Overcompensating, Yes?

It's #DrawDeathsHeadDay 2025! The most freelance peacekeeping day of the year! And, coincidentally, Simon Furman's birthday too!

A skinny, angry-looking DH this year. Maybe he's short of cash.

Sketched in pencil, "inked" in Krita, and a bit experimental. I'm still trying to find my confidence and style, so I went for something loose and messy, in an attempt to not overthink things and let the picture develop.

Dragonlance: Thirteenth Age

Here's an idea, combining two of my favourite role-playing games.

It's completely untested; we're learning as we're doing. Let's go!

Let's first of all generate the Icons we're going to use for this hypothetical campaign. We'll arrange them in the traditional three-by-three "alignment" grid, and for this purpose nine Icons work well, but there's no reason you can't have fewer or more.

Then we'll draw our Icons from the Fate Deck, like so:

I like the idea of drawing "in order" rather than shuffling them around to fit, but that's the Old-Schooler in me; if a "good" character is sitting in the Chaotic Evil spot, then that's interesting and worth exploring. The Icons don't necessarily map to those alignments, because neither 13th Age nor Dragonlance: Fifth Age really have alignment in the exact same way D&D has, but if it's useful to think of them, um, aligning in that way, then go ahead.

(The DL5A cards have black, red, or white icons that map to the good, neutral, or evil factions/moons/wizards; you can use these as a guide.)

The characters on the cards can be the actual Icons if you want -- which would make for an interesting alternate Dragonlance setting -- or they could be an example -- eg, Chot stands in for a generic Minotaur Warlord Icon, or Goldmoon is the Barbarian Priestess or something -- or it can be someone completely different that just shares those personality traits, or it can be any combination of the preceding. Go wild.

Make a note of this Icon grid. Maybe take a photo. Those cards need to now go back into the Fate Deck.

Icon Relationships

Now we have our Icons, player-characters can define their relationships with them. This can be done as normal, with starting PCs spending up to three points on positive, conflicted, or negative relationships with Icons of their choice. Those definitions should be obvious, but if not have a look at the 13A Icon rules.

(13A has limits on how to spend the points, depending on the alignments of the Icon and the PC, but I'm ignoring those as I don't like them. If you want to put all three points into a negative relationship with an "evil" Icon, go for it. The 13A limits can be seen at the above link if you want to use them.)

"Rolling Relationship Dice"

As a GM, use a PC's icon relationships three different ways, just as in 13A:

• At the start of a session to generate ideas about which Icons will be involved in that session's events.
• During a specific important event or moment, to determine if an Icon is involved, or if the PCs can get an advantage or assistance from an Icon.
• As a "sting" to see if an Icon is somehow involved with a "random" plot event.

Each player draws cards equal to their points with the relevant Icon:

• If the suit matches that of the Icon, then it provides an umambiguous advantage or benefit, the 13A equivalent of a 6. Unless it is a Dragon card.
• If the card is a Dragon, then it is advantageous as above, except there is also a complication, like an obligation to a "good" Icon, or unwanted attention from an "evil" Icon. The equivalent of a 13A 5 result.
• If the card drawn is the Icon card itself, then the Icon makes a personal intervention! Let's call it a 7; in 13A the Icons are not really supposed to appear in person, but drawing the Icon's actual card seems like it should warrant a special effect.

(The probabilities are a bit lower here than in 13A but they are not massively off, and the addition of the third, "7", result feels like it balances things. A bit. Ish.)

Combinations of results are allowed and encouraged! A 5 and a 6 is interesting, a 5 and a 7 even more so!

I think cards should be shuffled back into the Fate Deck after each Icon "roll", or at least after each player has had a go, except perhaps with the exception of any direct interventions, but this probably requires testing.

Changing Relationships

When a PC gets to Hero reputation -- 16 to 21 Quests -- they get an extra relationship point to spend. They can also switch an existing relationship point to a different or new Icon, as long as it makes sense within the context of the campaign.

At Archetype -- 29 Quests! -- reputation a PC again gains a new relationship point and can again switch one point around. At this stage a single relationship can be increased to a new maximum of four, to reflect the PC becoming a VIPI.

(A Very Important Person Indeed!)

Carrier-er

I've just read the collection of Blood Hunt, Marvel's recent vampire crossover event thing. It's not bad, although it seems to lose interest in itself about two thirds of the way through in favour of setting up the next crossover. It starts well though, and in pace and scale feels a lot like the first couple of years of The Authority, before that comic went a bit bad.

Not least because the Avengers have -- since 2023 -- been zipping about in this:

That's the Impossible City, a huge, um, city-sized space ship from another dimension. Possibly sapient, but with its memory and history erased, and with a distinctive teleportation ability, with which it opens "doors" to locations the Avengers need to access to do Avengering.

That's the Carrier, a huge city-sized space ship from another dimension. Possibly sapient, but with its memory and history erased, and with a distinctive teleportation ability, with which it opens "doors" to locations the Authority needs to access to do cynical posturing and widescreen property damage.

Hm.

Almost Forgot

Epic Excuses for Giant Robots!

The Horus Heresy, the foundational story and grand tragedy at the heart of Warhammer 40,000, is an excuse.

Back in the grim darkness of 1988 Games Workshop released the first version of its Epic teeny tiny wargames system, Adeptus Titanicus:

Epic battles between giant robots! Ace!

Except all the "giant robots" in that first box were Imperial, so GW needed to come up with a reason why the humans were fighting each other. And so, one back-of-the-napkin later, we get the Horus Heresy, gengineered brother versus gengineered brother, lots of overwrought high drama, about a million tie-in novels, a spinoff tabletop wargame, and soon a role-playing game.

(We're not counting the "3D Roleplay" graphic on the AT box...)

I'm not convinced by this announcement -- what are players going to actually do in this setting? -- but I'm intrigued.