Creative Commons Art for 13th Age Community Icons

The 13th Age Community Icons now have Creative Commons art for their symbols, thanks to Pelgrane Press! Check out this Pelgrane Press blog post for information on where you can download high-quality versions of these images.

Kudos to artist Madison VanDoren for her awesome work. You can find more of Madison's art on ArtStation.

I've already seen discussions about how third party software designers are considering how to incorporate these symbols in their products. Exciting stuff! I hope to see more of this artwork featured in future Escalation articles.

Progress on 13th Age Glorantha Book

It's been a while since I last provided an update to our community, so I wanted to take a moment to let you all know that we're hard at work on our largest project to-date. The Escalation team has partnered with Evan Franke to create a full-length sourcebook for 13th Age Glorantha: Red Moon and Warring Kingdoms. We estimate that the book will weigh in at over 300 pages when it's complete.

Here's a list of the chapters that are currently planned for the book. The chapter titles may still change, but they should give you a sense of what you can expect.

1. Introduction
2. A Life of Adventure in Fronela
3. Peoples of Fronela (including new player kin)
4. Ruled by the Moon: Adventuring and the Lunar Cycle
5. Classes and Cults of Lunar Arrolia
6. The Seven Mothers
7. Sources and Resources
8. Appendices

We hope that the 13th Age fan community are as excited by this project as we are. We appreciate your patience as we try something at a scale we've never attempted before.

Escalation Issue 10 is Available

I'm pleased to announce that Escalation Issue 10 is now available! You can find it on the Vault of the 13th Age. This issue's theme is The High Seas. There are rules for pirate-themed monsters, icons, factions, magic items, voyage rules,  swashbuckling encounters, and more. Having run a couple campaigns where the Midland Sea featured heavily, I wish I’d had access to the wide range of articles in this issue! You could really flesh out The Strangling Sea using these materials.

We love to hear feedback, so let us know what you enjoy and would like to see more of in the future. What's missing that you'd like us to include next time? What didn't work so well, and we should consider omitting? This is the community's fanzine, and we want to make it as useful as possible for you.

The Escalation team’s next project is the Red Moon and Warring Kingdoms book, describing how to play Lunar characters in 13th Age Glorantha. It may be a while before we come up for air, so please be patient with us in the meantime.

Thanks again to everyone who made this possible!

Show Demiplane Your Support for 13th Age Nexus

I submitted a request for Demiplane to build 13th Age Nexus (which would offer features similar to Pathfinder Nexus or D&D Beyond), based on their recent call to fans to submit feedback about games they'd like to see the platform support.

If that's something you'd be interested in, please add to this thread on the Demiplane forums.

13th Age Official Variant Rules Collection

Over the years, 13th Age has accumulated variant rules that the designers have shared with us. This page attempts to collect the variant rules in one place, summarizing each rule and providing a reference to the original source.

• Alternative Ability Score Array—Use this ability score array, which is better than the point-buy would allow, but on the bottom end: 17, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10. Source: 13th Age Glorantha p. 24.
• Force Salvo—Replace the adventurer tier feat with one that requires the wizard target each enemy only once. There are some other options offered as well. Source: 13th Age FAQ.
• Grabbed—When you're grabbed, the monster deals automatic damage to you as a free action equal to half the original damage of the grab attack. If you try to make a ranged attack while grabbed, you're subject to an opportunity attack. Source: 13th Age Glorantha p. 66.
• Icon advantages—When rolling icon relationships, treat both 5's and 6's as advantages. When a you use an icon advantage, roll a d20. On a 1–5, the advantage comes with a complication (the equivalent of a 5 in the core rulebook). Source: 13th Age Quick Start Rules p. 11.
• Incremental Advance—You may only take one new power or spell as an incremental advance per level. Source: 13th Age Glorantha p. 74.
• Ranger animal companion—A ranger with the Animal Companion talent uses the updated rules for the druid animal companion (e.g., you can cast spells on your animal companion). Source: 13 True Ways p. 41.
• Drunken Style Monk—This is a monk fighting style that didn't make it into 13 True Ways, but was included in the playtests. It was further refined and included in a Sage Advice article.

Escalation Issue 9 is Available

I'm pleased to announce that Escalation Issue 9 is now available! You can find it on the Vault of the 13th Age. This issue's theme is House Rules. There are rules for icon relationships, NPC companions, consumable item creation, increasing monster challenge, injury and dying, initiative, packing even more richness into a natural die roll, and more. Some of these house rules complement each other, while others directly conflict with one another. As a huge fan of tweaking a system to make it my own, I hope you'll enjoy the options that you'll find in this issue—some come straight from my own table!

We love to hear feedback, so let us know what you enjoy and would like to see more of in the future. What's missing that you'd like us to include next time? What didn't work so well, and we should consider omitting? This is the community's fanzine, and we want to make it as useful as possible for you.

Please consider submitting articles that expand upon the theme of the High Seas for Issue 10. See the information on the right side of the page if you'd like to submit an article or art.

Thanks again to everyone who made this possible!

Articles Needed: Pirates and Nautical Fantasy

We tried something new for the upcoming issue's theme, and ran a poll. By scoring three options from 1 to 5, our fans voted for "Pirates and Nautical Fantasy" with 138 total points. The runners up were "Modern or Near Future Fantasy" with 114 points and "Fantasy Robots and Power Armor" with 108 points. So it was pretty close, but we have our winner for Issue 10!

I wanted to share some of the ideas for other issues (or perhaps standalone articles) that were submitted with the survey responses. We're always looking for interesting articles, and don't require all articles in an issue to be strictly related to the theme. If you're interested in fleshing out one of these ideas, please drop us an email with your idea.

• The overworld (two suggestions for this one)
• Environmental hazards and how to take advantage of them
• Apocalypses
• Areas of the Dragon Empire
• More adventures
• Variations on mechanics, such as icon advantages, uses of the escalation die, backgrounds, and failing forward
• Beyond the Dragon Empire
• Using 13th Age to run a game in Mythic Europe

We'll add some of these to our queue of issue theme ideas. Perhaps you'll see them in future polls!

If you're looking for ideas for an article, here are some thoughts that we had. You aren't limited to these suggestions, of course.

• PC options – What themes, feats, races, or even completely new classes fit in a campaign dominated by pirates or underwater adventure?
• Nautical combat – How can you model ship-to-ship combat in a simple way that still feels like 13th Age?
• The Iron Sea – The Iron Sea is inhospitable to say the least. What lies beneath its surface? How have brave adventurers managed to brave the tsunamis and giant monsters, and what's valuable enough for them to risk their lives?
• The Strangling Sea – How would you extend or enhance the Strangling Sea adventure?
• Adventure! – Whether it's exploring the islands of the Midland Sea or diving beneath the surface of the Iron Sea, there are endless opportunities for nautical adventures.
• Monsters – Can you ever have enough aquatic monsters for your game?
• Treasure – Pirates love their booty. What items are worth the risk of diving beneath the waves or facing the ships that sail atop the seas?

Whether you're submitting an idea for a nautical article or one of the other ideas shared by the community, you can find submission guidelines and our email address at the top right side of the page. I look forward to seeing the community's take on the Midland Sea, the Iron Sea, and beyond!