Review: Modern AGE Basic Rulebook

"Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders." - Ronald Reagan

In a Nutshell: Classless but level-based generic RPG for 17th-21st century worlds; 194 page PDF from Green Ronin, available here for $20 at time of writing. The same engine is used with minor variations for Dragon Age, Blue Rose, and Fantasy Age.

Core Mechanic

Roll 3d6, add a relevant ability score and a further +2 if the character has a relevant focus; meet or beat a target number (11 for an averagely difficult test) to succeed. If two of the dice come up doubles, the score on the Stunt Die (one of the three, but distinctive) counts as Stunt Points which can be spent on special moves.

Contents

As usual, I've shown the page counts by chapter, as I think they give you a rough idea of the relative importance of topics in the game.

Introduction (6 pages): The usual; what an RPG is, what you need to play, example of play, the social contract at the table, basic rules concepts. Worthy of note are the three game modes, gritty, pulpy, and cinematic; the mode is applied as a lens or filter to various aspects of the game, and the GM may apply different modes to different aspects.

Character Creation (22 pages): There are nine steps to creating a character.

• Character concept.
• Abilities. There are nine of these; Accuracy (ranged weapons), Communication, Constitution, Dexterity, Fighting (melee), Intelligence, Perception, Strength, Willpower. They range from -2 to +4, with the average PC having +1. There are both point-buy and random options for generating them.
• Background. This is how you grew up; it determines your social class, and thus early life and (to an extent) available resources. It also provides +1 to an ability, one focus, one talent, and one benefit. More of those later.
• Profession. This is what you did for a living before you became an adventurer. It gives you another focus, another talent, and a starting Resources score (modified by background); it also defines your starting Health score, i.e. hit points.
• Drive. Why the PC does what he does. This provides two traits to guide roleplaying, another talent, and one of a list of improvements such as more Health.
• Resources and Equipment. Resources is a abstract score covering cash, credit and income, and you use it to make a test to buy stuff. This is similar in concept to the Savage Worlds Wealth rules. However, your PC enters the game with clothing, home, vehicle, etc as appropriate for the setting and Resources, any tools needed for his profession, and any weapon he has a focus or talent for.
• Secondary Traits. There are 4 of these, Health, Defence, Toughness and Speed; they're calculated from earlier steps.
• Goals, Ties, and Relationships. Goals (what the PC wants to do) and ties (how he knows the other PCs) are narrative, but relationships have numerical values and can help you in rolls which benefit the relationships.
• Name and Description. Purely narrative.

Characters amass experience points to level up, and when they do, they gain various improvements depending on the game mode and your level; Health, Defence, Toughness, Resources, a talent, a focus, a relationship bond, an ability improvement.

Basic Rules (20 pages): The core mechanic is as outlined above. In opposed tests, the higher score wins. If you need to know how well you succeeded, check the Stunt Die; higher scores give better results. Initiative in combat is a Dexterity test, and you act in decreasing order of score; each turn you take one major action (e.g. attack) and one minor (e.g. move), or two minors. Generally, if you need to make a dice roll for success, it's a major action. Attacks use the enemy's Defence as the target number; if you hit, roll damage dice, subtract target Toughness and Armour, and deduct the remainder from the target's Health; characters at zero Health are dying, but what that means depends on what game mode is in use.

When you start using Stunts in a fight, things get more interesting. Things that would be critical hits, or special combat moves, in most systems are Stunts in Modern AGE, which require Stunt Points to trigger. Let's say you shot someone, rolled doubles doing so, and have a 2 on your Stunt Die. You can use that to do one of a dozen different things, including knocking the target prone, doing extra damage, increasing your bonuses on your next attack, making extra attacks, and so on. The book recommends that you spend some time reading through available Stunts and noting your favourites on your character sheet; my experience with similar effects in other games is that players tend to pick one or two options and use them by default.

As well as combat encounters, the game has exploration and social encounters; the expectation is that most of a modern scenario is about gathering and interpreting information. These other types of encounters have their own Stunts, but as there is less time pressure, the rules are less detailed and complex. There are several options the GM can use to have the PCs find information; it can be automatic for anyone, automatic for someone with the right focus, or require a successful test.

Character Options (18 pages): This chapter goes into more detail on the various focus and talent options, with more detailed descriptions, and the benefits of advancing talents to expert and master levels. Starting at 4th level, you can also take specialisations, which are additional talents with additional benefits; these are how you stack talents to develop your PC's career or archetype.

Equipment (10 pages): My least favourite part of any game system, but covers what you'd expect; weapons, armour, adventuring gear, vehicles, lifestyle. Prices are listed as a target number for a Resources test rather than a specific amount of cash; if the GM wants to use cash values, that's up to them, but they need to figure out what those values are. I did notice that weapons have a Capacity rating for ammo; if you miss, and the Stunt Die meets or beats the Capacity number, you're empty and need to reload. Oh, and some of the Lifestyle entries are interesting; alternate ID, discreet affair, drugs, throwing a rave.

Stunts (10 pages): The Basic Rules chapter lists a few dozen basic Stunts; that list is greatly expanded on here, with more (and more expensive) Stunts; combat stunts, exploration stunts, social stunts. Stunts are similar in some ways to Savage Worlds Edges, but are all available to any PC who rolls well enough at any time, without having to spend advances on them.

Extraordinary Powers (20 pages): Powers are entirely optional; you can play a game without opening this chapter at all. If you do use powers, then each of the 16 power groups is treated as a separate talent, covering four related powers and with its own associated focus, and they are divided into arcane powers and psychic powers. By default, using a power requires you to spend power points and make a test - the usual 3d6 roll, modified by ability and focus, although there are several options.

 The Game Master (8 pages): This is the start of the "no players allowed" section, and begins with the usual advice on how to be a GM and the importance of being inclusive, keeping things moving, and being fair. It then moves on to story structures; this game favours location-based (map as flowchart), scene-based (somewhat more linear), and social stories (exploring relationships between characters as a kind of map). Next, it talks about different kinds of play styles and how to frame the various game mechanics in narrative terms, how to manage your game information at the table, and how to make the game world come alive. Nothing world shattering here, but it's sound enough and clearly conveyed.

Mastering the Rules (13 pages): More GM advice, but this chapter is tailored to the game system whereas the previous chapter was more general advice. Here, we learn about the ability tests at the heart of the game; whether and when to use them, which abilities and focuses to use, stakes and consequences, time taken; opposed and cooperative tests; advanced tests, used for things like chases, which require multiple rolls and success is driven by how many points on the Stunt Die you rack up during those rolls. Breaching tests, using to break into facilities or hack networks, are similar, but require you to succeed using multiple focuses, with each failure introducing a complication. This section is also where we find out about hazards, NPC morale, and so forth.

Adversaries (21 pages): Here's the bestiary. As in Savage Worlds, although NPCs and creatures use largely the same abilities and focuses as PCs, you don't need to build them using the same rules, just give them whatever seems appropriate. Each adversary has a threat level from Minor to Legendary, which balances them against PCs of certain levels, and has combat stats adjusted by the game mode. So, here we have the opposition for your PCs, each with a description and stat block; colour is used to show their stats in different game modes, ranging from the humble guard dog to the brainwashed killer or cyborg. There's an unusual division in play; the adversaries are grouped together by the intended encounter type - combat, exploration, or social. You might encounter the Smooth Operator socially, and he has a statblock, but you're not likely to use combat skills on him.

Rewards (9 pages): This is about how you reward the PCs for success, and how fast they level up. The obvious rewards are cash - which probably manifests itself as a temporarily improved Resources stat - or XP, gained for successful encounters and good ideas or good roleplaying, or reputation (which may or may not have tangible in-game effects), or membership and rank in organisations, or relationship bonds with NPCs (positive or negative) - such bonds generate extra Stunt Points in certain circumstances. The guidelines about relationships are especially interesting in that they range from the simple ("I won't rest until he's dead") to the complex ("She is my boss, my best friend, and someone I love, but to whom I can never express my feelings") to the contradictory ("I’ll do whatever I can to make her happy" and "I must prove I’m smarter than her", for the same NPC). You can also have relationships with a religion, culture, or other abstract topic.

Campaign Setting (13 pages): Fairly standard advice for a generic RPG, about building or adapting a setting in one of a range of genres such as alternative history, heist movies, survival horror, police procedurals, etc.; it also looks at the various eras from the Age of Reason onwards, the Golden Age of Piracy to the Near Future, by way of the French Revolution, the Victorian Era, the Cold War, and others. The eras are marked with a coloured symbol to show which game mode works best for them.

A Speculative Venture (12 pages): Set in the present day, this begins with the PCs as guests at a party, when an FBI agent, a business rival of the host, and a group of mercenaries crash the party. This adventure showcases action, exploration, and social encounters, and some that could be any of those depending on how the PCs approach them. It interested me enough that I might repurpose it for another campaign.

...and we close with a glossary, index, play aids, and character sheet.

What I Liked

• Being able to generate PCs either using a point-buy system or at random, because I like to design my PC but retain the random option for NPCs.
• The Stunt Die and how simply checking that removes a lot of book-keeping in combat and elsewhere.
• Stunts; what they are, how they are triggered, all the fun things you can do with them. My favourite part of the game system, actually.
• Solid advice for players and GMs. In particular, the advice on how modern scenarios differ from those in other genres, for example increased focus on avoiding danger and gathering information.
• Multiple ideas for rewarding PCs that aren't cash or XP.

What I Didn't Like

• Ability advancement requires you to keep a separate tally of how many points from levelling up you're allocating to buffing abilities.
• Different types of damage with different effects; impact, ballistic, or penetrating, any of which can be either stun or wound damage.

What I'm Unsure About

• Specialisations. I'm not sure I understand how they differ from, and interact with, normal talents. I think this is the most complex part of the system. However, I do like the advice on how you can stack and merge specialisations to create particular archetypes.
• Stunts. They're available to anyone, anytime; but that means you potentially need to know all of them, or at least read through them and scribble notes on the ones you want to use.

Conclusions

I like Modern AGE. If it were a little less complex, it might tempt me away from Savage Worlds for this sort of game; but it looks like a bit more work to achieve the same level of fun. The characters and basic rules are simple and straightforward; the complexity is in the Stunts and talents.

You can play it simply, using just the Basic Rules, or you can ramp up the complexity dramatically by bringing in all the Stunts and Specialisations and using different game modes for different aspects of play.

I'd definitely play it, and would consider running it.