Arcane Agents
A downloadable game
Our world is not as mundane as it seems. Eldritch horrors lurk in the shadows at the behest of the depraved cultists who summon them, while rogue sorcerers tear holes in reality with their clumsy machinations, ignorant of the damage they cause or the terrible monsters they unleash.
However, there is still hope. Unbeknownst to the public, covert government agents work diligently to protect humanity from these supernatural threats, battling malevolent entities and arcane practitioners. These brave men and women are recruited for their mystical talents and trained to fight fire with fire, using their own paranormal abilities to deal with those who abuse their power and endanger others.
You are a team of magically-gifted operatives working for a secret government agency. Your mission is to investigate rumors of supernatural activity, protect the innocent, and destroy otherworldly threats.
Inspired by Men in Black, as well as Twenty Palaces and The Guild Codex: Warped (a couple of my favorite urban fantasy series), Arcane Agents is a standalone scenario for the Tricube Tales system and is usable as a micro-setting, but it is also a fully self-contained one-page RPG in its own right. You can print it on a single sheet of paper: The first page includes everything you need to play, while an optional second page expands the adventure generator with examples and twists. The PDF uses layers for ease of printing.
If you enjoy this game, you might also be interested in some of the other Tricube Tales one-page RPGs! For further scenarios about psychically enhanced agents, there's Spellrunners and Titan Effect: Covert Tales. If you prefer cosmic horror mysteries, check out Eldritch Detectives and Deep Trouble in Oldport Bay, and don't forget to check out R’lyehwatch by my friends at Hedgemaze Press!
This free tabletop roleplaying game was created for the One-Page RPG Jam 2023.
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This PDF supports layers for printing.
Comments
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Nice work. As I wrote in my "review" here on the rating, the rules are clean and cool, while maybe the second page is a little bit wasted, bringing only slightly more detail to the primary table in the previous page.
I'd surely prefer more mechanics (advancements, equip...), or more inspirations (maybe tables with NPCs, monsters etc.).
Anyway, great work Zadmar. I didn't know you had a page here on itch.io. A big hug from Italy (LordLance here, from the times on Savage Worlds community forum).
Hi Andrea, I remember you from the Savage Worlds forums :)
Arcane Agents is my submission for the One-Page RPG Jam 2023, and the rules of the jam are that the product must be fully playable with just the first page. I'm allowed to use the second page for optional material such as advice and examples, but I cannot include additional rules or mechanics.
When I wrote my first one-page RPG (for the One-Page RPG Jam 2020) it was initially just a single side, but I received feedback that some people struggled to come up with ideas for adventures using just the adventure generator, so I added a second page with examples for each table entry. This proved popular and effective -- people could use the examples as written or just for inspiration, and it allowed me to add more depth to the setting.
I plan to release some larger Tricube Tales products in the future, but my 47 one-page RPGs all follow the same general design and layout, and I think it would confuse existing customers if I started changing it now.
Oh, wow, that "One-Page RpG" it's really merciless 😁 Damn, you can't even use the other side of that single page!
Anyway, jokes aside, I understand. Hard to do better than that (or deeper). Kudos.