Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a ghost story, to begin with. It’s part of a long tradition of telling scary stories at Christmastime; and when handled well, the ghosts can provide us with a shiver even as we gleefully watch them terrorize Ebenezer Scrooge in order to turn his heart from wickedness. The other […]
The Combat Modifiers section on page 171 of the core book suggests giving +2 to attacks that have “advantageous circumstances” and -2 to attacks from adverse circumstances. The bonus can come from a particularly clever use of the terrain or a surprising combat maneuver. A bonus might also come from some special circumstance of the […]
So ye seek the lost treasure of Karrag Voraldo, do ye? There’s a tale about Voraldo told in the taverns of Shadow Port that ye should know, then. They say that during the Age of Corsairs he was a trusted lieutenant of the King of Corsairs himself, until greed overcame him. He began lying to […]
The Free RPG Day adventure Make Your Own Luck (get it here!) begins with an army of trolls and goblins besieging the town of Harrowdale. As written, the siege is a jumping-off point that gives the events in the adventure context. If you want to explore the ongoing tension and danger of defending a town […]
In the 13th Age Facebook group, a new GM asked for good examples of PC backgrounds. I offered some, but couldn’t help also giving advice on what makes a good background. (It’s one of my favorite mechanics in the game.) I said that a good background doesn’t just outline your character’s backstory in three or […]
In part one I described how Crown of Axis began with an invitation to write the next big introductory adventure for 13th Age, and my idea to set it in the Emperor’s city of Axis. I just had to convince Rob Heinsoo this was a good idea! First, I read everything ever written about Axis in […]
With Crown of Axis out of its design and development phases and currently with the editor, I thought See Page XX readers might be interested in hearing how the adventure came about—a behind-the-scenes look at how one adventure came to be, for aspiring RPG designers or anyone who likes to hear how the sausage gets […]
Elven Towers is a fantastic new adventure from Cal Moore—if you pre-order the print edition now, you get the full PDF and color map folio immediately as a download. It does some really interesting things with 13th Age design, but as a GM I also love that it’s full of creepy monsters. With Halloween on […]
If you attended the 13th Age Monster Workshop at Gen Con Online this past weekend, you were treated to some odd and creepy fun with gnomes. It reminded me that way back in 2013, when 13th Age was still brand new, I ran this weird little adventure at Gen Con. It was a lot of […]
“The world blew up in a thousand atomic fireballs.” – Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards (1977) “Books (including tomes, librams and manuals), artifacts, and relics are of ancient manufacture, possibly from superior human or demi-human technology, perhaps of divine origin; thus books, artifacts, and relics cannot be made by players and come only from the Dungeon Master.” […]
