The Horizon Conspiracy

A New (13^th) Age

We recently completed a shelter-at-home, Timewatch adventure. The game, powered by Pelgrane Press’ Gumshoe engine, is an action-packed, hijinks-infused take on time patrol tropes. We liked the system a lot and look forward to revisiting it again in the future. At the end of the last session, we discussed what to play next. We’d recently reached a natural stopping point for our Godless Chronicles D&D game, but I wasn’t feeling it enough to pick it up again.

During the discussion, I suggested starting a new 13^th Age mini-campaign . It’s a system most of my gaming group is familiar with and, more importantly, like a lot. For those just tuning in, 13^th Age is a 2014 RPG created by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo, two of the minds behind D&D 3e and 4e respectively. The game was (and still is) a refreshing take on d20 fantasy that amalgams some of the best ideas from both D&D editions with simple world-building storytelling elements. It remains a favorite of ours and we keep returning to it on a regular basis.

It kinda helps that I spent the last few months designing official yet unannounced [redacted] for it. (Yes, I look very much forward to removing that “redacted” in my social media posts.)

We agreed to start as level 3 characters, as this is the 3 or 4^th campaign we start and everyone agreed that starting as established heroes would be cooler.

Let’s Roll… 20

I started looking for another online platform to support quarantine play. We’d been using Discord for a while, but it caused significant issues for Vero, my live-in partner, who’s laptop is a Macbook. Turns out Discord and Macs don’t make a happy marriage, causing significant lagging issues, sound drops and other annoyances that significantly ate into her enjoyment of playing RPGs online. That’s why I decided to give Roll20 a try. It’s getting a lot more traction lately, it has an integrated HTML-based video chat feature and has a free 13^th Age character sheet that does (some) calculations for players.

I spent a few hours making Vero’s character in it, she hasn’t played the game yet so I offered to build the mechanical parts of the PC and leave her the story part, with an understanding that she can re-engineer at a later date. I even went as far as entering her class features and powers on the character sheet (manually, of course).

I may tackle Roll20 in a future post when we master it more as a group. It’s promising.

See the character lineup below. You’ll see each character as a “One Unique Thing” (OUT) chosen by the player, not from a list but from what they envision for their character. Each character also has relation “points” with some of the game’s 12 icons, the faceless movers and shakers behind the game’s plots. The game assumes the world hangs barely by with each icon waging a cold war that could send everything tumbling down and end the current Age. Finally, each player invests points in backgrounds. Those act as the game’s skills but can also represent more depending on how they are phrased. You’ll notice that some players were more prosaic about their backgrounds while others took a more pragmatic path.

Dramatis Personae

• Sivik Mirir Xer: Tiefling Necromancer
  • One Unique Thing (OUT): I will redeem myself through the destruction of the world’s undead and wandering souls (after an undefined period of indentured servitude to him).
  • Icons: Lich King 2 (Negative); Priestess 1 (Positive)
  • Backgrounds: Exorcist 4; Preacher 2 ; On a pilgrimage 2
• Keştiyek mezin: Forgeborn Ranger
  • OUT: Clockwork acrobat, escaped from the Dwarven King’s circus of oddities with his BFF, a bear called Cornelius.
  • Icons: Dwarf King 1 (Negative); Prince of Shadows 2 (positive)
  • Backgrounds: Acrobat 5; Hunted 2; Survivalist 1
•  Sallissie: Human Druid
  • OUT: Uncanny guide who always finds her way, always.
  • Icons: High Druid 3 (positive)
  • Background: Herbalist 4; Guide 4
• Kiki: Thiefling Wizard
  • OUT: TBD
  • Icons: Archmage 3 (positive)
  • Background: Spy for the Archmage 4; Combat mage 2; Scheming manipulator
• Fynn (twin brother of Gröm): Human Cleric of Gozer
  • OUT: I am the chosen one, I will find the Master of the Door
  • Icons: Diabolist 2 (Positive), Priestess 1 (Negative)
  • Backgrounds: Busker 4; Ranking cultist of Gozer 4
• Gröm (twin brother of Fynn): Human Cleric of Gozer
  • OUT: I am the chosen one, I will find the Master of the Key
  • Icons: Crusader 1 (Positive); The Priestess 1 (Conflicted); The Diabolist 1 (Negative)
  • Backgrounds: Streetwise 3 ; Intimidating 5

Hatching a Campaign

My original idea of running an urban campaign in a city filled with monsters called Drakhenhall didn’t fit what was shaping up among the characters emerging stories. Yet, I didn’t want to end the session without laying the groundwork for our first adventure. I was thinking about it while the players were futzing on their characters and I found myself writing “Conspiracy vs…” on an index card (I really like index cards, see here and here.)

An idea came to me: I added up all the icon relationship numbers from the group and I created this chart based on their relative importance among characters:

• Lich King 1-2
• Priestess 3-5
• Dwarf King 6
• Prince of Shadows 7-8
• High Druid 9-11
• Archmage 12-14
• Diabolist 15-17
• Crusader 18
• I don’t know…Just pick something wild 19-20

I then had players rolling twice on that chart. The High Druid came first, the Archmage second. I also wanted to know where that conspiracy would play out, but somehow, I decided not to roll on this weighted chart. I wanted to leave it open to more possibilities. There are 13 icons in all, so I decided to chart all the icons except the Prince of Shadows on a d12. (I decided to keep the Prince as an Ace in the Hole for later). I once again asked my players to roll and got “Archmage” again, who’s city is called Horizon.

Then a question came to me: “Which icon is going to run interference in this scheme?” and asked for a final d12 roll and came up with “The Diabolist”

By then, my card looked like: Conspiracy: High Druid vs Archmage in Horizon. Interference: The Diabolist.

Damn! That chart is going to be useful, I’mma keep it within reach for later.

Now I’ve got two weeks to think what plot hooks, agendas, and events this elicits in my brain (Time to build an adventure deck). And my players have 2 weeks to think how they might get embroiled in all this.

I can’t wait!