The RPG Folder in Outer Space

Has it been 3 months since my last RPG folder post?? Yeah, I think so. Here's another batch of three RPGs I clicked on randomly (like, I close my eyes and move the mouse around and click a file. Hope there's nothing evil in here.

e-Adventure Tiles: Swamps by Edward Bourelle is exactly what the title says it is. A packet of something like 16 1" gridded swamp tiles. Print, trim, put minifigs on 'em. They look pretty good. I have almost no experience with this style of gaming but when I was using a battle mat I understood the value in having a precise map. For certain types of games.

Kingscairn: a Troika! Zine by Uyuxo Games with lots of public domain art by William Thomas Horton is a Troika! zine.

The zine gives you some random tables, six new backgrounds, and a few locations.

Right off the bat it's good to go because it uses a d20 table, shattering the d6 aesthetic of Troika!. I dig it. Fuck the system, right?

Holidays, guilds, random names, backgrounds. The locations include some random encounters and descriptions.

Overall, this looks like a very quick and dirty little setting you can just sort of run with. No fuss.

What the actual fuck have I gotten myself into here? First of all, it's a Fate based game. And... y'know. That's great. I am just not very into that game. I talk about it here a little bit. Second, and more importantly, this motherfucker is 382 pages long. Now... I'm a gonna preemptively state that no game needs to be 382 pages, especially one based on a fairly loose, narrative-leaning system. But hey. That's my lazy ass.

Modernity is a game by someone. I have not found the author's name yet. It is a Creative Commons game, which is awesome. Props to them for making their vision something for everyone to use and enjoy. Looks like Glacier Peak Games did this.

Ok. I'm on page 11 and it looks like we're starting. So now I'm getting a feel for how you can get to 382 pages.

I rib, but y'know.

Art is part of the setting, and this one has a lot of CG style art. However I can't seem to find the name of the artist in the credits. The pieces are signed and I think it says "Dash Reed". But I Googled the name and came up empty. Dunno. The pieces are OK, but not my cup of tea.

The game is basically an X-Files kind of thing. Hidden world in plain sight. The book says this:

Modernity is a thriller setting where modern meets mystery, where fact

fights fiction, and where skepticism slams headlong into superstition.

The several billion denizens of an otherwise mundane Earth circa “right

now” share reality with tabloid headlines that can be revealed in all their

grisly truth by heroes who dare to uncover their secrets.

I do pick up a tone in the opening pages of the text proper. First paragraph mentions "frou-frou coffee" and "faux news". One of the three modes of play (Contemporary, Occult, Noir) says "for the hyperconnected, media-saturated, politically correct, information age that we all live in." So maybe the author here has a bit of an axe to grind. Dunno.

This is a fat book and obviously a lot of work went into it. But it's definitely not for me. Check it out if you like X-Files and conspiracy theory fringe types of games.