Rob Heinsoo

When most gamers sit down and decide to write 'D&D but better', we call it a fantasy heartbreaker. When Rob Heinsoo and Johnathan Tweet (lead designers of D&D 4e and D&D 3rd respectively) decide to do that, the result is an elegant and exciting roleplaying game that combines the best features of many D&D versions.

At the core of 13th Age are the Icons, 13 powerful mortal archetypes who shake the world and whom the player characters have a relationship. The Icons are a mechanical realization show more of the big NPCs in many settings, but in 13th Age they're divided against each other in tangled alliances and enmities, stretched to the limits of their abilities, and poised on the edge of catastrophe. The whole setting feels like Europe circa 1914, in a good way. The game is structured for thing to fall apart and the players to decide how the rubble will land.

Character classes are another highlight of 13th Age. Classes have been compressed into 10 levels, and are made nicely distinct from each other. For example, Fighters can pick what power they use after they attack, Bards sing songs where the final verse has an escalating effect, and Sorcerers charge their spells before attacking. Within classes there's plenty of room for diversity by picking Talents and attacks individually from a list, and enhancing them with Feats. Characters will only master three skills by the end of the game, which makes for satisfying but reasonable choices.

Combat is no longer tied to the grid as it was in 4e, with a more flexible system of engaged/disengaged replacing detailed movement rules. Much of the built in complexity of 3rd is removed, such as rules for Grapples, Trips, and Disarms. Hitpoints as the sole measure of combat endurance along with a Helaing Surge style mechanism (resurgance) are welcome 4e carryovers. Spells and weapons remain competitive through the level, with a 10th level warrior doing 10d8+3*Str damage with their longsword and 10th level wizard unleashing similar spell damage damage. Save-or-suck only works on creature with low hitpoints, so powerful enemies have to be whittled down first.

The GMing section provides a basic stock of monsters and magic items, and some useful guidelines on how to create your own, although as a single source book, there's definitely room for expansion. The default setting is some of the most gameable generic fantasy I've seen, but there are plenty of blank spots on the map and it's easy enough to swap out one to all of the Icons to change up the setting.

That said, there are some weak spots. The full page illustrations are gorgeous, the monster art less so. I'm not sure how well rolling firstful of dice will work in combat, and some groups may rebel at the entire idea of having to have relationships with the Icons. That said, these are minor gripes, and 13th Age is my next go-to game. show less

First Impressions: Well, they certainly dealt with 3.5's rules bloat. Which needed fucking doing, right enough, when the only way to tote around all the reference books you wanted to stew up a creditable encounter was to buy a laptop or a minivan. Obvs more books will come out, but the core mechanic still rules, and a stripped-down version of it even. So: Clean, crisp, nubile and built for speed - score one.

As we know, the game lives and dies by class balance, and I think taking the ad hoc show more advances in gaming theory - in party roles - that have been made by MMOers - tank, buffer, etc. - and systematizing them - striker, leader, controller, and whatever they're calling the fighter role - was a great thing. It discourages four-wizard parties, I suppose, but it brings out and makes explicitly exploitable - with feats and items and so on - a hardcore, small-scale tabletop strategy aspect to the game that has been present ever since Chainmail I suppose, but has been strongly inconsistent. Score two. The core races all remain, except gnomes, who were the poor man's dwarf or halfling depending on your poison (and I say that as a gnome fan), and they have high- and grey-elf surrogates, which is cool. More elves means more good times.

Build options? They are here, and at a cursory glance they really cover ground, without being a threat in their multitudes like in both 2e and 3e. I'm gonna look forward to pushing adorable feyborn wizard Ianire Zaitequi Llogbregas up the rungs of the net to "Deadly Trickster" and beyond. Result!

And here is where it falls down. the point of the D&D rules, to me, is to give you an easy way to clap together your character, resolve combats and situations, and then get out of the way and let "imagination practice" (thank you, Vin Diesel) reign. And the incredible, annoying combat-centredness of these rules just does not let that happen. It makes it easier to calculate good value for money when you're buying yer magic armour, but where's the wand of wonder? It gives you a hundred subtly different ways to ambush the shit out of foes and feel cleverer than DMsie, but where's a goofy-yet-awesome mainstay like "rope trick"? I'm not some conservative nerd who's all "I can't believe you took out _____", nor do I think they need to fill it all in for us - we can come up with out own hilarious magic and scenarios and characters choices - but when you take out all hints in the direction of whimsy and laffs in the core rules, even pushing us toward a straight diplomacy roll to resolve negotiations, it feels . . . yeah, mechanistic. Numbing. It makes D&D a great strategy game with some RP gracenotes that hopefully affect your decision-making, but not a role-playing adventure.

But hell, this is just the first book. Maybe that stuff will come with the DMG - a better division of content, really, when you think about it. And keeping it simple, stupid, and then making the other stuff all supplementary and blowing the minds of the eight-year-olds raised on video games who have no idea all the ways D&D can go, well, that sort of makes sense to me. Still, I can't help but feel like something is lost, at least until the first appearance of an Apparatus of Kwalish or Huggles, the psychic, psychedelic, psychotic pig.

I guess this is really a review of 4e. The book is laid out well and the art is bland in a 3e way, the end. show less

I'm conflicted about 13th Age, I really am. On the one hand, it's almost my ideal fantasy RPG system, keeping the designed tightness of D&D 4e while dropping the most finicky parts of the tactical battle system. Classes in 13th Age are a fast 10 levels, with unique talents and powers, none of the "screw it, just play a cleric" mess of D&D 3.x. But I've never managed to run a campaign of it that's lasted more than 3 sessions. And while the map may look like generic fantasy, the world is very show more different, with flying islands, giant beasts, demigodly icons that walk with the PCs, and the end of an Age at hand.

13 True Ways extends the 13th Age core with six new classes, including the jack of all trades druid and super cool occultist. The commander and monk feel more like misses, though, and the chaos mage's core mechanic of not knowing what spells he's casting until the round before seems like a recipe for boring delay of game.

The book rounds out the setting, with descriptions of the major cities, lots of rumors, a whole new collection of devils to serve as tough nemesis, and some example NPCs and locations. It's imaginative, but I don't feel inspired to run this game, so much as impressed at the cleverness of the designers. Who knows, maybe one day. show less

The Planes Above is a solid setting supporting high paragon and epic level adventures in D&D4e, taking the Points of Letting setting assumption to cosmological scales. Heaven was broken in the Dawn War between the Gods and Primordials. Places of evil and forgotten relics are obvious targets for adventurers, tiny communities are threatened by raiders and abominations, and even Good Deities hold dark secrets.

The Astral Sea is much like you'd expect: an endless void haunted by Githyanki pirates show more and worse. Godly Domains serve as safe havens and larger sites for adventures. Inhabitants of the Astral come in three flavors: Exalted are dead worshipers of a god, enjoying a happy afterlife. Outsiders are dead mortals who's afterlife isn't working for mysterious reasons, leaving them stranded on border islands. And then there are mortal natives, travelers, and supernatural beings like Marut. Most of the book focuses on the setting, with some highlights being the Game of Mountains in Celestia, a tactical wargame that determines which of Moradin, Kord, or Bahamut gets to control the Domain that season, and the Prison Dominion of Carceri. There are about 40 pages of monsters, with CRs from 12 to 29, but a quick spotcheck suggests that they're built using pre-MM3 math, and so may require some conversion.

Not the most essential book, but full of cool bits of high fantasy weirdness to loot for other campaigns, and a solid expansion of the 4e Points of Light to epic-level extraplanar cosmology. show less