tl, dr: surely the best non-Pelgrane book for 13th Age: it has a few rules suggestions but the vast bulk is player options for all the classes from 13A and 13TW. The average quality is very high: in particular, his druid rewrite is superior to canon, and tips me over to granting the fifth star. Because of the 13A power curve, it’s hard to say if even the stronger options would cause real problems in play.

Don’t be fooled by the title: some of this is dark and twisted (there are more evil paladin options than I personally care for), but most of it isn’t – and very little is street-level ‘gritty’ the way that alleys might imply. 13th Age is rather too high-powered for that to work well, frankly.

A few pages of rules clarifications, extensions, and half a dozen variants bookend the work, with a playable “novice” tier play put at the end. I single out “Base 13” random attribute generation which combines randomness and balance, at the cost of a strong push to the medium.

After that are new PC races (13 of them) and feats, half generic and half racial-based. These are the weakest sections, adequate but uninspired. I will say the pixie is a solid attempt to make a tiny flying humanoid into a functional PC: it would be interesting to see how it well actually works in play.

90% of the book is new material for all of the canonical classes from the core book and 13TW. Some of it is borrowings from D&D editions; some of it is new but rather carefully designed to follow the same tone and themes that you get from the original classes. So the bard, for example, has new spells and songs which lean heavily into enchantment, illusions, and party support – and several of them work better with the correct icon relationships are in play.

The new options buff up all the classes, at least at character generation and generally later in play as well. Of course, it’s not difficult to increase the power of the opposition to compensate: just be aware you may need to do that, as they level up.

If you don’t want to throw the book open to all players, the slight across-the-board power-up could work for you. If it turns out that in your game some of the classes come out a bit weaker than their peers, try giving them access to these choices and see if that helps. Even the pure talent-based classes will see some benefit, including but not limited to new champion- and epic-tier choices. The paladin’s smite power is also broadened, which should appeal to all players except the ones who chose the paladin because of its mechanical simplicity.

Using this entire book will probably help the arcane spellcasters slightly more than the other classes, since they can more easily make full use of the new powers on offer by switching out spells. The cleric gets fewer new spells, case by case, since they’re almost all specific to their Domain choices – and there are a lot of new Domains added.

The other classic divine spellcaster, the druid, deserves special note. The book rewrites it with the same talent pattern as the demonologist, giving specific abilities for each talent as well as access to the spells or other abilities of the “Circle” in question. The result is superior to the canonical class, not only incorporating all the 13TW abilities but adding two more Circles and a good bit of individualized flavor. The rewrite does not appear overpowered; if anything (as with the 13TW druid) some of the options look like they might come out a little weak.

The one class where this book may be genuinely unbalancing is the sorcerer. It is strengthened not just by all the new spells (really, having lots of chain spells instead of just two is a nontrivial power-up in itself) but also by adding bloodlines (lots of added flavor; little bit of added power) and metamagic abilities (significant additional power with no downside). Having played a storm voice across a long campaign, I am confident that sorcerers are already quite strong enough and would be hesitant to use all of this without some sort of compensatory weakness.

In terms of presentation, the full-page illustrations which introduce each class chapter are well-done, though some are oddly chosen (a ratkin commander, a necromancer with a ludicrously huge scythe, and an evil paladin). The rest of the illustrations are b&w drawings, substantially more amateurish, and the cover … well, you can see it: it’s just kind of there. The book is well laid-out and, in part because of the relatively sparse art, feels just as densely-packed as it really is.

Tons of options that add flavor to every classes. My table was definitely looking for more ways to twist the classes of the core rulebook and Dark Alleys filled every expectations we had.

I'll just keep this simple: you want more options for your 13th age characters? Get this book. Great layout, nice art, excellent content.

Combine this with the author's previous book, Dark Pacts & Ancient Secrets, and you'll be hard-pressed to run out of character ideas and options for your 13th Age campaign.

Oh yeah, the hardcover version is quite cool, too.

Great book with excellent content that is well worth anyone's time if they're keen on expanding their 13th Age portfolio!

As a relative newcomer to 13th Age I admit that I didn't really know what to expect from this book going in. The variant rules a mixed assortment of things that tickle my fancy (Icon as Backgrounds and stat bumps per level) and those I'll need to give a try because they're a bit out there (Plushie Rule, Random Stat Generation). Overall these changes are all quite minor and will probably help to freshen up existing or long-running campaigns which is something I don't have the luxury of enjoying quite yet :)

The races are flavorful (I really like the Starchild, Sternenkind in German is quite a pretty name) and plentiful. Some have already existing attempts but nothing quite as "official" as this third party supplement (ratkin, orcs). Overall I would use these races as a default, but like with anything in 13th Age you shouldn't discount other racial choices just because it's so hard to get them wrong :)

New class choices are restricted to all of the official classes so no new Abomination or Swordmage perks which is a shame, but considering the 200+ page span of this book I think that can be forgiven. It expands on the very "simple" classes such as Barbarian and Ranger without altering their complexity too much which is great. Simple classes stay simple, but still have more choice afforded to them. So far I've created characters with the new Barbarian, Druid and Ranger options. The druid especially is quite a radical departure from the version presented in 13th Age, but the author does a good job of trying to bridge the gap between his changes and the original version.

Overall, this book has a TON of content that I'm happy to recommend. The rules and races are a cherry on top of the myriad of new class options and the author is also more than happy to chat about design and playtesting in the discord server.

Great addition to 13th age Core Book and 13 True Ways. After a few games the basic classes of the core book can feel 1 dimensional, this is solved with an incredible amount of talents and fears that gives some fresh air.