Green Ronin Release New Modern AGE Basic Rulebook

June 19, 2018 by brennon

Green Ronin has now released their new Modern AGE Basic Rulebook in a digital format alongside pre-orders for the print version.

Modern AGE takes a lot of the basic design decisions from Fantasy AGE and Dragon Age and brings them together in the new setting of the modern day (or near future). Your games can be tailored towards a straight-up modern day story, or include the rules for magic and psychic powers to put a spin on your adventures.

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.

Fantasy AGE is also not setting specific so you can invent your own worlds, or use the rules as a template for existing worlds like Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, World Of Darkness or Android for example. You can, however, delve deeper into their own setting, the World Of Lazarus, and this is continued through the Quick Start Rules as well which are free to download.

The Adventure Game Engine is one that I have a love and hate relationship with. It worked very well for my group in Dragon Age because it was very simple to learn and the Stunt system meant that they could add their own flavour to their moves, perfect for gamers who are maybe new to role-playing games.

However, it will be interesting to see if the 'grind' factor comes through in Modern AGE. After a little while it felt like combats could drag on a little bit...so it will be interesting to see how that has been handled going forward.

Will you be giving this a go?