A Thing of Beauté

The French translation of 13th Age has been published by 7eme Circle!

Somehow I didn't think seriously about how a French translation of the world map was going to turn out. Now we have it, and it's beautiful and very very cool. It's even online, now, so if you have been looking for a digital copy of the map, well, you get it first in French.

As Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan said on Facebook, "Hey, the French get roads!" Yes, the French version of the map shows the major Imperial roads that link several of the Seven Cities around the Midland Sea. The English-language map in the 13th Age book doesn't show those maps because I failed my visual proofreading check. At some point in the process, a Photoshop layer of Lee Moyer's great big beautiful map design dropped out. I missed that the roads had disappeared and the only person who noticed thought I'd made a decision to leave them out. So yeah, that's the ticket: the version in our book is the High Druid's start of the revised map, no roads required. Yeah!

I think it could be great to use the French map for a 13th Age game played in English. But since that's not to everyone's taste, we will have the English version on-line very soon! I think it's going to have roads.

Claw Claw Call Lightning

Assuming the PCs survive tonight's 13th Age session, revelations within the tomb of the Bloody Emperor could lead to major shifts. If not quite every PC survives, or if the shifts involve someone wanting to start a druid as a new character, we're prepared.

Everyone who has been part of the 13 True Ways support network (Escalation Edition, Kickstarter, Bestiary pre-orders) will soon be getting notice of the availability of the new druid and the updated commander and monk. By soon, I mean that notifications are going out tonight and tomorrow morning. For some of you, it's probably already sitting on your order receipt form in the Pelgrane store.

As you'll see, the druid class is a beast. The challenge of embracing elements of traditional druidic roles (wild healer, animal shifter, elemental magician, summoner, warrior of the wild) became huge fun as I took new approaches (talents defining spell lists and abilities, carefully calibrated summoning mechanics, spell lists tied to specific terrain). It's definitely the biggest of all the class design jobs. I hope it turns out to be as much fun to play as it was to design.

Other 13 True Ways progress includes the fully edited and illustrated write-up of Horizon from Jonathan and Lee, and full illustrations and text for Drakkenhall from a combination of Jonathan, Robin D. Laws, and Lee Moyer. The great bear druid piece above is newly competed as well, a sketch from Aaron finished by Lee.

This week Jonathan is working on miscellaneous monsters, including azers, pixies, and cloud giants. I'm working on multiclassing after a morning spent cooling down from the druid work by finishing a list of Thirteen Icon Variations that can shape a campaign. And speaking of campaigns, I'm running the second session within the Tomb in about an hour. By the time you read this it will probably all be over but the screaming. Well, actually that's just GM-smack talk. The night seems unlikely to end in screams. There will be screams along the way, but I'm betting it will end with huzzahs.