to each their own, I rather back someone with a history in TTRPG design
I understand. What hits me about the 13th Age design philosophy is that it hasn't changed or innovated in significant ways that will alter the experience compared to 13th Age 1e. (To be fair, I'm also not planning on purchasing 2024 D&D - because there's just not enough new about it.)
The game is over a decade old - older than even 5th edition. I haven't seen over a decade of exciting, new ideas yet.
what changes did they make?
Let's see.
- Replacing "Unique" and "Marilith" tiers with three other tiers - part of the way into the Kickstarter (changing the rewards)
- Adding two different "late bloomer" pledges so backers in the last 48 hours can get bigger discounts than people who backed earlier.
and you do about DC20?

DC20 sits in a weird spot for me, it is not close enough to 5e for me to be interested and it is not sufficiently different to become interesting in its own right (maybe it turns out to be, have not taken a close look..). That it is done by someone with very limited experience is not helping its case with me, so I will sit that one out. I am more interested in what Matt Colville does with a blank slate than what DungeonCoach does…
13th Age is available at my FLGS, conventions I visit, DriveThru RPG, Humble Bundles, etc. It's possible that DC20 won't be as available.
To me, the difference between DungeonCoach and the 13th Age team (Heinsoo, Tweet, et al.), is that DungeonCoach seems
hungry. As Mr. T. put it in Rocky III "he's got the Eye of the Tiger." 13th Age has been sitting on it, not promoting anything, not putting out interviews, not marketing. I get the feeling they're not excited and don't believe in their own product. Yesterday alone, I saw something like 6 videos about DC20. He's live on Roll4Combat right now. He's out there on the circuit promoting the heck out of this game. There is next to nothing about 13th Age - like 2 videos in the past couple months.
If DC20 is going to crash and burn, I'd rather have a passionate failure than a slightly updated book I've already owned for 10 years.