So far, we've been mentioning how this game does new things and incorporates new ideas into the D&D mold, but haven't gone into any specifics. This is the first in a short series highlighting the rules of The 13th Age and how they support a more personalized, character-driven style of play. I've decided to start with the thing that inspired our thread's title: the One Unique Thing.
When making a character you have the familiar steps of choosing your race and class, assigning your Ability Scores those usual things. You also choose One Unique Thing, your PC's hallmark that sets them apart from any old fella with a sword. They can be fantastic or mundane, world-shaking or personal, secret or extroverted, familiar or bizarre. It's entirely up to you. The One Unique Thing is not meant to bring a mechanical advantage, but instead to develop the world around you. Just from our party's OUTs and nothing else we know the Elves have a lunar exploration program, adherents of the Great Gold Wyrm fiercely believe portents, and there is an anger from deep in Dwarven history that they still fear; and that's not even the half of it.
It also makes you notable. Even if your Thing is as simple as being the karaoke champion of Concord somebody in the setting will know and care, at least the runner-up will. In this way, it also helps develop your backstory which is useful for choosing interesting backgrounds, but that's for another post. I like One Unique Things for how they provide focus to a character that isn't quite made yet. Nav is a construct of the Lich King's war effort against the living who deserted out of an appreciation for the finer things. That's a whole character in a sentence. It grew from the OUT and informs his powers, backgrounds, and flavor.
From the early stages of character creation we have a world with texture and flavor, and it came from the players themselves. I love collaborative efforts and having a stake in the world-building increases investment, so it gives me a little more leeway to pull whatever I think of. That collaborative aspect also helps seed plot hooks (how about that Groat Ungren guy) and signpost what the players want from their game. When I got the OUTs "Only half-elf born in a mixed marriage" and "Only elf raised by humans" it told me at least one-third of the players wanted a game where the family structures and mores of Elves were a thing that would matter.
Really, it's there to point out that every adventurer is exceptional, at least in some tiny way. Every game has them wind up that exceptional, but starting out as something special helps develop characters faster, and get you into how they think without those first few sessions of adjustment. It can even make PCs more relatable in a sense. Don't we all have that one thing we hang our hats on? Like the best of 13th Age's additions to the d20 formula, the One Unique Thing takes something that may already happen at plenty of tables, and presents it in a way to be used to its greatest effect in every campaign.
