It would be easy
to dismiss 13th Age as another D20-based fantasy role-playing
game, albeit one with gorgeous art. But underneath that deceptively simple
surface there are elegant storytelling gears that move in surprising
ways.
13th Age is
published by Pelgrane Press and
was co-designed by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, both alumni of various
Dungeons & Dragons editions. While it is based on the venerable D20 fantasy
RPGs that came before it, the designers of 13th Age Have
stripped away shopworn gaming elements (like lengthy spell lists and combat
based on counting squares on a grid) while bringing many of the fantasy genre's
tropes to the surface.
The world of 13th Age is populated by 13 powerful NPCs called Icons who represent common archetypes found in virtually all fantasy fiction and gaming. There's the High Druid, the Elf Queen, the Archmage, the Lich King, and more. They also roughly represent factions that players can join, tying them immediately to a web of alliances and ancient grudges.
The goal of 13th Age is to take that familiar D20 system and infuse it with the idea that each session or campaign should be a collaborative storytelling effort between the players and the GM. For instance, you don't select from a menu of skills. Instead, you create background elements for your character, and you derive skills from that background when each situation arises. So if you gave your character a background as a captain of a fishing boat, you could argue that you get a bonus on skill checks involving navigation, tying or untying knots, identifying aquatic species, and leading small groups.
Perhaps the most distinctive part of 13th Age character creation is the "One Unique Thing." You're not playing just any dwarf who goes out on adventures. You're playing the only dwarf in the world with a clockwork heart. Or a warrior with the soul of a dragon. Or a wizards who hears the singing of the stars. Again, there's no list to choose from. You make up your own Unique Thing. The fantastic story that emerges from it is the whole point of 13th Age.
13th Age feels like to me the spiritual successor of 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons mixed with the storytelling mechanics of games I like similar to Greg Stafford’s Pendragon and Gray Gygax’s 1st edition D&D. I think Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet give us a fully refined RPG mixed with a pile of house rules we can drop into any d20 game. While it’s great fun to run, 13th Age’s storytelling system demands much of a GM’s improvisation skills. At $45 plus shipping for the hardcover and PDF package or $19.99 for the PDF alone, 13th Age isn’t cheap, but you get a whole lot of game in a single beautiful package. If you’re looking for the evolution of D&D mixed with the storytelling of RPGs then look no further.
I was so
impressed with 13th age I started rewriting my own
homebrew campaign using the OGL Document this is still a work in
progress to figure out what would be Relevant and not
be Relevant in Urland today! (more on Urland will becoming later
on down the road)
I also signed up for their Organizedplay campaign found here and free downloads found here! and running a very successful campaign of 13th age on Tuesday Nights starting at 5pm at Isle of games 7747 E Broadway Ave Tucson, Arizona 85710
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