The spells-per-day tables for spellcasters in 3rd Ed could easily have been a lot better. Recently I talked with an academic about designing the wizard and barbarian classes in 3rd Ed, and it got me thinking again about the wizard’s spells per day. A problem that we on the design team inherited is that spellcasting got better in three ways as the caster levels up: they get higher level spells, the

A friend who has started writing wonderful novels mentioned that he’s looking for great scenes, scenes that are wonderfully well-written even if you aren’t necessarily reading the rest of the book. So here are five scenes I remember rereading immediately, and in each case have reread a few times since. Neal Stephenson , Snow Crash . You know this one already, right? The opening pages about the Del

As photographic evidence reveals, I’m thrilled to be at Gen Con this year! This my first convention-chance to talk with people about 13th Age 2e and to sell the new boxed set. I’ve also got exciting 13th Age publication news to share with people! If you’re not at the convention, those plans will also be revealed on Pelgrane’s web site soon. We don’t have seminars scheduled this year. You’ll find m

Here's a guest post from Jonathan Tweet. I'm one of the players who he forbade from looking into this game, so I publish this with less oversight than you'd think! --Rob This new TTRPG looks so good that I told the players in my game group not to read the titles or descriptions of the adventures. Thay way I can run Strange Stories without the players having a clue as to what sort of strange story

The upper end of the alphabet leans into games played with friends who prefer casual fare. Hot Streak Four hapless lower league baseball mascots race. You place your bets and contribute a secret card to help your wagers. Ridiculous silly fun playable by almost all ages and all but a few temperaments. This Boardgame Geek introduction sums it up. Legendary: Game of Thrones One of my designs, turning

Here are notes on games I’ve played in the past couple months, with game design comments where appropriate. Covering four games at a time means there’ll be a follow-up or two. I didn't intend to begin with two of my own games but such are the gifts of alphabetical order. 13th Age We’re getting close to the end of epic tier in the Teachers from the Court campaign that’s mentioned several times in 1

If you’re looking for a fun adventure to run as a one-shot at a convention, or for new players, or to jump-start a campaign when you don’t have anything planned ahead of time, check out the 2-Hour Freeform Adventure on the Adventures tab of the Pelgrane Press 13th Age Resources page. (It's now updated with typos fixed and better layout.) It’s set up as a 2nd level adventure for a GM who knows the

There’s something new in the way we’re presenting monster stats in 13th Age . Jonathan came up with it. I’m calling it the descriptor approach. After using something similar in Ars Magica and in Over the Edge , Jonathan was working on monster stats for a living dungeon on a spreadsheet. He found himself wanting terms to describe the raw numbers, especially for armor. So he came up with descriptors

On the nights I GM, I’ve been running a wild dungeon-crawl centered 13th Age game that attempts to live up to Hargrave’s eclectic grimoires. The players and I started the campaign by inventing our current Arduinian icons, the organizations or archetypes that shape the world and give the 1st level characters a stake in its major conflicts. Jonathan’s Arduin mastery helped guide a couple of the new

That’s one of two Estonian phrases my father taught me in the last few years of his life. He’d been weirdly reinvigorated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tracing the early war news in Estonian and German. Sita rutu karu tuleb functioned as commentary on that invasion: “Shit faster, the bear is coming.” For Estonians, like those in Ukraine, the bear is Russia. With the United State throwing its

I got both the deluxe versions of the Heroes’ Handbook and Gamemaster’s Guide and The Art of 13th Age in the mail on Wednesday. I took them along to gaming that night and set up the delightful GM screen as the first indication that I had the books on hand! Everything looks wonderful and the GM screen is heavy and better-looking than I could have hoped. USA shipments are going out and will probably

Despite the subject line, today’s blog is not a strategy guide! Instead, it’s a look at a couple of cards from the about-to-release Legendary: Game of Thrones showing how I redefined two Hero classes whose names make sense in superhero games but don't apply as well to GRR Martin's fantasy world. Legendary uses five card classes, aka colors, to define the heroes of all the various Legendary deckbui

I love the Legendary deck-building game designed by Devin Low! Lisa and I were in the same city as Devin when he made the original edition, so we got to playtest as the game took shape. Since then Devin has designed something like two dozen sets of various sizes and Upper Deck has adopted the system for a multitude of film and television properties. I’m still most fond of the freeform Legendary ap

The success of Martha Wells Murderbot stories has reopened the window for well-supported publication for some of her earlier books! One of my favorites of her earlier stories is City of Bones . Wells has a different (excellent) book that uses the word necromancer in the title, but City of Bones isn’t part of that series and it’s not about undead. It’s about post-fall archeology, marginalized heroe

Our several-year labor of love, 13th Age Second Edition , is out! Well, it’s some-of-the-way out! Past the first stage of modern rpg publication. It’s Digitally Launched! If you backed the Kickstarter or ordered on BackerKit you should have access to the digital files. You can also go to PelgranePress.com and pre-order the printed Heroes' Handbook and Gamemaster's Guide in a slipcase as well as th

(art by Aaron McConnell & Lee Moyer) The High Druid gets the nod as the iconic lead for the short chapter that covers ability score generation, defense math, and the outline of all the character creation steps that will play out in chapters three through five. The default standard array we're suggesting for ability scores is slightly better than the first edition's suggestions, but otherwise I thi

(art by Lee Moyer and Aaron McConnell) Today's image is the opening spread from Chapter 1 of the Heroes' Handbook . When I suggested that we reorganize the book by putting the combat rules ahead of the character creation chapters, Jonathan's counter-offer was to write a detailed example of play, showing everything from the GM's initial campaign concept through character creation, backgrounds and O

If you play Hearts, you’ll recognize the strategy of the USA’s current White House. The goal of Hearts is to avoid taking points; 1 point for each of the 13 Hearts, 13 points for taking the Queen of Hearts. A player with an extremely powerful hand can skip the niceties and try to shoot the moon, to win every trick, taking the Queen and all the Hearts. Instead of hurting themselves with 26 points,

For the next few weeks, I’m going to share two-page spreads from 13th Age 2E . The images are showing up first as Kickstarter updates. Here in my blog, I’ll post notes on game design and mechanics. If it sounds fun and you didn’t get in on the Kickstarter, you can find the game on Backerkit . This first slice from the Gamemaster’s Guide Monsters chapter is the second spread in the Demons section,

Laura Galli's painting above, from 13th Age 2E, illustrates the icon connection example when a half-orc with a connection to a High Druid averts bloodshed at a harvest festival invaded by (evil) elves by reaching back into the decades and centuries when humans and dwarves and elves lived together in the valley peacefully. The spirits of the ancestors come dancing out together in the swirling leave