Story and Crunch! 13th Age combines the best parts of crunchy d20-rolling fantasy gaming with story-focused rules that help the gamemaster and players collaborate to create unique campaigns. Storytelling Every character has One Unique Thing that sets them apart from all others and provides the raw materials for adventures and plotlines focused on that hero. Each character’s backgrounds provide bonuses to relevant skill checks so that every skill roll can reveal new details of that hero’s backstory. Connections with the icons—high fantasy archetypes such as the Archmage, Lich King, or Prince of Shadows—give even 1st level heroes an introduction to the conflicts that shape the world. The evocative but deliberately non-canonical setting helps each campaign surprise itself with new twists! We don’t tell the story—each of your campaigns tells new stories. Crunch Streamlined combat rules harness the good bits of crunchy tactical combat without ticky-tacky measurements. Innovations like the escalation die ensure that battles crescendo instead of getting bogged down. Each of the nine character classes has unique features, advantages, and play styles; the flexible fighter is nothing like the wild sorcerer or the elegant bard. In this second edition of the game, thirteen years of experience with the system and hundreds of playtest reports helped us revise the game’s class features, talents, spells, kin powers, and monsters (!) so that there are only interesting choices. Splendid Art Fantastic art from the artists listed at left, coordinated and in some cases highlighted and illuminated by paints from Lee Moyer. Gamemaster’s Guide Players will want 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide for treasure and information on the default setting of the Dragon Empire. Gamemasters need the GM book’s 250 pages of rules for running the game, campaign advice, rules for quickly creating exciting and balanced battles, hundreds of monsters, guidelines and tools for designing new monsters, and an introductory adventure in a living dungeon! A Whole Line of Supporting Books All the adventures, settings, monsters, magic items, kin, and classes already published for 13th Age are compatible with this new edition. In 2013, our game 13th Age showed fantasy roleplayers a way to combine vibrant storytelling with high-energy combat. Earlier, we had been the lead designers of 3rd Edition and 4th Edition of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, and in 13th Age we wrote for gamers like us, not for corporate shareholders. Our new second edition makes the game better, thanks to years of listening to fans and of testing ideas at our gaming table. The character classes have better options, the monsters are scarier, the magic items offer more choices, and the narrative rules are better defined. We hope you love it. –Rob Heinsoo & Jonathan Tweet, August 2025 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 as well as overseeing the 13th Age line and co-designing 13th Age Glorantha with Jonathan. Other notable designs include the various incarnations of Three-Dragon Ante, the first two sets of Epic Spell Wars, Wrestlenomicon, the upcoming Armello: The Board Game, and the upcoming Legendary: Game of Thrones. About Jonathan Tweet Jonathan Tweet is the perfect collaborator for Rob on 13th Age. Jonathan was the lead designer of 3rd Ed D&D, and his other game designs changed the way people design and play roleplaying games (see Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and Everway). He’s also worked in card games, miniatures, Facebook games, and fiction. His games have won three Origins Awards, and he is in the Origins Award Hall of Fame. Finally, he’s the author of Grandmother Fish (Macmillan 2016), the first book to teach evolution to preschoolers.
