Hello everyone! I have been away for quite a while and with the new year, I have been taking stock and wanting to be more engaged than I have been. I have not always been able to run the games I have wanted or how I have wanted this past year, but as a nurse during this pandemic, gaming has been a much needed distraction and I have been lucky in that I have friends that have been incredibly supportive and willing to be patient with me. That said, I wanted to kick off the first month of the year with a project that I have been working on and off on for years. Ever since discovering the AGE system, I have felt that it is uniquely positioned as an elegantly simple ruleset for players new to tabletop roleplaying that can also depict any number of different settings.

THE ELEVATOR PITCH

AGE of Omens is a campaign setting for Modern AGE. Taking inspiration from movies like Indiana Jones and comics like Hellboy (and a healthy dose of Lovecraft), it is an action-packed setting wherein the players take on the roles of gritty investigators and daring adventurers in a fictionalized 1920s world full of mysteries and horrors. While facing the supernatural forces that seek to consume the world in a new dark age, the player characters will not only fight to survive but also try not to succumb to their own demons and maintain their grasps on their fragile psyche.

GAME MECHANICS

Sanity: Just as Health measures a characters physical resilience, all characters have a pool of Sanity that reflects their mental state. As such, not all attacks affect the body and even confronting threats that are so beyond the realm of normal experience will do horror damage. Rather than power points, Sanity is also a resource to tap into magic and psychic abilities.

Omens: Replacing the Modern AGE core concept of Drives are Omens, encounters with the supernatural that have touched the characters’ normal lives and has permanently changed how they view the world. These can range from recurrent vivid dreams of an underwater realm where elder horrors sleep or having delved into an ancient tomb expecting to discover long lost treasure and instead finding yourself the victim of an ancient curse. In game terms, a character’s omen affects how characters react when their Sanity is reduced to 0, when their resolve and grasp on reality is broken. For example:

Terrified: When your character is reduced to 0 Sanity, you must make a TN 15 Willpower (Courage) test at the start of each of your turns. If you fail, you must Run before taking any other actions to move as far away from danger as possible.