And yet, even with all of these excellent options out there, I think there is one game that stands out from the rest, and has done so consistently since its introduction almost twelve years ago--13th Age by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, published by Pelgrane Press. I have written about 13th Age several times--a general review, a discussion of 13th Age Glorantha, and a discussion of the Quickstart from a few years back. I think it has the best writing of any ttrpg product line (both in the core materials and in the supplements)--clear, enjoyable to read, useful, often very funny. It has a keen eye for evaluating all the pieces of the d20/D&D experience, finding the fun parts, and leaving the rest behind. It brings into the basic D&D experience ideas from more narrative focused games in a way that highlights the strengths of both (in fact, Daggerheart, which I also love, is in many ways the mirror image of 13th Age, starting from the narrative world and adding back the fun parts of D&D). It is, IME, far, far easier to GM than 5e, in large measure because it puts thought and effort into what makes GMing clean and fun (and, as I will get into in a bit, 13th Age is about to remove one of the biggest pain points to GMing the game).
About a month ago, 13th Age completed their Kickstarter for a 2nd Edition of the game. Since the meaning of "edition" has become a contested space in the ttrpg discourse, it is worth talking about the scope of this project. In essence, 13th Age 2nd Edition promises to be to 1st Edition what the 2024 "don't call it a new edition" D&D books promise as to the 2014 5e books. In other words, all of the supplemental materials like adventures and monsters from the 13th Age line will still be usable as is. As a Kickstarter backer (and playtester of 13th Age 2nd Edition for a while now), I've looked at what we are going to be getting for 2nd Edition, and I can tell you that the new material is going to work pretty seamlessly with the old material. In fact, because classes in 13th Age are more self-contained than in 5e, I predict intermixing old and new material in 13th Age is going to be far easier than in 5e.
For this reason, if you are interested in getting into 13th Age, there is no reason to wait until the new materials are fully available (likely next year). All of the current material is going to work with the new stuff, so none of your money will be wasted. Still, in reviewing the new playtest material, I am very, very excited about the 2nd Edition material. The recently released "Gamma" playtest (which is a draft text of the entire 2nd Edition core books) keeps all the stuff that made 13th Age great before and brings with it significant improvements.
The biggest change, and the element that I think is an absolute home run that will improve the experience of playing 13th Age immeasurably, is the new Icon Relationships chapter. The core concept is the same--each PC has a connection to one or more of the Icons, major archetypical NPCs ("The Archmage," "The Emperor," "The Elf Queen," etc.), and their associated faction. At the beginning of each session, each PC rolls a d6 for each connection, and for each 5 or 6 that comes up, a resource that can be used during the session to generate a boon related to the Icon is generated.
As the designers have noted, while this structure has been consistent across the life span of 13th Age, the explanation for what GMs and players should do with those Icon rolls has varied wildly from book to book. In the original 13th Age core book, at least as I interpreted it, it was up to the GM to work the Icon rolls into the story. And, IME, this was a pain point for 13th Age GMs, since it represented an element of the game that was on the player's character sheet (so to speak) that the GM had to keep track of and keep in mind as he or she was running the game. It was very easy to simply forget about a player's Icon rolls. Later advice pushed the idea that Icon rolls were supposed to be a collaborative process between the player and the GM, without providing a great deal of concrete guidance for how to do that. In addition, Icon results were presented as narrative elements, so while it made sense to place the responsibility for handling them on the GM it increased GM task loading in a way that ran counter to the general thrust of 13th Age. The final element was that a roll of 5 on the Icon die resulted in a complication, which flagged ahead of time that a particular Icon point was going to have a trap. My experience is that there are some ttrpg players who simply will not self-impose a penalty on their character, and if you put spending complicated Icon rolls on the player, they will never spend them.
For 2nd Edition, the core change is that Icon relationship points are now explicitly a player resource, which players can now spend in two ways. First, the player can generate narrative outcomes, in a manner similar to the previous implementation, with a lengthy descriptions and examples for each Icon. So, the lift of dealing with Icon relations is off the shoulders of the GM, and put in the hands of the players in a way that they can actually use. The other option is to use Icon rolls in combat to give the player 5e-style Advantage on a roll (in essence, it works like pre-2024 Inspiration). This is a much simpler implementation, albeit less interesting, but I think this has an important place in the game because it provides a backstop if the players are struggling to come up with a good narrative use for their rolls. But, in order to push players toward the narrative option, the combat option is twice as likely to generate a "twist," the equivalent of the 5 on the Icon die from the 2012 Corebook. This works because now the player checks for a twist after spending the Icon die, so the sort of player who would be inclined to skip complicated Icon dice can't do so anymore.
The bottom line is that I think this is going to run far, far better than the previous version, without changing the fundamentals of what the Icon system does in the context of 13th Age campaigns. It delivers on what the Icon system promises, in a way that hasn't fully come to the fore yet.
The other major change is the reworking of the eight classes that were in the 2012 Corebook (Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard). Some of the changes are "quality of life" improvements that make the classes easier to understand and use. For example, all spells are now cast automatically at your character level, greatly simplifying the learning curve. Another smaller change is to beef up the some classes, especially the Paladin, that were designed to be easy to play but also tended to be underpowered and, more importantly, uninteresting at higher levels. There are also new and more interesting spell choices, as well as an editing pass on all of the Class Talents. But some classes--the Fighter, the Ranger, and the Bard--got complete rebuilds. The new Ranger is now structurally similar to the Demonologist class from The Book of Demons, in that Class Talents are divided into three pools (Hunter, Warrior and Magician), with abilities keying off of how many Talents are taken from the Hunter or Warrior pool. This allows for the Ranger to encompass the many different "versions" of the Ranger that have existed in d20 games throughout time.
But the star of the show for me is the new Bard. Bard has become something of a meme class, in part because of the unique flavor and part because 5e Bards have full access to 5e spellcasting, making them very powerful. The 2012 13th Age Bard was probably one of the most complicated classes, with a wide variety of somewhat disparate abilities. The new 13th Age Bard leans hard on the flavor piece, setting up Class Talents based on which instruments or forms of art the Bard practices, which in turn provide a suite of abilities. Likewise, the spells are laser focused on the Bard flavor--there is a spell that forces all combatants to take a full round of combat to talk about why they are fighting, with no attacks allowed. It looks effective as a class, without being overpowered, but most importantly it feels incredibly fun. And that's what you want in general, but especially for a Bard. Rob Heinsoo says the new Bard is his favorite part of the new edition, and I see why.
Two other global changes are on the GM side, with monsters and magic items. Heinsoo and Tweet have been candid that they really hit their stride with 13th Age monster design in the first Bestiary, leaving the core monsters in the original Corebook both a little weak and a little boring compared to later-designed creatures. One thing I noticed with the new designs (and something I hear Rob Heinsoo mention in an interview) is a move away from what was one of the most distinct elements of 13th Age, having monster powers trigger based on whether the d20 roll was odd or even (i.e., if the d20 is an even number and it hits, the attack inflicts ongoing damage on top of the normal damage, while an odd hit does not). Now, many of those abilities simply inflict the rider unless the PC makes a save. Since the default save is 50/50, it ends up being the same outcome, and I think the idea here is that it makes the players stay active during monster turns. To be honest, this is the one change I don't love--what I really liked about the odd/even mechanic is that it makes a single roll drive a lot of play, which speeds up combat. But the odd/even mechanic is not gone, just de-emphasized in a couple of places, and if it proves to slow down play it is trivially easy to ditch the save and go back to odd/even.
On the magic item front, the new idea is permanent magic items now have abilities that upgrade as the character advances in level. This pairs well with the 13th Age concept that all permanent magic items are intelligent and form a bond with their user--the longer that pairing goes on, the more that pairing results in greater mechanical effects. From a game perspective, it avoids the problem of what to do with lower powered magic items--throwing them away or selling them pushes the game toward a commoditized approach to magic items, which is not how many campaigns want to present magic. This puts it 13th Age in a middle place between 3e and 4e (as well as Pathfinder) and the commoditized magic item model and 5e which really doesn't know what it wants to do with permanent magic items.
The bottom line is this--in a world of ttrpgs that has many, many wonderful options, if you told me I could only play one d20 fantasy rpg, there is no question in my mind that I am going with 13th Age. If you told me I could only play one fantasy rpg period, the only other game that would compete with 13th Age for my choice is Daggerheart. It is an outstanding game, criminally underrated and underappreciated, and if you are a person who finds himself or herself looking around for options at this point in time, 13th Age should be one of the options you consider. If for nothing else, you will enjoy the process of reading the books and having a conversation with Rob and Jonathan about fantasy games.
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