In May 2017 we revived our hugely popular December 2015 13th Age Bundle, featuring the bestselling tabletop fantasy roleplaying game 13th Age from Pelgrane Press.
13th Age combines the best parts of traditional D20 fantasy RPGs with new story-focused rules, so you can run the kind of game you most want to play. Created by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, lead designers of the Third and Fourth Editions of D&D, 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. Play 13th Age as a standalone game, or use it as a source of cool ideas and add-on rules for your favorite FRPG. Ben Riggs of Geek & Sundry wrote about the virtues of 13th Age: “This Game is a Love Letter to D&D.”
In the 13th Age of the world, adventurers seek their fortunes in the Dragon Empire while powerful individuals known as Icons — conquerors, sorcerers, demigods, dragons — pursue goals that may preserve the Empire from chaos, or send it over the edge. The Dragon Empire setting is intentionally left half-created, so each campaign can pioneer new stories. The network of Icon relationships, both among themselves and with the player characters, differs for each group.
The characters’ backgrounds help define the setting. Each 13th Age player chooses “One Unique Thing” that makes his or her character interesting and hints at a story that can unfold over the campaign. Unique Things can establish facts about the world. If the player says, “I am the only acrobat who performed their way out of the Diabolist’s Circus of Hell” — well, wonderful! The GM didn’t even know there was a Circus of Hell, but of course there is — now.
As in the original December 2015 run, this bargain-priced revival included rules, monsters, treasures, adventures, and even music — everything you need to run your own 13th Age campaign in the Dragon Empire. There were three titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $62), including the complete 325-page 13th Age rulebook (retail price $25), the 13 True Ways rules expansion (retail $21) and the huge 13th Age Soundtrack (retail $16) with atmospheric music for each turn of the Escalation Die.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bonus Collection with six more supplements and adventures worth an additional $81:
- Eyes of the Stone Thief (retail $25): Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s massive 364-page campaign in pursuit of, and inside, a colossal living megadungeon.
- 13th Age Bestiary (retail $21): A horde of new creatures, both monsters and rivals, with hundreds of variant versions.
- The Book of Loot (retail $9): A 72-page collection of hundreds of new treasures.
- Diamonds and Shadows (retail $14): Available exclusively in this offer and nowhere else, this 171-page adventure collects, updates, and expands seven modules from the popular first season of the 13th Age Organized Play program.
- Shadows of Eldolan (retail $9): An ideal introductory adventure set in a small town with duelling wizards’ schools.
- Candles, Clay, & Dancing Shoes (retail $3): Your PC has gold to burn? Spend it on these six bizarre one-use magic items that make everyone’s life more interesting.
- For the May 2017 revival of this 13th Age offer, we added one new title: Summoning Spells, a 13th Age Monthly installment. All previous purchasers of the original December 2015 run also received the new addition. When you buy a Bundle of Holding offer early, you never miss a title added later — even way later.
The whole collection would cost you US$143 from a gnome merchant in Glitterhaegen, City of Coins, or perhaps even closer to home. Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to the charity chosen by Pelgrane Press co-owner Simon Rogers, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
