Review
I think this is a great game. It's wonderfully presented, colourful, full of flavour and brimming with great ideas that can not only work for 13th Age game but pretty much any roleplaying game, D&D or otherwise I can very highly recommend 13th Age, both as a general OGL D&D game as the changes and streamlining of the rules is very good and the new Icon and One Unique Thing rules make for an incredibly well put together story-driven system that marries narrative games with old-school roleplaying goodness. --Jonathan Hicks, RPG.net
...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, a game cobbled together by Jonathan Tweet and Rob Heinsoo. 13th Age is ... fun, fast, and accessible and encourages imagination from players and GM alike. It bakes some very cool new ideas into the d20 ecosystem while keeping all the major pieces intact. Of the many systems I've read recently, it's one of the best. The demo adventure I was able to play was a lot of fun, from character creation to combat, and left me excited to play more (which is a good sign.) And since it's part of the OGL it's simple to use it for everything from 3rd Edition to Pathfinder. In many ways, it's exactly the progressive design that I think a lot of D&D fans were hoping for when 4th Edition came out and that fans are now hoping for with 5th Edition. --Erik Kain, Forbes.com
13th Age is, hands down, the most exciting modern D&D variant I have encountered. [It] sits at the nexus not just of 3E and 4E which has engendered much discussion from D&D fans but also of the story games movement. It brilliantly melds the approaches of these three games into a cohesive, and fascinating, whole. Then, on top of all that, it adds a new and compelling take on an RPG setting defined by the game's 13 icons that provides dramatic conflict, ample room for GM and player input to the story, and makes the PCs themselves prominent. [It]...retains the strength of [the d20] system a rich tactical landscape with vast space for character customization but adds more freedom, and a well-designed toolbox, to add narration to the game. Toss in an exciting new style of setting design centered around conflicts rather than places and some simplification and abstraction to the combat mechanics, and the result is a beautiful game almost perfectly matched to my tastes. --The Other Steve, BoardGameGeek
About the Author
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.