EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I recently got in touch with a friendly fellow-poster (who frequents other parts of the internet) and the possibility of a future 13th Age campaign sprang up. However, before he makes any firm commitments, he wanted to get some character and campaign ideas. I've got the former covered pretty well, including my beloved standby (dragonborn Pally, with a fun OUT built-in). The latter, on the other hand, are coming up a bit short. I've thrown a few ideas his way, but for a lot of them, he wasn't feeling 13A for them--the Icons are supposed to be at least a *moderately* big deal, and he'd prefer a campaign where he doesn't have to "create" their importance from whole cloth. For example, a campaign set in Fantasy Ancient Greece could have the Olympians (and some Cthonic deities) act as its Icons, and people wouldn't need a lot of explanation for why they're there, nor why we care or why various Icon relationship rolls mean what they do (e.g. you roll a 5, "Athena's decided you're cute, all muscly and dashing, so she wants to see you sweat!")
I've done some digging elsewhere, but I haven't found any settings that really 'pop' in terms of the icons. The Eberron Dragonmarked Houses, for all their central relevance to the story, feel a bit anemic to me (just as an example); while their meaning is already baked into the setting, why any given person would care what any given house wants/thinks is less obvious. I also suspect that, if we did Eberron at all, the DM would want to run it in 4e, which defeats the purpose in the first place (as I'm wanting to try 13A to see how I like it, and he's open to the idea of running that system specifically).
So I turn to you, ENWorlders. What ideas, whether for campaigns (set in the standard 13A universe or not), or for baseline setting stuff, do you know of that really help the Icons shine?
I've done some digging elsewhere, but I haven't found any settings that really 'pop' in terms of the icons. The Eberron Dragonmarked Houses, for all their central relevance to the story, feel a bit anemic to me (just as an example); while their meaning is already baked into the setting, why any given person would care what any given house wants/thinks is less obvious. I also suspect that, if we did Eberron at all, the DM would want to run it in 4e, which defeats the purpose in the first place (as I'm wanting to try 13A to see how I like it, and he's open to the idea of running that system specifically).
So I turn to you, ENWorlders. What ideas, whether for campaigns (set in the standard 13A universe or not), or for baseline setting stuff, do you know of that really help the Icons shine?
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