13th Age 2E Playtest Update

The 13th Age 2E playtest is rolling, with a lot of feedback coming in already on the first playtest packet. I’m still welcoming in new folks, though I’ve fallen a bit behind on that front and have some more typing and list maintenance to do this week.

On Wednesday nights, we’re midway through our own champion-tier playtest campaign, moving up a level after every 3 battles. Actually, after just two battles at 4th level, where Jonathan pulled out dragons and double-strength fights and gave my troll (think: dwarven half-orc) fighter the unusual experience of spending many recoveries they did not actually possess.

Jonathan has set this campaign in the wilds of the Dragon Wood, a High Druid centered area that's not really part of the Empire, where humans are known as Huggers (as in tree-huggers), the elves are 'witches' and definitely not to be trusted, and sky-dwarves (dwarves crazy enough to like it on the surface) seem a lot more reasonable than the dwarves who live underground. We're troubleshooters sent by allied icons, the Dwarf King and Great Gold Wyrm. We've got two different versions of the fighter, a puissant cleric, and a sentient magic staff who functions as our wizard. Sessions are alternating between desperate combat and cross-culture diplomacy.

Meanwhile, as most everyone reading this knows, WotC's OGL-foofarah has been a rapidly developing show-on-the-side. I found myself heavily distracted for a week, but it now seems clear that good things are going to come of this, and 2E work is proceeding unaffected. We're figuring out which interesting new path we're going to take through the world of license-or-not, and no matter what we decide I’m grateful and happy to see how Paizo has responded to this cluster of events. We'll come to a decision along with Pelgrane before we put out another playtest packet, or perhaps sooner.

Speaking of timing, it's clear I’m not getting the second playtest packet out before the end of this month. So I’m now aiming at early February. I’m also taking a glance at some of the feedback, partly to see whether I want to account for obvious changes in the next packet, along with the bard/rogue/sorcerer, or whether we’ll save all feedback revisions for the third packet.