13th Age
1st ed by Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet (2013) Pelgrane Press
A fantasy tabletop role-playing game with a customizable setting, based on a variant of the D20 System from third edition Dungeons & Dragons. It mixes in story-oriented mechanics, along with no predefined skills and no assumption of figures or a map for combat. It does include ten levels grouped into three tiers. The setting includes default places, a default bestiary, and 13 default figures of power in the world (known as Icons – such as the Archmage, the Diabolist, and others). However, other details are left open to be filled in as part of character creation.
Description
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. In 2018, Rob Heinsoo Games and Chaosium published an alternate setting supplement for Greg Stafford’s Glorantha. 13th Age Glorantha was Kickstarter funded, along with a companion volume further detailing the world, The Gloranthan Sourcebook.
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 starting to count from the second round, known as the “escalation die” (it’s a six-sided die, so maximum bonus is +6).
The skills systems often associated with recent versions of Dungeons & Dragons have been replaced with “backgrounds” in 13th Age. Players are encouraged to create backstories for their characters that give them bonuses to actions in the game, often asking them to refer to a time in their fictional past when they have dealt with a similar obstacle and how they overcame it or what they learned from the experience.
Other differences from standard d20 games include the backgrounds taking the place of most utility magic, weapon damage dice being determined by class, spells that are only expended on bad rolls, and recoveries that resemble D&D 4e healing surges.
Like many d20-variant games, The Archmage Engine – 13th Age SRD was released under the Open Game License, so that its open game content can be copied or modified.
(not owned)