Thoughts On... 13th Age Bestiary

Type of Hobby:  Roleplaying Game (Supplement)

Number of Players: 3+

Authors: Rob Heinsoo et al
Publisher: Pelgrane Press

Price: £24.95 RRP

No RPG supplement excites me as much as a good monster manual. I'm certainly drawn to buy them whenever they come out for any system. I love flicking through the pages, searching for plot hooks and how and where I can use a monster in an adventure or two. I have so many that I'll never find time to use all the monsters I love.

That hasn't stopped me buying the 13th Age Bestiary, however. On the contrary, I've been waiting for my hardback copy with baited breath since I preordered it back in March. I've had the PDF, of course, but that's never the same.

If there was one aspect of the 13th Age Corebook that was disappointing, it was the section on monsters. Although they were mechanically interesting, information on them was limited to merely a sentence or two and there was no art representing them either. The Bestiary seems to have been in direct response to that, and the response is superb.

The Bestiary contains write-ups for 52 monsters, most of which have several variants, taking the total over 200. There's a lot of material here, all held together by the brilliantly simple mechanics that govern 13th Age's monsters and the open ended Dragon Empire. It's really good.

Monsters: You Can Never Have Too Many

The Bestiary fills in some important blanks that make up the staple of D&D monsters - ettercaps, chuuls and genies just naming a few. As expected from 13th Age, each of these contains a twist on the concept. Ettercaps are hoarders of secrets, though they still retain their affinity to spiders; genies are subject to a pact with the icons, able to interfere in the world for a time but that comes with the price of servitude; and chuuls are still lobster like aberrations, but they also lay eggs that can be cultivated into weird symbiotic magical items. All of this information is delightful and how much of it you use is up to you. It's nice to have these fresh takes on old ideas, allowing me the choice of presenting the 'classic' vision outlaid in various D&D sourcebooks over the years or put a new spin on things by taking some of the new flavour from these entries.

There are plenty of new monsters in the book too (at least to me), from the deadly and seductive jorgumo, the fourth wall breaking redcaps and clockwork zorigami, again, naming just a few. Each is just as brilliantly realised as these writeups for the more traditional monsters and they're all just as mechanically interesting. I particularly like the redcaps - there's something incredibly devious about the way their 'bad word' breaks the fourth wall (and I won't spoil it for you!)

Also unexpectedly slipping in is the 'twygzog' player character race, nestled within the entry for fungaloids. I wasn't expecting to find this at all. The idea of a humanoid mushroom prince cut off from the overmind is quite interesting, and has some nice roleplay potential. I'm not sure I'd play one myself but it's a cool option that players looking for a quirky and different race will appreciate.

You'll also find some expanded options for some of the most well known D&D monsters. Both white, black and red dragons get a lot of love, as do the drow. These are the kinds of monsters you'll be using again and again in your games, so having more options will never go amiss.

The monsters all show off how brilliant the way 13th Age handles monsters is. As a DM, I really appreciate how you only really have to worry about whether a monster is using its attack against enemies engaged with it or not. Letting the dice roll decide what else the attack does frees up my mindspace to think about more interesting things and improvise more entertaining descriptions. Having monster abilities trigger in this way also means that there's innate variety in the way monsters behave, and because it's inherently unpredictable it keeps players on their toes. I really like 13th Age's monsters.

Detail, so Much Detail!

Each entry is filled with wonderful detail. Completely opposite to the Corebook, each monster is given at least a few paragraphs of description before moving onto the individual monsters themselves. Even there, many of these monsters are given full writeups themselves. There's a lot to get your teeth into in these alone, inspiring adventure and encounter ideas.

Each entry also has a full colour artwork accompanying it and, although the art style is not to my personal taste, it's nice to have something to show the players to get their imagination going.

Alongside a description, monsters also come with advice on building battles (great when you're in a rush and just want to build a quick encounter), how they may or may not relate to the icons and a list of adventure hooks (again, great for when you're just looking for a quick idea to get the imagination going!).

Many come with even more than that, with quirky lists of sample loot and other esoteric elements. Ettercaps a list of secrets they keep, fungaloids come with sample environments, and death plague orcs come with example diseases and accompanying rules. Little bits of flavour fill this book from brim to brim, making each entry more than just a simple stat block and picture. You couldn't ask for more from a monster manual.

All this detail has really sold me on the Dragon Empire too. Seeing how its denizens live within it and add to it, as well as the myriad plothooks and ideas within this book, has really helped to set it apart and give it the depth it needed for it to interest me. It's still so entirely open ended that I could, if I wanted, do almost anything I wanted with it. And because everything is written in such an open way I can just cherry pick the appropriate ideas when I'm running something not set in the Dragon Empire.

How to Make a Monster

Right back at the beginning of the book is a set of 'Odd Monster Lists' that might come in handy. They're quite fun to read and, although quirky, are actually really useful. 'Monsters That Cloak Themselves in Lies' is a favourite.

At the end of the book is a great guide to monster creation. Working up from simply reskinning a monster, to tweaking one to be more suitable to your purpose and, the real meat of things, actually creating a monster from scratch. Here monster creation is broken down into two main areas - attacks/abilities that use the d20 and those that use the escalation die. The d20 section comes with a great list of triggers for effects to work from, including some of which that might not have occurred to me otherwise, like using the players ability scores as triggering numbers. (For example, to see if a player contracts a disease, see if the attack roll beats his ability score). I'll definitely be referring to this advice when I make my own monsters.

The Monsters That 13th Age Deserved

Artwork aside, this is everything I want in a monster manual. I've really enjoyed using the monsters I've picked so far and I can't wait to try a few more out. The amount of detail given means they're more than just stat blocks to kill the players with too, you can really build adventurers and stories out of any of these.

If this is the standard the sourcebooks for 13th Age are going to be hitting then I think the game is going to be going to some great places. I'm really excited.

Thoughts On... Dungeons & Dragons (5e) Basic Rules

Type of Hobby: Roleplaying Game

Number of Players: 3+

Authors: Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford et al

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Price: Free! 

D&D - Reincarnated or Resurrected?

So, six years later, here we are again. And I mean that both figuratively and literally, for this edition of Dungeons and Dragons is both brand new and everything we knew. It's also free, in a basic set of rules that anyone can download. This is a smart move, I think; I know a lot of people have been on the fence, or even outright hostile, about this edition and letting people just look at what things are going to be like for free will at least let Wizards of the Coast put their hand on the table. So, go on, download them, have a flick through. You might like what you see!

What you'll find is an edition that has gone right back to AD&D 2nd Edition for inspiration, whilst in many ways being almost a complete revert back to the 3rd Edition. Aside from a few little touches, 5th almost completely ignores 4th Edition, giving it no legacy at all. That isn't to say that there are no modern features, but this is a game steeped in nostalgia.

I'll try to reference my current love, 13th Age, as little as possible, but in some places comparison between these two contemporaries is inevitable.

A Lot of Character

Character creation is largely incredibly familiar and full of surprising amounts of detail despite being a set of 'basic' rules. You see this immediately in the writeups for the races. There are only four in this document, the stalwarts of humans, dwarves, elves and halflings, but there's a lot to get your teeth into. Physical descriptions, descriptions of culture; there are even descriptions of how each race views the others. There's more to get your teeth into here in this basic document than there is in the entire 4th Edition or 13th Age core book. This is a game that desperately wants to reclaim the title of roleplaying game.

Still, I actually think there might be a little too much detail here, having five or more things you need to keep track of just for your race could lead to a little too much bookkeeping, or at least things being forgotten at the table. In most cases I love detail, but there's a lot of mechanics attached to these races.

The classes (fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard) are also very classic feeling and offer few surprises to D&D veterans. There's a nice customisation option available to each class, allowing you to take each one down a specific path (martial archetypes and arcane traditions, for example). It's nice to see each class have different options, but this does feel a bit limiting and reminiscent of the worst parts of 4th editions class builds. I'd like to see more mix and match abilities, like the talents in 13th Age, so that you can truly make your character your own.

I initially had some concerns that we had returned to the bad old days of the all powerful spellcaster, but a quick look at the math suggests to me that a fighter or rogue should be able to keep apace of the Wizard or Cleric, especially as those classes have returned to a more or less vancian system. That's an improvement over 3rd, certainly. That's not to say that the spellcasters aren't considerably more versatile and in that respect powerful; spells still exist to counter almost any situation the wizard might find himself otherwise deficient and with more spells promised in the Players Handbook, that might get worse. Of course, that same book is going to have lots more options for the humble fighter too! I'd have to see a party in play myself over a reasonable period of time to really see how it works out, but my first impression is that party balance is not as bad as D&D has been in the past, but not as good as it was in 4th Edition. However, that balance in 4th came in the form of class homogenisation, which many really hated.

There are some nice innovations in character generation - or at least, innovations for D&D. 5th Edition asks you to make some choices about your character's personality and history, some quite interesting, some less so.

I like the idea of choosing an ideal; something your character strives for, it's a nice idea that gives the player somewhere to go with the character right out of the box. It also gives the DM something to work with, something to tailor adventures and encounters to his players desires. That's really good.

I also like bonds, something your character is connected to in the background. They're like a very basic implementation of the Icons from 13th Age. It's another tool for the DM to work with, another important fact he can work into the story to help the player feel more connected. I'm always in favour of that.

Less interesting to me are the ideas of personality traits and flaws. Personality traits are just fluff that reminds the player to roleplay. It's useful for new players, but most experienced players are either going to roleplay character traits or they're not. And flaws seem out of place in an ostensibly heroic game, but that's just a personal taste thing.

The mechanic that drives all these myriad traits is inspiration. When you're inspired you can choose to claim an advantage on an attack roll, skill check or ability check.  A DM rewards inspiration when you play your character well according to the traits you've written down on your sheet. In this respect it's quite similar to nature and demeanor in old World of Darkness. I worry that this mechanic may simply reward more extroverted players and leave quieter players in the dark. Weirdly, you can choose to reward your own inspiration to another player, in lieu of the DM doing so. I have no idea when a player would willingly give up their own inspiration though - surely if a player is deserving of it, the DM should be rewarding it?

I like these things, even if they're not as decisive and exciting as the similar ideas in 13th Age. They just feel a bit forced in places, almost a little out of place or like an afterthought.

Tying these personality traits together are backgrounds. They do remind me a little of the old kits from 2nd Edition, but without any real mechanical benefit they're just a collection of sample personality ideas. Which is fine, but I'd like a little more crunch here.

Alignment is back, although it just feels like a strange concession to the past. Without the mechanical crunch of detect alignment spells, it's just a strange and outdated personality compass. I think they'd have been insane not to have included alignment, but it's something they seem almost frightened of implementing properly, which is almost understandable considering the controversy the idea has attracted over the years.

The last element of character generation to discuss are skills. They're terrible, and that's really the kindest thing I can say about them. They're pared down like in 4th Edition, but in an edition of resurgent detail they're utterly lacking. Nothing about this incredibly basic list excites me at all or makes me think 'Yeah, that would be a cool thing for my character to be good at!' After the exciting and liberating backgrounds of 13th Age I find it hard to look at these without total disappointment.

Lastly, although the rules for it are not available in the basic rules, multiclassing in the style of 3rd Edition has returned. I've always been torn about the 'take a level of this, a level of that' approach, as it intrigues me mechanically but narratively it's often a nightmare, especially if you feel you have a strong concept for a multi-classed character from the get go. It's a part of D&D history though, and it's tried and tested. I expect a lot of fans will be glad to see it back.

Equipping Yourself

There's an awful lot of things your character can buy in this basic document, covering everything from adventuring gear to the cost of boats. This is all classic D&D stuff and it's nice to see it returning, although the lifestyle expenses rule seems like an exercise in bookkeeping that most will skip. I've always liked the idea of making everyone keep accurate track of their money and, while its nice that this can be simplified down like this, by the time you're a high level adventurer whether or not you've spent 1 or 4 gold at the inn seems a little irrelevant. This is a problem that D&D has always had, however - and it won't stop me loving to hand out treasure to my players.

Your weapons and armour are the usual fare, with weapons being priced as seems historically accurate and given appropriate damage dice. The same seems to apply to armour. This is traditional. but now since being spoiled by 13th Age's abstraction here, I don't think I could go back. It seems absurd to me to have options that are simply not as good, putting players off taking what they think might be thematically cool. I suspect most players will simply gravitate towards the weapon that does the most damage. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect D&D to take such a radical step as abstracting weapon damage, as much as I might prefer it.

Running the Game

Throughout the basic rules pdf the rhythm of play is spelled out in very simple terms, and in a way I've never seen before -

1. The DM describes the environment.
2. The players describe what they want to do.
3. The DM narrates the results of their actions. 

This is of course, really simple. For new players though, ones who have never roleplayed before, this could be a godsend. All too often games designers write paragraphs and paragraphs trying to explain what a roleplaying game actually is, usually supplying long examples, but this just puts it in the most simple terms possible. I really like this.

Running the game otherwise is more or less standard d20 D&D, which veterans will be utterly at home with. It still works. By default though, Wizards of the Coast have taken the brave choice to make combat gridless. Not mapless, but definitely gridless. (although the grid is an option). This harkens right back to the 2nd Edition and earlier. However, the level of detail and reliance on exact distances in this latest edition of D&D might mean that the grid is still very useful - just as it was in 2nd edition, even when it wasn't a core part of the rules.

Another core mechanic, which I really like for its simplicity, is advantage/disadvantage. If you have advantage, you roll two dice and take the highest. If you have disadvantage, roll two dice, take the lowest. It's a useful tool for both the game designers in designing abilities and DMs, who can use it to simply adjudicate situations. Fighting at the top of the stairs? Advantage! Fighting whilst on a swinging chandelier? Disadvantage! Dynamic and simple, this mechanic is really great.

It's D&D!

Overall all there is to say about these basic rules is that it's D&D. You're not getting the full experience, as I'm sure the Players Handbook will come with the rest of the classic classes and races, but you're getting the core experience. And I like it, for the most part. I'd definitely play it if someone chose to run it in my group, and I think I'd have a great time. If nothing else, reading through the pdf was making me incredibly nostalgic and I expect that's exactly what Wizards of the Coast were going for. If you want to play D&D, you could do a lot worse than this. On the other hand, because it's just nostalgia D&D I could just pick up my old 2nd Edition or 3rd Edition books and play or run from those, and I'd get that same effect. A few nifty mechanics and problems fixed won't change that. Certainly it hasn't usurped 13th Age as my fantasy game of choice with this pdf because it simply doesn't feel brave enough or different enough. Personality traits and inspiration are nice mechanics, but I've been spoiled now by the One Unique Thing and Icons. Nothing in these rules come close to those as tools a DM can use to craft great, player driven, campaigns. 

Where 4th Edition D&D felt radical and new, this simply feels nostalgic. 3rd Edition felt like it was trying new things and fixing old problems, whilst staying true to the feel of D&D. 5th Edition does neither of those things - it just feels like a minor rules update to 3rd Edition - and I think that might be a problem for Wizards of the Coast. That game already exists; it's called Pathfinder.

Index Cards and 'Gimmicks' in Game Prep

For the longest time (since I've been GMing, in fact) I've written up my game prep on the PC beforehand, usually in full prose. I've then printed out those notes and run from them at the table. Sure, there's been times when I've experimented with only putting bullet points, tried separating things by 'scene' or similar, but on the whole I've usually ended up with a mass of confusing notes on several sheets of paper that is fine for the first hour or so of the session. Soon though I need to switch sheets back and forth and then suddenly it all falls apart. Drowning in a sea of paper I begin to lose track of exactly I was trying to do and where was that monsters stats again? What treasure is in this room? What the hell is the name of this NPC?

It only took me about 7 years but finally I decided that I couldn't run like this any more. Especially when I discovered my group had grown from 4-5 people to 7-8. Which was untenable. More people meant more to think about and, yup, more paper to wrestle with.

These things saved my life. (Possibly an exaggeration)

I recalled a pair of articles on gnomestew.com that dealt with using index cards. Previously I'd skimmed them but mostly dismissed them as a gimmick. They've proven to be real game changers (literally), however. I'm writing more consise, better thought out, notes. I'm having less paper to juggle with. In short, I'm more organised and running a better game because of it.

Having nice colour coded notes (red for combat encounters, purple for skill challenges, blue for places etc) helps too. I quickly stopped numbering the cards though - anything that avoids me taking the players down a linear path is a good idea, in my opinion.

Where I differ from the gnomes, however, is that I don't keep my cards. (well, aside from the ones scattered around my room. I'm never going to be that tidy!) Instead I use Obsidian Portal to keep my game notes. This combined approach has worked really well - my notes at the table are easy to access and I have (via my iPhone) an encyclopaedia of campaign notes at my fingertips at all times.

My revelation about index cards caused my to look closer at other game 'gimmicks' that I'd previously dismissed. Especially as my group is now rather large. Taking cue from the 4th ed Dungeon Masters Guide, I now have one of my players (who is, of course, rewarded with a drama card!) keep track of iniative on a white board that everyone can see. One less job for me and having everyone know when their turn is coming up has helped make everything a little quicker.

The final gimmick I introduced serves a dual purpose! When you have a large group it's hard to stop people talking over eachother. Players tend to carry on conversations whilst waiting for their turn to come up - and in 4th ed that can take a little while.

That meant I had two problems to solve, both with solutions I'd heard many times before (but, again, dismissed). To solve the problem of players talking over eachother, a conch was needed and to solve the problem of turns taking a long time, I needed a little hourglass to help people along in taking less time.

So why not combine the two? I ordered a nice, big, green sandtimer from ebay. Big enough to be clearly symbolic and useful to keep track of time. Also it was nice and sturdy to stop certain players destroying it. Because they would.

 Just because something is a gimmick doesn't mean it should be dismissed.

There's a lot of advice out there for GMs. Previously I just stuck to the 'game theory'. I'm glad I've opened my mind a little - the game is definitely better for it.

Next - something with sails.