by Julian Kay illustration by Dagmara Matuszak We focused on demons in the first curse article—cursed and accursed demons. Here, we cover the many other 13th Age and F20 monsters that originated as curses or get much of their oomph delivering curses. Deathly (Well, Undeathly) Curses After the Diabolist, the Lich King is the icon […]
Author Archives: Rob Heinsoo
By Julian Kay illustration by Lee Moyer In many F20 games, curses are a flavorful inconvenience, temporary problems that can be removed by a single memorized spell. In 13th Age, freeform character creation options and flexible magic provide some mechanical and narrative space that can spin curses into blessings! In the big picture, curses have […]
Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan writes game books meant to be turned into wide-screen adventures. Book of the Underworld goes one better: the sunbearer golems who march an endless path through the four warring Kingdoms of the Mechanical Sun aren’t just made for cinema, they’d also work splendidly as the subject of a area-control and route-carving wargame! In […]
A funny thing happened on the way to the Crown of Axis arena. Wade’s request for a cover image featuring two powerful female gladiators had been executed in style by Aaron McConnell: original sketch For a change, Aaron decided to hand-paint the piece, old school instead of digital. That turned out to create a delivery […]
While working on Book of the Underworld a couple weeks ago, I realized that our advice for leveling up monsters isn’t as direct as it could be. Some of you realized this right away, for others it could be a welcome clarification. The simplest way to level up a creature is to bump it up […]
In a perfect world, I’d work up to revealing the final cover for Book of the Underworld, telling the step-by-step story of how it came to be and finally whipping the sheet off the easel. But that’s now how the internet works. So here’s the cover as painted by Lee Moyer using some original pencil […]
Shards of the Broken Sky has more oozes than you can hold in just one dungeon. Stirring the ooze-pot, I realized that the original black pudding from page 240 of the 13th Age core rulebook is one of the worst-designed monsters in the game. Not if you’ve been playing 13th Age. No, if you’ve been […]
If you’ve ever played a 13th Age demo with me, it might be obvious that I love miniatures. It’s less obvious that I like miniatures so much that I also love cardboard miniatures, the kind you print out and glue onto cardboard or have sold to you in helpful cardboard packs. These days my favorite […]
Want to heighten dramatic tension or foreshadow a huge battle far beyond what the PCs are accustomed to? Here are a couple of tricks you can do with the escalation die to achieve that. (For a change, I haven’t used either of these tricks yet—I’ve been playing lately instead of GMing. Maybe I can talk […]
Wanna bend the rules a little and play a character who has the ultimate in conflicted relationships? Choose one icon that suits your character’s story best. Spend your three icon relationship points like so: take one relationship point that’s positive, one that’s conflicted, and one that’s negative. Yes, all with the same icon. What interwoven […]