13th Age

13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most want to play with your group. Created by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, 13th Age gives you all the tools you need to make unique characters who are immediately embedded in the setting in important ways; quickly prepare adventures based on the PCs’ backgrounds and goals; create your own monsters; fight exciting battles; and focus on what’s always been cool and fun about fantasy adventure gaming:

Icon relationships and One Unique Things offer exciting storytelling possibilities

offer exciting storytelling possibilities Backgrounds provide a simple, flexible skill system drawn from characters’ personal histories

provide a simple, flexible skill system drawn from characters’ personal histories Escalation dice enable fun, fast-moving d20 combat.

enable fun, fast-moving d20 combat. Owlbears will rip PC’s limbs off to feed their young.

About 13th Age In the 13th Age of the world, adventurers seek their fortunes in the Dragon Empire while powerful individuals known as Icons pursue goals that may preserve the empire from chaos, or send it over the edge. Players decide which Icons their characters ally with, and which ones they oppose. These relationships, along with a personal history and a unique trait chosen during character creation, help define an adventurer’s place in the world of 13th Age and lay the groundwork for epic stories that emerge through play. There are also fun new rules for hitting orcs and making them go splat. “Our goal with 13th Age is to recapture the free-wheeling style of old-school gaming by creating a game with more soul and fewer technical details. …13th Age makes the play group’s campaign the center of attention, with a toolkit of rules that you can pick and choose from based on the kind of game you want to play. The mechanics draw from classic games as well as newer, story-based games.” – Jonathan Tweet, co-designer

Designed for experienced GMs and any type of player, 13th Age offers a fresh take on a familiar tabletop experience. Pelgrane Press gave Rob and Jonathan total freedom to create the game they most wanted to play. They brought the best parts of the great d20-rolling fantasy tradition together with innovative new rules, resulting in a game that EN World readers named “2013’s Most Anticipated RPG”.

Play 13th Age as a standalone game, or use it as a source of cool ideas and add-on rules for make your favorite RPG. This 320-page core rulebook features:

Character creation that gives your adventurer a place in the world (and the GM dozens of adventure hooks) through Icon relationships and your One Unique Things

A simple, flexible skill system through Backgrounds that bring your character’s personal history into the game with every dice roll

Streamlined, free-form combat with new rules that make battles fast, fun and dramatic

DIY monster and encounter building sections so GMs can create adventures with little or no preparation

Notes from Rob and Jonathan on how they approach their own games—and where they disagree

About Rob Heinsoo

Rob Heinsoo has created dozens of role-playing games, card games, miniatures games and board games. He led the design of the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons® and wrote or led the design of many 4e sourcebooks. Rob has just released the card game Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre. Other recent game designs include THREE-DRAGON ANTE, THREE-DRAGON ANTE: Emperor’s Gambit, Inn-Fighting, Dreamblade, FORGOTTEN REALMS® Campaign Setting, and the first nine sets of D&D Miniatures®. Games he worked on in the 90’s that have aged well include Shadowfist, Feng Shui, and King of Dragon Pass.

About Jonathan Tweet

Jonathan Tweet has been creating games professionally for 25 years. He created or co-created the roleplaying games Ars Magica (1987), Over the Edge (1992), and Everway (1995). He started writing for Dungeons & Dragons in 1992, and in 2000 he became the lead designer of the game’s third edition. In addition to roleplaying games, Jonathan has created and contributed to card games, miniatures games, computer games, and fiction. His games have won three Origins Awards, and he is in the Origins Award Hall of Fame.

“13th Age RPG delivers an incredible fantasy storytelling experience.”

– io9

“One of the best systems I’ve encountered—and I’ve either played or read the rules to countless d20 systems at this point—is 13th Age… It’s fun, fast and accessible.”

– Forbes

“[13th Age] has just enough of the freedom I want from a tabletop game while also being able to balance the crunchy aspects. I was just about to swear off D20 games, too. So I’m glad I found this.” – Kirby Smith, playtester

“The system is absolutely brilliant. For me, it brings a lot of the things I really enjoy about traditional fantasy gaming and infuses them with some new and really useful ideas that you often see in more indie gaming.”

– Aaron R., GM of Forgotten Sagas of the 13th Age, Obsidian Portal’s March 2013 Campaign of the Month

Staff Pick

I love how 13th Age RPG uses "Icons" throughout the session: Icons are 13th Age's NPCs that have an influence on the world, based on your relationship and rolls. The Icon system not only keeps players on their toes, but also provides an opportunity for storytellers to alter their plot easily in new and interesting ways.

The classes are familiar to most who play fantasy RPGs, but they are changed in a way that allows more flexibility. (This makes it a little difficult to pick which class to play because all of them are so much fun!) A lot of the rules are is left "up to GM and Players," which helps the game remain flexible and combats the fact that there just can't be rules written for every situation.

The rules are what I'd call "medium crunch," which appeals to a wide variety of player types, including someone like me, who loves getting right into the game as soon as possible.

—Meredith Gerber, Maven of Mythology (DriveThruRPG Publisher Service)



