Tabletop Spotlight: Modern Age
Today on Tabletop Spotlight, we take you through Green Ronin’s Modern Masterpiece – The Modern AGE.
The Adventure Game Engine is a flexible rules system that’s allowed Green Ronin to dip their toes into a variety of settings. We’ve seen it work its stunt-based magic in classic Fantasy, and in the Fade-touched world of Dragon Age. Now adventure comes to the Modern AGE with the newest book from Green Ronin. Come join us as we take a look inside.
The stunt system encourages narrative action and makes the instances when you roll exciting. Stunts are a resource for characters to manipulate the world around them, creating effects that can range from knocking an enemy prone, to reloading a weapon instantaneously. These are added effects that you earn when you do things in the world around you. The more you do, the cooler you are, essentially. And with the Modern AGE it’s no different–the developers clearly knew what players would be expecting to try when they wrote the game, so you’ll find perhaps the widest variety yet of individual stunts and categories of stunts.
But that’s just one side of the Modern AGE’s flexibility. This is the game that’s there to let you tell the kind of Modern story you want to tell–which is a hard thing to do. The Modern Era is in many ways the grittiest one, and not necessarily because it’s dark, but because it’s the one that’s the most real. Because it’s, well, reality. Which means that you’ll have a harder time abstracting things–it’s easy to sort of step back from a swordfight, most people have never been in one, so abstracting it to a roll of the dice is easy. But for some reason, that same mechanic falls flat when it’s working for a gun. We can imagine trying to duck out of the way, needing cover. And we have this perception that if you get hit, armor doesn’t matter and you’re dead.
And that’s just one example. We know the world. We know the kinds of stories in it–or so we think. But that’s what I love about the Modern Age, it isn’t just the era of Spy/Espionage or action cinema (though those are both valid). There’s a lot you can do in the Modern AGE–they have three different flavors of action, Gritty, Pulpy, and Cinematic each of which has its own tools for getting your game going.
Modern AGE Basic Rulebook – $34.95
Enter the Modern AGE!
Leap into exciting adventure in any era from the Industrial Revolution to the modern day and beyond. The Modern AGE roleplaying game allows you to shape the setting to suit your style—whether it’s gritty action or high adventure, urban fantasy or a dystopian future. With a new, classless character-building system, twenty levels of advancement, and optional rules for psychic and magic powers, you can create the heroes your world needs. Along with an innovative stunt system, rules for thrilling chases, and an introductory adventure, you’ll find all the action you’re after inside the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook.
The Modern AGE RPG features:
- A classless implementation of the Adventure Game Engine. Develop characters based on their backgrounds and experiences across 20 levels of advancement.
- Focuses, talents, and specializations like Investigator, Hacker, and Martial Artist let you customize your character.
- Fast-paced combat featuring modern weapons and high-octane vehicle chases.
- A game based around action, exploration, and social stunts. Roll doubles on three six-sided dice and something cool happens!
- Arcane magic and psychic powers for modern era games.
- Advice for first time and veteran Game Masters, including ways to customize the system for gritty stories, two-fisted pulp, and cinematic high adventure.
- Sample antagonists and other non-player characters, and an introductory adventure: everything you need to start playing right away.
Use Modern AGE in the campaign setting of your choice, including the World of Lazarus,based on Greg Rucka’s creator-owned comic series of near-future feudalism, or use it to run adventures in the world you create. Grab three six-sided dice, and you’re ready to play in the Modern AGE!
Happy Adventuring!
