Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. I hope I can do this here, it's not stepping on toes because this isn't a post about specific ideas. I do have specific ideas but they're in other threads, and I'd rather not muddy the waters of those other threads. Furthermore, I do intend to run one or more Modern AGE games out of this thread or PMs that result from it.

Thing is I REALLY like Modern AGE (enough to have bought Companions) and in addition to the ideas I've already bugged you guys about I'm willing to do other games that you guys take interest in:

• I don't buy or otherwise obtain d20 materials, so asking me to run a d20 splat book of some sort is out
• Yes I have tried GURPS, it was the best system I ever ran, but I haven't wanted to play it over the last 4 years due to a lack of support.
• I would like to be as generic as possible, e.g. I'd rather you pitch me a game about "a mafia family" than I would "San Andreas County after the events of GTA V".
• I would actually prefer to avoid settings that have established canon entirely, except possibly parody games, which make a point of changing the name so it's an obvious parody. This is to avoid offense that might be given by fanboys/girls who cleave to the established canon and think breaking it is sacrilege. Even that may not be enough, so if I can dodge established canons altogether, that's great!
• I would like for 3-5 people to be on board with the idea I decide to run with, so if someone posts an idea you guys like be sure to let me know you like their idea too.

Also, side question: Is there enough interest in AGE System in general, or Modern specifically to create a Discussion Group? Because I think if I can get enough people interested in that, I might have better luck running games with the system.

Teenagers investigating supernatural events, only it isn't the corrupt landlord in a rubber mask? (Not a Scooby-Doo parody. Original characters.)

Anyway, I spent money on the Modern AGE book for a stillborn game, and I'd like to get some value out of it, so I'll be watching this thread.

Turn of the 20th Century / Gaslight urban fantasy?
This message was last edited by the user at 23:19, Sun 12 May 2019.

I'd prefer not to do teenagers since I like to minimize content restrictions. It just feels easier to also let the game be mature/adult, and then if the game doesn't have certain content (violence, graphic or otherwise/sexual, but not necessarily actually sex, and so on) that's fine, we just weren't arbitrarily restricted from it by playing teenagers, or me by running them. That said, I won't outright say no to the idea of teens, I just would prefer otherwise.

Would they also be freelancers, or government agents, or would there be a transition from one to the other?


Possibly? Maybe even steampunk, or some mode of power besides steam... "gaslight" has a fair bit of enumerable possibilities. I also have Fantasy AGE and its Companion, so while that wouldn't be used to make Warriors, Rogues, and Mages, I could see the Arcanas and spells being usable. There's also the discussion of whether Arcanas would be a regular talent or specialization. This one will involve a fair bit of houseruling to grind out what we use either way, but not "I wrote a whole 20-40 page document full of houserules"

I don't have Modern AGE yet, but I noticed they managed to put a spellcaster in the sample characters in the Quickstart.

An 18-year-old is a teenager, and still young enough not to be entirely trusted by adults, which is the reason I said "teenagers"—so that the PCs would be on their own, unable to call on official help. The story could start after high school graduation.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with government agents or freelancers.

The character creation of Modern AGE is significantly different from Fantasy AGE. At the very least I'd want players to have its Core Rulebook. I'd prefer they also have Modern AGE Companion, as that offers a lot of options, several of which are indispensable to me and it saves on me having to write extra threads to cue them in... I'll have to do some of that regardless.


RPoL says they're old enough to be trusted as adults, so I'll be operating on the assumption that they're old enough to be trusted as adults as long as RPoL has an opinion on it. Those are the characters I'd prefer in my game either way.


That can occur without me having to call them teenagers for reasons I get into below.


It occurs to me that a college fraternity/sorority¹ centered on paranormal research the college is secretly doing could be cool.


The people from Scooby Doo aren't paid by government agencies to do the work they do. They're freelancers. The people of say... Men in Black are explicitly paid by government agencies. Many paranormal investigation crews run somewhere in the middle. That idea I thought of where the local college has a frat/sorority could easily be somewhere in the middle. They get paid by the government because the government explicitly provides universities some club funding. But they're definitely not an actual government agency. They'd also likely be freelancers on paper... that is if they did any paperwork. More likely they wouldn't necessarily even be considered freelancers. They'd just be some random club.

And if they get in a little over their heads, maybe, some government agency actually catches wind of it, throws some hush money at them, and suddenly the university Physics department has an underground bunker..

Or maybe not. But you did pitch an idea where they're real monsters, so it's reasonable that some theoretical physicists might be helpful for closing portals, inventing stories and so forth. It's really up to the userbase which way we go on that.

I would want to set it in some BFN town. The one most familiar to me is a university town in Arkansas, but even then I would probably change some details.

---

^{1. Oddly when I was in college, the groups that accepted both male and female were required to be called sororities. I have no idea if this is even a thing any more, or if I just had it badly explained to me then.}

Amusingly enough a college group that investigates supernatural mysteries is pretty much the exact sort of thing that I would want to play!

Maybe instead of a sorority or fraternity it's a sort of shadowy School Club though? That way we can have plenty of character diversity and people with different reasons to be there.

To go with the Scooby Doo angle, most of them might start off thinking they'll be more debunking things (or simply not finding anything paranormal at all) and then they get into real magical shenanigans?

Sure. The difference between the two is negligible enough that it doesn't make much difference for a game. I mean there probably are differences between frat funding and club funding and the legalese involved, but I wouldn't know enough about it to know what they are.


There's something to be said for both methods, the other being In Media Res. Although it does amuse me that the hobo down the street that's drunkenly wandering around naked and talking about Tir Na Nog or whatever could definitely be a goblin and that could still fly under the mundane radar.

The biggest difference between a frat and a club is that a frat has a house where everyone sleeps and throws parties.

Interesting... It does bring up an important detail to consider: having a house means the players can just gain access to secret rooms (and by extension, supernatural and techy things) within the house as the game goes on. I also super like the idea of a frat/sorority where the initial scenario involves exploring the house.

Also a frat would make it where an adult game somewhat makes sense. As it is, the game could be either Adult or Mature because I don't run general audience games.

The idea that it starts with exploring some weird old house is kind of an interesting one. Our heroes could discover a lot of secrets that way, or maybe it was originally some kind of base or something for an order of monster hunters?

Maybe it's not exactly a normal fraternity, more like a collection of misfits who couldn't get into a normal fraternity/sorority?
This message was last edited by the user at 15:21, Mon 13 May 2019.

That was the "yet." If this discussion goes in a direction I'd want to join, I'll buy the core book.

That said, college students don't appeal to me much, so I'll see what else develops here.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:26, Mon 13 May 2019.

Try this:

Young adults in a late 21st century setting where Earth has solved her energy crisis through the use of sea colonies devoted to mariculture and energy production via Open-cycle Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.

It is an optimistic future where high-speed mag-lev trains and solar powered blended-winged airships move people and goods from place to place, where humankind is working toward building their first permanent colonies in LEO and GEO, and expansion out into the greater Solar System is continuing apace.

So where's the conflict?  Humankind is still tied to the concept of nation-states.  Regional conflicts still happen, mainly over dwindling resources needed to support the presence of those various nation-states in space.  The United Nations, while apparently powerful, is in most respects a paper tiger, and is becoming more irrelevant by the second as humankind expands to the Moon, Mars, and other places beyond their reach.

Large  multinational corporations fund the majority of humankind's explorations in space and manage the energy output of the sea colonies now powering Earth's electrical infrastructure.  They have powerful influence over the decision making processes of the nations, and are winning autonomous independence for the colonies, making of them corporate states.  Wealth is moving outward with this wave of expansion, and Earth, while still on center stage, is seeing its influence over human affairs start to dwindle.

Conjure with that a while, and endless possibilities for adventure will be seen to exist.

God I wish I had room for more games. @Horus: That setting sounds right up my street!

In reply to horus (msg # 14):

Very interesting!

Find and read the book The Millenial Project:  How to Colonize the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps by Marshall T. Savage.  While you're at it, check out The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey.

Both of these were heavily influenced by the non-fictional but speculative works of T. A. Heppenheimer (Colonies in Space) and Gerard K. O'Neil (The High Frontier).

In a possibly related vein, look at the anime' Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo (English Title:  The Girl Who Leapt Through Space)  Not as straighforward a setting, but interesting nonetheless.

In reply to horus (msg # 17):

I'll do a kindle search for the scifi books later today and add Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo to my growing list of anime recommendations (behind Cowboy Bebop).

I'd be cool with that and it's in keeping with the idea that clubs and fraternities are separate entities. If we still go with that idea, the university could be dangling frat-hood if the group explores and/or cleans up a property that the university's trying to disassociate with. They find some secrets, and the university suddenly takes interest in the property.


Your idea wasn't out of the question either, we may just have to hash that out separate from the main core of this thread since it seems to have somewhat taken hold here, all the better if you can get several people interested. I do have to ask though: Is it just the college student aspect of it? Because the idea could still be tweaked so as to make it more satisfactory to all involved if there's room for it.


Sounds like a very interesting onion. I think you would be a better cook for it than I would. If you were to set up a separate IC for it, and decided to run it in Modern AGE, I'd be probably interested, but I do think it's a little on the deeper side for me. My various physiological problems prevent me from thinking too deeply except in rapid spurts.

Oh, yes. I'd be up for a tweaked variant of it where there's a broader age range in the "club." Frankly, I'm old and that's not a time of life I care to revisit, even fictionally!

I personally like the college club/fraternity/sorority idea. Having characters with a more common bond and a more intimate shared setting is generally a good thing.

The broader the group the less they start to have in common...
This message was last edited by the user at 18:00, Mon 13 May 2019.

I don't think that I can ask you a question here, because I think if you answer it, that would count as calling a character, but I think there might be a workaround even if the majority of the group is still club/frat members.

There are possibilities for going out of that age group, especially if a character is a teacher or sponsor.

I still think that most of the characters should be part of the same 'scooby gang' as it were though...
This message was last edited by the user at 18:15, Mon 13 May 2019.

In reply to CaesarCV (msg # 23):

I'm in full agreement about the desirability of a common bond, especially in PBP.

A wizard has died. (This is a rare and terrible thing.)

It wasn't in a Duel Arcane or anything, he just... died. Here's the thing: there is such a thing as an inquest (seeing how he died, basically if it was murder or not and who was responsible) but that's not our business, today at least.

Our business, today is that there are rival claims on his mansion, his sanctorum, his ongoing projects, any golems, automata or simulacra on the property, his Book, and so on.

We work for one of those claimants, a legal party who has maybe a 50-60% claim on the goods. There is an argument going on about that. We're just going to go in quiet-like and nab the most important things. Posession being most of the law, our boss might end up with it, or just have a bargaining chip for something else.  The odds of finding material that could be used to blackmail someone is non-zero. There might be evidence of some kind, too.

We're also going to make sure any pending Deals he made aren't going to implode or end up causing some sort of invasion. Several of his projects might also be... delicate.

We are almost certainly not the only group doing this.

Other than the above, it's the modern world. If we make too much noise, the police are going to get involved, and that's the worst-case scenario for everyone.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:56, Mon 13 May 2019.

In reply to Smoot (msg # 25):

I like it!

Plot Twist: It's a Megadungeon... I dunno, I'll be honest, that sort of game could go multiple different directions, anything from political intrigue (which I'm not as good at per above) to--as noted--a megadungeon. Or even just a dungeon. Seems like if it's just a regular sized dungeon, the only way I could avoid making it a one shot is to force people out of the mansion from time to time through arrest or what have you. The idea is still a possibility, I'd just need to think on it.

Other than that, are there any reservations about the paranormal investigators?

Good by me.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 27):

If you need any input, I've been sorta jamming on the idea for a bit, and would be okay giving you what notes I've got.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 27):

I like the idea of paranormal investigators. I'd personally like to include the college/scooby doo thing too though. Just give it a little more flavor. That's just me though ha ha.

I mean that's pretty much the entire conversation, and I'm reasonably certain the one person who didn't want it to be in the college said something about being ok with the idea that not everyone's an actual student... what I'm looking at so far is

1. Not actual Scooby Doo, or a parody, they were just used as an example
   
2. Either club or frat. There was some discussion about preference to a club, and some about how a frat has the advantage of a house... I'm not sure which way everyone preferred to go on that. I know you said club because of something about diversity, but I only ever saw like 2 frats and 1 sorority that didn't have much in the way of diversity I'd hazard that the diversifying agent is that not everyone who believes in something bigger than horoscopes is rich white folks, and not everyone who doesn't believe has zero curiosity
   
3. There was some discussion about mundane vs. actual paranormal activity, but I think both can be facilitated with the exploration of a house
   
4. There was "not an actual frat" and the notion that the university could be bribing the not-frat with frat status on the condition that they explore the building and report back about its viability to house their fraternity (which I can also pepper with intrigue and some horror aspected hostile intent on the part of some NPC in admin)

Am I missing anything? Anything you would like to add? are the assumptions above acceptable, or any of them not?
This message was last edited by the user at 23:28, Mon 13 May 2019.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 31):

I like those ideas.

I like those ideas a lot! Although I admittedly wont' be able to do much until next week...

Two more things I'm thinking about before I post the game

1. I'm thinking about making the game straight pulpy
   
2. I probably want to do Extraordinary Powers as Specializations (meaning they require 4th level).

Any objections?

With this many posts in the thread, it shoul be clear by now whether or not there is sufficient interest in this idea to warrant moving on to creating a game based on it.

Please save all further discussion for the game itself, created by steelsmiter, and linked to in the post immediately following this one.

Thank you.

Ok. I went with an adult rating. link to another game