13A definitely has some 'fuzzy' mechanics, and the way classes work is not as consistent as 4e. In that sense, it's not as simple as 4e, though that sense is not as easy to pick up & play, more than in the sense of not as complex.
13A is *MUCH* easier to learn to play than 4E. At my very last 4E campaign, I still had players (some of whom, by the way, had been playing it since 2008) confused about how the Fighter's combat challenge works, whether a warlock's curse supercedes a defender's mark, who took close to 5 minutes every turn even at 1st level juggling the 7+ combat options (including basic attacks and action points) every non-Essentials character has. The only real question I have had about 13A that comes to mind is about icon relationship rolls and thats because the players were not accustomed to that type of narrativist mechanic.
4E was a great game and I had a good time running it for 4 years, but its major failing was that it assumed every player needs to be a tactician that can juggle over a half-dozen power cards each and every combat scene. That, in my opinion, is the one reason we often heard complaints of "combat takes too long" or "the game is all about combat". If you have a group that understands tactics and makes effective use of teamwork, 4E combat runs pretty fast and smooth and gives the table enough breathing space to focus primarily on the story. If your group doesn't fit that mold, however, combat quickly devolves into a grindy boardgame experience that feels like some kind of minigame within the RPG itself. This is one of the reasons they provided simpler options with the Essentials releases --- because, while I personally don't have a problem being a power card juggling tactician (and am pretty half-decent at it), a lot of players can't (and won't) wing it and need other options.
The main issue I have with 13A is "simple" vs "complex" is a class choice, rather than a build choice (DDN has this problem, as well). However, there is enough flexibilty and creativity within character building in 13A (as well as the advice of "swapping out" talents between classes if it fits your concept and your GM says yes) that this is far less of an issue in 13A than it is in most versions of DnD. Also, because of backgrounds and icon relationships even the "simple" classes have a TON of opportunities to take narrative control of a scene.
Honestly, I think some of you have internalized 4E's mechanics so thoroughly from years of play that you have trouble understanding how they actually look to casual players or complete newcomers to the hobby. A lot of the rules interactions and synergies can get very very complicated really quickly. 13A mechanics, by contrast, tend to have a much more organic and narrative feel ("I move nearby to the the orc and do X") without having to juggle through long lists of power cards, class skills, action points, geometric blasts, and a dozen different conditions.
Backgrounds, though, made me nervous: they're player-defined/DM-interpreted, so there's a lot of room for dissapointment and/or conflict over how often they work. 5e Backgrounds and 13A Backgrounds both determine your characters skills, but where 5e at least gives definitions of which skills and what each skill can be used for, 13A drops all that in the GM's lap. One player says "I'm a Locksmith" and another says "I'm a Thief," the GM lets them both add their background to lockpicking, but the Thief also adds his to sneaking around, picking pockets, running confidence games, and circumventing traps. Another GM might also let the locksmith make clocks, wheelock pistols, and traps (all things locksmiths /did/ at some point in history), and keep ledgers, deal with guild politics, and the like - but that's still not as much adventuring stuff as the traditional 'thief' might get. Too fuzzy. 5e at least avoids the worst of that with its take on Backgrounds.
Backgrounds are absolutely Not A Problem if the GM embraces the spirit of 13A (Say Yes and Fail Forward) and you avoid the antagonistic relationship that typically defines older editions of DnD. I have yet to have an argument about backgrounds with any of the four groups I've run the game for.
13A's backgrounds also have the advantage over DDN's approach in that they are an opportunity for the player to assume some narrative control over the campaign world. One of my paladin's backgrounds was "Veteran of the Goblin War +2". See, I didn't know there was a Goblin War in my campaign world, but guess what? Now there is.
FYI, "thief" and "locksmith" are both really really really lame backgrounds for a 13A game and the rulebook encourages GMs to guide players into coming up with really interesting and evocative ones. "Middle-ranking member of the Neverwinter Thieves Guild" and "Apprentice to Dwarf King's Chief Locksmith" are much better ones that took me all of 10 seconds to think up.
Then again, if you absolutely *have* to have the rules detail to you *exactly* what you can do at all times (something I never even embraced even when I ran 4E --- I was a skill challenges, rule 42, terrain powers kinda DM), then no game that involves shared storytelling or narrative collaboration will really be the scratch for your gaming itch. That includes 13th Age.
Just as 'some people' are not master tacticians, 'some people' are not master narrators. So this 'reward good RP skills' approach essentially has the same pitfalls, but it also goes one better, and gives you the pitfall of the power gamer making up the narrative stuff not because it is a good story, but because it gives good bonuses.
Both approaches are valid, both have pitfalls, and the 'best' depends on you and your team. IMHO, the 'best' result is when you and your players can take one system, and 'use it in good faith'. That is, you make up for the shortfalls and do not exploit their weaknessess. But if you have a group like that, then any system will probably work for you.
Just as 'some people' are not master tacticians, 'some people' are not master narrators. So this 'reward good RP skills' approach essentially has the same pitfalls, but it also goes one better, and gives you the pitfall of the power gamer making up the narrative stuff not because it is a good story, but because it gives good bonuses.
Oh, I agree and that's an issue with, say, the stunting bonuses in Exalted as an example.
However, thats now how these mechanics work in 13A. You don't get "good bonuses" for "RP skills". When a player takes narrative control of a scene through the icon relationships, it has just as much chance of causing a complication as it does of being purely advantageous. Even when its purely advantageous, there is no mechanical or numerical advantage. It is a narrative advantage and decidedly non-mechanical in nature.
I have some pretty hardcore power-gamers in one of my groups, and nobody has hogged the spotlight yet. That tell me something right there.
Both approaches are valid, both have pitfalls, and the 'best' depends on you and your team. IMHO, the 'best' result is when you and your players can take one system, and 'use it in good faith'. That is, you make up for the shortfalls and do not exploit their weaknessess. But if you have a group like that, then any system will probably work for you.
Definitely. If you have a group that loved 4E but also loves collaborative storytelling and shared narration, then 13th Age is right up their ally. If your group isn't really into that stuff, but loves 4E but still wishes it was a bit more rules light and faster, then 13th Age might be right up their ally or it might not. If your group loves 4E's tactical combat system but isn't really keen on stuff like Rule 42 or skill challenges, they'll probably want to give 13th Age a pass.
OTOH neither of them is as simple mechanically for the player. 13a also adds some more explicit narrative type elements to the game, which is interesting. I still want consistent class/monster mechanics, it was just simple.
Speaking as someone who has DM'd 4E since it came out in June of 2008 and as someone who has run 13A for four different groups (two playtest one-shots and two ongoing campaigns currently), I find these claims about 13A...... well, interesting, to say the least.
I think you'll just have to chalk it up to a difference of opinion on where it is best for complexity to be concentrated. 4e is DEFINITELY easier for people to learn quickly than 13a. The problem with 13a is the class mechanics are highly incoherent. You have a number of different mechanics that are similar but not the same, often overlapping on the same class. All you need to understand in 4e is AEDU and whatever features you may have from feats/background/class/race/etc which are generally quite simply specific things (IE static or conditional bonuses, once in a while a 'power like' effect, though most of those have been replaced with actual powers in later supplements).
Just as 'some people' are not master tacticians, 'some people' are not master narrators. So this 'reward good RP skills' approach essentially has the same pitfalls, but it also goes one better, and gives you the pitfall of the power gamer making up the narrative stuff not because it is a good story, but because it gives good bonuses.
Oh, I agree and that's an issue with, say, the stunting bonuses in Exalted as an example.
However, thats now how these mechanics work in 13A. You don't get "good bonuses" for "RP skills". When a player takes narrative control of a scene through the icon relationships, it has just as much chance of causing a complication as it does of being purely advantageous. Even when its purely advantageous, there is no mechanical or numerical advantage. It is a narrative advantage and decidedly non-mechanical in nature.
I have some pretty hardcore power-gamers in one of my groups, and nobody has hogged the spotlight yet. That tell me something right there.
Both approaches are valid, both have pitfalls, and the 'best' depends on you and your team. IMHO, the 'best' result is when you and your players can take one system, and 'use it in good faith'. That is, you make up for the shortfalls and do not exploit their weaknessess. But if you have a group like that, then any system will probably work for you.
Definitely. If you have a group that loved 4E but also loves collaborative storytelling and shared narration, then 13th Age is right up their ally. If your group isn't really into that stuff, but loves 4E but still wishes it was a bit more rules light and faster, then 13th Age might be right up their ally or it might not. If your group loves 4E's tactical combat system but isn't really keen on stuff like Rule 42 or skill challenges, they'll probably want to give 13th Age a pass.
I've found 4e to be a pretty effective game for step up, framed scene type narrative play actually. You may see it as a swamp of nitty detail, but I see it as a powerful simple universal system with a lot of specific examples that are called powers. It is all in how you present it to the players. I think most people have been presented 4e in a way that got them sucked into number crunching, but I don't see that happening at my table. The players for instance all leveled up their PCs the other week after a hard fight with an Earthquake Dragon, which the orc shaman they were with then informed them was a test to see if they were worthy of taking the path ahead. They promptly all declared that they were taking some tribal feat that gives them collective extra surges and they called it the "blessing of the Dragon" lol.
I do LIKE a lot of the way 13a presents stuff. OTOH the class mechanics for the bard for instance are just bent. I tried to run it in the last playtest and it was confusing to ME, and I used to win Star Fleet Battles tournaments and have been RPing since RPG meant "3 little brown books". It certainly isn't a horribly complicated system, but it puts a lot of complexity onto the table at play time that 4e backloads onto chargen. I think overall 4e is the more elegant system, but that is just MHO. If it was a perfect world I'd merge 13a's backgrounds with 4e's class mechanics and make a few tweaks. Obviously no game is perfect
Star Fleet Battles - to know and use every rule to your advantage - ahh - no wonder there isn't space left in my brain for all these fancy RPG systems. Alas there were never tournaments in my area. I still have all my SFB stuff though. Although the slightest mention that my group could have a game one day when we need a break from DnD tends to have people quaking in dread. Oh well.
I do LIKE a lot of the way 13a presents stuff. OTOH the class mechanics for the bard for instance are just bent. I tried to run it in the last playtest and it was confusing to ME
It makes sense, the bard being towards the top of the complexity scale for 13th Age classes. I personally dig the AEDU structure for all classes 4e does, as it appears to set complexity to just the right level for our group, and also it makes it easier to 'learn' new classes. However I understand not all groups feel the same and they may actually welcome the disparity in complexity among classes.
If it was a perfect world I'd merge 13a's backgrounds with 4e's class mechanics and make a few tweaks. Obviously no game is perfect
I think our 13th Age/4e hybrid is pretty close to be the 'perfect game' (for us, of course ). Interestingly, when it came to backgrouds I (as a DM) was all for going full 13th Age, but one of my players felt they were too 'fuzzy' for his taste. So we went double and kept both the 4e skills and added 13th BG on top; basically you can use either for a skill check if they apply. So far we never had a problem with this, no matter how wide or narrow backgrounds have been chosen; actually a player decided to 'waste' a bakground on being a high class master chef... and it's remarkable to see how often that one has managed to change the outcome of a session in significant ways
Backgrounds, though, made me nervous: they're player-defined/DM-interpreted, so there's a lot of room for dissapointment and/or conflict over how often they work. One player says "I'm a Locksmith" and another says "I'm a Thief," the GM lets them both add their background to lockpicking, but the Thief also adds his to sneaking around, picking pockets, running confidence games, and circumventing traps. Another GM might also let the locksmith make clocks, wheelock pistols, and traps (all things locksmiths /did/ at some point in history), and keep ledgers, deal with guild politics, and the like - but that's still not as much adventuring stuff as the traditional 'thief' might get. Too fuzzy. 5e at least avoids the worst of that with its take on Backgrounds.
FYI, "thief" and "locksmith" are both really really really lame backgrounds for a 13A game and the rulebook encourages GMs to guide players into coming up with really interesting and evocative ones. "Middle-ranking member of the Neverwinter Thieves Guild" and "Apprentice to Dwarf King's Chief Locksmith" are much better ones that took me all of 10 seconds to think up.
Don't see how that really changes things. So they'll each get to aply their background in certain social situations in certain places, apart from that the 'theif' is still doing scads of traditional adventuring thief stuff, and the locksmith is picking locks.
If a system is wide open to strict superiority like that, it's a potential problem.
Then again, if you absolutely *have* to have the rules detail to you *exactly* what you can do at all times (something I never even embraced even when I ran 4E --- I was a skill challenges, rule 42, terrain powers kinda DM), then no game that involves shared storytelling or narrative collaboration will really be the scratch for your gaming itch. That includes 13th Age.
I just find time gaming to be more fun than time arguing. Good resolution systems deliver fewer arguments and imbalances. Fuzzy resolution systems are OK when everyone's already on the same page - at which point, you might as well be freestyle RPing.
). Interestingly, when it came to backgrouds I (as a DM) was all for going full 13th Age, but one of my players felt they were too 'fuzzy' for his taste. So we went double and kept both the 4e skills and added 13th BG on top; basically you can use either for a skill check if they apply. 
