Rob Heinsoo: 13th Age Update

Rob Heinsoo emerged from his subterranean lair to give us this update on the status of the 13th Age RPG, the 13 True Ways expansion, his new Shards of the Broken Sky adventure and more.

As you might have seen in Simon Rogers’ Through the Scrying Glass column, I finished the manuscript for 13th Age in November and turned the final text over for layout by the talented Chris Huth (Night’s Black Agents, Lorefinder.) In December, we sold the last of our 1,000 Escalation Edition pre-orders. People can still pre-order the game and download the final rules, but the window for getting your name listed in the book, and first refusal of the eventual leatherbound edition has closed.

After getting the final text into layout, I turned my attention to some non-13th Age projects on my plate, including design help and flavor on the recently announced Shadowrun: Crossfire, a deckbuilding game designed by Fire Opal Media and published by Catalyst that will lead into their cool new Shadowrun 5 RPG.

Timing of 13th Age

Now that we’ve hit 2013, I’m back at work on two 13th Age books: Shards of the Broken Sky is an adventure for Pelgrane Press, 13 True Ways is the book funded via Kickstarter.

The core 13th Age book should arrive in stores in April. That’s based on two months between the start of printing and final distribution and the likelihood that layout won’t be complete until February.

The delay largely stems from the complexity of the layout. Our vision was for a full-color layout with subtle touches and a variety of sidebars. We had some false starts but now Chris Huth’s work is going smoothly. Simon will share sample laid out chapters in the next See Page XX from Pelgrane Press.

I’m aiming to turn in the draft of Shards by the end of February. The goal is an adventurer tier sandbox adventure that could even be played twice by the same group with different characters and icon connections.

13 True Ways is underway with the rest of the team. Lee is working on the Horizon map. Jonathan is working on Drakkenhall and taverns. Aaron starts this week on art supporting the monsters, magic items, and characters created by our high level backers. I’m doing initial drafts of the new monk, druid, chaos shaman, battle captain, occultist and necromancer classes. I think its best if I skip publication date guesses for now. I’ll have a much clearer estimate toward the end of February.

Meanwhile Gerald is coordinating the 13th Age dice sets and the new Escalation Die (and eventually the t-shirt). ASH LAW has come aboard to help run that thing I would have sworn we wouldn’t be able to handle: an Organized Play program, of sorts; and there are more developments afoot for next week.

And for me, back to work.

Yours in battle captaincy,
Rob Heinsoo