I ran a two hour demo session of 13th Age at ZoeCon last week for five players. I was
deadline -rushed working on 13th
Age so I didn’t otherwise partake of the convention, but I did catch up
with a couple friends I hadn’t talked to in years.
The player who’d traveled the furthest was visiting from
Peru on business. Perhaps not coincidentally, he played a character with a bit
of business in her background: Arian was a halfling heiress, the exiled heir to
the largest halfling corporation in the world. It had an assimilation-style
name, something to fit in among the taller barons of Glitterhaegen, so I can’t
remember what the corp was called. Arian was a rogue who was inordinately fond
of all-things-elven but she took her main cues from the Prince of Shadows.
Unlike most sessions, where I actively try to find
connections between all the PCs, this session ended up feeling a lot more like
a game of Fiasco. Somewhat at a loss
for a unifying plotline, I fell back on the notion that the High Druid’s
resurgence had reactivated ancient dwarven mines and that some mines were now
sending out powerful metals that had been lost for centuries.
The player of the elf wizard had been reading a lot of
Tolkien. He glibly dubbed our miracle metal quindilar. Quindalar flowed and
shimmied and did its best impression of the stuff in the briefcase at the end
of Pulp Fiction. All the PCs ended up
wanting quindilar, or having an interest in its future, and after off-screen
travail and the deaths of their other traveling companions, they faced off at
the entrance of a former dwarven copper mine, now pulsing with quindilar veins.
Talian the elf
wizard and Court historian was friends with the halfling heiress. The elf
wizard had been exceptionally good friends with the Elf Queen, since he was the
father of her upcoming child. It was expedient for him to leave the Court while
still breathing and he hoped that quindilar might offer him an avenue to a life
where he could have more to do with his family.
The dwarf cleric, Ollen, had been blessed with the Great
Gold Wyrm with the ability to eat most anything, a survival blessing that had
allowed Ollen and other heroes to survive a fearsome siege. Ollen preferred
minerals. That’s probably where I started conceiving the quindilar plan.
Raven the half-orc barbarian was a foundling and a
champion of the forest, devoted to the High Druid at a level that went beyond
words.
Trixie…. Well, Trixie was a mess unless she was fighting.
A two-weapon fighter and a one-woman hybrid of a Great Gold Wyrm champion and a
camp follower. The details are now buried.
I can’t claim there was a great deal I added to the
session. I started the action with an orc-fake. As the PCs faced each other at
the mine entrance, swords drawn and wands ready, an orc arrow hissed out of the
darkness of the mine and clattered off the fighter’s armor. A fight with
minions of the Orc Lord made the most sense given the PCs’ enemies. I reached
into my minis bags for the orcs. Undead, gnolls, goblins, lizard men. No orcs.
Whoops.
Aided by the players, I came up with the following: “The
gnolls have been fighting their way here too. They ran out of arrows. They’re
down to using orc arrows. That’s why that attack missed so badly [natural 1].”
So the orc fight turned into a gnoll’n’demon fight. The
PCs got over their initial mistrust and didn’t start interfering with each
other until the moment that the gnolls had given up (Trixie’s sword, blessed by
the GGW in preparation for combat with demon-lovers, was putting the fear into
them, literally) and the Diabolist’s messenger imp that was trying to escape
with a glowing golden tube was tumbling from the sky suffering from acid arrow
damage that was going to kill it. Trixie made a play for the tube before Ariana
(the halfling heiress) put her swashbuckle talent to perfect use and
somersaulted away with the goods.
At that point the action could really have gone all-Fiasco,
but Ollen the dwarf and Raven the barbarian calmed people down. We ended with a
round-the-table tell-me-the-end-of-your-character’s story, that went something
like this…
·
Ariana used quindilar
to build a company that competed with her father’s organization while embracing
halfling culture instead of pretending to be Big Folk.
·
Talian wisely kept away from the Court of Stars
but used quindilar to further his
researches and to create beautiful gifts for his lover the Queen and toys for
the child.
·
Ollen discovered that quindilar was just about the tastiest thing he’d ever experienced.
I didn’t give him much of a chance to expand on his character beyond this
broadly mimed discovery.
·
Raven made all the other characters’ plans
possible by NOT working with the High Druid and the powers of nature to shut
the mine down. “As long as they use quindilar
in moderation and do not harm the earth,” he said.
·
Trixie died alone of an unmentionable disease.
