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C3 Episode 12 Reviewed One
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This episode is brought to you by the generous donations of our amazing Show Sponsors: Laura Pickrahn, Irene Viorritto, Darrell DeLaney, Charles Compton, Deviouspoptart, Nastasia Raulerson, David Scrams, Elizabeth Clark, Rebekah Gowman, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, Jerry Theuns, Mark Stanley, and Shelby Johnson.
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Transcript
Introduction to Eberron Renewed Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
um threaten with the coach now
00:00:09
Speaker
D20 Radio, your game is roll.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play tabletop role-playing game show.
Concepts for a Game Show Podcast
00:00:29
Speaker
Game show. Game game podcast. guest Oh my god, i would if somebody could put me on a weekly game show on a podcast, that would be the best. Anyway, this is Eberron Reviewed, where we talk about what we've done.
Introduction to 13th Age System
00:00:39
Speaker
I'm Jeff. And I'm Eric. Awesome. And we are going to talk for a bit. We have done I listen way more episodes than we normally do before a review, but that's not entirely true. We're going to talk a bit about the player pro logs that we just went through for the last handful of episodes. But mainly we're going to talk about 13th age, our new campaign, our new system that we're using. I'm going to pick Eric's brain about why this is the one we went with. And then of course we have some listener questions at the end.
00:01:08
Speaker
So before we get into anything with the new characters and our new PCs, it is just the two of us today. So that's also part of the reason we're not going to talk a ton about everyone else's PCs, because it would not be fair. I have thoughts.
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah. no Although I am. I am. You and I are the only ones that have played with all of the PCs so far. I managed to have no life enough to be in every prolonged episode. ah so But anyway, so let's talk about 13th Age. 13th Age is the new system that we are using for this campaign. And it is actually mid beta testing of edition two, correct? Or nearly done. Yeah. Second edition. Yeah. Yeah. Close to
Why Choose 13th Age?
00:01:46
Speaker
releasing.
00:01:46
Speaker
So Eric, first off, just why don't you talk a little bit about 13th age, how you found it. I mean, I, I'm assuming how you found it was searching up RPG rule sets, but what appealed to you particularly about it and then maybe.
00:01:59
Speaker
You can cut this part of YouTube, but how we've actually been working with the developers, ah or you have, I had nothing to do with it. They keep me away from the other people. i Jeff is a what we call an internal resource, the Geek Pantheon LLC. External liability. No, so I first came across 13th Age when I was making a video for the Geek Pantheon YouTube channel just about mechanics from other systems to steal for your campaign.
13th Age System Mechanics
00:02:25
Speaker
And one of the things I came across was the idea of the escalation die where you have a D6 and as each round goes by, it increases. And that's a modifier that gets added to PC roles just to ah represent building momentum of an encounter, but also making counters go a little bit quicker.
00:02:41
Speaker
And then I dove deeper into 13th age and learn more about how it was developed by the lead designer of 3.5 and 4th edition. They teamed up to make a game with both of their sensibilities. And I really liked it. The main thing that I really love about the system.
00:02:59
Speaker
that I think you've started to get a pretty good sense of through the prologues is how wildly different every class plays from each other. it like That's something about D and&D 5th edition that I feel like suffers a lot of times. I'm speaking of the 2014 edition. I have not read the 2024 D and&D 5th edition because I'm done giving Hasbro and Watsy my money. so and And we're simply not waiting in the discourse. Yes, yeah. But I... I feel like a lot of classes, especially when you get to, like, wizards, sorcerers, druids, and then fighters, barbarians, like, there's a lot of overlap in terms of how those classes operate. And 13th Age, I think, does a really good job where Jeff's Chaos Mage, as Kaz, plays entirely differently from Philip's demonologists, even though they are both, quote unquote, caster characters that Kaz spells.
00:03:53
Speaker
And I really like that. I like that there's not kind of universal spell lists that everybody picks from. It's like the wizard has their own spell list versus the occultist. And i I just really like that from a design standpoint. And I think it works well potentially. We'll find out from a podcasting standpoint because it's really easy to keep track of who's doing what, because nobody's doing anything that's similar. Like, if if you hear somebody constantly interjecting with their own insanity on other people's turns, you know, oh, that's Mia, because she's playing the occultist, and that's what that class does, is interject with their own insanity.
00:04:30
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. and i And I also, I like how much... Oh, go ahead. As a full disclosure, as Eric and I are recording this, we've actually already done the first arc of all five PCs playing together. So you may hear me make a joke that will make sense starting next week.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah. Or just like a, oh yeah, no kidding. That's like, how would you know that for me? Trust me. I saw it happen. Yeah. But I also really liked that part of the way the system was designed, especially if your class is like the occultist or even for you as the chaos mage, where, you know, you are figuring out what you're going to be doing on your next turn at the end of your previous turn.
Onboarding and Progression in 13th Age
00:05:06
Speaker
But there's also a lot of stuff that triggers when that happens that affects the entire rounded.
00:05:12
Speaker
I think has the potential to keep everyone really engaged at the table because if you're playing the e occultist, you have to be paying attention because all of your stuff happens on other people's terms. And so I really like that. So, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I honestly it's it is it is.
00:05:30
Speaker
chastening me because I also have to pay a lot more attention, which is so difficult. You'll hear me talk about my character sheet all the time during this thing because it's, but I'll finish that sentence later. But I have to pay attention because I don't know when I'm going to do each spell until I've drawn the thing. So I have to be like, okay, who's low on health the whole time? Yeah. So that i if I do draw a defensive spell, I know who to send it to or whatever.
00:05:56
Speaker
ah yeah A little bit about 13th Age from a from a player standpoint. It's really easy onboarding if you're familiar with 5E. There's a lot of nuance to look into if you want to, but if you just want to build a character for a one-shot, it's going to take you a couple of seconds if you're really familiar with 5E, which is pretty great.
00:06:16
Speaker
that really how i mean I just wanted to put that up. You pick your species lineage. What's what's the terminology we use in 13th Age? Kin, kin. You pick your kin, it comes with a little buff. Then you pick your class and it comes with a little buff. And then in addition to that, all of the obvious, the class features down the road. It doesn't look as, how do I say this? When you're looking at like the step progression part of any character building thing, it doesn't look as dynamic between levels as say D and D5E does. But when you start looking at your spells and you see, oh, at third level, you double your dice.
00:06:52
Speaker
Or yeah at fifth level, you this spell now can, without expending anything else or doing it a higher spell slot, this spell now can touch four allies instead of two or whatever. So you you got to dig a little deeper to see all of the growth potentials, but by and large, it's it's a really quick conversion for a player, which was really helpful for me when I was trying to help Madison build her character because I knew you know how to do it, kinda.
Collaboration with Pelgrane Press
00:07:19
Speaker
so Yeah, and in terms of our relationship with Pelgrin Press, who is the publisher of Thirteenth Age, the name of the system that we're talking about, i something that I really tried to do, and it was a pretty long process, is find a system that had a publisher that was willing to work with us in some capacity. um We are very good friends with a lot of people over at Edge Studios with Genesis and it was a lot of fun to be able to like talk about the system with the guy that designed it and things like that. We we didn't want to then hop
00:07:58
Speaker
back to a system like D and&D where it was just a we are full on consumers of the product. And so there were a couple different publishing houses that I had phone calls with about working together. And then it also became looking at those systems, which one was going to fit the type of story that I wanted to tell with the third campaign and that the players had bought into. And I think just the dynamic nature of Thirteenth Ages, combat and the way that they handle skills, I really like where it's through the backgrounds as opposed to a laundry list of skills. um I really like the malleability of that personally. so But yeah, more to come on what the actual partnership with Pelle Green Press looks like because
00:08:44
Speaker
They just launched another game based around the world of Lovecraft and Cthulhu game, and now they're working on finalizing second edition. But we'll we'll have more stuff to announce down the road once the game actually launches. So, yeah. Yeah, that's actually one thing.
Character Backstory and Unique Mechanics
00:09:01
Speaker
if when you when If you're not familiar with Thirteenth Age, when you listen, you're going to hear Rayleigh Eric ask, do you have a background that can help? And essentially that is one thing If you're not a big backstory person when you are developing your character and you want to like let it organically happen as you're playing, one, your DM probably doesn't love you for that. ah But secondly, you need to have ideas about a backstory because like Eric said, you don't have skills or skills.
00:09:26
Speaker
yeah you You just pit make up about, like for instance, cat part of Kaz's backstory is that he is Faye-touched. And so anything I try to do that might deal with Thelonis or that sort of Faye-inspired magic, i get a I get a bonus to add to my role because of that. But so you have to think about your backstory, think about what kind of guy you want to be, person you want to be while you're building.
00:09:49
Speaker
so yeah okay so we will talk you know i mean i'm here so we can talk a little bit about chasm here and why i picked him and what i'm doing yeah he is a little turd i wanted to i wanted to not have to be not happy to that's not fair i i didn't want to talk as much to outsiders as i did as hob and as dex and i thought that an easy way to do that would be to be a ah 16-year-old little piss ant. And yeah he's not the worst, but he is very much a teenager. And because of that, he's not going to be the face of the party in any sort of outward capacity to strangers. And I'm excited about that. And if he does become that, it's not going to be good for everybody involved.
00:10:30
Speaker
but his class is Chaos Mage and it is one of the, his class, Chaos Mage and Mia's class are the two that, Occultist are the two that do not have a second edition change, right? And demonologist. And demonologist. Okay. So three of three of our five characters. Okay, cool. yeah Are ported straight over. Madison's the only one playing a second edition character.
00:10:54
Speaker
Amazing. So if you want to take a look at what a Chaos Mage can do, it is ah it is out there and available to you in the Thirteenth Age documents online.
Icon Mechanics in 13th Age
00:11:02
Speaker
and so But the the fun thing about it, and we touch on it a little bit, is my guy has, I have six D20s in a bag in three different colors, and I pull one out blind, and that is the type of spell that I get to cast. Either are offensive, defensive, or what's called iconic, which is the powerful ones that I petition a god for, or not a god.
00:11:24
Speaker
In our case, it's just an icon, a powerful, almost all organizations in our thing, right? Like Lady Volo is one, but almost everything else is one. Well, and like a lot of them are, so O'Alin is the main druid, so he kind of represents the druidic forces, technically the speaker of the flame is our icon that represents the church, that kind of thing. So I tried to find like important individuals within them.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. Do you want to explain a little, and this is totally not for me. This is absolutely just for the listener and that I don't need this at all, but what the heck the icons are and do and why we, and what, what, like what they mean to the system. It's a little more concrete with my character, but just in general, cause we all have icon relationships. That's part of building your character. Yes.
00:12:12
Speaker
So it's it's very akin to obligations to a certain extent from fantasy flight games Star Wars system that we played a bit with early on in the second edition, of again or the second campaign. But at the start of each arc, which is not necessarily a single session, but rather a us as an adventure,
00:12:34
Speaker
Everybody gets to roll 1d6 per relationship point that they have with various icons. Everyone starts with three unless your character has a special ability like Mia's that you'll hear about in next episode where Mia's icon stuff works a little bit differently. Everything about Mia's character works a little bit differently. Yeah, that's very true.
00:12:53
Speaker
But you basically gain a narrative resource to spend that reflects your relationship with that icon to a certain extent. So without getting into two spoilery territory, but it's really the only concrete example that we have, Trevor uses his in the next session that we played in. He has a relationship with Lady Vol.
00:13:15
Speaker
you all were fighting some undead and he he used it in combat to get to re-roll his attack roll and basically said that you know he's been fighting undead minions of Lady Vol for so long that He understands how V understands how to fight effectively against them. But you can also use narrative resources. If you all hit a dead end with an adventure or something like that, you can then say one of my contacts from this organization. Or if you have a negative relationship with.
00:13:46
Speaker
Lady Vol, then somebody who you've worked with in the past against her shows up and has a lead for you all, that kind of thing. But there's a chance that there's a complication when you do stuff like that, where there will be some strings attached or, you know, this person that fights against Lady Vol all the time shows up, but he's being hunted by agents of Lady Vols, so they also show up kind of thing. So yeah, and there's 12 icons. And since we're doing an Eberron, had to come up with those on my own. And Keith Baker, both the designer of the 13th age and Keith Baker give the same advice for if you are running 13th age in Eberron or in a different setting is make up icons based on your needs from a campaign standpoint.
00:14:31
Speaker
don't try to do this very large amorphous list of icons that covers the entire setting because Eberron nerds will note that a lot of very important figures but in Eberron are not represented on the icon list. And that's because, well, there's very little chance that they're going to be important in the campaign. So, yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
right yeah like there's not a there's not an individual dragon mark house on our entire list of 12 right yeah or am i yeah so there's there's yeah the 12 right yeah but they are all 12 canonical eberron from yes fake baker materials right walliam yes the orem and the yep blah blah blah blah blah the kels or daughters of Whatever it is. I don't. daughters story cal yes I have made it my business to not learn anything about Eberron and I'm going like eight years strong on it or something. So I learned a lot about Eberron. I can't make those jokes anymore. But so I guess a question I have is what was
Prologues and Character Introductions
00:15:23
Speaker
the point of the prologue's Eric? I loved doing them, but just genuinely like as opposed to introducing our characters.
00:15:30
Speaker
collectively like we like we have in the past like most actual plays tend to do I just want to know what was your idea behind doing it I loved doing it and it was fun to play more or less throw away NPCs for public consumption because I could be a little sillier but so I finished your sentence I cut you off My sentence was that my address was going to be so what am with that? So it it was an idea that I heard floated in another piece of D and&D related content out there. Apologies for not remembering who to credit this to. Actually, I do remember who and it turned out he was kind of a Wang, so I'm not going to credit him. But anyway, sometimes bad trees have good nuts, whatever. So yeah, man, I'll be the I'll be the child about that when bad trees have good nuts. eric
00:16:16
Speaker
they There's an actual thing about bearing good fruit. Anyway, so it was this idea that you present your players with a lot of like one-shot D and&D adventures from like Dungeon Magazine and say, hey, pick one of these.
00:16:31
Speaker
that represents your character's first adventure and will run it just so you can get a feel for the character and get to like play them in an environment that is less high stakes than like the campaign proper i thought that was an interesting idea and so that that's where the initial idea of like prologue adventures where it's your character individually But then additionally, as that idea kind of germinated, it was, okay, this can also be the thing that each player character did that got the attention of the director who was trying to form the lighthouse. And, oh, this person is competent when it comes to dealing with extra-planar enemies or dealing with an extra-planar presence or problem. And then lastly, I... Really liked the couple of times in campaign two where I made one of you all control an NPC in a conversation just because it's it I think makes it more fun when one player character is having a scene and a lot of times it's very easy to Fall into just me and that person talking for 20 minutes. Yeah, send you back to campaign one of Barakan having conversation
00:17:45
Speaker
And so having a a roster of notable NPCs from each player character's background that can show up, and then I can hand the reins over to if Tucker from Nix's background shows up again, I can be like, Jeff.
00:18:01
Speaker
your Tucker. This is the circumstance in which Tucker is arriving. Go. And then you get to be a part of that scene as opposed to saying Kaz is just over here waiting. So yeah, I really like that concept and getting to build that out.
00:18:19
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's kind of all the different reasons why I like the idea of the Pro Logs. I hope you enjoyed doing the Pro Logs, Jeff. Oh yeah, they were a blast. I kept coming back. I very much could have taken, well, I don't know if I could have, because I think I was the one that was like, oh, we only have one other player. I guess I'll be playing in this one too, then. So maybe I couldn't have taken that off. But I was happy to. No, they were a lot of fun, and it was it was fun for me.
00:18:40
Speaker
to see how these characters acted with people they knew I know my prologue was not with people that I knew because yeah circumstances but you know with people that they knew or are comfortable with and contrasting that with how they acted among people that in this what comes out next week um yeah was kind of fun to see Speaking of, we never elucidated it in the prologue of mine. I don't know why. Well, I guess because he didn't know yet, but there's a time jump. So I will go ahead and tell you guys, you find out pretty quickly on my character. Kaz has a 20 year gap where he has no memory of anything. He, he woke, he went, he went to sleep at 16 years old and woke up 16 years old, 20 years later. So that's where he's at.
00:19:27
Speaker
20 oh gosh, what's the material playing called ever on cheese? That's that's right. It's just called the thing 20 ever on years later. So Yeah, I'm playing a little scatter shot today. I literally walked to home walked in the door from work and we started recording But yeah, no, I thought the prologues were a lot of fun. I enjoyed all of the different characters. It was also nice to play with Mia and with Madison for the first time for almost all of us. I'd played a one shot with Madison before, and I think Trevor might have been there for that, too. I can't remember. No, Trevor wasn't there. But I don't think any of us had played with Mia besides Eric knowing her yeah before.
00:20:07
Speaker
So it was great to get a chance to kind of play with these people before I brought my own character into it and kind of catch a dine icon stuff. And I don't know why Mia and I have decided that I'm going to say playfully antagonistic. I'm trying to be playful. It just became our vibe there ah during a couple of the prologues, but it was fun. It was a lot of fun.
00:20:30
Speaker
We will do some questions. This is going to be a shorter reviewed simply because we have not recorded any episodes yet, but we wanted to talk to you guys about the setting. We wanted, or not the setting, pardon me, it's Eberron, we've been there. We wanted to talk to you guys about the campaign. I will ask a question that is not in, well, it's we'll get to it. All right, so let's just start with some questions. If you ever have a question that you would like during an Eberron Reviewed episode, you can leave it in the Eberron Reviewed Questions channel on our Discord.
00:20:56
Speaker
If you want to join the Discord, I still believe the easiest way to find that link is on our Facebook page, which is facebook dot.com slash thegeekpantheon. Is that correct, Eric? Yes, it is. Okay. We're also on all of the other socials as thegeekpantheon, and I'm just going to finish the plugs now. That is also Eric's YouTube but channel, thegeekpantheon. Hooray. All right, questions. We are going to begin with Nicky. Nicky says, hi, Jeff. Hi, Eric. Hi, Nicky.
Adapting 13th Age to Eberron
00:21:22
Speaker
I started listening to the podcast around September when I started my Eberron campaign and I'm currently on campaign two episode 120. That is trucking through. That's amazing. Thanks for getting me through that after November. Thank you for but listening. Question is this, what were some unexpected difficulties with bringing 13th age to Eberron and what were some things that were unexpectedly easy?
00:21:42
Speaker
She says she started with Hijep, but that is absolutely an area question. They started with Hijep. I apologize. Yes. Hi, Nikki. I'm glad that you are enjoying the shows thus far. I would say probably the hardest we've already touched on was the icons list of just trying to nail down who the icons were, editing out the ones that would have been cool to include, but not necessary. And then also.
00:22:08
Speaker
And this is kind of territory to 13 pages of the system, but the decision to rewind the clock a bit and have it be set during the last war kind of had to think about a lot of things that are important to the Everon campaign setting that don't actually exist yet.
00:22:25
Speaker
like some countries and, you know, war for sure a very new thing. And so just kind of editing out those things that I chose to make difficult for myself. But the icons list was definitely the hardest. I would say the easiest is probably probably the classes I really initially when I was looking at the class list of the concept of chaos mage and an occultist and demonologist.
00:22:51
Speaker
I was spending a lot of time early days of figuring out, OK, because a big thing with the occultist is the occultist is the only occultist in the world. That's part of the class description is like you are the only person capable of doing the things that you do.
00:23:07
Speaker
And so i I started to try and really stress about how do I, from a lore standpoint, justify that. And then I just kind of stopped worrying about it and was like, you know what? like These are remarkable people. And Mia has come up with a really cool backstory that kind of does the justification for me.
00:23:24
Speaker
And so the unique things about 13th age like the character classes were a lot easier. I think by nature of the campaign being that we're dealing with people that are plainer touched. And so, you know, the fact that Nix can do what she does as a demonologist Yes, it's going to be terrifying for a lot of people, but I don't really need to spend a whole lot of time justifying why you don't see a whole bunch of people doing it because she's touched by the plane of Shabirath. And so that kind of justifies why she can do that. And same with Kaz and the Chaos Mage stuff. So, yeah, that's kind of kind of what what made it easy. So.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah like I can echo just the part about when we decided to set the campaign chronologically. like I have learned a lot about Eberron, but you know what I've never looked at? The precipitating circumstances of the war that started 100 years before I've ever played.
00:24:18
Speaker
So, yeah having to look at that stuff has been tricky. Where did I put my phone down? this That's interesting. I did not know that about the occultist, that that class necessitates being the only one and in the party that is that class. Yep.
Unique Classes in 13th Age
00:24:32
Speaker
Yep. Which I kind of get in the world. Yeah. Well, right. but i mean Which would indicate only one in the party.
00:24:39
Speaker
Which I guess makes sense if you have ah if you have like two occultists who are just... ah Sniping is not the right word because it's not hostile, but jumping in on everyone's turn, we're never getting to a round of combat. A party full of Occultists would be interesting, of just people just jumping in on each other's turns, chaos and nonsense. Roseau, I don't think that would actually work, because nobody would be acting on their turn, so the Occultists would never have a chance to go. Yeah. Interesting. Right. Anyway. the bet The better yet is just like... Me too. Alright. Irene asks, Jeff, which of your side characters was the most fun to play?
00:25:12
Speaker
I don't know why Philip and I both decided that for Valk's backstory, we were going to play the dumbest possible versions of the side characters or for the sidekick buddies, but we did. And that was a blast. It's fun. You know, I i often think about when Philip and I both played our characters drunk in campaign one and just getting to be silly or that gamer nation con one shot I ran for the two of you was just the most interesting section of D and&D. that's That's the deep lore of that Eric did a random role generated
00:25:46
Speaker
like a full random table-generated characters for a one-shot. And Philip and I just ran a rough shot over the whole thing, just blew up buildings, and it was fun. Anyway, so it's always fun to get to put aside the campaign-sustaining drama and be real silly with Philip. And so that was a blast. But I also enjoyed Tucker playing Smarmy. They were all fun. I i would be happy to cameo any of those guys again. I would just have to go back and listen to their dumb voices. Yeah.
00:26:15
Speaker
But I think, what was it? I really enjoyed you playing Madison's dad. I'm trying to remember the character's name. Elwin. Elwin Solis. Yes. That's a fun one to watch you play. That was fun. Honestly, that was kind of fun to play a figure that is supposed to be an authority, but neither of his children actually take him seriously. It was kind of fun. Yeah. But no, they were all good. And I'll go ahead and jump down. Kevin wants to know if the side characters from the prologue will make appearances in the main story. That sounds like we've already gone with a yes on that.
00:26:44
Speaker
as needed yeah there's no like big plans for any of them but when i think it'll be interesting then sure okay and remind me this we are we we we we we have travel capabilities eventually the lighthouse consortium that we met in campaign two yeah if you haven't listened to campaign two yet spoilers for some point in the campaign you'd be surprised We don't have that yet. So, so the camping, other Aerith, other decks, other Drakirs will not be showing up because it's not a time jump thing as well, right? It's just being able to travel. Correct. And kind of my internal intention right now at this point is that like from a getting it into like multiversal theater, like you all are on the prime lighthouse
00:27:37
Speaker
universe like this is the origin of the lighthouse consortium and so like until you all get things up and running nothing can exist outside of this timeline if that makes sense so yeah so i am sorry to put the nail in that coffin before it even had a chance to tease itself but you won't be hearing Dex or Drakir and I know which one you're more sad about no time soon and don't tell me you keep it to yourself we'd love it we'll do it sometime i'm sure but yeah okay flame asks what aspect of 13th age are you most excited about for me it's the variety of characters i really like uh you see this a lot more in board games like the board game route where every player i was going to mention that earlier game i really like that concept because
00:28:25
Speaker
in in a board game since it can still be competitive, but it's not. it's It's harder to play to mess with other people because you can barely keep track of what you're supposed to be doing. But I just really like Thirteenth Ages, the system having such a wide.
00:28:42
Speaker
disparity between V as a monk and like Nyx as a demonologist, even though they both attack in melee, neither of them work even close to similar other than they roll a d20 to attack. Selena as a wizard and Kaz as casters are very, very different. So I really liked that about the system. I excited to see how that continues to tease out as you all get more comfortable with the characters.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking ah kind of along similar lines, like once I learn more, certainly of my own, but then also everyone else's characters, like the idea of like the fastball special.
Collaborative Character Creation in 13th Age
00:29:18
Speaker
Like how can we use what we do differently cooperatively? You know, I've got that one spell. I have a spell that doesn't really do much at the moment.
00:29:29
Speaker
but the next time somebody hits this the person I cast it on it just does a pretty insane amount of extra damage for no good reason other than that's what the spell says and so I you know making sure I know maybe if it's a I can't think of a good example now but that That idea that I know that Nick yeah has this much left in her arsenal and they're guaranteed hits So I'm gonna cast this now because that's what she has next or yeah I know I can heal s Selena and so he knows I can heal her because I've drawn a defensive Die so she can go a little more aggressively right now kind of things. Yeah that is one that is escalation die that also plays into it of like holding that spell for later in the fight because
00:30:11
Speaker
if everybody's getting a plus four to their attack roll, well, then they're a lot more likely to hit. and so Yes. Yeah. That is what is the most difficult thing for me to remember about 13th age right now is you always add the your level and your escalation die to your d20 rolls. And I regularly forget level and almost always forget escalation die. And part of that is because we don't have a big honkin d6 sitting on our desk.
00:30:39
Speaker
to roll yeah around when we're recording remotely. And I probably should just get one. I need to get one of those big down markers from an NFL game and just have that up on the wall. I can ratchet it to the next one. It only goes to four, but I think I can make it work. I'll just get two. and hes yeah mean but You know, and that actually, so the escalation die only goes to six, obviously. So what happens at the end of the sixth round? It just stays at six. Yeah. Yeah. Like in one of the prologue adventures, I did something fun where it was like, once it gets beyond six, then the fight ends because yes, a good way to mark when a fight has gone on a really long time. But yeah. Yeah. No one wants to fight for more. Was that 36 seconds at six rounds? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:19
Speaker
It's a quick little skirmish. Awesome. Kevin asks a few more questions. One of them is, does anyone have things they want to change about their character now that they have some experience with 13th age? I don't think I want to change about that. I don't have anything that 13 ages gameplay makes me want to change. Um, it's a whole different ball game for me. I've never played a caster for a campaign, barely for any one shots. And so I'm having trouble right now, distinguishing what is different.
00:31:46
Speaker
about playing a caster class and what is different about 13th age. It's all all very new, so it's difficult for me to make those distinctions. What I will say is because of what we were just talking about, I wish that we had done a more collaborative not character creation, but actual stat dividing and stuff. like I wish Philip and I had sat down and been like, okay, i'm think i'm I'm kind of going here and here and here, and my spells are going to be mainly whatever, piercing damage, or I'm thinking about having a war hammer, and then I could take that and go, okay, well, I can do this and this and this with that. It's a little different with the Chaos Mage because my spells are so prescribed, but with some of the other magic classes where you actually pick spells from a list.
00:32:31
Speaker
yeah That's the other thing about the Chaos Mages. I only have like nine spells. So it goes pretty quick. Well, not including the icons, which I have 12 of. But outside of those, I have very few spells. And only right now at first level, I only have not access, not spell slots. My spell book that I have to choose from is five spells long outside of the icons. So it's it makes it a little, well, it certainly made it easier for me to build the character. And then I think we kind of touched on Kevin's other question. What's been the hardest transition to 13th age?
00:33:00
Speaker
from the Eberron standpoint. From the gameplay standpoint, its it's genuinely just remembering the movements. I don't want to say the gameplay or the rules, but the movements, the physiological stuff is so much still like D and&D because you're rolling D20s and stuff that it's hard for me to remember the extra 13th age stuff.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah. I'll get there. Because again, it really does change things when you remember you get to add seven to your role because it's the fifth round and you're a second level character. It gets huge. So eventually I'll be remembering those things also partly because I'm thinking I rolled a five and something to add your stuff for. See? Yeah. 28. Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That was Dex. I rolled a three on initiative. So 26. I think it really was something like that. Maybe that was perception. Doesn't
Excitement for New Campaign
00:33:48
Speaker
matter.
00:33:48
Speaker
That is the end of our questions, which I understand because the prologue, I didn't tell people with enough, with enough forewarning that we were going to record this today. It's a pretty quick episode. Eric, do you have any more insight about 13th age or about the coming campaign? We're super excited to have Mia and Madison joining us. Yeah, I do want to say that varying levels of experience with TTRPGs continuing.
00:34:12
Speaker
the tradition of adding somebody relatively new for each campaign, which is pretty fun. Trevor being back is great. That was a little touch and go. So that's wonderful as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, from a formatting standpoint of this campaign, ah it's kind of intentionally structured in a way to where, you know, as schedules allow, you might, we might be without V for an adventure or two here and there. We might sieve out, go off and do something personal while the rest of the group goes and does something I'm taking some casual. No, no, don't put them here because Jeff doesn't have anything better to do. So that's what it is. Kazma seriously disappears midway through some sessions because this kid came up. But no, I'm excited about this campaign. This is an idea for a campaign that's been brewing since about episode 30 of campaign two that we thought the campaign two was maybe going to go 100 episodes. ha ha And so, no, i'm I'm very excited to finally get it on the table. There's still a lot of
00:35:09
Speaker
A lot of I's that need to be dotted and T's that need to be crossed before the campaign is is really revved up and where to go, but i'm I'm excited that we have now started it. so yeah i I mentioned in the Discord something about how excited I was for everyone to meet Kaz, because he's the character I've been thinking about the longest out of anything I've ever played. And I remember the first time I brought up the idea of playing somebody who'd had a little Feywild adventure, you can't remember it very well. And it was at Fuzzy's Tacos in Yukon, Oklahoma, which would have been like, what, 20, 20, late 21, early 22? Yeah. Yeah, like, it's been a long time that we thought campaign two was gonna end. And Philip has been thinking about his, about, maybe not Nick's in particular, but what he wanted to build for this campaign in general for as long.
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah, so this had time to build four or five different characters that he was very excited to play you know so of course you know the The difference between Philip and I is Philip builds four or five different characters I just be erase and restart the same guy 600 times to the point that I can't remember which things I decided were the best things and So I'm not sure if you're getting Kaz's best foot forward here, but that's the one I ended up with. So, but we're really excited to bring it to you. I guess to, to put an action item out there, there is no better time to tell somebody about our podcast than at the beginning of a campaign and yeah, proper episode. What's that? I said, yeah. Yeah. Can see proper episode one starts on Friday. So, well, Nick, yeah, Nick. Yeah. A week from when you're listening to this.
00:36:51
Speaker
Yes, assuming assuming you were champing at the bit to listen to this reviewed episode the minute it came out, it'll be a week from when you're listening to this. Yeah. And we've like we've done the first handful of episodes and they were a lot of fun. This is a fun group of weird characters that I think really played off each other well. I think it's going to be a really yeah interesting, fun campaign. Eric Scott.
00:37:12
Speaker
I don't know what Eric has in store for us. Honestly, I was going to say Eric's got some great stuff in store for us. This is such a wild card idea for a framework to play in that I don't know what he's going to do. And that is also very exciting.
00:37:27
Speaker
I am kind of scary. So yeah, that's it. We're just playing jazz out here this time. So thank you for listening. We're excited to have you come along on this next journey with us to repeat the plugs. We are at the Geek Pantheon on all the socials and also on Patreon. ah You can search for patreon dot.com slash the Geek Pantheon.
00:37:46
Speaker
If you want to check out the other actual play that Eric is a player on and Philip GMs, you can do that at what's up. I was, yeah, I'm just, I've just, I've been over here. Keep going. Eric's hyping me up over there and I thought he was trying to interrupt me. You can, you can check that or do you can check that out the laughing tree on YouTube. The show was called Kyber shorts. The new campaign is blades and banners. Yes. Blades and banners, blades and banners, pirates. And I couldn't think of a good P word. So.
00:38:12
Speaker
I think that's it for us. Pirates and plots. and Yes. Unless you have further insight to share and not more words to start with. Not even a little bit. Okay. I know this was a shorter one you guys, but we really appreciate you listening and we will be back next week with episode one of the campaign proper. Have we picked the name for campaign two yet? I know last we traditionally pick now when the campaigns are over. We might need to crowdsource that one.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah. If you've got a good campaign to name, feel free to drop it in the Discord and we reserve the right to thank you and use it and and make sure people know who named it. That is all. yeah Thank you so much. Have a great week. Bye-bye. Oh, I've been Jeff. Eric.