Tag Archive for: AGE

Modern Monday: What’s Coming?

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So, after answering some questions last week, general chatter compels me to talk about what we have planned for Modern AGE. In most cases, I’m going to talk about the current state of each release. Then I’ll answer a common question about how Modern AGE compares to its sister, Fantasy AGE.

In Production

The following things are in various stages of production—that is, the creation of a book from developed and edited text files.

Modern AGE Quickstart: It’s out! Read about it and download here!

Modern AGE Basic Rulebook (This is the core book!): This is currently going through last proof and art finalization. The advance PDF and preorders should be ready for June.

World of Lazarus: World of Lazarus is the first setting book for Modern AGE. It’s based on Lazarus, Greg Rucka’s dystopian-transhuman comic. Check the comic out (external link to Lazarus at Image Comics). This should be finished production shortly after the core. Note that project is a creation of Mutants and Masterminds developer Crystal Frasier, which is fitting, since she knows how comics and games intersect much better than I do.

Modern AGE Game Master’s Kit: This is the GM screen and reference card kit for Modern AGE. This is very close to finishing production and will be released hot on the heels of the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook and Lazarus.

Text Complete

The following thing happens to be text-complete, by which I mean writers have written it, and I’ve developed it, but it hasn’t entered production.

(Announcing the) Modern AGE Companion: This is currently in editing. I may add a short set of options we excised from the core book. The Modern AGE Companion includes expanded rules for powers, new talents and specializations, expanded stunts, campaign management, technology—lots of stuff. The Modern AGE Basic Rulebook is absolutely a complete game, but the Companion is anchored in the idea of customizing the rules for your campaigns.

Did I just announce a new book? Yes. I’ll probably give it a proper breakdown once we reach production. When is it coming out? That’s still to be determined.

Outlined and Approved

Okay, so my policy is the further something is from release, the sketchier I’m going to be about it. The following books have had their outlines approved, so I can start working with people to get them designed. They have cute code names for now.

Project Cranky (Real Name TBA): This is a utilitarian supplement for Modern AGE, not tied to any set campaign.

Project Crooked House (Real Name TBA): This is an original in-house setting.

Comparing Modern AGE and Fantasy AGE

How many shows have you seen where there’s always something weird going down in the “warehouse district?” We are not about to challenge that cliché. From the Modern AGE Quickstart, available now!

So, I’ve fielded a few questions about how Modern AGE relates to Fantasy AGE. Modern AGE isn’t just a case of copying and pasting guns over swords. I’ve already talked about how it’s a classless implementation of the AGE rules, but there are several other under the hood changes. These range from Resources, the system we use to manage in-game purchases without you roleplaying getting loans and doing taxes, to Breaching, the advanced test variant designed by Crystal Frasier to support heists and capers. These demand cooperation and dramatic reversals. Crystal originally designed these for World of Lazarus, but we all agreed they were so cool they should be in the core rules. Social systems and investigations are also part of Modern AGE’s core, as is appropriate for games where characters will be deeply embedded in complex societies.

Fantasy AGE features magic as a core assumption instead of an optional extra. Certain rules emphasize the special roles of each of its classes. It has several talents not present in Modern AGE, such as Armored Training and Horsemanship, which could be used for modern games, but represented cases rare enough for me to exclude them in favor of others. Fantasy AGE’s magical Arcana can expand the range of what’s available for Modern AGE characters, and Modern AGE’s new rules might be useful for many Fantasy AGE games, but in the end they’re separate lines, with differences that in some cases, cut right down to core systems. We trust you to perform whatever creative mashups you like. I for one would love to hear about any such “FrankenAGE” games.

Jump into the Action! Modern AGE Quickstart Is Out!

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Modern AGE RPG Quickstart Cover Image: Three characters in modern-day garb strike dynamic poses on an urban rooftop, lit from below. Skyscrapers tower in the background.A disease with no Earthly origin strikes. A legendary monster stalks back streets. Refugees from another world hide in our own, afraid of secret authorities. Gates between worlds, a sly demigod and a conspiracy introduce the Modern AGE roleplaying game with its new quickstart!

The Modern AGE Quickstart contains streamlined rules for Modern AGE, a game of contemporary adventure which uses the Adventure Game Engine found in Fantasy AGE and Blue Rose: The Age Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy. Pre-set to Modern AGE’s Cinematic rules mode, it includes everything you need to run your first game except six-sided dice, writing materials and your friends. Along with the rules, the Modern AGE Quickstart comes with ready to play characters and Burning Bright, a modern fantasy adventure in its own mini-setting.

Using the full rules in the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook, you can continue the quickstart adventure, or devise an entirely new campaign. Modern AGE is designed to support any modern era setting from the Age of Sail to near future action. Modern AGE releases this June, followed by the World of Lazarus campaign setting, based on Greg Rucka’s comic series of future feudalism.

Jump into the action and download the Modern AGE Quickstart!

Image from Modern AGE Quickstart: A cigar-chomping, bearded mercenary stands in the foreground, with a wicked knife strapped to his flak jacket. In the distance, a magical-seeming castle looms atop a wooded hill.

Modern Monday: Occasionally Asked Questions

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For this Modern Monday I’ve harvested Modern AGE questions from the Ronin Army forums. Instead of just copying and pasting them, I’ve synthesized some repeated questions into stuff I can answer in one go. I also made up a couple of questions I figured you’d want answered.

Persistent detective work pays off. Or just asking.

Is it a standalone game?

Absolutely. You don’t need Fantasy AGE (or any other AGE RPG) for Modern AGE. The World of Lazarus, Modern AGE’s first supplement, does require the Modern AGE core. That said, there are many useful things you might port between various games. Modern AGE’s Breaching rules, which cover capers and other complex cooperative tasks, would be interesting to apply to other AGE games, and in a modern fantasy game Fantasy AGE and Blue Rose both have elements which can be ported to Modern AGE.

Does work on Modern AGE affect other Green Ronin projects, or vice versa?

Modern AGE is one member of the Adventure Game Engine family, so naturally some folks are curious about whether work on Modern AGE affected, or will affect, releases for other games. Nope! Each game has its own line developer and writers who know how to manage their time. I did some writing for the Fantasy AGE Companion and the Titansgrave setting, but this happened during draft cycles, while writers were working, so it didn’t delay anything else. The production schedule gives it its own space. It’s all good.

Will there be cross-genre support?

Yes. This is handled in a few different ways. First, campaign mode (Gritty, Pulpy, Cinematic) can be used to fine-tune how various things work, so you can decide how action-oriented your game is. Second, the Game Mastering section devotes significant space to various genres, on their own and by historical period. This kind of “soft” support can be found throughout the game, including in suggestions on how to adapt various systems for specific genres and periods. Third, the game does have a slate of powers you may or may not choose to add to your campaign. That brings us to the next question:

Are there powers?

Modern AGE provides detailed support for two types of powers: magical arcana and psychic disciplines. These are mechanically similar in their base treatment, but the rules include options for distinguishing them from one another. In addition, the game has a “rough draft” treatment of the sort of minor powers we often see in TV series. If you want full-on superpowers? Well we have this game you might have heard of, called Mutants and Masterminds.

How does classless AGE work?

In Modern AGE, characters are initially defined by a social class and its associated background, a profession, and a drive. These provide initial ability bonuses, talents and other traits. As you level up, you choose further ability and talent advances, along with a few other things such as specializations. You can’t improve the same ability twice in a row and will eventually incur the multiple advancement cost for peak improvements, so this prevents doubling down on Fighting, for instance. Your character’s special abilities are defined by talents and later, specializations.

How does Health work?

Your character’s initial Health is determined by profession, drive and Constitution. When you advance, further increases are based on the game’s mode. In Gritty mode, your Health doesn’t increase at all. In Pulpy mode, the increase is 1 + Constitution (minimum 1). Cinematic mode grants the full 1d6 + Constitution per level increase might know from other AGE games.

Where’s the book at?

Modern AGE has passed through initial layout, proofing and copyfitting stages (copyfitting is when we tweak the text to flow better in the layout). The advance PDF, which we release so you can get an early look (and point out typos) before we absolutely lock down the text for print, will be coming very soon indeed. After that it goes through processes to get things into print.

What About the Quickstart?

Even sooner. Days. The Quickstart gives you streamlined rules pre-set to Cinematic mode, ready to play characters, and a modern fantasy adventure, “Burning Bright.”

Other questions?

I read the forums at www.roninarmy.com regularly. I can’t guarantee I’ll answer all your questions but posting there is the best chance of putting them in front of my eyes.

Next Modern Monday?

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll announce a new book or something. See you then!

Modern Mondays: Get Your Fight On

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As we ramp up to Modern AGE’s release, let me tell you a little bit about how we handle contemporary-era combat. That means firearms, but I’m also going to talk about the ins and outs of combat in general.

Get Your Gun

A Modern AGE round lasts about 15 seconds, so we knew right away that a ranged attack roll wasn’t always going to represent one shot, even when characters aren’t spraying fully automatic weapons around. The assumption is that unless you’re using a firearm where you must reload after every shot, each attack roll represents several shots aimed at the same target (and other targets, provided you use stunts—but more of that in a bit). In most cases, you’re pulling the trigger as fast as you can. This raises two questions. First: Shouldn’t those extra bullets make a difference? Second: How do you track ammunition?

While Amy wades into the fray, Brian’s about to demonstrate the violent benefits of teamwork.

The answer to both lies in the Stunt Die. We wanted to wring more information out of the rolls you’re already making. When it comes too hails of bullets, the Stunt Die represents this by adding to damage whenever you use a weapon capable of rapid fire, be it semi- or fully automatic. The Stunt Die also determines when you run out of ammunition in a way that needs to be addressed during the encounter. In most cases, characters are assumed to have as much ammunition as they need, and to reload during pauses in the action which aren’t necessarily measured in game terms. However, if you miss, check to see if the Stunt Die is equal to or greater than the firearm’s capacity rating, which varies from 2 to 6 (a Capacity of 1 is a single shot weapon, and simply noted as such instead of being given a number). If it is, you use the action specified by the weapon (a minor action for a typical magazine-loaded handgun) to reload. Gritty games modify this to make running low more likely and require characters to state they’re carrying spare ammo.

When it comes to the various tactical options available based on the firearm you choose, Modern AGE has an array of firearms stunts, some of which are keyed to specific weapon types. For example, Short Burst and Suppressive Fire require automatic weapons.

Get Trained

Except for Stunt Attacks (see last week), most of what you’ll see in Modern AGE’s combat rules will be familiar if you’ve played games like Dragon Age, Fantasy AGE, or Blue Rose. One of the main differences are stunts, which are curated into focused lists for various forms of combat. This means Melee Stunts are available if you’re attacking with fists or blades, and Grappling Stunts are on hand for when you want to restrain your opponent. Incidentally, to allow for some basic personalization in unarmed combat, Brawling and Grappling are separate Fighting focuses with distinct stunt groups, though both inflict damage with a basic attack roll. There’s no “grappling subsystem” in Modern AGE beyond that.

Where unarmed combat has been split up slightly, other aspects of combative character development have been streamlined compared to prior AGE iterations. With no classes, there are no niches to protect by penalizing characters for using weapons. Thus, there’s no non-proficiency penalty. You make a standard ability-based attack roll and if you have the focus, benefit from its bonus. Furthermore, since there’s no need to sequester certain light weapons for the use of a particular class, Fighting now applies to all melee attacks, and Accuracy applies to all ranged attacks. To develop a fighting style, pick the focuses you want and talents which support them, such as Pinpoint Attack (which has a name Fantasy AGE players may recognize) and Self-Defense Style. Top it off with specializations like Gunfighter, Martial Artist, or Sniper.

Get Tough

The other new character-centered factor in combat is the Toughness trait, which is equal to your Constitution. Like armor (which is less common in modern games), Toughness absorbs damage, but the type of damage depends on the game’s mode—that is, one of the three genre-based rules options which apply to your campaign. In Cinematic Mode, Toughness works on virtually any form of damage, while in Gritty Mode, it only applies to what we call stun damage: the kind of stuff you take from a punch in the face. Pulpy Mode lies in the middle, absorbing damage from close combat weapons but failing against ballistic damage, which most firearms inflict.

Get Ready

Next Modern Monday I’ll talk about the game’s social and investigation systems. Since most modern settings feature functioning governments and societies, even wandering trouble shooters must deal with more than ruins and woods filled with, let’s say, angry bears. (Or indifferent bears. Don’t go near bears.) How do you run interrogations, make friends and grab clues? I’ll tell you then.

Modern Monday: So. Many. Stunts.

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Modern AGE is a couple of weeks from going to print. In this final stage, we’re refining the look of the game. One of the things we introduced late in the process was a system to color code the three campaign modes (Gritty, Pulpy, and Cinematic) so their rules options are easy to find. Plus, Modern AGE isn’t a one-and-done affair. We’re simultaneously fine-tuning the Modern AGE Quickstart and getting together a Modern AGE GM’s Kit featuring a screen and reference cards.

Oh yeah: There’s one other product in development that’s about 50% through final text development. But I won’t be talking about it until it’s been through a couple of other stages.

Anyway, back to those reference cards. They include a lot of stunts. Modern AGE uses stunts to represent exceptional success, but also for certain special moves which in other games, would involve a special subsystem. This changes how stunts are framed compared to other Adventure Game Engine RPGs like Fantasy AGE or Blue Rose.

Stunt Attacks

One new major action in Modern AGE is the Stunt Attack. In combat, you forego the standard result of an attack—inflicting damage—to automatically gain 1 stunt point. You still get stunt points from doubles. These and other sources of stunt points (usually Relationships) stack with your free SP. This is how you perform actions which in other games, would be resolved with a “grapple check” or something. In many cases it’s better to inflict damage, but when you gain talents and specializations which enhance your stunts (such as Modern AGE’s Martial Artist, who gains bonus stunt points for some stunt attacks) it can become a powerful option.

Core Stunts and Stunt Picks

Due to the expanded role of stunts, Modern AGE includes a whole bunch of them, bundled into specific categories, such as Grappling Stunts and Membership and Reputation Stunts (which support that game’s more robust social system. Two new “non-rules” enters the game to deal with the risk of decision paralysis. Every stunt list has labeled Core Stunts. These have low or variable costs, and are generally useful, so when you can’t decide on your stunts, these are your picks. Related to this non-rule is the next: is the book’s explicit advice to pick stunts you like and want to use ahead of time. Make your own menu and see how it plays out.

These are “non-rules” because they’re just ways to help you pick stunts. They never limit your selections. You can still pick any appropriate stunt you can afford! Eventually, you’ll find your favorites and use them to define your character’s personal style, but you can always switch them up. It’s a lens, not a locker.

Vehicular Stunts

As you might have predicted after seeing a similar system in the Fantasy AGE Companion, Modern AGE gives you the option to run vehicular combat without tracking a Health Point equivalent for cars and such. While the GM can assign Health values to vehicle parts and special effects for destroying them, affecting the vehicle as a whole involves Anti-Vehicle Stunts whose effects range from making the target vehicle harder to handle, to turning it into a twisted, flaming wreck. Some attacks, such as those with an anti-materiel rifle, can generate more powerful stunts against vehicles.

Chase Stunts are another new stunt group affecting vehicles, though they can also influence mounted or foot chases. These interact with Modern AGE’s chase rules. Again, if you’ve seen the Fantasy AGE Companion you’ve seen a version of these rules, though they’re not exactly the same as their modern counterparts.

More? Monday?

This isn’t everything you can do with stunts. In fact, I’m going to plug the Fantasy AGE Companion again and recommend its rules for stunt pools and stunt packages, which could easily be used with Modern AGE. Furthermore, we’re working on a few new options for stunts in that book I can’t talk about yet!

My evasive behavior will change soon—I promise! This is the first Modern Monday column, and as we ramp up to launching the game, and getting it to you in its “early bird” PDF medium, you’ll see more about Modern AGE, its principles, and our plans for the line. These include the World of Lazarus campaign setting, based on Greg Rucka’s comic of the feudal near future. See you next week!

Why call shotgun unless you really mean it? In case you’re wondering, Brian’s on the left side because this is Sean’s fancy British car.

 

 

Ronin Roundtable: MUTANTS & MASTERFUL STUNTS

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I’ve used the past few Ronin Roundtables to preview products and plug some of our talented and ingenious third-party publishers, but this week I want to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart: Making the system work for you. I’m a great lover of homebrew—systems are there to work for you; you’re not there to work for them. If a rule doesn’t do what you want, then change it or toss it. No mercy.

But what if you find another rule you really like, and want to roll it into your Mutants & Masterminds experience? Or you want to add some of your favorite elements of Mutants & Masterminds to another system? For these tasks you need the hands of a surgeon, not the axe of an executioner (an axecutioner, if you will).

Let’s look at one of my favorite elements of Green Ronin’s Adventure Game Engine (AGE) system: Stunts. Stunts add a lot of cinematic fun to a game, with players able to show off and get creative in the moment. I like running a cinematic table for my superhero games, so I’m interesting in borrowing from AGE for my own M&M games.

I’m going to use the stunt lists from pages 36 and 79 of the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook, but each book for the AGE system (Fantasy Age, Dragon AGE, Blue Rose, and the upcoming Modern AGE) have their own slightly-modified stunt lists to best suit their related genres.

What and Why?

Before we figure out how to import a rule, let’s take a look at what stunts do and why, and see if anything in Mutants & Masterminds is already doing the same thing. The stunt system fleshes out interaction and exploration scenes with new tactics, giving some heft and direction to what is otherwise just a mechanical skill check. It lets the player character do impressive or unexpected things, even with relatively low die rolls. Mutants & Masterminds largely relies on player creativity for that (which is fine) and freeform rulings from the GM. You get a little definition in success by measuring how many degrees of success you score on a check, but even that is largely abstract. So the exploration and roleplaying stunts could shift a little of the power and the burden of creativity from the gamemaster to the players for skill checks. Sounds good.

But the stunts also let PCs try out innovative attacks and strategies in combat, and Mutants & Masterminds already has a fairly robust combat system. Stunts are how the AGE system handles the actions—taunt, disarm, power attack—that M&M handles via actions and maneuvers and Advantages. The stunt lists from Fantasy AGE provide a few additional attack options, like punching through armor and attacking a second time, that aren’t generally options in M&M for balance reasons. Still, they could work if we wanted to drop the maneuvers as options for our heroes, or turn any remaining maneuvers into new stunt options.

So if we import the stunt rules, our easiest option would be to only adopt the roleplaying and exploration stunts. We can import the combat stunts, too, but that means tinkering with the core system a little more under the hood.

The Hookup: Dice

If we want the stunt system to work, then our PCs need to be able to generate stunt points. Obviously we don’t want them to generate stunt points on every roll—that would slow the game down and take away the semi-random element that makes stunts feel like cool stunts and not just a part of your character’s abilities. The AGE system handles this by rolling doubles on 3d6, and the Mutants & Masterminds Gamemaster’s Guide gives us some suggestions for using 3d6 for your games instead of a d20 and the benefits and drawbacks involved, so that could work. We could also use a page from the existing Mutants & Masterminds rules and say that PCs generate stunt points when they score an additional degree of success than they need; they could either roll a d6 to determine how many, or keep it a straight conversion: trade in one degree of success on a skill check for 3 stunt points, or two degrees for 6. This second option means PCs need to roll well to use stunts, losing that feel of doing cool things even with an average roll, but is more in line with how the Mutants & Masterminds rules already reward players.

There’s no one right answer, so weigh the pros and cons of both against your table’s play style.

The Overhaul: Rewriting

If you want to use new rules to replace what Mutants & Masterminds already does, that’s a little trickier. In the case of maneuvers, PCs can plan ahead and accept a penalty to their action to get a different effect. The AGE system reverses the order, letting players look at their dice results before narrating what the exact effects are. Using both AGE-style combat stunts and keeping the existing list of actions and maneuvers is probably the easiest, but then what happens when a PC scores stunt points on their disarm roll? Ignore it? Let them add a stunt? This method will slow combat down a bit, as if gives PCs more choices, but if your table is pretty quick with the rules already it might be the easiest.

If you want to replace certain rules in favor of stunts, you can drop the following actions and maneuvers: Defend, Disarm, Trip, Demoralize, Feint, and Power Attack. You might also want to turn the Grab, Recover, and Smash actions into stunts of their own (costing maybe 4, 3, and 2 stunt points, respectively). Once we do that, how do we handle Advantages like Improved Trip? Do they let you simply use the stunt without spending stunt points? Or is it more balanced to have them reduce the cost of their related stunt by 1 SP? Is that too weak for an Advantage? Should we just eliminate those Advantages? Or it might be cool if they let a player “bank” unused stunt points for that specific maneuver to use when they wanted to—sort of like “charging up” a special maneuver or leading their opponent to give them an opening—but what happens if the PC charges up several feats and unleashes all their special maneuvers in one big disarm-trip-power-attack?

That last option sounds pretty cool and in-theme for a superhero game, so let’s try that.

The Tweak: Rules Check

Finally, we take our vague idea and read through what exactly we’re doing, and tweak the specific rules where we need to. For the exploration stunts, The Object of Your Attention, The Upper Hand, and With a Flourish all provide a mechanical bonus to other checks, and Mutants & Masterminds using a different difficulty scale than the AGE system. A +3 initiative bonus seems fine, but let’s increase it to +4 to line it up with the Improved Initiative Advantage. But Object of Your Attention and With a Flourish bth seem like they’re adding a circumstance bonus, so let’s say they grant a +2 bonus, or increase a +2 bonus to +5.

The roleplaying stunts have a few more rules elements. For Sway the Crowd, we might say the extra influence in limited to anyone with an Awareness lower than your Presence. Jest seems like a ripe target for a Will resistance check, say with a DC equal to your Presence + 10. Flirt sounds like it would call for an opposed check of your Presence skill against someone’s Will defense or Insight skill. And finally, Tower of Will seems like it’s adding a circumstance bonus, so again we’ll bump that up to +2.

The list of combat stunts are where things start to get a little more challenging. We’ve already talked about replacing the rules for stunts like Knock prone and Disarm with their related action rules. The Rapid Reload stunt doesn’t really apply to Mutants & Masterminds, which doesn’t track ammunition. Stay Aware seems like an easy fix, giving a PC a free Perception check as a stunt. Mighty Blow and Lethal Blow seem like they’d raise the resistance check DC of your attack by +2 and +5, respectively. Pierce Armor could be trouble, as M&M doesn’t have specific armor rules; we could say it lowers the target’s toughness save by –2, but then it becomes mechanically identical to Might Blow, so maybe we can go with ignoring a target’s Impervious rank on the related defense—this will let smaller heroes still have some chance of affecting bricks from time to time and make their efforts feel less futile. Lightning Attack lets PCs unbalance the action economy, so my first instinct is to limit it to a single standard action rather than a full action, and increase the cost to 5 SP (this also lets us figure out about how many SP a Hero Point is worth, if we later want to let PCs trade a Hero Point to generate SP). For Mutants & Masterminds, Dual Strike actually seems less prone to abuse than Lightning Attack, so let’s reduce the SP cost to 3. The Seize Initiative stunt seems good as-is. That finishes out the basic combat stunts, but maybe we want to add stunts for the Grab, Recover, and Smash actions as well, more or less using the rules for the existing actions as-in, but assigning them an SP cost.

Make your own updated list of your stunts and their costs and print out a few spare copies for players so they have quick and easy access during play.

Test Run

Any time you want to test out new rules additions or changes, it’s best to test them out first with a few friends and quickstart characters. Rules that seem innocuous during the design phase might end up very unbalanced in actual play, and ideas that seemed fun might be confusing or drag things out. For example, in test play, giving PCs with the appropriate Advantages the ability to bank stunt points for later didn’t really see any use; my players felt like they weren’t getting any benefit for the Advantages, because when they generated stunt points, they wanted to use them now, not save them up for a later attack they may never even get.

So back to the drawing board for a tweak, and now let’s say the various combat Advantages give you a 1 SP reduction in a cost of their specific maneuvers. This might means a little tweaking on character sheets (for example, you might break up Power Attack into Improved Mighty Blow and Improved Lethal Blow), but it kept things buzzing along at the table, and even though the Advantage seems minor in its stock description, it let the players have a lot more fun slinging their stunt points around. One PC unleashing a Knock Prone, Mighty Blow, and Taunt for just 3SP sure felt a lot like reading a certain spider-themed masculine hero in my childhood comics.

Over all, they roleplaying and exploration stunts brought a lot to the game and I’d use them again.The combat stunts felt a little less necessary, but were still fun once we got used to them. We ultimately settled on trading in one degree of success for 2 SP, trading two degrees of success for 4 SP, three degrees for 6 SP, or trading in a Hero Point for 4 SP (5 SP let PCs stack a little too much into a single attack, and it meant PCs could spend a Hero Point to “buy up” the DC of their first attack by +5 with lethal Blow, which tended to shut down fights fast).I personally preferred adopting the 3d6 dice pool mechanic for all our M&M rolls, but my players like the swingy-ness of the d20 more, and ultimately it’s about what makes the game more fun for everyone.

House rules aren’t really any different than official rules; the intention either way is to have the best tools to tell the stories you want to tell. So go nuts; pick and choose what you like and makes things more fun for you and your players. Always be ready to adapt, though, and be consistent with changes you make—carrying them forward for the rest of the session and beyond until they prove to not be working or stop being fun.

Ronin Roundtable: Walking the Royal Road IV: Character Subplots

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One of the pieces of advice many real-world Tarot readers give is to use the cards to tell a story. This is what makes the Royal Road such a fun tool to use in Narrating and playing Blue Rose: it’s a source to mine for inspiration when both planning and in play.

In playing a Blue Rose chronicle, each player character has a built-in subplot generator, in the form of their Calling. The Blue Rose core rulebook defines a character’s Calling as “their place in the world, their role in the grand story of life.”

To that end, while planning your story arcs, the Narrator should keep those Callings in mind to give player characters a place to “hook into” the narrative. That’s not just a stylistic thing, either: player characters recover Conviction by taking actions that are in accordance to their Calling, so part of the Narrator’s responsibility should include providing those opportunities.

We’re going to look at a way of using the Royal Road to define those opportunities. As with many of the previous “Walking the Royal Road” articles, you’ll want to make sure you have a Tarot deck (which can simply be any one of several online card randomizers), and a means of interpreting those cards to give you the maximum possibilities. The cards we use in these articles are the Shadowscapes Tarot, with art by the amazing Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, whose art has graced the covers of Blue Rose books throughout the game’s history. They also include booklets with summaries of card meanings, so we’ll be using those for our inspiration.

Method: The method for doing this involves drawing three cards, although you can use fewer or more cards if you want shorter or longer character-specific plot arcs. Essentially, each card is an “episode” in the subplot, and the character’s Calling defines the nature of the subplot.

Here’s an example.

 

 

Dame Emelynn Aros, Knight of the Blue Rose

Calling: The Sun (Championing the Everyday)

This calling is perfect for the earnest if somewhat naive Dame Emelynn, a newly-anointed Knight of the Blue Rose. She herself comes from a family of poor Jarzoni immigrants, who were nearly done in by the dangers of the Veran Marsh, but were saved by an itinerant Blue Rose Knight who was her inspiration. She is now a knight herself and wants to help the common folk whose problems are often overlooked by those with the power to do something about it.

 

First Card: Five of Swords

Interpretation: Discord and conflict of interests; feeling as though the world is against you, temptation to let everyone else be and just look to your own goals.

Plot: A somewhat dire card, the Five of Swords suggests a situation wherein it seems as if the good that the Calling wishes to accomplish has soured. The Narrator decides this means that some of Emelynn’s good deeds are soured by deed or circumstance. So she sets up an encounter with a bandit who is troubling local farmers, and Emelynn of course rides to help them. When she brings the bandit in to the local noble for justice, however, she discovers that the bandit is one of the Sovereign’s Finest, attempting to get his way into a nearby bandit gang. Not only is the envoy-bandit released, but Emelynn is expected to claim that he got away from her. While she is willing to do her duty, the farmers she was working to protect are bitter and upset with her for losing the bandit, and she has no way of defending herself.

 

Second Card: Knight of Wands

Interpretation: Change and progression toward a goal; daring and passion.

Plot: After a couple of game sessions where the locals treat her as a resented failure, the envoy contacts her psychically. He knows she took a blow to her reputation, and he’s grateful for her sacrifice, and wishes to know if he can count on her continued help. He asks if she and the other adventurers she spends time with would be willing to help him win the favor of the bandits. He’s met them, but they want him to prove himself first – the noble is going to provide a wagon of “tax money” and he wants Emelynn and her friends to act as the defenders for that wagon, fighting just enough to be believable, but then fleeing. A case full of coin is the sort of thing they’ll have to return to their lair with, so he’ll know the best place for the noble to send troops to take them all at once. They accomplish this, and the noble asks Emelynn and her friends to join in the attack on the bandit lair, which they agree to gladly.

 

Third Card: The Hanged Man

Interpretation: Letting go and surrendering to new perspectives.

Plot: This last card is the end of the subplot, where Emelynn and her friends ride with a troop of the Aldin Guard and the noble to attack the bandit camp. Upon their arrival, they find the envoy, stabbed and near death! Her adept friend heals the envoy while Emelynn herself leads the charge, fighting the leader of the bandits (with the blood of the envoy still on his blade). In the end, her heroism saves the day, and protects the valley’s residents from the depredations by the bandits. In an effort to preserve the envoy’s cover, the noble makes known the story of how Dame Emelynn’s bandit quarry escaped, and she took a noble vow to bring not only him but all of the bandits to justice, and the locals uplift her as their hero.

Ronin Round Table: Fantasy AGE Campaign Builder’s Guide

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Hey folks, Jack here. So with the release of the Fantasy AGE Companion I thought I’d tell you a bit more about the next book in the line.

Now I know some of you are probably thinking “Oh, man, the Companion took so long to come out so how long is this new book gonna take?”

Well, not nearly so long because its mostly written. Its not entirely written, there’s still some more to do on it, but the early drafts are in and looking good.

See, a few months ago I had an idea for a new book to round out the “core books” for Fantasy AGE and had some interested writers who either were not working on the Companion or had finished their work for it. So…I set them to work on this new book, the Campaign Builder’s Guide.

So what is it? Simply put, it’s a book about all the aspects of building your campaign. Each chapter covers a different topic, from encounter design to creating religions and pantheons to designing rewards and more. Each chapter is gives advice and a deep discussion of the process of designing and creating these aspects of a campaign. Then it finishes off each chapter with a detailed example of the campaign element using those guidelines and advice. So each section includes both ready to use campaign elements and guidance on how to make your own.

For example, one of our Fantasy AGE Bestiary contributors will be doing a chapter on adversary design. He’ll go through the process of creating a threat for your campaigns, the problems, pitfalls, and a few tricks you can use to really make your villains and monsters work well. Then at the end of the chapter he will present some all new monsters designed with that advice in mind.  Likewise, I’ll be writing on how to customize your game for various fantasy subgenres and then picking a genre and providing optional rules and adjustments to Fantasy AGE to make it better fit.  Each chapter will follow a similar format for different parts of a campaign. Also included will be a chapter of various random tables to help GMs generate locations, groups, and concepts on the fly.

This book is designed to be a GM’s guide in the sense it will guide GMs on how to do things for themselves more effectively and also present examples for their use.  The book will be released later this year and should round out our current lineup of core book, rules companion, and bestiary.

Fantasy AGE Companion Pre-Order & PDF

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We are pleased to let you know that you can now pre-order the Fantasy AGE Companion in our Green Ronin Online Store, and when you add the pre-order to your cart, you’ll be offered the PDF version for just $5, for immediate download. (Please make sure to click “Add To Cart” on the popup/overlay once you add the pre-order to your cart.)

The Fantasy AGE Companion provides a plethora of new rules and play options for your Fantasy AGE roleplaying game campaign. This book expands upon the core Fantasy AGE rules and provides alternative game systems so that you can build rules and characters which fit any setting and genre you desire.

Ronin Roundtable: Driven and Motivated

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One of the new elements in Modern AGE is Drive, a trait which sets your character’s emotional motivation. You pick Drive at character creation, where it provides a small capstone benefit. If you use the Conviction rules (you’ll recognize these from Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy, though they’re optional in Modern AGE) Drive also influences how it works.

But I’ll let you in on a secret: The best thing about Drive isn’t mechanical. It’s the principle of the thing.

I think virtually everyone has played a game where getting the characters involved in the story is a challenge. Roleplaying games have taken several stabs at pushing characters to act. The first tactic is no tactic at all. The game sort of assumes the GM’s job to convince the characters unfolding events are worth their time. When I was playing games as a teenager, this was virtually the only method. Combined with teenage defiance, this led to a lot of glaring and nonsense until everyone settled down. Another tactic is to weave characters into the setting, with responsibilities and problems which force them to get things done. More recent games have suggested ways to signal the GM about a thing your character might go for due to an obsession, goal or personality trait. This is a more focused version of the first, GM-as-salesperson method. Then we have background-driven motivations, ranging in length from one-liners to long backstories which are supposed to kick characters into action.

Drive is similar to all of these but isn’t quite the same. It’s a lot like “alignment” in some ways, and it absolutely is a personality trait, but its function is more than a description of the character’s psyche. Now when you get the book, this will probably read as overselling it, since Drive is not a mechanic designed to dazzle with innovation, and in nuts-and-bolts fashion, is fairly conventional. Here’s a Drive from the upcoming Modern AGE Basic Rulebook. It’ll look totally familiar to folks who’ve played a lot of RPGs.

Protector

There are a lot of threats out in the world, and you guard against them. Exactly what you consider a threat, and who or what you are protecting from it might vary, but the most important thing is you are not going to stand idly by when you could act.

Your quality is devotion to those under your protection and to your ideals, no matter what challenges lie in your path. Your downfall is recklessness when it comes to putting yourself (and others) in harm’s way to protect your charges.

Talent: Misdirection or Protect

Improvement: Health, Membership, or Reputation

What’s her motivation?

So why am I going on like this? I want to make its purpose clear. Drive is a personality trait that always answers the question: “Why are you getting involved?” Always. Because in Modern AGE, character creation assumes the question, “Are you getting involved?” is always answered in the affirmative. This is a subtle but important difference from games where the GM is supposed to sell you something, and games where the facts of the world (“I’m in the Secret Service,” or “They killed my master and I want revenge?”) dictate involvement. Drive is a personality trait which explains why your character is emotionally invested in the story.

Is this rhetorical sleight of hand? Absolutely. But it has a fine pedigree. Drive has a precedent in improv, where performers are urged not to block ideas that come out of the on-stage, brainstorming-while-acting process. So, when you crack the book open and pick a Drive, keep in mind that this isn’t a general blueprint of your attitude as much as the part of you that compels your commitment.

Drives are emotional, not factual, for a simple reason: Campaigns feature ever-changing conditions. Modern AGE also tells you to write down character Goals. Goals transform over time, but your Drive usually doesn’t. (Here’s an optional rule: If you want to change your Drive later, that’s fine, but you don’t get the benefits that come at character creation, except for how your new Drive affects Conviction, if you use it.)

Drive is primarily a way for you to develop your character’s emotional connection to the story. We can map it as a Mad Lib, as follows:

My inclination to be a [DRIVE] makes me want to get involved with [SITUATION] because [MOTIVATION], so I’ll [ACTION].

[DRIVE] is the Drive trait on your sheet.

[SITUATION] is what’s happening in the story.

[MOTIVATION] is an account of how your feelings about the situation inform your actions.

[ACTION] is what you will do.

To demonstrate how this works, I’m going to take the sample Drive, Protector, and hit the “Situation” random generator button at http://writingexercises.co.uk/plotgenerator.php. I get

A political demonstration turns into chaos.

Therefore:

My inclination to be a Protector makes me want to get involved with a political demonstration which has turned into chaos because I’m afraid of my friends getting hurt, so I’ll find them and lead them to safety.

In this model, a character goal is a situation that’s always happening—at least until you completely accomplish it.

Breaking this down makes it seem more complicated than it really is. The process is intuitive. As long as you exclude blocking the situation (by refusing to deal with it in an interesting fashion) it comes down to: “This is how my emotions push me to deal with what’s ahead.”

Drive is really a principle with an incidental game mechanic, adaptable to pretty much any game. It’s an attitude shift where getting into the story is your character’s premise, not their problem. In a fantasy game, instead of saying, “As a True Neutral character, I don’t care about this battle between good and evil,” say “As a True Neutral character, I need to accompany my friends to this struggle between the Moral Powers to test the strength of my convictions. Can I maintain detachment amidst all this struggle and suffering?”

Awkward Segue to Factual Update!

So, what’s going on with Modern AGE? The Basic Rulebook text is going through the production cycle right now. Its first setting, Lazarus (based on Greg Rucka’s comic of the same name, developed for Modern AGE by Crystal Frasier) has also entered production. The text for two small pieces of support for the game (to be announced) are also finished, and first drafts of an upcoming book are coming in.

I can’t wait to share it all with you. I’m driven—and I’ll say more about it all another time.