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 […]
Category Archives: 13th Age
13th Age game
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 […]
“I could but tell them how I had just emerged from dungeon and jacket in the morning, and without rhyme or reason, so far as I could discover, had been put back in the dungeon after being out only several hours.” — Jack London, The Star Rover The only problem with dungeon crawls is there […]
In my home campaign, our heroes found themselves transported back in time to the rebellion against the Wizard King—though as they discovered later, they were actually trapped in a living dungeon’s memories of that era. These were some of the foes they encountered: brutal enforcers of the Wizard King’s rule. It’s possible these miscreants will […]
One of the easiest ways to quickly add iconic flavour to an adventure is to rework the monsters. If one of your players rolls a 6 on their Negative relationship with the Dwarf King, you can just hastily glue some beards to those ghosts in room 7 and call them the Spectres of the Tombless […]
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 […]
A lot of us with a long history of d20 fantasy gaming have shiver-inducing memories of the first time a certain grinning, many-eyed monster absolutely demolished our group of adventurers. Sadly, that iconic monster isn’t available under the OGL; but the concept is so compelling that a lot of fantasy RPGs have taken it in […]
Halloween is nigh, so I’m going to stat up some spooky monsters—in this case, pirate ghosts! These restless undead might haunt the Iron Sea coast, the rivers of the Fangs, or the Midland Sea around Necropolis and Omen. You can find all sorts of ghosts in the 13th Age Bestiary, from the Petulant Never-Was to […]
A 13th Age GM recently asked for advice on using Backgrounds in a modern setting. At first I didn’t see the problem—”Former circus performer” should work the same in the modern world as it does in the Dragon Empire, right? But when I really gave it some thought, I saw the difficulty. “Former circus performer” […]
Thanks to everyone who sent in their fun 13th Age t-shirt slogan ideas! Rob Heinsoo and I read and discussed them, and together we chose our three favorites. Grand Prize goes to Tim Baker: “Well, that escalated quickly.” Second and Third Place go to Michael Keon: “Ask me how 3 + 4 equals 13” “I […]