13th Age was released on August 3, 2013, and the pre-release version was a nominee for the RPG Geek RPG of the Year 2013.
Setting
The setting of 13th Age is intended to be fleshed out in the course of play. Although there are default places, 13 default Icons that are archetypes of powerful gods and NPCs in standard fantasy settings, and a default bestiary, a lot of the setting is dependent on character creation. This is done by means of having freeform backgrounds rather than predefined skills, and by each character having One Unique Thing that can be anything which has no direct mechanics; examples in the rulebook include I am the only halfling knight of the Dragon Emperor and I have a clockwork heart made by the dwarves, both of which affect both character and the entire setting.
System
Like many d20-variant games, 13th Age was released under the Open Game License, meaning that its open game content can be copied or modified. An outline of the rules is available for free online. 13th Age was designed to be familiar in terms of setting concepts to D&D players, so it is a class-based game with the main rulebook containing standard D&D classes. It is also level-based, with ten levels grouped into three tiers. 13th Age was designed from the ground up to not use miniatures or a grid, and instead uses abstract distances and positioning. In order to speed up combat the Player Characters gain an escalating bonus to hit equal to the number of rounds that have passed starting to count from the second round, known as the "escalation die". The skills systems often associated with recent versions of Dungeons & Dragons have been replaced with "backgrounds" in 13th Age. Players are encouraged to create backstories for their characters that give them bonuses to actions in the game, often asking them to refer to a time in their fictional past when they have dealt with a similar obstacle and how they overcame it or what they learnt from the experience. Other differences from standard d20 games include the backgrounds taking the place of most utility magic, weapon damage dice being determined by class, spells that are only expended on bad rolls, and recoveries that resemble D&D4e healing surges.
History
After they had both left Wizards of the Coast, long-time friends and gaming partners Heinsoo and Tweet decided to create a game together. By GenCon 2012 the game was ready for playtesting, and they used the hype created at GenCon to Kickstart a supplement called 13 True Ways even before 13th Age was released. The game was officially launched a week before GenCon 2013.
Kickstarter was again successfully used in October 2014 to fund 13th Age in Glorantha, a sourcebook for using the 13th Age rules with the Glorantha setting.
