Halfway Station: Review: Five and Infinity

The final part of my trilogy of reviews of Modern AGE and accoutrements.

In a Nutshell: A campaign in five adventures for the Modern AGE Threefold setting, plus scenario and plane generators. 130 page PDF by Green Ronin, available here for $18 at time of writing.

Note: You need both the Modern AGE Basic Rules and the Threefold setting to use this book.

Introduction (1 page): Capsule summaries of the adventures and generators.

Chapters 1-5: The adventures. Between them, these will take heroes from level 1 to level 16; it's hard to review adventures without spoilers, but I figure it's safe to tell you what's on the back cover of the book and in the initial mission briefings for PCs. The default assumption is that your PCs work for the Sodality or the Aethon.

Hunting Night (18 pages): Levels 1-4. A spider goddess seeks safe exile on Earth. What better way to kick off the campaign than fighting giant mutant spiders in an office building?
The Dreaming Crown (15 pages): Levels 1-4. On a diplomatic mission, the PCs learn that the rumoured discovery of the crown of the last Divine Empress inflames the political ambitions of demigods.
The Soul Trade (22 pages): Levels 5-8. Beginning in media res during a doorkicking raid on a smugglers' hideout, this takes the PCs to a prison planet which holds the secret of the illegal trade in souls.
Midnight Gold (21 pages): Levels 9-12. Dark deeds force heroes to a literal urban hellscape, where they must find and recover a missing person.
On the Threshold of Apocalypse (22 pages): Levels 13-16. The Earth has been destroyed. Merely a temporary setback, surely.

Each adventure has multiple parts, each with multiple scenes. There are appropriate maps, NPC and creature statblocks, and as usual for Modern AGE, each scene is tagged to show whether it is a combat, exploration or social encounter.

The Infinity Machine (25 pages): This chapter provides the GM with random generators for adventure scenarios and the planes on which they are set.

As with the Threefold setting book, there are sidebars throughout the book with capsule descriptions of minor planes.

What I Liked

The scenario maps. Nice work.
Hunting Night and The Soul Trade were both enjoyable adventures, and I'm tempted to run them at some point.
Threefold uses non-linear time for some plotlines, and this is showcased in On the Threshold of Apocalypse. Tricky to pull off, but worth it if you can.
The minor plane Loop; Groundhog Day for all, with everyone remembering hundreds of previous cycles to the detriment of their mental health.

What I Didn't Like

There are a number of schoolboy spelling errors, usually missing letters, most often the letter R for some reason. 6/10, see me after class.
The adventure generator was too abstract for me to work with; it felt like writing an adventure by rolling on the Mythic event tables.

Conclusions

I wanted to like this, but I didn't, despite it having some interesting points and scenarios. This is because like Threefold, it focuses strongly on the fantasy and infernal planes, whereas I much prefer more mundane alternate universes.

If I could get past that, the five-scenario campaign arc would be worth running, but the adventure generator doesn't give me enough guidance and I would plunder my collection of SF and fantasy books for the planes rather than generating them at random.

So, this one's not for me; Your Mileage May Vary, especially if you like the magical and infernal planes more than I do.