We had some great submissions to the Iconic Contest, where we asked you to run a game with a few ‘new to 13th Age’ players and tell us about it. Our winners are:

• Jeff Hewartson
• Jordi C
• Patrick Joynt

Kudos to them for running some great sessions and introducing some new players to the wonderful world of 13th Age! Here are some of their recaps:

Jeff’s Session

Hello Iconic Podcast, here is a (hopefully) brief summary of a game I got to run with a group of people new to 13th age. It was meant to be a short adventure, but due to scheduling errors we have not had a chance to finish it yet, but even the single session seemed to go quite well.

Here are the characters and their OUTs (I don’t have their sheets on me, so unfortunately I cannot provide much more)

• An Aasimar Cleric who is the only child begotten by a god of light
• A Forgeborn Fighter who has a soul of someone who died at the exact moment of his creation inside of him
• A Half-Elf Demonologist who was the first female saint from a prior age brought back to life for some unknown purpose
• A Halfling Rogue of poor upbringing who knows he is destined for something greater
• A Wood Elf Wizard who seeks to destroy a cursed tree that she knows will kill her
• A Dark Elf Sorcerer who believes himself to be immortal

Character creation took up a good portion of the session so we were not able to fully flesh out the characters as they ought to be for a long game. for backgrounds I would give them +3 to a roll when they could give a brief explanation to how their characters story helps in the situation. for Icons I planned to use the 7 Icon variant, but we only quickly glossed over what they were. Mostly I used them to determine what magical gear their characters would begin with (1-3 nothing, 4 = Magical potion, 5 = random magical item based on characters icons, 6 = specific magic item type based on character icon).

as for the adventure itself: the players were level 3, and each found their way to a small settlement on the outskirts of civilization. The towns lord believes this to be the site where a member of his family once settled to begin a new domain but was driven out by a group of druids who cursed them for trying to move into their sacred grove. this new town is being built on and with the ruins of a previous ruined town.
Now though, people have been going missing and loggers working in the nearby forest have claimed to see a hag walking the woods…
The players, each with their own reason, have found themselves in this burgeoning town and after making their impressions on the towns folk and lord agree to take up the quest of finding the hag that has been stealing away people. they receive blessings from the priestess of the towns small chapel ( in the form of healing potions and home brewed holy water that can act as a resistance potion against demons/undead or as an oil to align a weapon as holy for a battle).
The players struck out into the woods which quickly turned into a swamp. the marsh began to give way to palpable sensations of evil and corruption. they passed a great stone with carvings that seemed to have been cleanly split in too. the players recognized the symbols as being druidic in origin but could not discern their meaning.
Further on, a hut could be seen in a marshy clearing with some sort of spell around it formed by human bones hung ritualistically in the trees outlining the hut perimeter.
Unable to determine the exact nature of the hag magic (a grizzly form of the alarm spell), the party proceed cautiously and snuck up to the hut where they saw a women and child bound on the floor while a cauldron bubbled with what looked like human appendages sticking from it.
Some of the characters moved in to rescue the captives while the other kept watch for the hag. the captives try to warn the characters about the animated skills on the hags shelves set to guard them. the players begin to turn as the skulls all jitter towards them, when some of the players felt the dropping of an illusion and realize in the nick of time that the woman and child were actually the hag and its familiar under an illusion!
The players got into a fight against a Hag, a Hellhound (reflavored as a brown jenkins-ish familiar) and 5 guard skull mooks (homemade monsters).
the players managed to win the day, though the hag hexes did a number on them. in its death throes the hag cursed the sorcerer who killed it and erased his name from all memory.
The players explore the hag hut and found an enchanted shield of the first knight sent by the towns lord prior to the players arrival, and many gruesome witch objects.
The session ended with the players finding an odd wooden door in the center floor of the hut, the idea of a basement being odd in the swampy environment…

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for giving us fans a quality podcast. Perhaps sometime I can include some of the notes / maps I had drawn up and other things or expand on the other aspects of the adventure.

Thanks again, Jeff + crew.

Jordi’s session:

Hi, I’m Jordi, the guy taking the table selfie. I’ve got a few co-workers and my younger brother Willie playing our first romp in the Dragon Empire!

I’ve been getting my new home ready for hosting for a while now, and finally knocked out some characters. Left to right, we’ve got Duncan as a half orc rogue; Kira as a dragon born sorcerer; Patrick as a Praxian necromancer; Clint as a dragon born ranger with Nike sneakers; and Willie as a Praxian commander/Humakti fighter. Not pictured is Chad, our human barbarian/monk.

I waited for relationships and backgrounds and unique things before I really settled in a campaign direction. Looks like we’re going for the Three and the Lich King, with some Orc Lord thrown in. The core adventure provided a great starting point! I’ve run a few one shots for free RPG day, so I was loosely ready, and we slowed down to really understand how to play this game.

Duncan and Kira helped me with our maps and tokens, we all enjoyed seeing the nose picking gobbo. I’m gonna draw the boss monster for our next session, but these monster pogs are keepers.

We only got through the first encounter in a three hour session, but everybody was so enthusiastic that we can’t wait for the next session. I love presenting an awesome map, and I’m really gonna elevate it for the final encounter at Boltstrike Pillar!

Patrick’s session:

My game (which you’ve probably seen me mentioning in the various groups) is set in New Port, running alongside another Instance of another game set in Drakkenhall. Of the two tables and eight players, only two players have played 13th Age before.

Here are the links to the player background packets everyone gets for each game:

• https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfzoyiobdv324s4/New%20Port%20Report.pptx?dl=0
• https://www.dropbox.com/s/7k38u3z08kvzrhg/Drakkenhall%20Dossier.pptx?dl=0

And here are the latest write-ups from the GM (me) for the first New Port session (Char gen and about an hour of gameplay) and heck, here’s a link to the shared Engine of Ages (which the New Port game just finished filling in):

• https://www.dropbox.com/s/zdb9xu15asuk6n2/Engine%20of%20Ages.docx?dl=0

New Port:

Most of our heroes met up, some of them being long-term residents of and some being recent adventuring residents of a small town. One just came to investigate some cult or something, some “devourer” cult, seems unlikely to amount to anything.

Anyways, some sort of horrible underground thing ate the whole town, with perhaps 500 of the 1,100 who were living there (1,000 residents and 100 refugees from the attacks of the High Druids creatures) fled towards New Port, our heroes leading the bedraggled many …

Thanks,
Patrick