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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
 
$8.99
Average Rating:4.3 / 5
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Davin W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/25/2023 09:18:54

A fun and entertaining world, an great companion/prequel to one of my faovrite RPGs I've ever played, Trinity.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Jason C. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 04/27/2020 14:27:16

As the Trinityverse series chugs through its second editions on Kickstarter, it's worth taking a moment to look back at some of the material that made this trilogy beloved in its White Wolf days (the Trinityverse is now owned by Onyx Path). Adventure! was the third game in the series, the only standalone book, and is among the most beloved by Trinityverse fans. Aberranmt had its (surprisingly prescient) near-future vision of microcelebrity superheroes struggling not to be consumed by their own powers, and Trinity took a stab at a combination of 1970s psi-fi and optimistic tean sf. For the series to take a plunge into period pulp action... well why not?

Adventure!'s system is a stripped down version of the Trinity-verse era version of the White Wolf house system; die pools rolled trying to beat target numbers. It's serviceable, and supplemented by, as always, the top tier supernatural powers written by the White Wolf team. It depicts an alternate 1920s-30s in which a mysterious experiment resulted in (or coincided with the appearance of) the development of weird abilities - some not even known to their possessors. It doesn't pretend to any kind of alt-historical verisimilitude (unlike Aberrant and Trinity which delve deeply intot their respective timelines). A! says instead that history is yet to be written, and turns your characters loose in an Indiana Jones/The Shadow-esque world.

The dramatic editing rules were among the innovations of this game, rarely seen in mainstream games to this point. These permit you to spend a currency to make small or even dramatic changes in the fictional world, and leaves the in-world reality of that currency an open question. (The second edition has closed that question in a very interesting way, emphasizing quite strongly that this ability actually fully exists in the game world.)

Nevertheless, the emphasis on these rules isn't truly reflected in the rest of the game. Much has to be done for the modern player to navigate the stereotypes of the pulp adventure world in a way that isn't harmful and doesn't reinforce those stereotypes. Few pulp adventure games have really attempted to dig into the roots of the genre and what you may find, excise or salvage from it, and A! is no exception to this. If there is an area where improvement could be found, it is in that, and in the awkward melding of the capacity-focused Storytelling system with the fictional-focused dramatic editing system.

At this late date, if you haven't read it, you definitely should. And given the improvements to the Trinityverse games so far, I can't wait for the next edition of Adventure! to come across.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Bryon M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/01/2015 19:43:39

Adventure! is a game of "pulp" high adventure set in the 20's and early 30's. The game wants to hearken the feel of Flash Gordon, Indiana Jones, The Shadow and other cliffhanger serial movies and books. Does the game do this? Is it fun? I'll break it down and show how the game has some strengths and weaknesses that almost pull it off.

Layout: First things first, lets get to the PDF layout out of the way. Though this may not be a deal breaker kinda element it can determine ease of use and when having to flip though everything when first starting out can be quite frustrating. Everything is pretty easy to find and reference which is a good thing. The setting is located in the beginning in book 1 and laid out nicely. Book 2 has all the rules and character creation. Again everything is clean and neat and laid out in a logical easy to find fashion. Now the downside. The setting is again set up front and written like you joined a secret order. Some of the notes and typing are a pain to read and dull. Also with the setting set up right out of the gate somethings come off as huh? In all I did not like it. It's bland, boring and with it being up front gives off a bad vibe to the whole book. Things come a little more together once you get to character creation but why this was done I haven't a clue. The short story is fine as a starter but the rest just falls flat. Overall *** out of five

Character Creation: Character creation is really simple and easy to do. The uses a 0-5 point box system and based on your choices you get points to spend to flesh out your character. It is really well put together and with skills, subsets and knacks you can really make a varied and interesting character. The only con is the one sheet instruction summary has a couple of steps out of order. There are stats that should be tallied up at the end but is has you do it mid character and then update again at the end. Pointless. For newbies this might cause some much unneeded erasing and or confusion but overall doesn't kill any fun in creating a character you want. ****

Game-play: The meat and potatoes of any game. For me this can really make or break a game. So the basics are this is a dice pool game using D10's. You basically take your skill and base stat add them together to see how many D10's you roll and try and roll a 7+ on each one. If you you do that counts as one success. I'm going to be honest, I'm not a fan of dice pool games in general. To many dice needed sifting through just to get one success. It's cumbersome. I get why people like it as it gives a very power-gaming feel to things but just isn't my cup of tea. The aim though is to create high drama and extraordinary "pulp" human beings. In essence because things can be relatively easy, even for beginning characters, to pull things off, the rules work most of the time. Where it fails though is the fast paced feel of combat. The game wants you to be fast and furious, and give a sense of jumping headlong into dangerous situations full of peril and high stakes. Due to the nature of rolling sometimes 10 dice at a time the intial combat resolution becomes bogged down. If kept to some simple one off rolls the rules work but combat with multiple targets and people can become a nightmare to slog through. This part really defeats the spirit of the game. An interesting addition to the rules though are inventions. The basic though behind it is really great to pull off the cheesy special effects like weapons and gadgets of Batman, Flash Gordon, G-Men, Rocketeer and so forth. There is a lot of fun to be had here but watch out there's also some serious crunch involved. It's not overly hard but things can get cumbersome so if you are not into basic Algebra then this might turn you off. ***

Setting: In short dull, that's the simplest way of putting it. There are a couple of so-so short stories that introduce main NPC's and the overarching dilemma but it just didn't captivate me. Everything is laid out lik agent files and for the most part a lot of the files and notes are a frustration in reading and following along. Things are smashed together and look like huge blocks of run on sentences and paragraphs. Just a huge mess. For beginning game-masters there is no sample adventure or adventure hooks with ideas to get games rolling. As pulp can sometimes be hard to fully flesh out of the gate this would have been an nice addition. As it stands if you have no idea how to run a pulp campaign or this is your first foray into running a game, well good luck your dead in the water. Unforgivable. *

Final Conclusion: Adventure! sets out to create a pulp game and in some cases does just that. The characters you can make hit the mark. The system at intervals can help weave a great "Pulp" story of your own making. Just don't look to the makers of the game to help flesh that out if your new to this all. Stay away from prolonged combat as it becomes a tedium of dice rolling and figuring out dice splitting for multiple actions and things will stay moving. All in all Adventure! is a decent game in need of a better combat system and setting. **1/2 out of five



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Eric P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/24/2014 16:11:12

As a PDF, it's a bit primitive, and the scan is a bit better than fax quality. As a game, this has long been one of my favorites -- I bought it in hard copy when it first appeared, and recently purchased the PDF for an extra copy while running the game. Some of the other reviewers seem not to know that this game is 13 years old and thus does not benefit from the continued evolution of the Storytelling game system (the version used here and in the other Aeon games is a bit simplified from oWoD), but it's easy enough to come up with a few house-rules compromises if it's important to you to use a different version of the rules. Or you could wait for the revised version Onyx Path is supposed to do soon, I guess.

The big innovation for the rules here is Dramatic Editing, the players' use of the power stat (Inspiration) to gain a little control over the story and narrate the kinds of improbable conveniences that benefit heroes of the pulp genre -- I've seen other, later games use a similar mechanic (like Pulp Hero and Spirit of the Century). It's also a way for them to get out of cliffhangers: let the players pool their points and narrate their way out whatever bind you've left them in from last time.

The character types range from peak human Daredevils through psychics to the super-powered Stalwarts (on their way to becoming the Aberrants of the two other Aeon games), and the rules let players build starting characters that could plausibly be world-class heroes right out of the gate. The setting allows for everything from mad scientists with airships to lost jungle civilizations to mole-men from the Hollow Earth, and it's rather simple to tweak the setting for the 30s rather than the 20s if your players are itching to punch Nazis, too.

The book features a LOT of fiction and background, and it's all front-loaded, so if you hate that sort of thing, you'll hate this, but it's generally of good quality and excellent for bringing you into the pulp mindset and the setting: the idea seems to be that you've bought the book because you are a fan of pulp stories, and the rules are just there to help you tell your own.

In short: there are lots of good pulp games out there, but if you have a player-base that's used to the Storytelling game system, this one will serve you well.

I give the game 5 stars and the PDF 3, for an average of 4.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Michael D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/17/2014 21:38:44

The layout is godawful. There are about a dozen pages of fiction about characters that the players won't care about before the utterly useless Table of Contents for Book 1. All of the rules are in Book 2, which you won't even see reference to until you reach it 100+ pages in. All of this is aggravation is pretty much unavoidable on the first read because there are no bookmarks. And what's the payoff? Slightly homebrewed new World of Darkness, complete with all of the problems that would later be half fixed by God Machine. Not worth the awful layout. Not by a longshot.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Kerry H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/03/2013 00:25:43

no bookmarks, over 100 pages of fluff before you get to the actual rules, poor OCRing or maybe it's just poor layout design



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Roger L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 05/26/2012 09:03:21

White Wolf hat einige gute Rollenspiel-Systeme her­aus­ge­bracht, eines der eher unbe­kann­ten jedoch ist das Aeon­ver­sum, wel­ches aus den Sys­te­men Adven­ture!, Aber­rant und Tri­nity (ehe­mals Aeon) besteht. Da diese Sys­teme zur Zeit seit eini­gen Jah­ren zu mei­nen abso­lu­ten Favo­ri­ten gehö­ren, möchte ich die Chance nicht ver­tun und sie Euch vorstellen. Da die drei Sys­teme zeit­lich auf­ein­an­der auf­bauen und durch­aus auch ver­bun­dene Sto­ry­fä­den haben, beginne ich mit Adven­ture! Das Aus­ru­fen­zei­chen gehört im Übri­gen zum Titel des Systems.

Jeder von Euch hat Indiana Jones gese­hen, viele ken­nen Jäger des ver­lo­re­nen Schat­zes oder ähnli­che Filme. Das Genre die­ser Filme nennt sich „Pulp“. Der Begriff rührt von der mat­schi­gen Papier­masse, die frü­her genutzt wurde, um das bil­lige Papier von Gro­schen­ro­ma­nen zu pres­sen. Eine andere Her­lei­tung besagt, dass die The­men die­ser Aben­teuer wild gemischt sind, also eine the­ma­ti­sche „Matsche“.

Worum geht es in Adventure! ?

Ende der Zwan­zi­ger Jahre des Zwan­zigs­ten Jahr­hun­derts pas­sierte etwas auf unse­rer Erde, was deren Lauf ver­än­dern sollte. Soge­nannte Z-Wellen ras­ten um den Pla­ne­ten und ver­än­der­ten einige Men­schen, gaben Ihnen Gaben, die einst als Magie oder Legen­den abge­tan wurde. Es sind nur äußerst wenige Men­schen, aber irgend­et­was sorgt dafür, dass sich diese Men­schen zusam­men­fin­den. Natür­lich sind nicht alle her­zens­gu­ter Natur..

Als Spie­ler spielt man einen die­ser beson­de­ren Men­schen, die soge­nann­ten Inspi­rier­ten. Deren Gaben müs­sen nicht mal etwas beson­de­res sein. Viel­leicht sind sie sehr ath­le­tisch, sehr wage­mu­tig (oder ver­rückt…) und haben bei ihren irr­sin­ni­gen Aktio­nen ein­fach nur unver­schäm­tes Glück. Andere schei­nen nie von Kugel getrof­fen wer­den zu kön­nen. Dann jedoch sind die dort, die sel­te­ner sind…die Gedan­ken lesen kön­nen, die LKWs hoch­he­ben kön­nen, die nicht altern und vie­les mehr. Dadurch, dass diese Men­schen sich wie von Geis­ter­hand von­ein­an­der ange­zo­gen füh­len, ent­ste­hen Frak­tio­nen. Man­che wol­len for­schen, wol­len die Welt ergrün­den und der Mensch­heit ein gol­de­nes Zeit­al­ter berei­ten, wie die mys­te­riöse Aeon Society for Gent­le­man. Andere träu­men von Welt­herr­schaft, andere schwin­gen sich auf zum Super­gangs­ter­boss. Und wie es so oft kom­men muss, pral­len diese Frak­tio­nen auf­ein­an­der. Manch­mal direkt, manch­mal nur sehr indi­rekt durch von Ihnen jeweils bewirkte Aktio­nen. Und so ent­wi­ckeln sich Geschich­ten, die phan­tas­tisch sind, die mit­rei­ßend sind.

Das Set­ting sind die gol­de­nen Zwan­zi­ger Jahre und schon nach kur­zem Nach­den­ken klin­geln etli­che magi­sche Begriffe in der Erin­ne­rung: Pro­hi­bi­tion, Al Capone, Flap­pers, Art Deco, Expe­di­tio­nen, Schwarz­afrika, Zep­pe­line, Alt-Ägypten und seine Pyra­mi­den, Archäologie.….

Wie spielt sich Adventure?

Da es sich um ein White Wolf Sys­tem han­delt, wird hier mit w10 gewür­felt. Die Schwie­rig­keit ist immer 7 und 1en zäh­len nur dann als Pat­zer, wenn man sonst kei­nen Erfolg gewür­felt hat. Dadurch hat man nur eine Chance von 40% auf Erfolg pro Wür­fel, das ver­schnel­lert jedoch auch eini­ges. Schwie­rig­kei­ten wer­den durch die Anzahl der nöti­gen Erfolge bestimmt. Das Sys­tem krän­kelt am Pro­blem vie­ler Rol­len­spiel­sys­teme, denn spä­tes­tens im Kampf wird zu viel gewür­felt. Ich selbst lasse nur mys­ti­sche Fähig­kei­ten und Kampf wür­feln. Und selbst für letz­tes habe ich ein ver­schnel­ler­tes Sys­tem erdacht, wel­ches zwar gefähr­li­cher ist, aber auch spassiger. Da Spiel läuft flüs­sig ab, vie­les ent­scheide ich durch einen Blick auf den Bogen des Cha­rak­ters: „Ah, du willst dies Schloss kna­cken? OK; Dex­te­rity und Leger­de­main auf 6 sollte rei­chen“ Nur wenn ich zweifle, lasse ich auch die­ses Würfeln.

Die beson­de­ren Fähig­kei­ten der Inspi­rier­ten haben kein Rating von 1 bis 5, son­dern sind so, wie sie sind. Das, was diese Men­schen zu beson­de­ren Indi­vi­duen macht, ist der Regel­me­cha­nis­mus namens „Inspi­ra­tion“, der von 1 bis 10 gehen kann. Die meis­ten Spie­ler­cha­rak­tere wer­den jedoch nie mehr als 5 Punkte haben. Die­ser Mecha­nis­mus wird benutzt, um die beson­de­ren Fähig­kei­ten zu akti­vie­ren oder deren Stärke zu bestimmen.

Eine beson­dere Sache in Adven­ture ist das soge­nannte Drama Edit­ing. Ein beson­ders mäch­ti­ger Mecha­nis­mus in mei­nen Augen, da er doch die Geschichte des Spiel­lei­ters ändern kann! Stellt Euch vor, ihr seid in einem abstür­zen­den Pro­pel­ler­flug­zeug über den Anden, der Böse­wicht hat den letz­ten Fall­schirm genom­men und ist laut lachend gesprun­gen. Nun hat der Spiel­lei­ter aber nie die Spinde an der Bord­wand genauer beschrie­ben, son­dern nur erwähnt, dass dort wel­che sind. Wie durch Zufall durch­sucht einer der Cha­rak­tere recht hek­tisch die Spinde und siehe da — es sind noch genau eine pas­sende Anzahl wei­te­rer Fall­schirme an Bord, wohl bei der letz­ten War­tung lie­gen gelas­sen. Sie sind etwas löch­rig und auch mod­rig, aber sie wer­den den Tod der Spie­ler unwei­ger­lich abwen­den. Der Spie­ler, der das initi­iert hat, streicht sich zwei Punkte Inspi­ra­tion und die Spie­ler überleben..

Wie leite ich Adventure?

Um Adven­ture mög­lichst glaub­haft zu lei­ten, sollte man sich als Spiel­lei­ter einige der Filme des Pulp-Genres anse­hen, eini­ges an Geschichte der Region, in wel­cher man spie­len will, lesen und auch Musik der 20er Jahre hören. Das in Summe ver­schafft ein gutes Gefühl, wie die Welt auf­ge­baut ist. Die Sys­tem­lek­türe ist gering gehal­ten, denn es gibt nur das Grund­re­gel­werk, die­ses aber in zwei Vari­an­ten. Die erste und ältere, also die ori­gi­nale, basiert auf dem W10 Sys­tem. Die neuere, wenn auch schon einige Jahre alt, basiert auf dem AD&D D20 Sys­tem. Ich per­sön­lich bevor­zuge die erste Ver­sion. Der Hin­ter­grund bei­der Bücher deckt sich. Adven­ture wurde prä­miert mit dem Origins Award 2002 Best Role Play­ing Game — alleine das spricht für die Qua­li­tät des Spieles.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Michael H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/23/2012 14:58:38

My initial response to the game was "Wow!" The fluff is compelling to read in itself, and the setting is thereby very well illustrated. It is set in 1924, in the hopeful turmoil between the world wars. The world was not yet all mapped out and there were many places and things to discover. Add in the fictional element of z-ray inspired super powers and you have a lot of fun pulpiness. The art is good, and really gets the feel. The game's mechanics are familiar to anyone who has played anything else with the dot system, as we called it back in the day. Very good for story and roleplay. Players can spend inspiration points to alter or help the narration, adding their take to the ongoing chronicle.

In brief. Get it!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Mark H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/10/2009 01:09:37

This game is fantastic. It is the only reason I am still gaming after 3 years and it still gets a kick every time we play. Do not be fooled by the D20 version, this is the original and by far the best.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by David B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/28/2008 22:38:03

I love this system. For those of you not familiar the Trinity Universe has three main era's (Trinity mid 22nd century far future game, Aberrant early 21st century, and Adventure early 20th Century) that were released in reverse order and each have slightly different themes but share a metaplot. It includes a few extension on the standard Aberrant Rule set (many of which are backwards compatable to abberant games) that allow for a better gaming experience. Examples include abilities to let players do minor alterations to a scene (as if they were the storyteller and only with storyteller permission) that allow for more of the twists of fate and coincidences that the system wishes to encourage. At first this sounded like a bad idea to me but with the system it presents it went off very smoothly and naturally in my game. The characters are no where near as powerful in raw terms as character from the two later settings but with the emphasis on storytelling backgrounds organization and abilitys which manifest as luck they tend to work very well and be fun to both play and manage. The story also has a great system for high end (over 5 dot) backgrounds, and balancing gadgets and equipment produced by supernaturally intelligent characters both with wider applications in other games in the system.

The general mood of the game is more in line with globe trotting adventures like Indiana Jones with a little of the Film Noir flavor, and some influence from period detect pieces and Victorian pulp high adventure. Probably not the most elequent description but it is what I took away from it.

For a White Wolf system the Trinity universe on a whole is a lot more hopeful and higher tone that their standard fare (even though they do occasionally touch on that especially in abberant).

I would recommend it to anyone interested in a new novel system for mostly human (but exceptional) characters. Anyone interested in the backstory on the Trinity Universe (which has Sci-Fi and Super Hero(more like Normal People with Super Powers as opposed to Super Hero but you get the idea) flavored settings). A slightly happier setting that follows the White Wolf 5 dot system. Or anyone who would likes any other white wolf systems (especially Exalted which I see as the Heir the the Trinity Universe mentality of game design). Or just anyone willing to take my word on it being a really cool product.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Shane B.
Date Added: 09/13/2008 13:09:35

I have not recieved my product. I have paid for the product 2 times but still not been able to download it.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Shane B.
Date Added: 09/13/2008 13:09:30

I have not recieved my product. I have paid for the product 2 times but still not been able to download it.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Debra P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/08/2008 02:16:06

I had a hard copy of this and wanted another copy - a computer copy was perfect since i could just print out a couple of relevant peices to make characters up or read to remind me of rules rather than lug the whole book.

I enjoy the game - its a little different though familiar to anyone who's played a White Wolf game. The pulp fiction feel really shows the people who created this game knew the genre and liked it - I know i've read more than one rule book where people didnt' seem to actually like the genre for which they wrote.

Above and beyond the game itself being fairly fun, the book is an enjoyable read and the PDF was very much exactly as the book i already have - only better because i can enlarge the print as needed for my elderly eyes. Good crisp graphics and excellent translation from print to PDF.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Adventure! Tales of the Aeon Society Rulebook
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Mike B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/20/2007 19:14:08

Want to be a hero from the pulp fiction magazines of the 1920's? Want to be a Nova who lives like Indiana Jones(tm)? Want to be a Maniacal Genius with the brains to match wits with those pesky Heroes? Adventure is the book for you. High Adventure in the 1920's. Use Telluric Energy for your impossible machines and weapons. Have fun exploring the world of Novas in the 1920's



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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