Flame & Ice

We're extremely happy that 13th Age core books are now shipping to people who pre-ordered as part of the Escalation Edition, to other Pelgrane pre-orders, and to those of you who asked for the core book as part of your 13 True Ways Kickstarter rewards. For people who didn't pre-order, the game should be in stores the first week of August. I believe the official street date is August 5th.

FLAME:  Here's a look at the t-shirt design that's exclusively for 13 True Ways backers who signed on for the shirt. We promised that it would be exclusive when we did the Kickstarter, so much as I'd like the shirt to be a more-distributed thing now that I can see how cool it is, it's not.

The slogan, in case it's not entirely clear, speaks in the voice of the Great Gold Wyrm, holding the barricades against the Abyss: I am the Shield, you are the Sword, we are the Flame. They shall not pass. 

The mix of art and t-shirt color is the full design, we're not doing other colors for this one. And in case you were wondering where the logo was hiding.....

ICE: Our friends at Sasquatch Game Studio are producing a sword and sorcery d20-mechanic sourcebook where the defenders are more like Conan and the ultimate villains are more like Cthulhu. I'm curious to see what Primeval Thule ends up doing with icons in a world touched by Lovecraft, Merritt, and Clark Ashton-Smith, since a 13th Age-compatible version is part of the Sasquatch plan. They have 7 days left on their Kickstarter, check them out here. 

Three Surprises

I'm working on the 13th Age Bestiary today with 13th Age's developer, Rob Watkins. Whenever the two of us say "Yes yes yes!" while working on monsters you can be sure it's going to be entertaining trouble for PCs. Or maybe just trouble, given that we're working on mechanics for red dragons and rust monsters. 

I haven't been blogging lately and want that to change, but for the moment I'm just going to mention three recent 13th Age-related surprises. 

1. The EN World poll for most anticipated RPG of 2013

I've rarely experienced the cliche of having my jaw drop. But that's what happened as I watched the results of the poll. We're in great company and this has been splendid motivation in the weeks before the game releases into print. 

2. A Bestiary preview

Our redcap fits into impossibly small spaces and bursts out by surprise. This morning he showed up exploding from a cupboard in a preview on EN World, art by Rich Longmore. I decided to use this entry by Kevin Kulp because I wanted to preview something funny. Other entries vary widely in tone and style but the redcap serves as a good example of the more detailed treatment that Ken Hite decided we would give monsters in the Bestiary--more details and ideas to inspire GMs and players instead of the just-the-stats approach used in the core book. 

3. Primeval Thule Kickstarter

It's gratifying when friends who are excellent designers decide to use 13th Age as one of the systems they'll support with their swords-and-tentacles RPG sourcebook. Sasquatch Game Studio's' first Kickstarter will include 13th Age-compatible game material set in a different world, a world that's more Conan vs. Cthulhu than the Archmage vs. the Diabolist. I am looking forward to seeing what Rich Baker, Dave Noonan, and Steve Schubert do with icons in a new and very different world. The Kickstarter runs another couple weeks. Check it out, either for 13th Age, for Pathfinder, for 4e, or for all three. 

First Printing

There was a wonderful Fed Ex package this afternoon. I kept it secret until Jonathan came over for tonight's 13th Age game. 

Up until now, Jonathan had deliberately avoided seeing most of the art and layout. So opening the book has been a very happy moment, and one that I think will be repeated elsewhere, soon. 

And now we play!

Return of the Grove

At the start of our last 13^th Age session, I decided that I was finally going to start using the Player Picks suggestion from page 189. It was Jonathan’s rule originally and I’ve used it a bit but never gotten into the habit.

Then the game happened. And I was reminded of why I tend not to have to use the option of giving the players a vote on an element that will reoccur.

Because Sandilarion the oldest elf in the world, discovered and saved the ancient fey temple named Trill that he had spent a century or more running as a friend of the sprites, though those memories had previously been suppressed by the Archmage’s just-fallen ward . . .

... and Haara the monk wood-shaper discovered that he can truly shape wood, into buildings and tree homes even, as one of a lost line of Architects from the party’s fallen blood-line . . .

...and Thorin the dwarf bard found a helmet of a dwarven hero also named Thorin but from another world, and so Thorin sang The Song of the Broken Brother for the first time and began learning songs from that other world, where dwarves rule the Empire not humans . . .

...and Talimir the rogue/ninja slipped through shadows far more effectively than anyone had ever done (so mysterious….) and reported that he had done his best to dig an intricate network of ambush tunnels beneath the grove (which was bullshit but inspired bullshit and will no doubt turn out to be true, in the long run) . . .

.... and Brial the autistic elf bard found the bardic Keystone he had been supposed to find up on Vantage where it had fallen after Vantage exploded, temporarily crushing Sandilarion's ancient grove, and when addressed properly the Keystone revealed that Brial's magic is so alien and unknown (even to the Archmage) because it literally an echo of a Great Chord struck on some other world (Brial being the name of one of our PCs from a 3.5 game called The Nine Chords) . . .

Well. You can see that there’s a lot of stuff coming that’s going to be coming back. No player votes necessary. 

The funniest moment of the game came when Talimir was intent upon getting everyone into ambush positions in the sacred grove. The plan (originally created by Brial) was to ambush the undead 17^th Legion as it cut past the grove headed to the battlefields to hide for the day. But when the PCs reached the holy ground just in time to set the ambush, every PC other than Talimir started what you could probably call an independent craft project. Sandilarion and Haara performed a ritual to save the sacred grove, newly crushed and almost destroyed by the fallen Keystone and other pieces of Vantage. Thorin sang a song, an ancient battle hymn of the other world his helmet is telling him about, to wake up the broken Keystone, and then Brial lectured the Stone, telling it all about himself, but of course Brial ended up saying things he hadn't known until that moment. The grove erupted in woodsy-sprite-filled splendor and the ambush was entirely ruined despite Talimir’s best advice. So the PCs just had to get the job done in straight combat.

And they still believe there were no consequences for spoiling the ambush. Ah, I love GMing. 

Ambush Bug

Matt Nelson entered the Monster Art +13 contest for 13 True Ways with the following proposal:

The older fantasy art that stands out to me depicts the moment right before a losing battle.  It doesn’t show what happens in the fight – the threat of doom can be more captivating than the violence itself.  Instead, it focuses on that moment when the heroes realize they’re outclassed – seeing the dragon’s eye looking in through the window or dozens of undead crawling out of the ground around them.

I suggest a piece depicting a party trekking through the Frost Range.  A gigantic Remorhaz bursts out of the snowy ground behind them, and the fur-clad heroes turn to face the monster, drawing their weapons and realizing that their luck has run out.  

Want something smaller? Lose the snow and make it an Ankheg. (Any monster with a silent "h" works."

The remorhraz is getting loving attention in the 13th Age Bestiary and I didn't want to double-cover it in 13 True Ways. The ankheg waved a pincer signifying "I would love to ambush some halflings and gnomes."

Hence this great thumbnail from Aaron McConnell. Maybe it's called "I'm Your Silent H."

I feel a little awful about this illustration. Not because of the panic on the faces of the fleeing halflings. No. I feel something awful because the brave halfling woman standing her ground is NOT a Shaman. Another title of this rough sketch could be "This is not a chaos shaman." Doesn't matter what Aaron wrote up on top of the illustration. This woman is a druid.

We'll show you the chaos guys quasi-soonish.

Norman Dee-Dee-Dum

This is a picture of Lisa’s bike still showing her race tag from the triathalon she was in last summer. You’ll note the wonderful number. She normally wouldn't keep a race number around but she kept this one because really, how could she get rid of 1066?

A few weeks ago we were talking with a friend who had no idea why the number 1066 would matter. We started explaining the Norman Invasion.

“Oh man,” he said, “enough, I learned everything I wanted to know about Normandy from Saving Private Ryan.”

Tarrasque at Bay

The Monster Art +13 contest we ran after the 13 True Ways Kickstarter had one entry that I discarded immediately. It was from Christoper Tatro and it read like so:

Ever see a dog in a stand-off against three larger animals it doesn't quite know what to make of, like turkeys or goats or something outside its realm of experience? How it crouches its front end down and growls, its back end still raised and ready to spring or run? And the other animals just look on unphased and unimpressed?

That, but with a tarrasque facing down three Koru Behemoths, in a clearing with a nearby forest coming up only to about belly-level for scale.

I laughed. Christopher wanted his tarrasque and he wanted it with Koru Behemoths on top! He'd only forgotten the part that said that one of the Koru Behemoths was swinging an aircraft carrier as a baseball bat. 

My first reaction was because I'd decided to avoid illustrating any Behemoths for awhile, to let people's imagination carry them wherever they wished . . . a plan that pays off with great fan art like the piece done by Temporalpyradox on the Impossible Forge tumblr. Also, Ken Hite was already going to run the tarrasque in the 13th Age Bestiary, and I didn't want to horn in on that action. 

But the more I thought about the image the more it appealed to me. And I remembered our guiding principle that showing off one flavor of Behemoth meant nothing about all the other flavors. So I asked Aaron McConnell what he thought of the illustration, implying that I thought it was crazy. And of course Aaron said, "Oh, I don't know. It sounds kind of challenging. I could get into that."

So here you are. I'm showing the rough draft of this two page spread though the final may be somewhat different. There are going to be more elements that show scale, there are going to be more features and carapaces and such on the behemoths, maybe small changes to the tarrasque. I think of this look for the Behemoth as moving forests, probably more connected to the High Druid than others. 

And yes, the tarrasque will appear first in the Bestiary, with a great writeup from Ken. Jonathan and I will find some other Way of the Tarrasque in 13 True Ways.