Modern Age: Classless Classy

Hello and welcome to The Bard's College. I am The Bard and today we'll be diving into the social classes, backgrounds, and optional origins rules for the Modern Age RPG.

One of the things I really love about Modern Age is that it's a classless system. When you create a character in Modern Age (or Cthulhu Awakens for that matter) everything feels so open to you. Your concept is never limited by arbitrary divisions into predesigned archetypes. Now I realize my opinion here might be somewhat biased by the years I've spent playing certain other games *cough* & *cough* but background influence notwithstanding it's a feature I really love in ttrpg design.

By Justin Nichol, CC BY 4.0, modified from its original state

There's not really much to say on the lack of character classes. They do exist as an optional system presented in the Modern Age Mastery Guide, but since the classless nature of the game is part of why I love it I’m skipping these. Maybe some other time, if people want and you all behave and eat your vegetables.

Moving on, for those of you who've not checked out the Modern Age Basic Rulebook or my last article, both of which you totally should, social classes are part of the standard character creation process for Modern Age which determines which backgrounds you can select as well as impacting your starting Resources. I am not a fan of social classes.

Now I don't want to overstate it. Social classes are nowhere near as prescriptive as character classes and shouldn't be seen as equivalent, but they do guide player choices. Within the Basic Rulebook there's an option for selecting a profession outside your character's social class, which additional books expand to work in both directions. The Modern Age Companion does mention very briefly that some campaigns may restrict or completely disregard social class, but there's not really guidelines for such and I think that's owed to social class not really being essential to the gameplay.

Personally, unless you're telling a story where the relative social positions of players play an integral role I recommend fully disregarding social class during character creation. It contributes very little to the overall gameplay experience and could influence player choices in a way that takes away from group story potential.

Next up are backgrounds. Backgrounds are where Modern Age characters really move from mental concept to mechanical creation. There's a decent selection of options presented in the Basic Rulebook, 12 to be precise, and subsequent books expand these options, with 14 from the Companion (including 6 “people” backgrounds we’ll get into shortly), 24 from the Threefold Campaign Setting, 6 from the World of Lazarus, and 8 from Cyberpunk Slice. The Companion also presents details for making custom backgrounds, opening up nearly infinite possibilities. Suffice to say, we’ve got options.

Mechanically backgrounds grant characters 1-2 ability increases, 2-3 focuses, 1 talent, and potentially a minor additional bonus thematically associated with the background and setting. The available variety and versatility here really opens up character concepts. Given the custom background rules, it's entirely reasonable for players to swap out a specific benefit from their background for something else that better suits their character (discussed with the GM, of course).

Backgrounds cover a lot of ground in character creation, effectively representing everything that makes up your character prior to the events of the game. For most modern settings it would be enough to describe experiences, but when playing in a setting where there are fantastical elements backgrounds also need to encompass another element, ancestry.

By Di (they-them), CC BY-SA 4.0, not modified

There's been a lot of talk recently about what you want to call these aspects of ttrpg characters, be it "races" or "species" or something else. In the Fantasy Age 2e Core Rulebook they're referred to as ancestries, which I believe makes a lot of sense, but in Modern Age the default character creation rules assume everyone’s playing human characters. To address this, the Companion introduced "people" backgrounds which function like any other background, but represent these ancestries. Fortunately these rules also specify you should disregard social class when selecting a people background so we get to dodge that entire discussion (thank you MAge devs).

This system is certainly adequate, but in my opinion it has a few opportunities for improvement. In Fantasy Age 2e ancestries provide a number of focuses, talents, weapon proficiencies, special qualities, the character's base speed, and potentially ability increases, with two traits being dependent on a random roll as opposed to one for Modern Age backgrounds. Meanwhile Fantasy Age 2e backgrounds provide only a single focus.

Personally I think there's a grand opportunity to divide these more evenly into ancestries and backgrounds. I’m still working on this in detail, but my concept is this. Players choose an ancestry which provides a selection of special traits linked to that ancestry’s physical characteristics, similar to the ancestries from Fantasy Age 2e but limited to physical traits. Backgrounds would then provide an additional focus, talent, and roll on the background table, all representing cultural and experiential characteristics.

If we were then to assign values to each ancestry trait we could easily implement a system where traits could be mixed and matched for mixed ancestry characters. Giving credit, this structure takes inspiration from the excellent An Elf & an Orc Had a Little Baby series from DM’s Guild, but applies it to AGE system games.

When we’re finished with ancestry and background we’ll jump into professions. If what we covered today represents where your character came from, professions represent where they are now, but I’ve rambled on long enough already so I think I’ll save those for a future post. 

As last time, if I've intrigued you, definitely go pick up Modern Age or any of the other AGE System games that strike your fancy.

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Until then game well, my friends.