Review: Threefold

"These are human stories that express hope in the face of impersonal metaphysical forces. The Metacosm may be in the thrall of warring cosmic powers, but nothing is more important and valuable than the human spirit." - Threefold

In a Nutshell: Dimension-hopping campaign setting for the Modern AGE RPG. 186 page PDF from Green Ronin, available here for $20 at time of writing.

Contents

When It Starts at Home/What If You Could Go Anywhere? (7 pages): The obligatory introductory fiction and an explanation of what the setting is; portal fantasy, in Modern AGE terms, where gates take the PCs to various settings of three basic types; baseline Earth and her alternate timelines, Otherworlds where magic works, and Netherworlds where dark forces reign. The gates are protected and kept secret by a conspiracy, and that's where the PCs come in. The point of all this is to allow all the PCs from all the genres to set out together on all the adventures.

Across a Thousand Planes (19 pages): This chapter is an overview of the setting; its planes, gates, and factions. It speaks to the different kinds of planes and gates; gates are connected in chainlike routes, which use the primary Earth timeline as a sort of hub, with alternate histories nearby, magical Otherworlds further out, and hellish Netherworlds further away still. Heterarchies are nexus planes with gates to multiple kinds of planes, and are mixtures of the planes they connect to, so they can be magical alternate Earths, for example. This chapter also speaks to the major powers and the history of the setting as the PCs would know of them; the planes mentioned here are all of major importance, as are the governments which rule them.

Threefold Characters (26 pages): Additional character options, including a wide range of new backgrounds, professions, talents, specialisations and ancestries. All PCs in the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook are human, but ancestries offer the possibility of being what D&D would call a demihuman; the game's conceit is that these are humans from alternate realities. Want to be a dwarven psychic detective who can channel spells through a firearm? Knock yourself out.

Secret & Potent Powers (23 pages): This expands the Extraordinary Powers section of Modern AGE to include occult rites and cybertech implants. New powers, new arcane colleges, the effects of being near nexus points, how to suck magical power out of (un)willing colleagues. Did I mention the new powers? Soooo many new powers; the ones I found most intriguing were those connected to dreams and those which manipulate ionising radiation.

Moving on to Augmentation, cybernetic implants are a little different from other powers in that they're not talents as such; instead, each PC has a number of noetic (mental) and somatic (physical) "slots", representing how much augmentation they can take before they start suffering penalties on various tests. I especially liked Spider Hand, which lets you detach a hand and use it as a remote-controlled drone.

The Sodality & Aethon (16 pages): These are the two factions most likely to employ PCs; characters can join other factions, or go it alone, but the main thrust of the book assumes the PCs work for the Sodality, as a diplomatic/exploration team and their bodyguards. The Sodality is the paramilitary arm of the Vitane, a kind of magical United Nations of the planes, while Aethon is a similar organisation leaning more towards cyberpunk and working for the Peridexion, an organisation which exists to protect Earth by being nasty to the enemies of those gods who watch over it; cyborg black ops teams, Section 31 to the Sodality's Star Fleet. This allows PCs with both patrons to adventure together. This chapter explains how each organisation is structured, what it does, how it recruits and trains members, and signature equipment; the Sodality provides members with a Scarab, essentially a magical smartphone, and a Shabda Plaque, which like Dr Who's slightly psychic paper can masquerade as any sort of ID or authorisation one might need, while the Aethon favours more tactical gear; guns, armour, computers. Since the Aethon has been (re)created numerous times in numerous timelines, multiple Aethons can have operations on the same plane, and it's anyone's guess to what extent they're part of the same organisation.

Eternals at War (17 pages): This chapter marks the start of the GM-only section, and gives the GM details of the major factions of the setting, their purposes, structures, members, and conflicts, beginning with the deepest secret: Why the "metacosm" of planes exists at all, why it is the way it is, and why people are important. The full secret is more than a little trippy, and although one could infodump it on the players at the start, I think it would be much more fun to reveal it gradually over the course of a campaign. Later in the chapter, we learn of lesser factions, and their structure, history and goals; I think finding out about these, too, is part of the fun of playing in the setting, so no spoilers here.

The Planes (18 pages): More details on the nature of the "metacosm" and prominent planes within it; the code used by planar travellers to describe planes, descriptions of the six major planes and the Sentium, which one can picture as the medium in which the planes float, connected by chains of gates. There are also sidebars scattered throughout the book, each describing a minor plane in one short paragraph. Here, we also learn about Incessance, the way that planes interfere with items brought to them from elsewhere; in game terms, this manifests itself as extra Stunts, which do things like make equipment glitch.

Treasures (10 pages): Setting-specific gear and rewards, including a few sample weapons, armour and vehicles associated with the major powers; advanced versions of gear are represented simply by giving them bonus Stunt Points. This chapter also talks about the currencies of the major powers, and how they translate to Resources within their boundaries. I was especially interested in soul transplants (and the illegal trade in disembodied souls which supports them), self-pork (flash-cloned versions of your own body that you can eat to restore Health quickly), myrmidon armour (made from giant beetles and has to be drenched in blood to work properly), and the quantum ark (allows interplanar travel without a gate).

Denizens of the Planes (18 pages): Additional NPCs and creatures dimension-hopping PCs might meet. NPCs sorted by faction, creatures from minor vermin to godlike campaign-climax opponents. It's a bestiary, what can I tell you?

Metacosm Campaigns (9 pages): What it says on the tin; the GM's guide to running campaigns in the setting. At its heart, Threefold is about exploring unknown locations and discovering their strangenesses, and it's recommended that each adventure be focused on a plane which is the world we know, but with a single difference, explored through play. What if everyone had a malicious doppleganger? What if the laws of physics changed with your mood swings? What if your dreams came to life every night?

Identity (13 pages): An introductory adventure. It's a simple recon mission to a newly-discovered plane, what could possibly go wrong?

...and we close with an index and a revised character sheet.

What I Liked

• The setting concept. I'm a big fan of World of Tiers, Sliders, Fringeworthy, Stargate, Half-Life, that kind of thing; strangely, not Amber, though I like Zelazny's other works.
• Some of the planes are really quite imaginative, for example the Fetter, an infinite coil of land thousands of miles wide with a saltwater ocean/river running along the middle.
• Since different planes have different physical laws, the GM can easily remove overpowered items ("It only works on the plane where you found it"), and the dimension-hopping nature of the setting means that the GM can add, rework or remove NPCs, items, etc. between sessions ("Oh that NPC, the one with the overpowered skills? She died, time passes so much faster on her plane. There's an alternate version of her from a parallel timeline waiting for you in the lobby, though; similar personality and skills, but she hasn't met you yet.").
• The way the multiple instances of the Aethon help or hinder one another, or indeed are completely ignorant of each other. Very wilderness of mirrors, that.

What I Didn't Like

• All ancestries except human have a range of additional powers, but I couldn't see much in the way of trade-offs or disadvantages to balance them. I suspect that demihumans have an advantage over baseline humans, as is often the case in RPGs. At least not all of them have big pointy ears.
• I'd like to have seen fewer magical and infernal planes, and more straight-up mundane alternate history.

Conclusions

I think this is one of those settings whose vision is too grand for my smooth brain to encompass, one that I lack the imagination to run. It would also be difficult to play in, now that I have learned its deepest secrets.

I enjoyed reading it, though, especially said deepest secrets.