Pick up 13th Age

I'm not immensely surprised that there are two or three third-party supplements that deal exclusively with icon rolls. As you said, good idea, but needed way better support.

Possibly a blessing in disguise, OP. I sure as hell wouldn't want a ton of edition warring and general autism that would come with.

>4e and 2e/BECMI are best D&Ds

>implying they aren't
>especially compared to the cancer-AIDS of 3.5

But he's right 3aboo scum.

The d100 works well because it only ever generates a single result. So you only ever have to account for a single wrinkle to your session-prep.

Icons are great, but if everyone is rolling 5's and 6's? You better be damn good at improv.

I actually don't mind Icons as written, but it means I play with very little prep

>I play with very little prep
As a GM should. No plan survives contact with the players.

Is that the one with abstracted combat areas?

A buddy of but mine ran a one shot of it.

I was pretty disappointed honestly. I've interested a lot in minis are terrain, I like an actual tactical combat system.

>I've interested a lot in minis are terrain
Are you having a stroke?

Or is that just a phone?

Yes

It only takes a little retweaking to have icons make sense. One campaign I ran took place between two warring nations, so the icons were of a handful of allied nations instead.

>4e and 2e/BECMI are best D&Ds
You get some points for being correct about 2e, but 4e is the only thing worse than 3.pf so you come out net negative. Try again when you have a correct opinion.

You're missing the point. It's the disconnected way the system works, bringing in random numbers of random icons and then discarding them the next session for a new set. Even if you're a master of improv, a session might only be a few hours in-game, and several sessions might all be about going into one dungeon. There's no coherent way to make it work without it turning into a fucking Bethesda RPG, where people randomly run up to you and give you a new hat, courtesy of the Queen. There's no appreciation of the timescale and consistency necessary to make these background details a coherent element of the plot that actually validates the player's interest in that Icon in the first place.

>The d100 works well because it only ever generates a single result.
I agree. It's generating a B-plot for an adventure to underscore character growth.

In 13th Age the rolls generate one-time-use injections of "this icon is referenced at some point and you'll get a minor bonus". The narrative payload is a bit limp.
As a whole the Icon system isn't bad, but it's got problems. They tried to take a middle path between openness and concrete elements but it usually ends up being something players just don't care much about.

Obligation/Duty are a lot more clear about how much detail needs to be supplied to make it function, so there's actually a lot more clarity in what it means to the characters. Between that and it being something they developed, players typically find more meaning in those moments.
Of course, it being in a more familiar sort of setting is also going to contribute.

My only question is, how generic is the system in terms of setting? Also, does it still use funny-shaped dice? I really like using funny-shaped dice. It's disappointing that so many alternative (not-D&D) RPGs go full d6. I get the attraction to the pretty bell curves but I like having special dice.

It still uses d20 as the base, and all the other polyhedrals. The setting is blah that is supposed to be redesigned (changing the Icons being the main way of doing it).

I played both and I prefer 5e. (Played 13th Age long before 5e was even announced).

13th age is even more specialized and inflexible than 5e and it has even less variety in builds for the classes. The Icon idea is interesting but in practice it's not so great and, even though it proclaims that it can be used for homebrews, it shackles the system to its' setting whereas 5e can be used much more naturally for homebrews or other settings.

13th age is also more poorly balanced than 5e. Barbarian was overpowered the last time I checked while there was no reason to ever play Bard. At least 5e Errata'd Rangers.

>how generic is the system in terms of setting?
You literally have your standard Tolkien array of elves, dwarves, orcs, and gnomes, along with some not-Aasimar and not-Tieflings. It's pretty much as generic as possible and one of the reasons I dropped it as soon as I flipped through the first few pages.

Up until

>13th age is also more poorly balanced than 5e. Barbarian was overpowered the last time I checked while there was no reason to ever play Bard.

I was thinking "hmm, an user with different opinions, that's fine, I guess"

But barbarian is one of the worst classes, while bard pretty okay.

Maybe we've had different experiences then. I remember it being quite bullshit when seeing it into play. It outclassed our fighter and dual wielding ranger (Which is allegedly supposed to deal the most damage in the game) in terms of combat.

But in the end, balance isn't my biggest gripe, or a big gripe at all. That can be fixed. My problem was that the game seemed to both lack any variety and be bland at the same time, even though, paradoxically, it touts itself as giving you a lot of options and letting you reskin skills. One thing that I did like over 5e was its' Sorcerer class and the DBZ spell powerup ability as well as its other DBZ Con build. But other than that, it didn't have a lot of spell options and its' end-game repertoire seemd very underwhelming.

See, I'm a pretty new GM so far, but for the most part it really bothers me when a system is already set in an established "setting." It makes me feel obligated to stick to the facts of that setting when I have neither the background knowledge or the inclination to learn the background knowledge of, for example, the Forgotten Realms, which seems pretty damn bland to me. So I've been thinking that a more generic system I could use for a custom setting (even a derivative one) would be preferable to something like that, at least for me.

Try actually reading the book, or at least The Walking Mind's intensive review. 13th Age's setting is bland on the cover and very sparse on details, with a lot of weird shit that exists solely to produce different kinds of dungeons. If you don't want to run a dungeoncrawl, there's nothing in it you need to keep.

>Try actually reading the book
Isn't it a series? Or multiple series? And anyway, I already said I'm not interested. I have other things I'm more interested in reading.
Minimal setting details sounds fine to me if I want to make my own setting, thank you.

I really want to run a full-blown campaign in this system, and after running a couple one-shots and reading tohoufag's infodumps I think I've got enough in the way of house rules and game knowledge to smooth over most of the hiccups.

The one thing I have no idea how to do is work with the icon relationship dice. The way things are handled in the premade adventure in the back of the book (write 2-3 places for 'an icon' to be worked into the story and have an idea for how that'd work for several different icons) seems clever. But it falls apart when your players roll six sixes.

Anybody got any ideas for using the icon relationship dice in practice?

He meant the sourcebook, which there is only one of. And yes, I'd say 13th Age has minimal setting details seeing as the details that do exist (beyond the list of icon names) can be thrown out wholesale with no ill effects.

If you can't bother reading the corebook, and you can't be bothered to notice when a system is generic because there's 20 pages of vague fluff and it doesn't have 'Generic' in the title, you deserve to drown in GURPS.

Even Icon names don't matter. You don't need a Dwarf King and an Elf Queen if you want something else instead. Changing which Icons are available and writing new ones is how you set the tone for the game.

There's a sourcebook? I thought he was still talking about the Forgotten Realms.

Changing the icon names does require a smidge more legwork than changing the icon descriptions and setting, since you'd have to make edits to some class features as well. That said, they're extremely minor, easy to make edits.

>13th Age's setting is bland on the cover
I have no idea how you got forgotten realms out of this.

Well, I used Forgotten Realms as an example of a setting I wasn't interested in learning about, and then user suggested that I just read the book. So I got it by bringing it up in the first place.

>balanced game
>worse than Caster Edition

You mean the user who specifically told you about 13th Age's setting, and told you to read a 13th Age review? Maybe the reason you have trouble dealing with a game that has a setting is because you're terrible at reading comprehension.

I'm a little lost, that's true. I don't think my reading comprehension is bad, though. Everybody makes mistakes, and in the case of "the book," it wasn't perfectly clear what book he was referring to. I was still thinking of the Forgotten Realms, which is why I thought that was what he was talking about, especially because he said "actually," which could have indicated insistence: "I'm not interested in this." "Try actually reading it."
Secondly, I don't know who or what The Walking Mind is, so I don't know how I would have known that he was referring to a review of 13th Age: for all I know, The Walking Mind is a book reviewer.
It was a simple mistake. There's no reason to get so nasty about it.

There's no reason to be such a limp-wristed faggot about it, either. Literally everyone else but you followed along with what was being said. The thread is about 13th Age, you say can't handle settings and give Forgotten Realms as an example of your failing, user says that you should read the book so you know what the fuck you're talking about, namedrops a specific review (protip - you fucking have google, plug in 'The Walking Mind' and see what comes up as results for FR vs. 13th Age) and tells you that 13th Age has a certain bland overlay of a setting that is easily customizable, you're too busy prepping a bull to follow along and continue being retarded.

Lurk moar, faggot, you're clearly not ready to keep up with a conversation.

Why are you so upset about this?

If you want to be a faggot who asks to be spoonfed and then spits out the pap because the only thing he can swallow is daddy's cummies, go shit up RPGnet.

But why are you mad?

>>pick (any system)
>>it's literally everything that D&D 5e should have been
>>but it doesn't have the D&D seal on it so nobody plays it

Pretty much applies to fa/tg/guy's pet system.

13th age was kind of neat, but not my cup of tea, since I actually enjoy tactical combat.

I'm not mad at all. Reminding you that you're not worth anyone's love, and barely worth anonymous disdain on a Taiwanese soapmaking board, is a fun way to spend my lunch break before I go back to my life and you go back to wasting yours.

Most systems don't feel like a version of DnD. 13th Age does. I think that's the biggest difference here.

It's just that I don't really understand the vitriol. I misunderstood a single post, and you accuse me of prepping bulls and so forth. That kind of reaction is kinda uncommon here. What's the deal with that?

I think combat was were it fell flat for me.
If I'm feeling in the mood for DnD, I'm in the mood for an oldschool dungeon crawl.

Trochbearer seemed to do a rules light version of that better to me. Although I didn't really like it's combat system either.

I guess it boils down to if I want the dnd feel, I'll just play whatever edition of dnd I like best, or maybe an OSR clone.