13th Age
| Designer(s) | Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Pelgrane Press |
| Publication date | August 3, 2013 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Archmage Engine |
| Random chance | Dice rolling |
| Website | Official website |
13th Age is a d20 fantasy tabletop role-playing game, designed by Rob Heinsoo (lead designer of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition) and Jonathan Tweet (lead designer of D&D 3rd Edition), and published by Pelgrane Press. It was released on August 3, 2013, and the pre-release version was a nominee for the RPG Geek RPG of the Year 2013. As of December 2013 the ENWorld hot games list showed that discussions of it were responsible for 2.6% of all D&D related web traffic they had been able to index.
The setting of 13th Age is intended to be fleshed out in the course of play. Although there are default places, 13 default Icons that are archetypes of powerful gods and NPCs in standard fantasy settings, and a default bestiary, a lot of the setting is dependent on character creation. This is done by means of having freeform backgrounds rather than predefined skills, and by each character having One Unique Thing that can be anything which has no direct mechanics; examples in the rulebook include I am the only halfling knight of the Dragon Emperor and I have a clockwork heart made by the dwarves, both of which affect both character and the entire setting.
Like many d20-variant games, 13th Age was released under the Open Game License, meaning that its open game content can be copied or modified. An outline of the rules is available for free online.
13th Age was designed to be familiar in terms of setting concepts to D&D players, so it is a class-based game with the main rulebook containing standard D&D classes. It is also level-based, with ten levels grouped into three tiers. 13th Age was designed from the ground up to not use miniatures or a grid, and instead uses abstract distances and positioning. In order to speed up combat the Player Characters gain an escalating bonus to hit equal to the number of rounds that have passed, known as the "escalation die".
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