The Fractured Authority Gambit: A 13th Age Game

I recently started a new 13th Age 2E campaign with my gaming group.

Long time readers will recognize this roll call:

Math:

• Started playing AD&D (what you kids call 1E) with me back in 1986 when space shuttles exploded and the Berlin Wall was still standing.
• Plays a cleric whose church follows him around, TARDIS style, and grows larger the longer he stays in a settlement
• The church leaves a copy of itself behind whenever he moves on.

Yan:

• Another high school friend, started playing GURPS with us at irregular intervals in the late 80s. Joined the group permanently in 1999. Was part of our GURPS to D&D 3e transition.
• Plays a Human Wizard with cat ears. Was the feline familiar of the Archmage(1) before one of his experiment going awry turned her human.
• She has uncanny knowledge of the Archmage’s projects, betraying her true age.

Franky:

• Joined us in late 1999 shortly after we switched to D&D. We were work colleagues who became friends while playing Magic games during our lunch breaks.
• Plays a burglar-type rogue who got ensnarled in the consequences of causing one of the Archmage’s experiments to go tits up during a heist.
• Yes, there’s a link between Yan and Franky’s character.

Nico:

• Now 24, my son joined our gaming group when he was 14 or so and has been an intermittent member of countless D&D and 13th Age campaigns since.
• Had one of his previous D&D character become the fabled multi-campaign “Ring of Rumours” to tie up its narrative arc.
• Plays a Ranger whose One Unique Thing as a deserter of the “Shadow Legion”, a group of Special Forces serving both the Emperor and the Prince of Shadows, and fails to register permanently in the minds of anyone he encounters. (2)

Setting the Stage

Something interesting came up at the table that made me want to share it here.

The session focused on the final confrontation of the introductory adventure presented in the Gamemaster’s Guide. It featured a ‘Mastermind’ caster making the living dungeon she occupied grow, an armoured bodyguard, a pair of archers, and 5 ginormous Dire Rats (minions).

On the 1st round, Yan’s wizard cast one of his arc (read “‘daily”) spells, scored a crit and OBLITERATED the bodyguard.

As the fight progressed, the Rats moved in on the characters who had stayed behind the recently unlocked door leading to the final fight, the archers focused fire on the Math’s cleric, and the Mastermind did too.

The cleric fell. Tension was rising. Players got worried and antsy.

I reminded everyone that 13th Age 2E allowed retreats in exchange for story losses.

Franky: You know us, Phil, we would rather die and make new characters than retreat!

At this point I wondered aloud if the Escalation dice would increase or not as the fight was not moving forward for the players (3).

Tempers rose a bit, partly because in all the years we’d played the game, I’d never brought this possibility up, but mostly because Yan had especially built his wizard to become more powerful as the value of the dice rose. On the other hand, Nico felt the fight was not progressing and that the dice should not escalate.

We reviewed the rules, and I realized I should not penalize players because they had bad rolls and I very good ones. That “moving the fight forward” should never be based on dice rolls, but players choosing actions to move towards victory.

As things calmed down. Players resumed looking for a solution to survive the fight.

Nico: Can I use my icon relationship with the Prince of Shadows to lock the door so we can focus on the rats without being pummelled by the rest?
Me: Absolutely, that’s what these are for, go for it! You take out an ancient scroll of hold portal that the Shadow Legion uses to “work in peace” and it crumbles to dust when you use it on the door.

This bought the group enough time to return the cleric to life and for Yan’s wizard to kill all the rats with one close quarters multi-target spell.

Others: You could have done that first!
Yan: I needed the Escalation die to be at 3 or more to keep my spell after casting it.

When the turn of the creatures across the door came up, I said they heard the Mastermind, who was also a necromancer, do some sort of quick ritual. I also said the archers… and something else, moved to the door to try to force it open.

The players considered spending another turn to use their Rally actions to heal up, but they agreed that would entail not moving the Escalation die forward. The fact that they took this into account without my bringing it up told me they had internalized the “push the fight forward” ethos of the game.

When the players opened the door and realized I had “resurrected” the bodyguard, I had to deal with a series of emotional responses from 3 different people around the table, fuelled by the previous friction about the Escalation Die.

Yan: That cancels my critical hit! Can you at least only give him half hit points?
Nico: That makes sense that a Necromancer would do that, full hit points makes sense.
Me (A GM aware of his people pleaser persona): Ok, I didn’t raise the guy. No wait I did but I’ll give him half HP, no wait…
Nico: Stop changing your mind and stick to your ruling!

At this point, I had pushed outside my emotional zone of comfort. I wanted to keep things going forward and re-establish emotional balance around the table but I needed to get a grip, and fast.

Being in such an emotional state is a precarious ones for a GM because whatever happens next is prone to be driven by the internal need of the GM to feel better rather than to focus on the whole table’s need to calm down and move forward.

The Fractured Authority Gambit

So I cheated. I bought myself time by weaving an illusion.

I stuck to my guns and let the bodyguard be as described, without openly specifying whether it was at full HP or not. Instead, I asked Yan for 2 d10s and applied both the Ironsworn TTRPG Oracle rule (4) and the Gygaxian one (5).

Whenever I was asked a question about the bodyguard, or challenged about it, I rolled both dice and called “% that the answer is Yes”. When Nico shot it with arrows, I rolled the dice and told him he hit the creature in the head, making it explode while the rest of the body stood. Then I described how the bodyguard attempt to use its teleportation power to move by the side of the Mastermind (internal thought: for further healing).

I rolled again (bad result) and described that the teleportation went “Star Trek bad”, and described a pile of breathing, squelching organs appearing by the boss monster.

When the wounded Mastermind tried to use its drain life power on that pile, I rolled again (badly, again) and determined that it hadn’t survived long enough to supply the necessary life force to heal its former master.

These events, as described, brought all 3 players (Yan, Nico, myself) back into the positive energy of play. By sticking to my narrative guns, but letting the story (and dice) help me dictate what happened next, I felt we each detached ourselves from the friction of my initial decisions (and flip flopping on them), and refocused on the fun of the game.

In that, I realized a few more things about my players.

As a tactician and min-maxer, Yan wants his decisions to matter. He’s willing to take his lumps and will weather a full session with bad rolls. But he wants his good moments to shine and to stick. That’s paramount for his enjoyment of the game.

As a surprisingly Old School player, Nico who played through my unconventional type of roleplaying for years, prefers the grit and uncaring universe of a game that deliver a harsh experience. He rolls all his dice, he wants things to fail when they should, and he wants wins that are powered by inspiration and using his, not his characters’ brain. In fact, I suspect that he chose a character that is nameless and forgettable because he doesn’t want me to put too many narrative hooks into it so that he can play the game “on hard mode”.

His oft repeated quote: “If I wanted easy, automated, I’d play a computer game”. I shall remember that.

All in all, the gambit played out well.

How do you deal when your calls are challenged, or elicit emotional reactions you didn’t expect? Do you believe it is part of your job as a GM to bring things back to baseline? I do.

Until next time.

If I wanted easy, automated, I’d play a computer game.

Nico

Footnotes

1. 13th Age is a d20 Fantasy game where the powers that be of the implied settings are 12 off screen icons whose agenda and agents affect the world as you the GM and players see fit. Players chose relationships (Positive, Conflicted, Negative) with up to 3 such icons. Yan’s wizard has chosen the Archmage and the Elf Queen as his icon relationships.
2. Each character has a story element called a “One Unique Thing” that players come up with that makes their characters unique in the specific campaign each group plays in. I find Nico’s nameless, faceless unique is quite challenging and I accidentally “took it” from him when I had another Shadow Legionnaire recognize him. I’ll talk to him about that, see what he thinks.
3. At the end of the first round of combat, a big D6 called the Escalation die is put on the table, showing its “1” side. All Player characters add the value of the die top their d20 rolls. At the end of further rounds, if the GM deems the players have moved the encounter towards its main goal, the dice is increased by 1. Many PC’s (and some monster’s) powers have interaction with that die.
4. The Ironsworn RPG by Shawn Tomkin refined a rule found in other Solo TTRPGs where you can answer various Yes/No questions as a GM by setting the likelyhood that it will be ‘Yes’ (25%, 50%, 75%, etc) and rolling 2d10 to determine the outcome. It is exceedingly liberating and has gotten me out of so many GMing pickles. Plus it embraces 13th Age‘s “Play to Discover” Gming principle.
5. I don’t remember where I read that, probably in the AD&D 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide but the Gygaxian Golden Rule can be paraphrased (and modernized) as “Sometimes the only reason why you roll dice (in front of players or behind a screen) is for the sound they make and the outcome they create in the minds of the players”

Postscript

I’m currently in between jobs.

I spent 11 years as a scriptwriter then a UX writer at Ubisoft, working on games like Rainbow Six Siege, For Honor, and multiple Assassins’ Creed games. I then spent 2 years and a half in a small Montreal based immersive experience studios where I wrote and designed Dungeons & Dragons: The Immersive Quest which ran in the Greater Toronto Area and then in the outskirts of Dallas to much critical success. Alas, it was not a financial success and the company eventually ran out of money. I lost my job back in April and I have been looking ever since.

I haven’t touched TTRPG design in 5 years, although I do have a few yet to be published NPCs in Pelgrane Press’ upcoming Icon Followers.

This new blog post was fun to write and reminded me just how much I love doing this. We’ll see if inspiration strikes again soon. I long ago learned that promising to do so was an indicator that I wouldn’t. So here’s to fate!