13th Age is the edition of Dungeons & Dragons that I've always wanted. Created by Jonathan Tweet and and Rob Heinsoo, the lead developers of D&D 3E and 4E, this is their "love letter" to D&D. It's an innovative mix of d20-based mechanics and story-focused role-playing. The System Resource Document (SRD) contains the basic rules for 13th Age, valuable to GMs and players, alike. While I would highly recommend investing in the core book, the SRD is a wonderful introduction to the system. Here are some of the highlights:
The Escalation Die: This is a simple but powerful tool to speed up combat. Gone are the 90-minute encounters of 4E, and that is greatly thanks to the Escalation Die -- a d6 that comes into play in the second round of combat, and is escalated each round. The PCs and certain powerful monsters add the value of the Escalation Die to their attack rolls over the course of a battle. This helps introduces a tactical choice between the "alpha strike" or waiting for increased accuracy. It's also a mechanic that several other spells, talents, and monster abilities are hung on.
No gridded combat: 13th Age abstracts distances to "engaged," "nearby," and "far away." While a map and minis/tokens or at least some M&Ms representing monsters and PCs on the table are helpful in communicating basic whereabouts, they're not required. Area effects will target 1d4 enemies in a group, for example. That will work whether using miniatures or more abstract combat. And it speeds things up. When the GM and players stop counting out squares, things move faster.
Backgrounds replace the skill list: Rather than an exhaustive list of skills, all skill checks are ability checks, where the players may suggest where their PC's background would provide a bonus. Let's say your ranger has a background of "Raised in a lumber camp in the Bitterwood," she could suggest to the GM that this background should grant her a bonus to a wisdom check in tracking enemies through a forest. But it could also apply to intelligence checks about local herbs when the party is in the Bitterwood. It could even apply to a charisma check to shake the morale of the goblin tribe in Bitterwood that she's encountered before. Thus, it becomes a very flexible tool, while generating wonderful hooks for the GM ("you say you've encountered these goblins before, eh?").
Characters feature One Unique Thing: What is your elevator pitch for your character? Is he a mechanical construct that was transformed into a human by powerful fae magics? What does this say about the world that the character is in? Apparently there are mechanical constructs. Will there be elements of steampunk, perhaps? And there are powerful fae magics, too. Now we know a couple of things that this player likes in his fantasy world, which will help the GM keep the player engaged. Furthermore, it makes the character interesting -- worthy of being a major character in a heroic tale.
Characters are immediately part of the world, thanks to their relationship with the world's Icons: Icons are the "movers and shakers" of the world. By tying beneficial mechanics to the PCs' relationships with these Icons and their organizations, the characters start their adventures with a reason to go on quests, to interact with NPCs, and to hate certain monsters and those monsters' powerful masters. GMs won't feel tempted to have the players meet a mysterious stranger in a tavern (unless they really love that old fantasy trope).
Monster/NPC stats don't require referring back to a spell list: Unlike 3E/5E, monsters and NPCs include their spell descriptions as part of their write-ups. This may seem like a small thing, but if you don't have a bookmarked electronic file or a handy print-out of the spell list, it's a big time-saver.
Monsters are easy to build: The math behind monsters is transparent. A GM can quickly whip up a monster in a matter of minutes.
Classes play differently: One of the big complaints about 4E was that the classes felt too similar. This is clearly not a problem with 13th Age. Classes depend on different mechanics and vary in their complexity.
Magic is rare, and magic items have personalities: There are no assumptions about characters amassing a certain amount of treasure and magic items per level. Magic is rare and special, and magic items are more like artifacts in 4E than like 3E/4E magic items. If a PC possesses too many magic items, her personality will be overwhelmed by the personalities of her magic items!
A wonderful community of players and GMs: The Google+ community for 13th Age is second to none. There is no edition warring. People are genuinely helpful toward one another, pointing out where fan-made resources can be found, helping clarify rules, answering questions, etc. This isn't something that I typically see mentioned in a review of an RPG, but it's been such a positive experience that I thought it was worth mentioning here.
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