Introduction

Picture this: it’s game night, you have your gin tonic with frozen raspberries (or whatever other beverage goes with that for you) and tonight you feel like diving into a world of heroic fantasy and crushing some dragon skulls. But there is a problem, your group usually plays gritty cyberpunk. Normally, that would mean you have to convince everyone to learn new system, buy more books, and then invest time and energy into something new. Even worse, the custom creations you’ve crafted for one game often end up gathering dust, locked away in an incompatible system.

Over the years, I’ve faced this struggle over and over again. I’m deeply inspired by the stories I consume. Reading How to Train Your Dragon with my son, I dreamt of a campaign where every player had their own dragon. Garth Nix’s Angel Mage inspired me to add angelic icons to my world, and his Abhorsen cronicles influenced necromancy and riverwalking. Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders made me bring living ships to the table. My setting evolved into a chaotic mix of magic, technology, and genre-spanning ideas that, somehow, work together to occassional delight of my players.

Age of Adventure is my answer to these challenges—and my invitation to you to build something even greater. This system’s modular design allows you to switch genres without learning new rules, seamlessly carrying your favorite elements from one setting to another. Your creations will interact with others in new and interesting ways: when I created an "Echo" feature for creatures it allowed me to immediately have echo knights, wizards, and assassins in a sword-and-sorcery game, but it also means I can have pirate aliens with echo like hologram technology in a space opera game down the road with no additional work.

What makes AoA truly special, though, is its openness. Every aspect of this system is developed transparently and protected by a simple Creative Commons license. No hidden clauses, no fine print, and no corporate interests. The core rules and my own creations are freely available for everyone to use. The system’s code and content are open-source, ensuring there are no rug-pulls or gatekeeping. Best of all, it empowers you to contribute freely while retaining ownership of your work—or sharing it as widely as you like.

I would like to end this welcome with a nod to my players, friends and family that support and contribute to these efforts as inspirations, co-creators and rough first draft playtesters that stand by me even when things do not work so great, providing honest but kind feedback.

Semper tuum, JR.