13th Age Second Edition Boxed Set – PRE-ORDER

Story and Crunch!

13th Age combines the best parts of crunchy d20-rolling fantasy gaming with story-focused rules that help the gamemaster and players collaborate to create unique campaigns.

Storytelling

• Every character has One Unique Thing that sets them apart from all others and provides the raw materials for adventures and plotlines focused on that hero.
• Each character’s backgrounds provide bonuses to relevant skill checks so that every skill roll can reveal new details of that hero’s backstory.
• Connections with the icons—high fantasy archetypes such as the Archmage, Lich King, or Prince of Shadows—give even 1^st level heroes an introduction to the conflicts that shape the world.
• The evocative but deliberately non-canonical setting helps each campaign surprise itself with new twists! We don’t tell the story—each of your campaigns tells new stories.

Crunch

• Streamlined combat rules harness the good bits of crunchy tactical combat without ticky-tacky measurements.
• Innovations like the escalation die ensure that battles crescendo instead of getting bogged down.
• Each of the nine character classes has unique features, advantages, and play styles; the flexible fighter is nothing like the wild sorcerer or the elegant bard.
• In this second edition of the game, thirteen years of experience with the system and hundreds of playtest reports helped us revise the game’s class features, talents, spells, kin powers, and monsters (!) so that there are only interesting choices.

Splendid Art

• Fantastic art from the artists listed at left, coordinated and in some cases highlighted and illuminated by paints from Lee Moyer.

Heroes’ Handbook

The 350 pages of the 13^th Age Second Edition Heroes’ Handbook include character creation, a chapter on the kin, classes, backgrounds, the combat rules, icon connection rules, and writeups of each of the icons to help players use their connections in fun ways that shape the story. To help people get into the game, the book opens with a 17-page example of play covering campaign planning, character creation, and the first four battles fought by a party of heroes exploring a cemetery overrun by Lich King cultists.

Gamemaster’s Guide

Players will want 13th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Guide for treasure and information on the default setting of the Dragon Empire. Gamemasters need the GM book’s 250 pages of rules for running the game, campaign advice, rules for quickly creating exciting and balanced battles, hundreds of monsters, guidelines and tools for designing new monsters, and an introductory adventure in a living dungeon!

13^th Age Second Edition Gamemaster’s Screen

The side of the three-section screen facing the players shows shows the twelve icons. The side facing the GM has all the tables needed to design monsters and battles on the fly, reminders for conditions and actions during battle, and the guidelines for both environmental threats. It’s not all bad for the heroes—the screen also has guidelines for suggested treasure rewards.

A Whole Line of Supporting Books

All the adventures, settings, monsters, magic items, kin, and classes already published for 13^th Age are compatible with this new edition.

In 2013, our game 13^th Age showed fantasy roleplayers a way to combine vibrant storytelling with high-energy combat. Earlier, we had been the lead designers of 3^rd Edition and 4^th Edition of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, and in 13^th Age we wrote for gamers like us, not for corporate shareholders. Our new second edition makes the game better, thanks to years of listening to fans and of testing ideas at our gaming table. The character classes have better options, the monsters are scarier, the magic items offer more choices, and the narrative rules are better defined. We hope you love it.

–Rob Heinsoo & Jonathan Tweet, August 2025

About Rob Heinsoo

Rob Heinsoo has created dozens of role-playing games, card games, miniatures games and board games. He led the design of the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons® and wrote or led the design of many 4e sourcebooks as well as overseeing the 13^th Age line and co-designing 13^th Age Glorantha with Jonathan. Other notable designs include the various incarnations of Three-Dragon Ante, the first two sets of Epic Spell Wars, Wrestlenomicon, the upcoming Armello: The Board Game, and the upcoming Legendary: Game of Thrones.

About Jonathan Tweet

Jonathan Tweet is the perfect collaborator for Rob on 13^th Age. Jonathan was the lead designer of 3rd Ed D&D, and his other game designs changed the way people design and play roleplaying games (see Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and Everway). He’s also worked in card games, miniatures, Facebook games, and fiction. His games have won three Origins Awards, and he is in the Origins Award Hall of Fame. Finally, he’s the author of Grandmother Fish (Macmillan 2016), the first book to teach evolution to preschoolers.