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13th Age RPG

Role-playing Game Name: 13th Age

Description: 13th Age Role-playing Game Pelgrane Press d20 - 2013

What are your reviews for this role-playing game? Would 13th Age play by post work well? Did you ever try a home brew version of this Role-playing Game, if so what did you do to improve upon it.

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13th Age is one of my favorite systems for playing D&D style adventures. It takes familiar mechanics, slaughters some sacred cows, and adds a narrative focus that I really like.

13th Age is not for everyone. It is a narrative game, not a simulationist one. What I mean by that is that the game doesn't try to model 'reality' it tries to be a fun fantasy adventure.

Take how it does skills. In 13th Age, a character doesn't define the specific skills they've trained in. Instead, they define their character's backgrounds. So, a Fighter might have a background of Royal Bodyguard +4. Anytime that background would be relevant to a challenge at hand, the Fighter gets a +4 bonus to the roll. Knowledge of Royalty and their Customs? Yep. Courtly Etiquette? Yep. Classic adventurer paranoid alertness for danger? Yep. Planning an assassination? Absolutely. Infiltrating a Gypsy camp? Not so much.

Weapons are treated the same way. They are defined in broad categories. Simple/Martial, Melee/Ranged. Light/One handed/Two handed. The game doesn't care what the difference between a longsword and a scimitar is. Or, for that matter, the difference between a warhammer and a longsword. They're all one handed martial weapons. The damage you deal with a given weapon is based off it's category, your class, and your level.

A Rogue will do more damage with a dagger than a Fighter, because they're trained to stick dangers into sensitive spots. Meanwhile, a Fighter is going to be way more competent that a Rogue with a longsword. Weapon damage scales linearly with level. A 1st level Fighter with a sword will do 1d8 + mods, where a 4th level fighter will do 4d8 + mods, because he's that much more efficient at murdering things with swords.

Standard D&D attributes, and each class only has 10 levels, but the levels are dense. Every character gets a bunch of stuff when they level with no 'dead' levels. Because the levels are so dense and there are only 10, there's a rule for incremental advances, where players can get 'pieces' of their next level instead of the whole thing at once. So after an adventure, a player may get an incremental advance and get an extra feat or extra hit points. Once you've taken all the available advances, you're a character of the next level. It can stretch out a character's advancement and make it feel more smooth, as you get incrementally better, rather than just get a boatload of stuff all at once.

The Icons are a big part of the 13th Age Setting. The Icons are movers and shakers in the setting, each with broad influence and agents. Every PC has connections to those Icons, which can be positive, negative or conflicted, and the GM is given rules for how to use those connections to influence and drive story.

All in all, 13th Age is a great game. It has a very high fantasy, D&D style feel, while doing a lot of things differently. Perhaps too differently if D&D is your one true love. I love it, and have run a full campaign and a few one shots. I'd encourage you to try it if given the chance.