Through Monday, August 25 we revive (for a third time!) the December 2020 Modern AGE and Expanse RPG Bundle featuring two RPGs that use the Adventure Game Engine (AGE) from Green Ronin Publishing: Modern AGE, for high-power action from the Industrial Revolution onward (2018), and The Expanse Roleplaying Game (2019), based on James S. A. Corey’s mega-popular science fiction novels of diplomacy, discovery, and danger in the future Solar System.
The AGE rules system powers the Fantasy AGE RPG (we presented the 2E version in June) and Blue Rose (presented in March 2020). AGE is a traditional roll-high system where you roll 3D6, including an off-colored Stunt Die, against a target number. Each failed Challenge Test introduces a complication that pushes the narrative forward. The Stunt Die breaks ties and generates Stunt Points, which let you pull off special maneuvers or earn extra benefits in combat and social encounters. Every action type has a menu of Stunt effects. Modern AGE characters have a Background (social class), any of two dozen Professions, and a Drive (motivation) like Achiever, Caregiver, Rebel, Visionary, or Ecstatic. Any d20 or 5E player should find the straightforward combat system comfortable, and you can tweak the damage rules for Cinematic, Pulpy, and Gritty campaign styles.
Funded in a July 2018 Expanse RPG Kickstarter campaign, The Expanse RPG is a standalone adaptation of the Modern rules. Expanse characters have a Native Gravity, Income level, and Fortune points you can spend to reduce damage and change die results. Advanced Challenge Tests may have a Success Threshold with degrees of success. Combat inflicts damage as various conditions, including Hindered, Deafened, and Free Falling. The extensive chapter on space travel presents scientifically accurate travel between planets, communications times, and ship construction rules – no warp drives or deflector shields here. Forty pages of the 260-page core rulebook cover the Expanse setting, and another 40 give gamemastering advice. The chapter on Threats is twice as long as the one on Rewards, which will sound right to Belters grousing about their low wages mining ice for Mao-Kwikowski Mercantile or Pur’N’Kleen.
The nine-book Expanse series was a story ten years in the telling. The first book, Leviathan Wakes (2011), introduced righteous starship officer James Holden, the crew of the Rocinante, and an enigmatic alien Protomolecule that reshapes human beings for unknown purposes. Later installments pushed all the characters far beyond known space and way out of their comfort zones. Leviathan Falls, published in late November 2021, concluded the tale with an ending Polygon calls “in equal parts heart-wrenching and hopeful.”
The Expanse saga has often drawn comparisons to roleplaying games, as befits its early development as co-author Ty Franck’s homebrew d20 Modern play-by-post RPG on a gaming forum. The Expanse novels present wheels-within-wheels plots with dozens of characters doing lots of things everywhere. Likewise, the RPG supports many campaign frameworks: freelance traders, paramilitaries, Belter rebels, political operatives, or investigators tracking the mysterious Protomolecule. In a June 2019 Gnome Stew review of The Expanse RPG, Jared Rascher said, “I think this is my favorite iteration of the AGE System rules. There are so many useful tools, and enough bits to make a game interesting without adding in bells and whistles like powers or magic. […] Not only is it a solid game for presenting The Expanse, but it is a good ruleset for hard sf games in general.”
Pay just US$17.95 to get all six titles in this revived offer’s Modern Collection (retail value $85) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Modern AGE Basic Rulebook and the Modern AGE Companion; the cross-dimensional campaign setting Threefold; Enemies & Allies, for Threefold and other Modern AGE games; the short adventure Missions: Warflower; and the Modern AGE Game Master’s Kit.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $32.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get this revival’s entire Expanse Collection with five more titles worth an additional $80, including the complete standalone The Expanse RPG core rulebook, The Expanse Game Master’s Kit, the full-length six-scenario campaign Abzu’s Bounty, the short adventure Salvage Op, and – newly added in this revival! – Ships of the Expanse, a 144-page guide to every kind of spacefaring vehicle in the Solar System. And if you purchased this offer during any of its three previous runs, you get the newly added Ships of the Expanse automatically on your Wizard’s Cabinet download page and in your linked DriveThruRPG Library. When you buy a Bundle of Holding early, you never worry about missing a title added later – even much later.
An AGE of wonder and action has returned! But get this revived December 2020 Modern AGE & The Expanse RPG Bundle before it once again passes into history Monday, August 25.
