13th Age 2E Pages: Little Demons

For the next few weeks, I’m going to share two-page spreads from 13th Age 2E. The images are showing up first as Kickstarter updates. Here in my blog, I’ll post notes on game design and mechanics. If it sounds fun and you didn’t get in on the Kickstarter, you can find the game on Backerkit.

This first slice from the Gamemaster’s Guide Monsters chapter is the second spread in the Demons section, with artist Pat Loboyko bringing the stampede that convinced us to hire him for all the demon illustrations.

Dretches: Just because they’re the smallest demons doesn’t mean they’re harmless, and in fact that sentiment changed how we’d handled things in 1E. The first time around, the dretch was a 3rd level mook. Jonathan hated that, observing that demons should be truly scary the first time heroes encounter them. Maybe dretches are pathetic to other demons, but they’re not pathetic to adventurers. So now the dretch is a standard monster, and if they appear in large numbers, the group terror ability will make them scary for nearly any outnumbered and surrounded player character.

Claw demons: The claw demon is imported from Book of Demons. The 2E modification limits the number of possible attacks against a single target, so the claw demon wants to engage multiple foes. That’s especially true if it’s using the new nastier special that deals damage to engaged enemies that miss it with an attack. That’s another element that spreads the damage out instead of potentially focusing it all on one target.

Gloranthan Options: This page is one of the few notes that specifically mentions 13th Age Glorantha. Since 2E is still entirely compatible with 1E, 13G’s monsters and rune blessings and even its classes are compatible with 2E games.

Chatty style: 2E still includes designer sidebars where Jonathan and I express specific opinions, but we ended up with fewer such sidebars in this edition. Not because we have less to say, more because that back-and-forth style now sometimes shows up in rules text. The Random Abyssal Defense paragraph is an example, pointing out in its first sentence that this is one of Jonathan’s preferences. In the last sentence I acknowledge that I usually skip it. Battles I prepare are usually already on the complicated side and I don’t usually need the extra defense to mix things up. Which is the way we want it: 13th Age GMs have options. There are usually a couple reasonable approaches to creating an exciting session.

Greg Stafford & the First Copy of D&D

(Young Greg painted for King of Dragon Pass by Stefano Gaudiano)

Before you read my story, read the story in Greg's words from the Chaosium blog, February of last year.

It's a great story and I was extremely amused to read it. But my amusement may not have been the same as your amusement, because I was comparing it to the story as Greg had told it to me, back when I worked at Chaosium!

Greg was a storyteller supreme. The best. I can see why he might have been more circumspect in the codex than he was with me. I'm not certain which version shades more towards truth. That doesn't really matter to the story . . .

When Greg told the tale, we weren't talking about Dungeons & Dragons. We were talking about White Bear & Red Moon, specifically about how Greg had tried to work out a publishing deal with various companies, shopping it around. I think it was after the first printing had sold out, he wondered if there was a way to publish the boardgame with a bigger company.

And he went to see Gary Gygax at TSR. As Greg told the story, Gygax was doing well at that time, he received Greg in a nice office. But it did not go well for Greg and WB&RM. Early in the conversation, Greg told Gygax that he thought he had owned one of the earliest copies of D&D . . . and here we diverge!

The way Greg told it, most of the copies of D&D had been stuck at the printer because the bill hadn't been paid yet. They weren't releasing the games to Gygax. And Greg's brother-in-law worked at the printer, or had business there, and saw the game, and thought it looked like something that Greg would like. One way or another he got a copy and sent it to Greg at a time when Gygax was being prevented from getting copies out to anyone else.

Maybe Gygax was amused later, but according to this telling, he wasn't happy with Greg at that moment. The attempt to publish WB&RM through the resurgent TSR went nowhere, and in this telling, Greg turned the story into a sort of fable about waiting until after the deal is done to tell funny stories that will only be funny to you.

(Greg the storyteller, again painted by Stefano Gaudiano for King of Dragon Pass)

Monster Design Tools: Using Size/Strength as Well as Level

Igor Coura asked a question on Twitter that’s better answered in prose. Igor is in the middle of converting some monsters from other F20 games to 13^th Age, and found himself wondering why we use the category of large monsters to mean “twice as powerful as a normal monster.” Other F20 games tend not to do it that way, when they want a more powerful monster they just use a higher level creature.

13^th Age monster levels determine the important stats that shape every combat: attack bonus, defenses, and hit points. We created the extra-knob for double-strength (and even triple-strength) monsters because we wanted certain monsters to survive longer in a fight, to have more weight as something that the PCs have to take seriously. If you add a couple levels to a monster, it certainly has to be taken more seriously, but as monsters (and PCs) gain +1 attack & defenses each level, the leveled-up monster is also going to be harder to hit and have a much easier time hitting the PCs.

Fighting higher level monsters is certainly one experience. Fighting tough monsters of your own level is another experience. Therefore, when we decided we wanted both experiences in the game, we seized upon the somewhat obvious idea that a bigger creature of a certain level might be tougher than a normal-sized creature of a certain level. Large creatures that are double-the-hit-points-and-damage are part of the story our system is telling. Players can generally count on discovering that large creatures are twice as tough as normal sized creatures, and huge creatures might be three times as tough.

We’ve really liked the impact of having double-strength monsters, so much so that in books after the 13^th Age core rulebook we introduced double-strength creatures that aren’t large. We just wanted to be able to emphasize that a named NPC monster was tougher than the rest, or that a particularly puissant spellcaster or wrecker was going to be twice or three times as much trouble to handle.

We didn’t stop there. 13 TrueWays added weakling monsters, creatures that were only has as tough (hit points and damage) as normal monsters. They’re tougher than mooks, and can’t be killed in batches like mooks, but they’re deliberately not as serious a problem as normal antagonists . . . while still using the attack bonuses and defenses that sit in our game’s sweet spot. That felt right for a couple of the new devils invented by Robin Laws, creatures that have abilities that can be serious campaign problems but their raw combat stats aren’t the point. (Shout out to the honey/slime devil, one of which became the star recurring villain of my 13^th Age Glorantha campaign when reskinned as a Lunar Chaos priestess.)

And speaking of 13^th Age Glorantha, that’s the book where we introduced elite creatures, creatures that are half again as tough as a normal monster of that level. That power level felt exactly right for the Thanatar acolytes—and it’s telling that when I supplied the final hit points/numbers for Ruth Tillman’s similarly spooky jackal priests of the Great Ghoul in 13th Age Bestiary 2(page 123), elite status seemed right. The elite 150% mark is great for extremely dangerous combatants or leaders who you still want to encounter as part of a larger group. Double-strength and large monsters tend to eat up the building-battles possibilities while elite creatures supply some of the same punch while appearing in threatening numbers.

That’s the point of having monsters at different strengths at the same level: to give GMs flexibility when building battles. Well-built battles tell different stories, stories that feel much different when fighting mooks, weaklings, elite, large, or triple-strength enemies. Variable strengths work along with monster-level to provide multiple dials we can adjust each battle and each adventure. 

Johnny Reb, Dana Lombardy & Glorantha

As a younger dude who hadn’t entirely grown into game designer boots, in mid 1996 I got a job at Chaosium as Greg Stafford’s right-hand man for publishing Glorantha. Positioned on the right-hand, I learned that neither the left hand, nor the checking account, nor the pockets, nor any other chunk of Chaosium, had money to pay freelancers for work they produced within, oh, maybe three years if all went amazingly well. So, my Glorantha work was mostly about shutting projects down.

But Greg’s dream was that Giovanni Ingellis and his company, Stratelibri, from Italy, were going to produce a Glorantha miniatures game. Stratelibri hoped to challenge Warhammer, go big or stay home. But it wasn't something we could start working on at Chaosium. Giovanni wanted to design our Glorantha game, that was his dream, and in return he would fund it.

So I dove into the world of miniatures gaming. I’d already been turned on to a clever ancients/medieval game called Armati by Jon Kovalic, of all people, who for a brief time helped put out an Armati fanzine. But I’d missed the brilliantly abstracted DBA (De Bellis Antiquitas, which I still love) and its wooly ancestor (WRG 7^th Edition, which Charlie Krank & friends introduced me to in Charlie’s game garage). About the same time, Scott Schneider of Chicago introduced me to Great Battles of History, the GMT ancients wargame that plays a lot like a minis game with counters.

Closer to home in the Bay Area, Chaosium’s friend Dana Lombardy wanted to teach me to play Johnny Reb. I put him off for a little while. I believe I was thinking that a regimental American Civil War minis game wasn’t all that relevant to a supposed rival to Warhammer.

the rules at the time; these days some gamers prefer John Hill's newer rules, Across a Deadly Field

After work one day, Dana set up a giant battle (well, giant to me!) and we played for several hours. I'd played write-orders-then-execute-them wargames before, but Johnny Reb improved greatly on that model with face-down order counters executed in a timing sequence that created a dynamic battlefield. Dana was enthusiastic and helpful and wanted to help the Glorantha minis project take off. I remember the Johnny Reb game fondly. Which is ironic, because at the time I was nowhere near appreciative enough.

Dana, closer to now

I was caught up in the strange dance steps of preparing to produce a game that I wasn’t allowed to think about designing. Greg was focused on turning out orders of battle for the various combatants in the Hero Wars, particularly the Lunar Empire. (Some of this work has recently resurfaced in Martin Helsdon’s The Armies & Enemiesof Dragon Pass.) Giovanni of Stratelibri wouldn’t talk about the Glorantha minis game until I visited him in Italy. I thought that was unhelpful, but hey: free trip to Italy!

Giovanni, someone I'm glad to have met

The trip was delightful, Stratelibri were gracious hosts and just meeting and hanging out with Giovanni was splendid in a life/historical sense. But the minis business rolled a fumble. It turned out that Giovanni didn’t actually have time to design anything new, he planned to re-purpose a quirky little cyberpunk skirmish system he’d created years earlier. It hadn’t really worked as a cyberpunk game and I didn't think it was going to work as a Glorantha game. I hadn't really expected to challenge Warhammer but I'd at least hoped to take advantage of Greg’s work on the military histories of Dragon Pass. 

By the time I had returned to California, Giovanni had regretfully pulled the monetary plug because of a) problems with Magic: The Gathering; b) store expansion plans; c) knowing the Glorantha project wouldn’t work; d) choose your own adventure. That was when nearly everyone at Chaosium got laid off thanks to the Mythos over-printing disaster.

But back to Dana. He was on hand, helpful, and would have been one of the best people in the world to talk with about miniatures and wargame design. I stumbled along without recognizing that Dana’s presence in the project was a lucky penny that I should have flipped many times. On the bright side, my mistake wasted less of his time than if I'd understood what I was doing. 

You can find links to Dana’s doings here. If you grab a copy of Green Ronin’s wonderful 100 Best HobbyGames, edited by James Lowder (now of Chaosium!), Dana wrote up Johnny Reb on page 157.

Gaming this week: Book of the Underworld, Wingspan, Cypher System

The wonderful car-web photo above was taken by Lisa Eschenbach, and I'm using it to acknowledge that I finished the development phase on Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan's Book of the Underworld earlier this week. Yeah, it took a few weeks longer than I expected. The book is now with the editor. All the art is coming in on schedule so it won't be too long before it's in layout.

Also this week, I made huge progress on two new designs. The secret card/boardgame I've been designing for my own personal satisfaction has achieved harmony. Players have been enjoying it for awhile, and now I'm also simply having fun rather than seeing things that need fixing. Notably, I'm no longer winning every game. There's a specific type of imbalance when the designer's advantage in knowing what might be unbalanced pays off too often. Happily, I'm losing now, so that development phase is over.  I'll be looking for a publisher soon.

Meanwhile on a different unannounced boardgame project that has a publisher already, I solved the last of the design problems that was bugging me and am making a pass through the cardset and other components to live up to the new solutions. I'm looking forward to playtesting next week.

I also enjoyed a couple first-plays this week. I've only been able to find the European supplement for Wingspan, but friends Brittany and Miguel brought over the core game. We all loved it. Lisa used the Audubon app on her phone to accompany turns with the calls of the newly played birds. Brittany arranged a ridiculous combo and stuffed what she called a 'Christmas goose' with 20 VP, so curses accompanied the bird calls.

I also got to play my first game of the Cypher system, in a highly diverting fantasy genre session run by Bruce Cordell. I had fun as a Resilient Speaker Who Keeps a Magic Ally. Specifically, I'm playing a priest of a war god that died in apocalyptic fashion (the god I mean), and now I get my spells from random deities, changing every day, who are using me as an experiment, or a bet, or something. More or less a One Unique Thing that will definitely make for fun prayers. Also: I'm a kite-fighting and bocce ball aficionado. My comrades are considerably doughtier (more on them next time), so all shall be well.

And though we didn't play The Gods War this week, it launched a Kickstarter with Gloranthan gods of War, Secrets, and Magic, and I'm pretty sure I never shared this method-acting photo from our Gods War game. From right to left, Sean pulled faces as Chaos, Jonathan was a stickler-for-rules Solar, and I was a Storm player who never rolled a 6 after mistakenly using a wargaming plan in an area control universe. The sword was an attempt to compensate for 6-less-ness. Paul, the Darkness troll photographer, ate us all.

My GenCon Schedule

I'm going to be simpler to find this year. Many years I orbit the Pelgrane booth, but in the past it's been a loose orbit. This year the orbit tightens and I'll be working the Pelgrane booth most of the show. Find me and the rest of the Pelgranistas at booth #1417, where we'll have a couple new products for Night's Black Agents and one new sandbox adventure book for 13th Age: Shards of the Broken Sky.

13th Age Monster Workshop 
Friday, 11:00 am to noon. Stadium Meeting Room 12
This panel is a team-up between 13th Age designers and audience members who end up as 13th Age designers! Previous workshops' creatures that we polished and published include three entries in Bestiary 2: the shadow mongoose, the salamander (originally designed as the lava moth), and the Koruku, the avatar of the Iron Sea's hatred for the Dragon Empire. That's Rich Longmore's illustration of the Koruku above. Its brainstorm melted my brain cells. Bring your brain and help distribute the meltage.

13th Age Glorantha Signing
Friday, 3-4 p.m. Chaosium booth #829
Jonathan Tweet and I will be scribing runes into books. Also autographs.

BGG Interview about Shards
Saturday 1:30
Digital discussion for on-line viewing.

Swords, Spies, & Shoggoths: the Pelgrane Press Panel
Saturday, 2-3 p.m., Crowne Plaza: Pennsylvania Station A
This is one of our Ken & Others Talk About Stuff panels. Happily the stuff includes some mostly-unannounced 13th Age books!

Guest Post: Jonathan Tweet's GenCon Schedule

In 1978, I went to Gen Con as a 12-year old and bought Cosmic Encounter. Nine years later, I returned as a vendor selling Whimsy Cards, and I’ve been back most years since. This year at Gen Con, I’ll mostly be promoting Over the Edge, the all-new rewrite of my influential 1992 RPG. Here’s my schedule of public events.  

Wednesday during the day, no plans, maybe I should make some. 

Wednesday night, Diana Jones Award party at the Slippery Noodle, game professionals welcome. Eager to see who wins from among the four worthy nominees.

Thursday, 11–1, Atlas Games booth, #1421. Talk to me about Over the Edge, Clades/Clades Prehistoric, Ars Magica, On the Edge, or anything. Yes, I’ll also sign whatever books of mine you bring.

Thursday, 2–3, Crowne Plaza: Pennsylvania Stn A. Basics of finding players, getting a campaign started, and taking the gamemaster role. With Darcy Ross, Robin Laws, and Justin Alexander. Crowne Plaza is the place with the creepy white statues, so that’s good. https://www.gencon.com/events/149629

Friday, 3–4, Chaosium booth, #829, signing 13th Age Glorantha, or anything. With Rob Heinsoo. 

Friday, 7pm or so until much later, ENnies reception & silent auction (6pm) and awards (8pm). Union Station Grand Hall. Last year I had a fun time bidding at the silent auction and losing all my bids. 

Saturday, 11–4, Atlas Games booth, #1421. 

Sunday, 11–2, Atlas Games booth, #1421. 

Sunday, 3, http://twitch.tv/genconstudio, live interview. 

Then 24 hours until my flight out on Monday.

Twenty-sided rune dice for 13th Age Glorantha

I love that both 13th Age Glorantha and RuneQuest are up for awards at the UK Games Expo later this week.

So here's a note on on a product that people may not have realized works for both games: the set of RuneQuest expansion dice from Q-Workshop.



The hit location die and the twelve-sided strike-rank die aren't going to do much for 13th Age Glorantha players, but the runes on the 20-sided die are the runes used by 13G in exactly the right order to replace a glance at the random rune table.

Guest Post: Thumbing Through 13th Age Glorantha

Jonathan Tweet gifts my blog with gaming-centered posts, and here he is, finally looking at something we created together! 

At Gen Con, I finally got a copy of 13th Age Glorantha for myself, and when I got home I looked it over page by page. During production, Rob worked with the art and layout to bring the book together, but I kept my eyes off it so I would be able to see the final book with fresh eyes. It was worth the wait! Over the last forty years, various art styles have represented Glorantha to gamers, and 13th Age Glorantha touches on all those styles. From Cults of Terror (1981), there’s a classic, full-color, black-and-white illustration of Thanatar. He’s the severed-head god whose worshipers steal magic from the heads of those they decapitate. There are plenty of stylized images of gods and heroes, which are perfectly suited for a myth-oriented world like Glorantha. Some illustrations are drawn in a comic-book style, which suggests the archetypal quality of the myths and those involved in them. Some illustrations represent a more recent style of Gloranthan imagery, with details inspired by East Asian and South Asian cultures and religious art. Other illustrations are gritty fantasy pieces, reflecting the down-to-earth aspects of roleplaying in Glorantha. It’s fun to see all these styles together, and it’s a cogent reminder that your Glorantha is up to you. 

The Glorantha Sourcebook is a treat to look at, too. It’s a system-free companion to 13th Age Glorantha, and it has lots of art that I would have loved to see when I was running Glorantha campaigns in high school and college. The iconic images of the gods do a great job of connecting the abstract background of Glorantha’s divine beings to the everyday life of characters in the world. 

Here’s a photo of a meaningful illustration from 13th Age Glorantha. This section of the book is about a terrible part of the God Time where your god was defeated, and this is Rich Longmore's depiction of the mighty Orlanth, defeated and broken. The player-characters get to enter the God Time in their god’s place, and then it’s their turn to face the denizens of Fangplace.

You can see I’m bookmarking some pages. These are places where I wrote something particularly harsh. Chaos is on the rise, and there’s plenty of harshness to go around. In one scenario in particular, I almost feel sorry for the players. 

Guest Post: On Dice Mechanics and Over the Edge

This is a guest post on  from Jonathan Tweet, who is in the last 24 hours of his Over the Edge Kickstarter with Atlas Games. I didn't directly contribute to the design of Over the Edge, but it turns out that I contributed indirectly! 

Rob’s first professional appearance at Wizards of the Coast was when he in brought an interesting skirmish miniatures game and showed it to leads in the game design group as a possible acquisition. It was designed as a Glorantha game, but it would work the same way for a Magic-based miniatures game. The special dice you rolled mostly had numbers on them, but some faces instead had runes that triggered special abilities. When you rolled the dice in this game, the numbers you rolled were important, but so were the runes. 

He brought the same approach to 13th Age, where a monster’s attack roll determines not only if it hits but also whether something else happens. For example, if a phase spider hits you with a d20 roll that’s even, it can make a second attack to steal one of your magic items. The attack roll means more than simply hitting or missing, and the gamemaster can use the same attack over and over with different results from round to round. 

The original Over the Edge from 1992 had a linear dice mechanic, where your roll of multiple dice resulted in a number that indicated how well you had performed the task being attempted. The new Over the Edge has a linear scale on two dice to determine success or failure, and it adds good twists (if a die is a 4) and bad twists (if a die is a 3). These are the surprising results, good or bad, that are part of the conflict’s resolution. The good twist and bad twist rule was the original concept that the whole dice rolling system is based on. That approach derives directly from Rob’s dice systems that provided results that were different not just in quantity or degree but in quality. 

The Kickstarter for the new Over the Edge ends Tuesday, August 14, at 11 am Pacific. 

Where I'll Be at GenCon

In pictures, my week looks like this...

Here's the text version!

Thursday, August 2

13^th Age Adventure Design Seminar.

11 a.m. to noon. . .

Lucas Oil Meeting Room 1

We run these as audience-participation workshops, so y’all will brainstorm a 13^th Age adventure with Jonathan Tweet and Wade Rockett and I functioning as multiclass ringleader/muses!

Pelgrane Booth, Signing & Talking

3:30 to 5:00 PM

Booth #1317

I’m likely to be around the Pelgrane booth other hours also, but if you want to be sure to catch me, these are the times.

Wrestlenomicon Playtest/Demos

5:30 to 8:00 PM

First Exposure Playtest Room,  convention room109 near the bottom of the Westin escalators

I’ll be running games of Wrestlenomicon in the First Exposure Playtest  Room. It’s a two or three-player card game of apocalyptic professional wrestling between elder gods, launching on Kickstarter later in August!! 

My co-designers Shane Ivey & Dennis Detwiller of Arc Dream will be running Wrestlenomicon in First Exposure starting at noon. The later shift goes to Fire Opal Games CEO Marie Poole and me, Marie will start at 4:00 while I’m in the Pelgrane booth.

Friday, August 3

13^th Age Monster Design Seminar.

11 a.m. to noon. . .

Lucas Oil Meeting Room 5

Another audience participation workshop with experienced 13^th Age monster designers at the mics . . . and one developer, if Paul Fanning can join us.  Two of the monsters created in previous seminars appeared in Lions & Tigers & Owlbears: 13^th Age Bestiary 2 last year!

Worldbuilding from Different Directions Seminar

12 noon to 1:00 PM

Lucas Oil Meeting Room 1

Here’s something you won’t see every year: at least three game designers involved with different games, all inspired by the same world, getting together to compare perspectives and approaches. Of course it’s Greg Stafford’s world of Glorantha, and Jeff Richard and Jason Durall and I will be talking about HeroQuest, RuneQuest, and 13^th Age Glorantha.

Pelgrane Booth, Signing & Talking

3:00 to 5:00 PM

Booth #1317

Wrestlenomicon Playtest/Demos

8:00 PM to midnight

First Exposure Playtest Room

Saturday, August 4

Swords, Spies, & Shoggoths: The Pelgrane Press Panel

2:00 to 3:00 PM

Lucas Oil Meeting Room 5

Pelgrane Booth, Signing & Talking

3:30 to 5:30 PM

Booth #1317

Sunday, August 5

13^th Age Glorantha Seminar

10:00 to 11:00 AM

Lucas Oil Meeting Room 7

Jonathan Tweet, Michael O’Brien (MOB) and I will take a jaunt through the many Gloranthas that helped create our 466-page labor of love and talk about the many possible campaigns it can help create, in and out of Glorantha. 

[[Also Sunday at 10:00 a.m until 2:00 p.m., Shane Ivey and Dennis Detwiller will be running more Wrestlenomicon demos in the First Exposure room.]] [

13^th Age Glorantha Demo: The Next Valley Over

Noon to 2:00 PM

Chaosium Gaming Room

I put this demo and its pregen characters together last week. It’s in the freeform style you may have experienced playing the 13^th Age convention demo I created a few years back. Other GMs will be running the demo throughout the convention. 

Pelgrane Booth, Signing & Talking

2:30 to 4:30 PM

Booth #1317

…And that’s the plan, aside from business meetings, design meetings, seeing friends, keeping contact with Fire Opal Games comrade Jay Schneider as he helps run Dragonfire and Shadowrun: Crossfire events, and touring the hall to surf the wave of thousands of happy gamers!

Interviews & Lists

broo minis painted by Richard Bark, octorilla/walktapus mini from when Jonathan and I designed Dreamblade

I've done a few interviews in the last couple weeks, two about 13th Age Glorantha and one about monster design.

JM, Mark, and Nick's Iconic podcast on all things 13th Age-related has started up for a second season! Jonathan Tweet and I were guests for the first episode. We started by discussing the biggest design challenge we faced on 13G: fitting everything into a 190 page book. (Spoiler: we failed!) Our hosts were funny and fun and I'm looking forward to joining them again some time.

Also in the world of radio podcasting, The RevEnFuego interviewed me about 13th Age Glorantha for a BJ Shea's Geek Nation segment. Unlike the Iconic trio, the Rev wasn't familiar with Glorantha before he got hold of 13G, so we started with some of the runic, mythic, and Staffordian basics. As with the Iconic chat, we eventually landed among ducks. Along the way we talked a lot about 13G classes like the trickster that might also be used in 13th Age games that aren't set in Glorantha.

That was also the subject of a column I wrote for the Pelgrane Press website, New 13th Age Classes: A Swordmaster & an Earth Priestess Walk into the Dragon Empire. Originally I was going to write about all the new classes in 13G, but I opted to go in-depth into two (Humakti and earth priestess) as examples of what's possible.

Meanwhile in a text interview that had nothing to do with ducks, but one good question about Glorantha, Phil Pepin of High Level Games asked me questions about monster design, including a question that led back to designing miniatures games at WotC. That ties nicely into the miniature photographed above, a walktapus-by-another-name that Jonathan and I made as part of a Dreamblade set while at WotC.

Another thing we took along with us from WotC was a fondness for the OGL. We used it for 13th Age so that other people could create compatible products with the system and I enjoyed Wade Rockett's recent round-up of notable books compatible with 13th Age published by third-party publishers. There's a lot of great stuff here, and it didn't mention some of the cooler free stuff, like Tim Baker's Escalation fanzine.

13th Age Glorantha: Delicious (to Trolls)

Of the little things I like about our 13th Age Glorantha book, one of the silliest is how pages 347 and 348 look like they've been eaten by moths. It’s the o Darkness section of our runic geography chapter. o Darkness is the rune of the trolls, and trolls a) eat anything; and b) herd giant insects. So it always makes me happy that pages devoted to troll territories look like they’ve been nibbled by bugs!

But did I say this was silly? It’s not really. It’s the kind of thing Greg Stafford planned when he envisioned Glorantha’s runes. It’s more cosmic than it is accident.

Heinsoo: Rainbow over the Wine-Zoo

How do you pronounce my last name? Yes, you, the reader, the comrade sharing this line.

If you pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with ‘wine’ and the second syllable to room with ‘zoo,’ you’re agreeing with nearly all English speakers. Well, American-speakers, at least.

If you pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with ‘rain’ and the second syllable to rhyme with ‘bow,’ you’re either Estonian (or maybe Finnish or Dutch), a member of my circle of family or friends with a good ear for language, or someone who has had me correct you two or three times already.

My wife Lisa (not a Heinsoo, by the way, she has a very cool name of her own that’s marginally easier to pronounce) advises me to give it up, and just let people pronounce my name the way they’re going to read it, because come on, who am I kidding? She’s probably right. When Shane Ivey of Arc Dream asked me last week about the pronunciation of my name for the upcoming Wrestlenomicon Kickstarter video, I could have let the original wine-zoo pronunciation roll. Because really, I don’t care if people say my name wrong. 

I just can’t bring myself to ignore our Estonian selves, not when I say my own name, or when someone asks. Who would I be if I’d grown up with a name that other people could pronounce properly? Maybe less of an unusual person, I say, being polite.. I suspect I wouldn’t be me, not in some odd ways that matter.

So it’s OK if you pronounce the name of my company to rhyme with Rob Wine-Zoo Games. I don’t mind, I expect it. But if you hear me talking, I’ll continue to rhyme my name with rainbow. And in honor of that pronunciation, here are four beautiful color treatments Lee Moyer (rhyme scheme starts with Wheee!) created of the logo for the new company, and two black and white versions like the one that appears on the cover of 13^th Age Glorantha.

this week in gaming

 

This week I absorbed the rules for four new games: Gloomhaven (cunning boardgame dungeon-crawler and Kickstarter darling) Magic Maze (unique co-op game getting in and out of a delightfully illustrated fantasy shopping mall), Wild Blue Yonder (the new version of Dan Verssen’s Down in Flames WWII air combat card game from GMT), and Centerville (Chad Jensen’s new Euro-style urban planning status and prestige game). So far the only one of the four we’ve played was Magic Maze, which was hilarious fun but demonstrated again that I’m a turn-based gamer and a real-time bumbler.

In the world of playtesting, we played a great session of one of my new card game designs that the publisher has not announced yet. The game has gone well enough for long enough that I’m going to finish up its rulebook and call it done as soon as I can carve out two focused days.

Also in the world of playtesting, Lisa and I played a friend’s new card game a number of times on a couple of nights, but that’s not announced either so I can’t write details.

And the Wednesday night RPG group enjoyed another session of the Over the Edge 25 campaign that Jonathan has been running for a while now. The campaign doesn’t have a name yet. Our other OTE campaigns seem to acquire a name when things go horribly wrong, names like “Ann Thunder Escapes,” when Ann Thunder was our nemesis. So far, so nameless.

Meanwhile in the world of actual work I’ve been acting as editor/layout overseer for the Book of Demons for Pelgrane. And getting art orders ready for three other Pelgrane books. And cobbling together the credits and appendices for 13^th Age Glorantha, which Chris Huth is busy laying out the final chapter of. I’ve also been dealing with art direction on two other game-projects we’re not talking about yet, which raises the point that I’m often working as the art director for games I design or develop. That was something I leaned towards at the end of my WotC shift, when I was writing art orders for books I hadn’t worked on. But WotC had excellent art directors, trained for the job. In the world beyond WotC my untrained aptitude has frequently put me in the director’s chair.

When I get through the art direction, I’ll be back to developing Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s Book of Ages, a fun 13^th Age project with three different takes on portraying a world dominated by icons-over-time. Which means that this week, my only effort that qualifies as actual game design was a lunch time conversation with Logan Bonner about two in-progress card games. Extremely worthwhile, but I haven’t even have time to follow up on his thoughts. We’ll see if I can get back to design next week. 

Winter update

This weekend: I'll be at Dragonmeet in London on Saturday with the Pelgrane crew. I love visiting London, and Wednesday I got to attend Arsenal's 5-0 tonking of Huddersfield, so all is well.

Work in progress....
The first five books mentioned on this list are Pelgrane projects for 13th Age. After that the list moves to other companies and other games.

[[cover art by Jessica Chung Ti Lee]]

Fire & Faith:  The third of the battlescenes books by Cal Moore, with ready-to-run mini-adventures for the icons who rely at least partly on faith: Diabolist, Crusader, Priestess, Great Gold Wyrm. The book didn't quite make it into print in time for Dragonmeet. Printed copies are showing up later in December, for now you can pre-order at the Pelgrane store and get the PDF.

[[cover art by Melissa Gay]]

Book of Demons: This one is in layout. Among the reasons the book will be notable is that it contains a rarity: a new 13th Age character class, the demonologist, something I put together after initial work by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and another early draft from Paul Fanning. Elsewhere in the book, the six hellholes Gareth created are wild. He'd written art suggestions that I said were not-doable, "tone it down, a lot, this is just too convoluted, no artist is going to want to handle this," I said. And then Cat Tobin went and proved me very wrong, finding an artist named Agathe Pitié who pulled a full Hieronymus Bosch. 

Book of Ages: I'm midway through developing Gareth's wonderful combo of DIY chronicling and sample ages, full of monsters and magic and spells from the ancients. Not sure of publication date yet but it's next in the pipeline.

Shards of the Broken Sky: I've got a bit of final devwork to handle on ASH LAW's big adventure. Art is midway. Maps are still needing to be arranged.

Loot Harder: ASH's new book of treasure, with bits from a few couple other writers. To be published in 2018, either just before or just after Shards I believe.

13th Age Glorantha: It will be a 400+ page book from Moon Design. We recently shared Chapter 3: Playing in Glorantha with KickStarter backers. Six of the book's eight chapters have been laid out by Chris Huth. Layout finishes soon. I'll be handling indexing and other final bits when I'm back from Dragonmeet. I'm amazed by the final layout. Jonathan prefers not to see our books as they're in progress, he likes to wait until they are done--he's in for a treat!

Wrestlenomicon: A two-player card game from Arc Dream Publishing, presently in open playtesting, aiming to be on Kickstarter sometime in 2018 since its art by Kurt Komoda is complete and we're just getting the mechanics right. (See the previous post in this blog.)

Dragonfire: I didn't work on Catalyst's new Dragonfire game of D&D deckbuilding directly, but my business partner Jay Schneider did, and it's pretty much a second edition of the Shadowrun: Crossfire game our Fire Opal design group created, which is why Mike Elliot and Greg Marques and the rest of us are credited as designers. As a second edition, I think Dragonfire is an improvement over our Crossfire mechanics. I believe Crossfire may be getting an update soon to match some of the improvements, and I'm excited to see Dragonfire's progress in the months to come.

Stuff at GenCon!

It’s not only GenCon’s 50^th birthday this year; it’s my wife Lisa’s 50^th, and they coincide. So I won’t be at GenCon this year. I’m sorry to miss out on seeing friends I only see once or twice a year, but I have no complaints, it’s going to be a great birthday!

There will be several games and things I’ve designed or contributed to showing up at the convention.

First, at booth #1317, Pelgrane Press will have copies of Lions & Tigers & Owlbears: 13^th Age Bestiary 2. I haven’t seen the physical book yet so if you get a copy you’ll be ahead of me. You should be able to find authors like Wade Rockett, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and Jonathan Tweet at the show and often at the Pelgrane booth. Artist Naomi VanDoren (Purple Dragon, kowha, etc.) will be in the art show.

Speaking of art, Campaign Coins has repackaged the 13th Age icon tokens with a color backing card. They're up for an ENnie and they'll be on sale at booth #842. 

Pelgrane panels will also be discussing the next few 13^th Age books in the pipeline. One of them, the Book of Demons, contains the new demonologist class, which is presently being playtested by former 13^th Age Monthly subscribers and which I’m working on more this week.

And speaking of playtesting, Arc Dream Publishing will have playtest decks of the Wrestlenomicon card game I designed the mechanics for at booth #431! I'm happy with mechanics I’ve never seen anywhere else that capture a wrestling match between gigantic elder gods! It helped to have card art finished by Kurt Komoda and hilarious/devastating card names provided by Dennis Detwiller and Shane Ivey. I got to focus on carving mechanics to live up to the art’n’concepts. The game is going to have a wider public playtest you can sign up for on the Wrestlenomicon site, and then a Kickstarter.

Meanwhile over at the Chaosium booth, #829, they’ll have the first three laid-out chapters of 13^th Age in Glorantha. Chris Huth, the layout artist responsible for this design, is taking a break from layout to attend the show, where he’ll be running games and working at the Pelgrane booth a bit. You can see more samples of the layout in this update on the 13G Kickstarter page.

More coming in a later post . . . .

Fire Giant and Snowy Owlbear: 13th Age Bestiary 2 is ready to roll

illustration by Rich Longmore

This fire giant soldier is smashing his way into reality: Lions & Tigers & Owlbears: 13^th Age Bestiary 2 is (almost) finished with layout!

What’s the hold-up?

It’s the fact that anyone who buys the SnowCubEdition of Bestiary 2 as a pre-order before June 21^st gets their name in the book’s credits. Layout artist Jen McCleary is waiting for that list on the 21^st to put the final touches on the credits page.

Soon after that the layout PDF will go onto the Pelgrane store bookshelf of everyone who bought the SnowCub Edition and the book will head to the printer.

I’m thrilled with the final 304 page tome! Every designer and artist contributed something special, Jonathan showed up with insightful sidebars, I wrote a two-page appendix to support folks who want to use these monsters playing 13^th Age in Glorantha, and towards the end, partly because of comments from people who purchased this pre-order, we added new building battles tables that include weakling and elite creatures as well as different sizes of mooks. Our thanks to everyone who is contributing by picking up the SnowCub! 

Two snippets about Glorantha and The Gods War

Sandy Petersen's The Gods War kickstarter is ending in about twelve hours and I didn't get around to mentioning that I'd written a couple short bits about Glorantha involving that project. Even if you aren't in for the mythical battles, it's worth checking out Sandy's site for wonderful art.

Snippet #1 is something I wrote for Kickstarter and the Chaosium blog, statting up one of the miniatures from Sandy Petersen's The Gods War for 13th Age in Glorantha (you can never have too many broos).

Snippet #2 is something I wrote about growing up with Glorantha and having it become my favorite game world.

GenCon Notes: Lights! Camera! Action!

I had a great GenCon. So did most of my friends, both old and new. I’ll post a couple highlights, now and maybe later.

Lights!

Will Jobst and I left the exhibitors’ hall on Saturday night and went upstairs to watch the 13^th Age and GUMSHOE games in the Pelgrane-focused game room. I admit that I was 13^th Age-focused: where GUMSHOE is concerned, I’m not really a pro.

Early on, we were startled by what looked like impromptu chair dancing at a 13^th Age table. Everyone’s hands went up in the air, the bass started thumping, hands spinning as disco balls. Turned out that the first time the sorcerer had used their dancing lights spell, the table discoed-out; and now it was a thing for the rest of the session! Dancing lights! I thought about filming it but decided to let it fly solo in memory.

The musical ambush left us happy and gave us a story to glide on the rest of the evening as we joined Steve and Paula Dempsey to ramble through the entire convention center.

Camera!

The night before the show, Eric Lang won the Diana Jones Award! I’d talked with him earlier in the day and he said he had zero chance of winning—he expected it to go to Pandemic Legacy by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock. We agreed that if Eric won, I should yell “Daviau was robbed!” Which I did, utterly happy and knowing no one could hear me, since you can’t hear much of anything at the Diana Jones Award ceremony and certainly not when everyone is roaring for Eric!

Then I got to see Greg Stafford, last year’s winner for The Guide to Glorantha, hand the award over to Eric, and the whole thing made me so happy I *did* get out my phone to take a picture. I knew it would be crappy but I didn’t care, it’s the fact, not the photo. That’s Jeff Richard of Chaosium in the middle, and Luke Peterschmidt all shiny in the foreground.

Action!

I knew that Upper Deck would be releasing the Legendary game I designed, Big Trouble in Little China. It’s a playful take on the Legendary deckbuilding game system designed by Devin Low for the Marvel Legendary games. Big Trouble in Little China was a game I had a huge amount of fun designing but I wasn’t sure how much of a marketing push the game would be getting, given that the film has been out for awhile. I’d heard that there was something going on with the GenCon lanyards, but I didn’t know that everyone wearing a GenCon lanyard would have Big Trouble in Little China art around their necks. And I had no idea that Upper Deck was gonna set up a Big Trouble exhibit with the Pork Chop Express big rig in the dealer’s hall! Right alongside a bit of a Chinatown shrine and a signboard for Egg Foo Yong Tours. That’s some action.