cleverly chosen words. But in 13^th Age you are encouraged to be that albino unicorn. Rob did not seem at all concerned about players breaking the system/game since he had stressed how this portion becomes a group activity. For me, everything else about my character flowed from this statement. A few examples…

First player starts us off with a solid idea of having his cleric have a heart of stone. Since the Priestess is an icon of love, his heart will be a stone for all … except one (the Priestess). Okay, a clever idea that. But then Rob started asking questions, like “Why” and “How do you see that playing out? Is it REALLY stone or metaphorically stone?” Rob kept stressing that this is how My One Unique Thing works. It’s a shared collective in many respects, but driven by the originating character.

A few questions later and the following idea is posed to the table: what if it’s not a stone heart, but rather a mechanical heart, created by the dwarves. The player and table agree whole-heartedly (see what I did there?); we have our priest in the bag. We moved around the table, getting everyone’s character developed.

“I see the ghosts of my ancestors.” We discussed if they were real or not. They were, and that brings in a probable interesting relationship with the Lich King.

“I was stricken blind by the Elf Queen.” His eyes were turned into opals with the Queen’s mark upon them. We now have our Daredevil archer    cool.

“I have no parents. I was found by a druid in the hollow of a tree stump.” He’s never left the grove, he’s a half-orc barbarian, but thinks he’s a druid. Tons of meat on that bone for the GM.

Clearly we were having some excellent ideas put forth, and the only thing I have when it’s my turn is that I think my female Halfling is a renowned circus performer. But that sounded mundane to me – so we had a table discussion about some extensions of this idea. Rob suggested that I was in the circus of the Diabolist, entertaining in Hell. I somehow managed to entertain/perform my way out of there.

Beauty; everything seemed to fall immediately into place.

For my backgrounds (think skills), my rogue had 10 points to spend. Just like in many other games, rogues get a couple of more skill points than other classes (6 sounded average, and someone else had an 8). I took Circus Performer for 4 (duh), Hell-hardened for 3, and Deal Maker for 3(the table liked that last one). In D&D skills were listed like college courses. In 13^th Age you simply describe who you are or what you did; I like that. All you have to do is describe how that Background will be assisting with the task at hand and then you receive the appropriate bonus. But to be clear – the math is still based on a d20 type of skill check. If you liked how that was handled in D&D 3.x, hooray for you! If not, move along, there’s nothing new to see here.

From a GM’s perspective, Rob took some time to explain how the character creation process can really set the campaign’s tone. He mentioned that his previous play test was far more whimsical in construction. My group was “grittier”, so that’s how he ran our demo. I can see how a discussion of what sort of campaign will be run needs to be made clear before anything is done character-wise. Or if it strays far from that guideline, that certainly tells you what the group wants to play. Either way, there is participation from all sides.

Characters done… adventure time! In a demo setting you don’t have much room for subtleties, so our scene is straight ahead:  escort the barbarian-druid to a druid circle. Once we arrive at the druid circle, D&D’s oldest XP provider makes an appearance. An orc shaman and his orc bashers have corrupted the circle’s stones – to combat!

Minis are placed right on the table as there is no need for squares in 13^th Age. Half of the orcs are “near” and the other half are (in Grover’s voice) “FAR!!!” Initiative is rolled and recorded, and things start flowing. And flow it did. The removal of squares helps a ton in reducing slowdowns. Bop here, bop there, move your mini to that spot … essentially do what you do and move along.

Combat is very D&D. Add your “to hit” to your d20 roll. If you hit, roll dice and add your damage bonus. For monsters, they have a set amount of damage – less rolling, faster pace to combat. Turns are flying by, damage is being dealt and taken, and the first round is over. Thus the appearance of the escalation die was heralded. I love this mechanic. After the first round a D6 is placed on the table, with the number 1 face up. This number is used by the PCs to add to their “to hit” total. The third round it goes up to 2 (+2 to hit), etc.

At one point the wizard wanted to use a spell (Frost Breath), but a bit of environment gave the orc cover due to an LOS ruling. All the wizard had to do was move his mini a bit to his right and the world was good again. (Note: I asked Rob about this post-game as to why that was necessary given the fact that squares are not being used. His response, and this goes to his old school DNA, “I just wanted to be a bit of a pain.” Note how the rules work against this old school sensibility. Interesting.)

We worked effectively as a team, identifying the risks and opportunities, managing the field of battle like so many 30/40-something, slightly overweight Sun Tzu disciples. Or we rolled our asses off. I forget which. Either way, this battle in 4e would have lasted … 90 minutes? At the table it took us no more than 30 minutes. More importantly, it felt smooth, it kept moving along, and it felt rewarding.

Rob did a great job of giving us a sense of how 13^th Age would play out in a full-fledged session, as well as how a campaign could feel.

ANYWAY, Descent second edition uses different dice than the first edition. Which made me a sad owlbear, because I’d bought a bunch of extra sets if 1e dice. Also, FF isn’t selling extra sets of 2e dice (yet.  If there’s a penny to be sucked out of my pockets, FFG will find a way to do it).
So I poked around online and the folks at the Board Game Geek forum had the answer, at least for a digital replacement.For iThings users, there’s an app called MachDice. Costs a paltry 99 cents and lets you do all manner of traditional polyhedral rollings (d4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20) plus d2 (it turns from dice to coins) and d3 (which are Fate dice). It unfortunately doesn’t seem to handle odd ducks like d14 or d30, so you Labyrinth Lord fans are still out of luck.

But what it does is allow you to make custom dice from either images on your device or from pictures taken. It costs another 99 cents to unlock the custom dice feature but once you’ve paid that it appears to let you customize to your heart’s content.

“But Mister Owlbear sir,” you mewl. “I don’t want to have to take photos of each face of the 6 different Descent dice! That resembles actual effort!” Never fear dear reader. This is where Fantasy Flight perhaps unknowingly came to our aid! Because in their promotional leadup to the release of 2e they posted the unfolded image files for all 6 of the die types. (the Luddites among you who like to feel the actual clatter on the table could, I suppose, just print those onto sticker sheets. Or use them as a guide to carve your own dice from stone or wood or the bones of some wild boar you slew.) Save the images to your phone or pad or pod then select the image from the custom die creator and capture each face onto each face of your custom die. I found it works best if you leave the files in their original orientation instead of rotating it 90 degrees.

Creating the custom dice isn’t terribly intuitive so the cat who made MachDice has a short and very energetic video on his site explaining how to do it. Very cool.

The results are pretty nice:

My time at GenCon was very limited this year, so I was reduced to the following two humble hopes:

1. Leave GenCon with the same exact number of diseases as I had when I walked in (CON CRUD!!)
2. A better understanding of 13^th Age

The jury is still out on #1, but my understanding of 13^th Age is much, much better after I sat in on a seminar, and then subsequently played in a demo run by Rob Heinsoo.

First, the seminar. It was sparsely attended, with only about 20 attendees. That really shocked me. Jonathan Tweet? Rob Heinsoo? They should draw at least 40, even for an indie type of release. This was booked into a “double” hall which holds seating for around 120. Factor in the recent Kickstarter that they have just started for the follow up book, and you would figure that there should have been plenty of juice behind this to get up to at least 40. Pelgrane marketing, I think you fumbled your skill check on this one.

The seminar itself was engaging, and it was great to hear the passion of the creators. But the subject matter was all over the place. This is where my professional life has broken me; I expected a professional delivery of a seminar that was designed to inform and excite the attendees about their new game. What we got was an entertaining meandering of thoughts, information, and retelling of gaming experiences.

Yes, even game designers want to tell you about their games and characters.

They started off by covering the basics for those who are unfamiliar with the system (which was about half of the attendees). For those who are unfamiliar with 13^th Age, think of it as “old school D&D meets indie gaming sensibilities.” Crazy, right? For me and my group, this fits right into the sweet spot between what some want out of role playing and what the other half want out of roll playing.

Rob and Jonathan summed it up by saying that they wanted to make a game that they’d like to play, without any corporate oversight.

Sadly no overhead projector was provided/brought (MARKETING TEAM!!!! ::fist shake::), so as we moved from the overview portion over to the new art we had to huddle around Rob’s laptop. From what I could see they have an excellent direction. Each icon has its own style, and these will be brought through to the appropriate monsters, items, etc. Ferinstance, the Dwarven Lord symbol looks like it was stamped out of metal. The Elf Queen looks like a faint spider outline on an opal. I had trouble seeing details from where I was, but it all looked fabulous from 20 feet. Hopeful.

More home-game stories followed. Amusing to be certain, but not a lot of information was shared if I’m being honest.

Between the late start, the overview, stories, and sharing of art, the time flew. We were winding down when they opened it up to the floor, and some excellent questions arose, leading to a more meaningful discussion on several topics.

I asked, ”How will they remove all of the punitive bits of D&D and keep things moving forward quickly and freely?” They were very keen on getting to this one as it seems to be one of the pillars of this new game. Here’s a short laundry list: elimination of squares and going with “near/far” distances, taking average damage at higher levels and rolling a smaller subset of that dice to add flavor and variation, monsters doing set damage and having specials triggered by the die roll, and the escalation dice. Their mantra, which I heard several times, “A battle that took you 2 ½ hours in 4e shouldn’t take you more than an hour in 13^th Age.”

If you know anything about 13^th Age you already know that this is one of their pitch lines. But I can assure you that in practice… they work. I will get into this with my 13^th Age demo write up. And yes, I will tell you ALL about my character. That’ll drive up the hit counter and revisits!

“How will this differentiate classes as this is something 4e just didn’t do?”

My buddy Billy asked this question near the end, and Rob very enthusiastically tried to answer it as best he could, but we ran out of time. However, Rob took the time post-game demo to delve deeper with us. In summary, Rob didn’t want anyone to feel useless at any level in 4e. To Rob, fighters became less useful at higher levels in 3e, and wizards always started out slowly in D&D (“Someone wake up the wizard; she needs to use her daily magic missile/sleep…”). Rob won that battle in 4e, and then the dev team turned their attention to making these more generic, but useful, classes more unique. But before they could make any headway in this area, work was stopped as they had to go to press. Essentially business needs ran that decision, and Rob is sad about this.

(Note: the irony of the fact that they have to release the core rule book sans monk and druid due to business needs is not lost upon this observer.)

With that in mind, the team of 13^th Age is doing their best to make sure that not only are all classes relevant at all levels, but they are unique in how they feel. Add to that the icon relationships, backgrounds, and the aptly named “My One Unique Thing” and I don’t believe that this will be an issue for this system.

I need to spend some time talking about Rob and Jonathan – to know more about the designers is to know more about their game. I spent time with Rob, and what a great guy. Pleasant, he’s attentive, he’s very quick-witted, and you can tell he knows he won the “job” lottery. I am happier having met him and spent time with him. Jonathan I didn’t chat with much, but he was very accommodating, insightful, and interested in what everyone was asking and saying. Having a few beers and sitting in on one of their sessions has to be a blast.

They have a fan in me, and I will absolutely support their efforts.

As I thought about the seminar over a beer or four at Scotty’s the following thought hit me: that grizzly looking server dude looks hilarious in his Teletubby costume, and Jonathan and Rob are old school in their gaming DNA. They still speak about killing party members as if it’s a victory for the GM – granted this is tongue in cheek, but it’s a trope they all buy into. Also, GMs making things tough on players also brings them delight. Distilled to its core, there is still the “GM vs. Player” dynamic somewhere in their hearts. Once again, I will be a bit of a plot tease as I will go into details on an example in my follow up.

But for this game I think that’s right. Yes, my favorite recent game is Apocalypse World, and I hate the GM vs. Player dynamic. But Rob and Jonathan also love that system. What they are undertaking is not a small task: creating a chimera of new school gaming and old school D&D. And we all know D&D has several major failings, so you need to have someone who understands those failings, who has embraced those failings, if you want them to bridge some of that gap between it and modern gaming ideals.

A great example of how they are trying to do just that came in a response to a question from the group: “Back story is a throw away for my group. How can I fix that in 13^th Age?” Jonathan said (and I paraphrase) that, “It now matters in 13^th Age because it’s part of the system. It has material value beyond “story” and flavor text.” Now story might be enough for some, but for those who like rolling and getting shiny swords, this now gives them a tangible tool and benefit to walking down that path.

In some perverse way, it’s almost as if they have created a rule set to protect themselves (and old-school D&D players) from some of their predispositions and old habits. It’s a weird dichotomy in some regards, but I give them full marks for doing so.

All in all, a fairly useful hour spent at the Con. I learned more about the designers than I did the game, but in the end that was very important. More structure and a shared agenda would have helped shape the discussion and keep it efficient, but it really did add value to my upcoming game demo.

Now, this was the introductory scenario for the Second Edition and it is designed to be a pretty quick encounter.  The board is tiny – only 2 “rooms” and some connecting “hallway” pieces.  And there aren’t many baddies to deal with – 2 ettins and a handful of goblins. But still, an hour. And it was fun.

Here then are my observations (aside from “it runs shorter”) on the second edition of Descent:

-Removing the glyphs and monster spawning and dead heroes resurrecting back in town has gone a long way toward making this feel more like a tactical boardgame and less like a videogame.

-Monster hit points are scaled way down.  The gobs only had 2HP each.  I think even lowly beastmen from 1st edition had 4 or 5.  The master ettin only had 8. Damage dealt felt about the same as the start of a 1st edition game – about 2-4 points per hit after armor.  The result was that things died quicker.  Of course I (as Overlord) was placing another gob on the board at the end of each of my turns so there was a quantity issue to deal with as well.

-Character abilities were interesting and pretty clear.  There was some confusion at first based on memory of 1st edition rules.  For example, if you have an ability that does an extra damage for a surge, in 1st Ed you could throw 3 surges at that to do 3 extra damage.  But in 2nd Ed it doesn’t work that way – only 1 surge per ability. Some characters have the same surge ability listed twice so you could do it more than once.  That took some adjusting to.  Also one character had a Familiar and the rules for that were a little unclear in spots.

-Healing worked well. The Spiritspeaker (a class of the healer archetype)  character had an ability that allowed anyone within 3 squares to spend a surge to recover 1HP, and a Feat that let everybody in 3 squares gain back a bunch of points.  This was an area I was concerned about as the 1st edition relied so heavily on potions, although that was always a losing game of attrition as you never really got that many HP back. The healing wasn’t too overpowered though; I managed to take down 2 characters (the ettin being able to spend a surge for +3 damage didn’t hurt there).

-Ability tests are interesting but i don’t love them.  Most of these came in on Overlord cards.  Characters have 4 Attributes listed on their cards and when testing you roll 2 dice and try to get under the value for your appropriate attribute.   I think 4 is too many and guarantee my group will never bother to remember the names of them (“Might” which is symbolized by an armored gauntlet, was immediately dubbed “Fisting”).

-I was concerned about the Overlord cards not being interesting. Without Threat to spend, how do you ramp up to the really awesome stuff? And since the basic game’s Overlord deck is only 15 cards if the powerful stuff like Doom or Dark Curse were just thrown in the mix would they come up too often? Most of the cards appear to be very basic stuff like allowing a monster an extra attack or an extra move, or to reroll a die or earn an extra surge.  But Dark Curse was in there (sadly the player passed his attribute test so I didn’t get to take control of him but got a card from the deck as a consolation prize). I only got through about half the Overlord deck in this short encounter so I can’t speak to how frequently the big cards cycle through.  Many of the more powerful cards are probably reserved for the campaign mode, where the overlord can spend XPs to unlock them.

-The biggest disappointment for me are the class skills.  When you choose one of the 2 classes for your character’s archetype (Knight or Berserker for the Warriors, for example) you start off with one set skill and one or two set pieces of gear.  I really dug the random element of drawing your skill cards in 1st Ed. It made things more interesting in replay.  Having fixed skills seems a little dull.

-Making defense an opposed roll instead of a static armor value didn’t add to the length/complexity of the game really at all, and made it more interactive.  Also added some unpredictability to the mix, as you never knew if your hit was going to actually do any damage or not.

There were a number of other little tweaks and clean ups to the rules I’m likely forgetting (like not having to decide between range or damage on the dice).  The rules overall were much cleaner and I didn’t feel the need to constantly consult them and flip through pages of errata to figure out how abilities interacted with each other. Overall I’d say it’s a definite improvement.  We’re seriously considering putting together a fixed group to do the campaign mode.  Given that our copy of 1st Ed had mostly languished in the box since the demise of our Road to Legend campaign a couple of years back, I think that’s saying something.

I decided not to record this session for a couple of reasons, primary of which being that recording made me incredibly self-conscious the first time out.  Another big reason was that this session tied in very strongly with some stuff in the overall 4e campaign, and without that context I think the listener would be pretty confused.  Lastly, I knew this session was going to be a lot of talking/planning/thinking things through which would only barely touch the system at all (with some background tests and relationship checks) and although we are wildly entertaining I didn’t think that would have much interest for the half dozen or so of you who are reading this but not actually in the game.

The next couple paragraphs are a synopsis of the session and don’t touch on the system much. If you don’t care about such things and want to know how the system worked, skip down below and I’ll flag where the fighty bits started.

(Last time, on 13^th Age, our heroes were recruited by an individual named Derenda the Wanderer, an agent of the Archmage, to look into a band of odd looking people in full plate armor who were setting up some magical apparatus in the path of an oncoming Koru Behemoth up by the Living Wall.  Upon arriving Derenda identified the beings not as armored humans but as “Warforged,” a race not heretofore known in the world.)

The session started with the PCs deciding to just walk right up to the Warforged and ask them what was going on. I really should have seen that coming. I figured they’d heed the warnings of their friendly NPC that these creatures served a twisted and malicious god and it would be best to not interact with them. But I knew what they were all about and what they were doing well enough to roll with it and it gave some good stuff for later. There was some background testing here, as the characters tried to suss out what the Warforged were *really* up to. The Warforged assured them that they were just there to study the Behemoth, but were cagey around the topic of what exactly their apparatus would do to the beast. They definitely left with a bad impression, although there were too many Warforged there to just launch a frontal assault. They also learned there was another group about 5 miles away, on the other side of the behemoth path.

Concluding their interview, the group was intercepted by some rather curt Drow who invited/demanded the group accompany them back to the Court of Stars to speak before the Court about this whole Warforged situation.  The Court was in emergency session trying to decide what to do about this, partly out of concern that if someone ticked off a Behemoth it might rampage into the Queen’s Wood.  Elves being what they are, the session had been going on for 4 days already and the queue of speakers wanting the floor was estimated at taking another couple of days.  The Behemoth was roughly 1 day from the Warforged.

PCs being PCs, they took matters into their own hands. They sought counsel from representatives of other Icons who had been dispatched to the Court. One of the High Stewards of the Archmage was present. He was able to note that some of the runes on the magical apparatus were related to transportation magics. He also revealed that no one named Deranda was presently in the service of the Archmage, although there was someone named Deranda the Wanderer who had been an ally of the Archmage of the 5^th Age, thousands of years ago.  There was also a representative of the High Druid present, a Wood Elf who was much more interested in proactively wiping out the Warforged (unliving abominations against nature) lest they bring any harm to the Behemoth. Lastly a Prince of the Imperial Court was present, but he was a foppish dandy of very little use.

(I had decided ahead of time which Icons had representatives here.  What I *should* have done was just let the players roll on any relationship they wanted. A 5 or 6 meaning there was a rep here and indicating the level of support/assistance/information provided.)

So the PCs sent the High Druid’s rep off to try to warn the Behemoth and they themselves interrupted the Court (violating all manner of rules of order and social mores!) to give a stirring speech about the imminent danger and the need for action. A handful of more impetuous elves agreed and went off with the party to deal with the Warforged.

(oh, and they confronted Derenda about who he really was, and he was kind of cagey but did admit he’d been following the Warforged from world to world and was seeking to oppose them and their god, and whoever he might be he and the PCs had a similar goal in stopping whatever the Warforged were up to, so let’s just roll with this and not question me too intently, okay?)

For those of you skipping the boring talky parts, the fighty bits start here.

So we got into a combat.  We again used minis on the battlemat and the demarcations between Near and Far ranges were much clearer than last time.  I decided the half dozen elven rangers they brought with them were mooks and pulled their stats in about 30 seconds. The encounter had a “boss” (statted up as a Large creature) 2 standard baddies and a group of 5 mooks, all at +1 level from the PCs (because this was Chamion tier). I also added in another 10 or so mooks on the Warforged side to balance this out and raise the stakes a bit.  My intent was that this would be a single encounter in the session so it should be higher difficulty than a standard one.  That’s something I’m going to write in to the playtester comments – how to scale encounters when you don’t do the 4e model of fight-fight-fight-fight-rest but maybe just have one big fight scene and a lot of talking in a day.

The “victory conditions” for the encounter would be destroying/altering the apparatus or wiping out the Warforged. I imagined the former would be easier than the latter but instead the group just plowed directly in to the Warforged.  I didn’t use the fixed damage presented in v3 of the playtest rules because I like a little swing in my baddie damage and less predictability. Instead I rolled a max of 3 dice and standardized the rest of the damage for all their attacks (so an 8d10 attack did 3d10+27). It worked out well and I didn’t have any one-shotting of a PC on a crit like I did last time.

Largely because everybody was more familiar with their characters, the entire combat lasted about an hour.  In 4e that size fight would have easily gone two and a half hours or more with my group.  A definite plus.

When we left off, Derenda had run up to the apparatus and done…something to it but I rolled a 1 on his attempt, and then a baddie critted against him.  So in my mind that combination of unluck means Something Bad Happened. But I didn’t decide/reveal exactly what.  The next player to go wiped out the remaining Warforged. And we ended the session there. We decided to go on for a third session to deal with whatever happened to that apparatus, to deliver the beat down on the other Warforged encampment on the other side of the Behemoth path, and then handle whatever fallout happens afterward.  Stay tuned!

Descent is probably my favorite boardgame, although I always found it flawed in a number of ways. A session could easily run 4-5 hours, the rules required extensive FAQing and clarification and boy howdy were there a lot of bits and pieces, both physical and informational, to keep track of.

All that said, I still didn’t hesitate long before ordering the second edition of the game.  The rules are posted on the Fantasy Flight Games website so you can take a peek. I liked what I saw there enough that buying it was a foregone conclusion.

The big changes between first and second edition: no glyphs or going back to town, no money to manage (except in the campaign rules), no treasures or chests, no threat or conquest tokens, characters have classes that determine their abilities instead of random card draws, combat is now done with opposed rolls instead of static armor value.  Other than that last one, these all sound like great ideas to speed up and streamline the game. That last one, I don’t know. It feels like it might slow things down but who knows. One of my other favorite boardgames (Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit) uses opposed combat rolls and I feel like it makes things more exciting there so I’m not completely “opposed” (I’m so very, very sorry) to the idea.

The rules claim a 1-2 hour playtime. Between the simplification of the game and what looks like simplified, shorter scenarios that looks about right to me.

This pseudo-review is based on reading the rules and looking over contents of the box. I haven’t had a chance to play yet but will post a follow-up when I do.

So the first thing – the box is small compared to the massive 1^st edition box. There are only 8 heroes and a smattering of monsters. It’s kind of sparse and I’m sure FFG plans many expansions. But fortunately I have the 1^st edition basic game and a couple of the expansions so after I plunked down $20ish for the Conversion Kit I now can use all the stuff from those as well.  More about the Conversion Kit later.

But in addition to fewer minis and not as many tiles, they made some good moves toward keeping the physical stuff of the game smaller too. As noted above, there’s a lot fewer fiddly tokens involved. I have all my first edition Descent stuff in a tackle box and a series of craft bead containers. The tokens take up 2-3 full bead boxes. All the tokens from second edition fit into half a box, plus there’s room for the dice and the small cards (condition, class skill and shop cards are a smaller size card. Monsters are on a regular size card instead of on a larger cardboard statcard.)

It fits on one box! How can this be?

The figures themselves are nice.  The hero figures especially are MUCH nicer castings than the first edition. I’ve been painting some of my Descent figures over the past year so I’ve been forced to spend a lot of time focusing on their details and I can conclusively say they’re just not very good.  There’s just not a lot of fine detail and in some cases hands are really big. The second edition heroes are by contrast really really sweet. I can’t wait to get painting these.

Second edition on the left, first edition on the right.

The monsters are less inspiring, probably because they’re weird freaky monster types rather than standard stuff like ogres and bats and beastmen and demons. I honestly have no idea what half these things are by looking at them. The first edition monsters had a good amount of detail – some of them disturbingly so (take a good look at the buttocks on the Giant Ape some time. That’s a lovingly sculpted simian posterior. Somebody spent a LOT of time making that look good. Yeah, I don’t even).  The second edition monsters look pretty good but there’s not as breathtaking as the heroes.

A zombie and a medium sized spider and I have no freaking idea what that is in the back.

The tiles look really good too. First edition had all dungeon stuff, square or rectangular rooms and long rectangular hallway pieces all with the same features.  Second edition has interior designs on one side and wilderness on the other, and many of the pieces seem to have different designs. One of them has a river of lava on it. Oh, that’s one other thing – there’s no pits or rubble or water markers in the game.  Those things are right on the tiles, which may limit their reusability.  But they do look very pretty. One major bummer: the tiles do NOT interlock with the first edition tiles.  Boooo!

Tiles, front and back

There’s a rule book (same one available on the FFG website) and a scenario book. The scenario book has 20 scenarios. They can either be played as one-offs or as a campaign, and rules for doing the campaign are in here. Characters and the Overlord accumulate experience and can spend it on upgrades.  Characters also gain gold and can spend it on better and better items.  There are rules for wilderness encounters in between the scenarios. I don’t know how it compares to the Road to Legend campaign set from first edition but it looks like fun, and not strictly linear.

Some more heroes and…my god. A bowstring??? There are no words.  They should have sent a poet.

As promised, a word on the Conversion Kit.  It does NOT, as I originally believed, allow you to just upgrade your first edition characters and monsters to second edition rules so you can then just keep on keeping on without needing to buy the second edition at all. No, that wouldn’t make FFG as much money. Instead it provides upgraded stats for characters and monsters to be used WITH second edition.  I suppose you could just grab the conversion kit and the rules pdf and keep playing first edition scenarios. I have no idea how that would work out. You’d be missing out on the class cards and some other components that you’d probably need. And honestly for the figures and the tiles it’s not terribly expensive (the second edition game lists at $80 but you can find it for less than $60 plenty of places. I got mine from Miniature Market, who also had the Conversion Kit for about $10 less than list/Amazon).