Link to a Flames Rising Interview and Notes on 13th Age 2E Art

Monica Valentinelli asked some fun questions about 13th Age 2E and I wrote a few long answers. You can find the interview on Flames Rising here.

An interview question about how design philosophy might have changed in the new edition led to a discussion of Second Edition art: how it shows many different versions of the classic characters and creatures and how it approaches player character heroes who obviously have One Unique Things!

There's another big change in the art of 13th Age Second Edition that I didn't mention in the interview: there's so much of it! We're getting ready to turn the Gamemaster's Guide over to layout, and the monster chapter alone has around 70 full illustrations. Most of the monster entries have at least one illustration, a couple like dragons and demons have five or ten. In a handful of spots where the text suggested that we could fit alphabetically adjacent monsters into the same spread, we've got illustrations that show two different types of monsters as each other's allies, or as enemies.

That's where the Lizardfolk vs. Manticore image above comes from. Rich Longmore created the black and white pencils, and Lee Moyer spread the warriors out a bit, painted the image, and added the wonderful watery-battlefield effect. I love how the lizardfolk appear to be keeping a close eye on the manticore's tail! Maybe the warrior in the middle is being extra-careful because they've already lost part of their own tail.

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.