13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most want to play with your group. Created by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, 13th Age gives you all the tools you need to make unique characters who are immediately embedded in the setting in important ways; quickly prepare adventures based on the PCs’ backgrounds and goals; create your own monsters; fight exciting battles; and focus on what’s always been cool and fun about fantasy adventure gaming:
- Icon relationships and One Unique Things offer exciting storytelling possibilities
- Backgrounds provide a simple, flexible skill system drawn from characters’ personal histories
- Escalation dice enable fun, fast-moving d20 combat.
- Owlbears will rip PC’s limbs off to feed their young.
“Our goal with 13th Age is to recapture the free-wheeling style of old-school gaming by creating a game with more soul and fewer technical details. …13th Age makes the play group’s campaign the center of attention, with a toolkit of rules that you can pick and choose from based on the kind of game you want to play. The mechanics draw from classic games as well as newer, story-based games.”
Jonathan Tweet, co-designer
In the 13th Age of the world, adventurers seek their fortunes in the Dragon Empire while powerful individuals known as Icons pursue goals that may preserve the empire from chaos, or send it over the edge.
Players decide which Icons their characters ally with, and which ones they oppose. These relationships, along with a personal history and a unique trait chosen during character creation, help define an adventurer’s place in the world of 13th Age and lay the groundwork for epic stories that emerge through play.
There are also fun new rules for hitting orcs and making them go splat.
“13th Age is, perhaps, the first d20 game that I’ve ever played that treats the game inside of combat and the game outside of combat with equal love, attention, and innovation.”
“13th Age RPG delivers an incredible fantasy storytelling experience.”
“One of the best systems I’ve encountered—and I’ve either played or read the rules to countless d20 systems at this point—is 13th Age… It’s fun, fast and accessible.”
“[13th Age] has just enough of the freedom I want from a tabletop game while also being able to balance the crunchy aspects. I was just about to swear off D20 games, too. So I’m glad I found this.”
“The system is absolutely brilliant. For me, it brings a lot of the things I really enjoy about traditional fantasy gaming and infuses them with some new and really useful ideas that you often see in more indie gaming.”
Latest Articles
View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – November 2025
When egg nog appears on store shelves and the strains of Wham’s Last Christmas play [...]
13th Age FAQ
Original FAQ written by Wade Rockett in 2013. Slightly updated by Rob Heinsoo in 2025 to [...]
13th Age 1e pre-generated characters
Official Pre-Generated Characters Level 1-4 Gen Con 2015 pregens (PDF) by ASH LAW level 1 – 4: Half-Elf [...]
Celebrating 2nd Edition: Icon Talents for 13th Age
by Martin Killmann To celebrate the fresh off-the-print Second Edition of 13th Age, I would [...]
13th Age 2E Errata & Typo Notes
November 3, 2025 Here are the current corrections in the 2E PDFs. We’re keeping the [...]
13th Sage: Iconic Intrigues
I often talk about how icon relationships are a powerful resource in the players’ hands. [...]
Sep
View from the Pelgrane’s Nest – August 2025
It feels like a mere month since I last peered out from the nest to [...]
Converting 13 True Ways Classes to 13th Age 2E
(necromancer art from 13 True Ways by Aaron McConnell & Lee Moyer) People have been [...]
Living Dungeons of the Dragon Empire
When I first started playing 13th Age, the living dungeon concept didn’t really click with [...]
Latest Products
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell
Interior Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell, Simone Bannach, Andi Brown, Joshua Calloway, Laura Galli, Heinrich Kley, Cristiana Leone, Pat Loboyko, Rich Longmore, Dagmara Matuszak, Roena I. Rosenberger, Paul Tobin, Naomi VanDoren
Pages: 592
Other Credits: Editor: Trisha DeFoggi Layout: Jen McCleary
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell
Interior Artists: Simone Bannach, Joshua Calloway, Jessica Chung Ti Lee, Laura Galli, Ania Kryczkowska, Cristiana Leone, Pat Loboyko, Rich Longmore, Dagmara Matuszak, Juha Makkonen, Aaron McConnell, Lee Moyer, Agatha Pitié, Pascal Quidault, Roena I. Rosenberger, Frankie Smith, Paul Tobin, Naomi VanDoren
Pages: 184
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell
Interior Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell, Simone Bannach, Andi Brown, Joshua Calloway, Laura Galli, Heinrich Kley, Cristiana Leone, Pat Loboyko, Rich Longmore, Dagmara Matuszak, Roena I. Rosenberger, Paul Tobin, Naomi VanDoren
Pages: 250
Other Credits: Editor: Trisha DeFoggi Layout: Jen McCleary
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell
Interior Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell, Simone Bannach, Andi Brown, Joshua Calloway, Laura Galli, Heinrich Kley, Cristiana Leone, Pat Loboyko, Rich Longmore, Dagmara Matuszak, Roena I. Rosenberger, Paul Tobin, Naomi VanDoren
Pages: 348
Other Credits: Editor: Trisha DeFoggi Layout: Jen McCleary
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell
Pages: 256
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Aaron McConnell
Pages: 320
Cover Artists: Pascal Quidault, Gislaine Avila, Wagner Chrissante, Lauren Covarrubias, Rich Longmore, Dagmara Matuszak, Jeremy McHugh, Ernanda Souza, ASH LAW, Gill Pearce, Christina Trani
Pages: 232
Cover Artists: Lee Moyer, Rich Longmore
Pages: 240
Resources & Downloads
Here you’ll find official materials as well as useful game resources and play aids. A link to a third-party site doesn’t mean that we agree with or endorse all of the opinions on that site. The resources are available under the Community Use policy, and all are copyright Pelgrane Press Ltd unless otherwise noted.
13th Age and Archmage Engine licensing
Vault of the 13th Age – a fansite operated by Fire Opal Games that collects community-created content for 13th Age RPG
Iconic – the 13th Age fan podcast
Escalation! – the 13th Age fanzine
- 13th Age PDF character sheet US letter
- 13th Age PDF character sheet A4
- 13th Age form-fillable PDF character sheet US letter
- 13th Age form-fillable PDF character sheet A4
Class-specific character sheets
- 13th Age Dragon Empire map (low-res PDF, 4.2MB)
- 13th Age icon symbols
- JPEG (.zip)
- Adobe Illustrator 8 (.rar created by David Flor)
- Kazekami’s photo cube escalation die (PDF templates)
- 13th Age Monster Guide by Steven Warzeha (Excel) Spreadsheet of monsters in the core rulebook, bestiaries, supplements, and adventures
- Book of Demons print book errata (PDF)
*** COMING SOON! ***
Usable 1E Adventures
- Up To Our Necks…In The Knee Deep adventure setting by Baz Stevens
- The Burrowing Dead adventure by David Thomas
- El Ovillo adventure (in Spanish) by Fran Vidal
- The Free RPG Day adventure Make Your Own Luck
- The Free RPG Day adventure At Land’s Edge
- The Free RPG Day adventure Swords Against the Dead
- The Free RPG Day adventure Swords Against Owlbears
- Swords Against Owlbears print book errata (PDF)
- The Free RPG Day adventure Assault on the Dungeon of the Pogonomancer!
- The Next Valley Over: a 13th Age Glorantha 2-Hour Demo by Rob Heinsoo (PDF)
REVIEWS
-
Longtime 1E player Admirable_Garden_808 reviews 2E on Reddit’s r/rpg
- 15 Year RPG.net Compatriot bss does a Let’s Read of 2E on RPG.net
INTERVIEWS
- Tim Linward at Wargamer.com interviews Rob Heinsoo
- J-M DeFogg interviews Rob Heinsoo & Jonathan Tweet for Beyond the Table
- Mildra The Monk interviews Rob Heinsoo on YouTube
- Matt Miller interviews Rob Heinsoo on his gaming podcast From the Depths
- Rob Heinsoo joins Ben Riggs & Dr. Scott M. Bruner on Reading D&D Aloudand they also interview Jonathan Tweet
- Teos Abadia interviews Rob on Mastering Dungeons
- Andrew Girdwood of Geek Native interviews Rob Heinsoo
- La Taberna del Rol does an interview with Rob Heinsoo (the interview is in English, with Spanish subtitles)
- The Flames Rising blog interviews Rob Heinsoo
- 13th Age 1e character sheet (PDF)
- 13th Age 1e Dragon Empire map (high-res PDF, ~65Mb)
- 13th Age 2-Hour Demo by Rob Heinsoo (PDF)
- 13th Age item cards for the 2-hour demo (PDF)
- 13th Age Booth in a Box – Everything you need to run a demo game at a convention, including an adventure, pregens, and monsters
- All 1e pregenerated characters
- ICON – the previous 13th Age fanzine
Third-Party and Fan-Created Game Aids and Supplements
- Master Monster list (.zip) Spreadsheet of all the monsters in the core rulebook, Bestiary, Bestiary 2 and 13 True Ways (with thanks to Sean Dunstan)
- Master Monster list sorted by level (.zip) Spreadsheet of all the monsters in the core rulebook, Bestiary, Bestiary 2, Midgard Bestiary and 13 True Ways (with thanks to Andre Comtois)
POWER DECKS
- 13th Age class power decks (PDFs by Dion Haubro, created with permission)
- 13th Age Wizard power deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Sorcerer power deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Cleric power deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Rogue power deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Bard power deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Fighter power deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Barbarian deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Ranger deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Paladin deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Racial powers deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age General feats deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
- 13th Age Conditions deck (.zip file by Kazekami, created with permission)
Character sheets
- Santy’s Customised Fillable 13th Age character sheet V5 (PDF by Ade Sant)
- Santy’s Customised Fillable 13th Age character sheet V5 – no background (PDF by Ade Sant)
- Santy’s Non-Fillable 13th Age character sheet V5 (PDF by Ade Sant)
Radial character sheet V2 (PDF by Matt Smith) - La hoja de personaje del 13th Age – 13th Age character sheet in Spanish (PDF by Fran Vidal)
- 13th Age character sheet fillable (PDF by Evenglare)
- 13th Age autofill character sheet (Excel by Will Patterson)
- Landscape-oriented character sheet (PDF by Kendall Jung)
- “Death to Ability Scores” character sheet (PDF by Jackard, for use with Ryven Cedrylle’s ability score-less 13th Age)
- “Flat stats” Death to Ability Scores 13th Age variant by Nicholas Arroyo, Rae Artemi, and Jordan Prokosch
- Decorated character sheet by Ieuane
Let’s Play Podcasts & Videos
- BJ Shea’s Geek Nation with Rob Heinsoo as GM (podcast)
- Critical Hits Show/d20babe: Dragon Punchers! (YouTube and Twitch)
- Phelanar:
- RPG Academy: Secrets, Lies & The Undead (podcast)
- RPPR: 13th Age: Gobpocalypse!
- Saving Throw: 13th Age One-Off, 24-Hour Marathon to End Alzheimer’s (YouTube)
- Six Feats Under: Let’s Play 13th Age (podcast)
- 13th Age: Tomorrow’s RPG, Today – Actual play at Seattle’s Gamma Ray Games, with a surprise drop-in by Jonathan Tweet
- What I Learned About 13th Age by Playing With Rob Heinsoo – Wade Rockett
- Playing 13th Age at Penny Arcade – Rob Heinsoo GM
- Persuasions of the 13th Kind
- 13th Age Homebrews
- 13th Age of Midgard
-
Thoughtcrime Games, 13th Age category
- Cross Planes, 13th Age category
Reviews
- What Killed Dungeons & Dragons? – Pookie, Reviews from R’lyeh
- Core rulebook walkthrough by Rob Donoghue
- 13th Age: The New Tabletop Game From The Lead Designers Of 3rd And 4th Edition Dungeons And Dragons – Erik Kain, Forbes review by Erik Kain
- “I think I’m in love.” – BoardGameGeek
- “The REAL 13th Age Review” – The Kitchen Sink
- Pre-Release Review of 13th Age, Part 1 and Part 2 – EN World
- “13th Age RPG is a Roiling Broth of Intrigue” – Robot Viking
- “Icons and d20 Tech” – Some Space to Think, Rob Donoghue
- 13th Age RPG thread – Something Awful Forums
- Thoughtcrime Games Chat — 13th Age, Marvel RPG, and More!
Interviews
- Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet and Lee Moyer Interview – Obskures.de
- Jonathan Tweet Talks 13th Age – EN World
- Jonathan Tweet Interview – Geek in Review podcast
- Rob Heinsoo Interview – BJ Shea’s Geek Nation podcast
- Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet Interview – That’s How We Roll podcast