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.

• 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 1st 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.

• 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.

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

The 350 pages of the 13th 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.

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!

In 2013, our game 13th Age showed fantasy roleplayers a way to combine vibrant storytelling with high-energy combat. Earlier, we had been the lead designers of 3rd Edition and 4th Edition of the world’s oldest roleplaying game, and in 13th 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