13th Age - Summer 2021 Humble Bundle and General Discussion

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Simon Hogwood

Simon Hogwood

Puritan Bearbearian
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Messages
1,967
Reaction score
6,413
So, 13th Age - Pelgrane Press's D&D-alike. There is currently (July-August 2021) a Humble Bundle running for the corebook and several supplements:

www.humblebundle.com

Humble 13th Age Bundle: Treasures! Maps! Adventures!

Start your own tabletop RPG adventures with 13th Age, 13 True Ways, and more! Plus, pay what you want & support charity!
www.humblebundle.com www.humblebundle.com

I was initially somewhat suspicious since they for some reason have it filed under their "software" rather than "books" tab, but apparently they really are for the books in PDF and not VTT assets or something.

I've read the corebook, a while ago, and while I probably wouldn't run it as written I find there's plenty to pull out and use. The bundle has several of the supplements I've been eyeing, so I'll probably be getting it at some point.

Anyone else have opinions about the line, for or against?
 
13th age is my favorite edition of heroic fantasy d&d, bar none. I ran two excellent campaigns with it, basically one turned into the next. They played norse flavored everything, ended up bringing the offspring of a god into the world, finding a ship manned by undead and fighting for the right to sacrifice their own character to be the captain of the undead ship (they would become an NPC), finding a pile of corpses that was blocking the flow of one of the mythic norse rivers between the worlds, convincing them 3rd son of Surtr to marry Hel, raising the corpses as a wedding gift, watching Loki kill Baldr, and starting Ragnarok, flooding the world.

so, yes, I like it
 
A good number of the books overlap with the Bundle of Holding 13th age offering from a while back.

The maps are all new in this.
 
I like it. I think it's a better game than 5e in many ways. (Runs faster, combat flows through turns faster, is much easier to run, much better monster design - managing monsters that are both more interesting and simpler).

It's also frustratingly lazy in a lot of ways. There's a lot of rules where they come close to just saying "fuck it, do whatever", but it's also easy to hack. I transferred the ritual rules from 4e D&D wholesale, to fill in for the handwave in the core 13th Age book.
 
It’s been years since I looked at my copy, and the one thing that really sticks out in my mind is the asides where the authors talk to you directly about this or that aspect of the game. That kind of thing usually falls into “really cool” or “really lame” for me, and with 13th Age it really fell into the latter category.

Also, the idea of the mega-NPCs seemed neat at first, but the general consensus among those in my gaming group who read it was that it was a mild form of “There will always be NPCs cooler than you” syndrome.
 
How does it run for a long campaign, character growth and gameplay wise? I've only ever glanced through the core book at a game shop and read some reviews. My initial gut feel appears to fall in line with some of what I'm reading in the posts here. A sort of hit and miss system. Though I could be wrong. (shrug) I'll snag it probably next month, I'm really waaay over my gaming budget for this month and I don't want to experience my wife's side eye looks. Lol
 
Ralph Dula said:
It’s been years since I looked at my copy, and the one thing that really sticks out in my mind is the asides where the authors talk to you directly about this or that aspect of the game. That kind of thing usually falls into “really cool” or “really lame” for me, and with 13th Age it really fell into the latter category.

Also, the idea of the mega-NPCs seemed neat at first, but the general consensus among those in my gaming group who read it was that it was a mild form of “There will always be NPCs cooler than you” syndrome.
Click to expand...
Yea, if you don’t like the authors talking to you, it’s not for you. That happens a fair bit. Myself I like it.

and the icon system is the weakest part in my mind. I replaced it wholesale with something based on runes and incentivized my players to remember it. On the other hand, I’ve exported the backgrounds from it into a number of games as a simple mechanic for making characters more interesting with skills.
 
After my disappointment with RQG, this became my first option for an eventual Glorantha campaign.

Speaking of which, how is 13th Age Glorantha in play? The book is beautiful and looks well-made but does it capture the flavor of Glorantha heroism well? Also, is the corrbook enough or are there mandatory supplements or something?
 
Lessa said:
After my disappointment with RQG, this became my first option for an eventual Glorantha campaign.

Speaking of which, how is 13th Age Glorantha in play? The book is beautiful and looks well-made but does it capture the flavor of Glorantha heroism well? Also, is the corrbook enough or are there mandatory supplements or something?
Click to expand...
Should have added that in my post. I'd also wondered about 13th Age Glorantha. How well it's suited for Glorantha and tied into my ponder about long campaign play.
 
13th Age has given me some of the best moments of my gaming career.

I'll be the first to admit that the game isn't for everyone, but at least for me and my group is one of the best fantasy games on the market.

I guess the best way to describe it is, 13th age is a combat engine with narrative mechanics bolted on to create a fast-moving roleplaying game. It shares the same design space as D&D 4th edition (and both authors were involved with 4th edition), but it builds on the same ideas in a very different way. For example, each class plays very differently (instead of the homogenized classes of D&D), every class is almost it's own minigame.

For the DM, I don't think I've ever encountered a fantasy game that is as easy to run as 13th age, in fact, for me the best selling is that I could pull stuff out of my ass with the absolute certainty that the mechanics could handle it.

One thing to keep in mind is that the game is very modular, even if the game doesn't do it for you, it's full of great ideas and mechanics that can be easily exported to other D20 games.
 
I ran a campaign with it, and I’ve never sold off my books faster after a campaign was over. There is a lot to like, and this is a great bundle. But honestly the game got in my way a lot, because it was so hand wavy on a lot of the rules. My Paladin player was absolutely bored to tears with the class, and switched to Wizard which was super over powered in my opinion.
And abilities triggering on odd/even rolls felt really gimmicky and slowed things down at our table.
I’d honestly just prefer to play 4e again.
 
UnplayedRanger said:
I ran a campaign with it, and I’ve never sold off my books faster after a campaign was over. There is a lot to like, and this is a great bundle. But honestly the game got in my way a lot, because it was so hand wavy on a lot of the rules. My Paladin player was absolutely bored to tears with the class, and switched to Wizard which was super over powered in my opinion.
And abilities triggering on odd/even rolls felt really gimmicky and slowed things down at our table.
I’d honestly just prefer to play 4e again.
Click to expand...
Yeah, if I would have to raise an objection against the game is that if you want to play a class with a certain flavor but you don't like that level of complexity... well, you are kind of fucked. My player loved the Paladin, but it's a very simple class, like B/X fighter levels of simple.
 
Lessa said:
Speaking of which, how is 13th Age Glorantha in play? The book is beautiful and looks well-made but does it capture the flavor of Glorantha heroism well? Also, is the corrbook enough or are there mandatory supplements or something?
Click to expand...

Acmegamer said:
I'd also wondered about 13th Age Glorantha. How well it's suited for Glorantha and tied into my ponder about long campaign play.
Click to expand...
I have 13AG. I have not gotten to play it and have only read pieces of it. The art is fantastic and the class design looks very good. I strongly suspect, from what I understand about Glorantha heroism, it actually does as good a job, if not better, than runequest. 13th Age really shines as Big Damn Epic Heroes.

I would recommend the core book, true ways, and the bestiary. true ways has several good classes (notably, the monk, the commander, the occultist, and the chaos mage if I remember correctly) and monsters.
 
Hortum said:
Yeah, if I would have to raise an objection against the game is that if you want to play a class with a certain flavor but you don't like that level of complexity... well, you are kind of fucked. My player loved the Paladin, but it's a very simple class, like B/X fighter levels of simple.
Click to expand...

The book is at least honest about that and tells you up front that the Paladin is one of the simplest classes.
 
I’m probably going to pass on the new edition.
St this time I simply cannot justify the expense. Hopefully they keep some of the older books including the Bestiary in print. I’m missing those.
 
I actually think there's a lot of good reasons to put out a new edition.

They've signalled the Fighter for a rewrite (which it needs) - but a lot of the other classes need a shake-up to.

A lot of lingering fiddliness that was a carryover from 3e and 4e rules design could be chucked. ( +2 to AC for one round when you roll an odd number while dual wielding - type of thing).

A common house rule is to use Advantage and Disadvantage instead of modifiers which fits in well with the spirit of 13th Age.

The other thing I think that really needs linking through is how and when utility magic is intended to be used in 13th Age - as the game is both very handwavy and very inconsistent.
 
Last edited:
Heinsoo just put out a tweet saying Tweet would be a co-writer and that there would be no 2e without Tweet. This apparently will be the limit of Tweet’s involvement with Pelgrane.

you can read elsewhere about the conflict.
 
the playtest document for this is supposed to be released today, and I have my email in for the playtest (along with one back from the team saying my group was large and I was brave, so I feel like I'm a shoe-in). I don't expect a lot of drastic changes, as noted above. Assuming I get it today, i'm putting together a one shot for friday (sorry, was going to do ogre gate, but this came up and the group really likes this one).
 
Raleel said:
the playtest document for this is supposed to be released today, and I have my email in for the playtest (along with one back from the team saying my group was large and I was brave, so I feel like I'm a shoe-in). I don't expect a lot of drastic changes, as noted above. Assuming I get it today, i'm putting together a one shot for friday (sorry, was going to do ogre gate, but this came up and the group really likes this one).
Click to expand...
Hmm.. I think I put myself in for that as well.
 
Got the doc but haven't had time to read it yet. It's that have-to-go-to-work thing. Ugh. Can't wait for the weekend. :grin:
 
Does anyone know if this OGL fiasco will impact 2E and/or the planned Kickstarter campaign?
 
Apparition said:
Does anyone know if this OGL fiasco will impact 2E and/or the planned Kickstarter campaign?
Click to expand...
From Rob Heinsoo’s blog: “Meanwhile, as most everyone reading this knows, WotC's OGL-foofarah has been a rapidly developing show-on-the-side. I found myself heavily distracted for a week, but it now seems clear that good things are going to come of this, and 2E work is proceeding unaffected. We're figuring out which interesting new path we're going to take through the world of license-or-not, and no matter what we decide I’m grateful and happy to see how Paizo has responded to this cluster of events. We'll come to a decision along with Pelgrane before we put out another playtest packet, or perhaps sooner”

robheinsoo.blogspot.com

13th Age 2E Playtest Update

The 13th Age 2E playtest is rolling, with a lot of feedback coming in already on the first playtest packet. I’m still welcoming in new folks...
robheinsoo.blogspot.com robheinsoo.blogspot.com
 
I find myself revisiting my 13th Age core book, and thinking this is possibly an overlooked gem.

I initially bought 13th Age back when it was relatively new in 2016. However this was around the same time that one of my group bought D&D 5E, and he ran us thru some of the Forgotten Realms adventure paths. That was it for a year or so.
I only gave 13th Age a passing notice and by the time it was my turn to GM again I had moved onto other trpgs to run.

I find myself looking at 13th Age with fresh eyes at present.
Possible on account of this guy rejogging my memory:




It seems a nice simple take on epic fantasy for D&D characters.
I really like it's clean and broad way of handling skills and abilities by using Backgrounds; it's a bit like BoL in some ways.
Not much bloat on the character sheet, which is really a boon for me at present.
The narrative dials built around the straightforward chassis may make this quite a good D20 game engine, and I can certainly envision my group having fun experiences with this.

I've recently ordered a few supplements (True Ways, Monsters book, and a few others), and may roll out a game early next year perhaps (I have other rpgs first).
But this hint of a revised edition is tantalising, and I think I'ld like to have that book before introducing this system to my group.

Anyone got any new goss on the forthcoming 13th Age Escalated Edition?
 
Last edited:
Raleel said:
I’m in the playtest for it, though I’ve hardly had time to actually playtest. It’s apparently 100% backwards compatible,
Click to expand...

It is, but I found that I was having trouble reading the changes and adjustments that have been made to the update—probably because my tastes in gaming have radically altered since I played 13th Age extensively in 2014-2015. (I'm now having trouble with anything more complicated than Tricube Tales--thanks for that recommendation, Mankcam Mankcam.)
 
Vargold said:
It is, but I found that I was having trouble reading the changes and adjustments that have been made to the update—probably because my tastes in gaming have radically altered since I played 13th Age extensively in 2014-2015. (I'm now having trouble with anything more complicated than Tricube Tales--thanks for that recommendation, Mankcam Mankcam.)
Click to expand...
Don't hate the slide into light games. It happens to a lot of us as we age and get grumpy with granular detail and general foo-fer-ah. Embrace your Carlsberg years.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top