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
- Backgrounds provide a simple, flexible skill system drawn from characters’ personal histories
- Escalation dice 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
