DriveThruRPG.com
Narrow Results
$ to $
 Publisher















Back
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion $15.00
Average Rating:4.3 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
7 5
7 1
4 1
0 0
0 0
Agents of Oblivion
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by David P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/18/2014 23:41:43

Disclaimer: This is from the point of view of someone GMing for the first time. I've played in several Savage Worlds campaigns, and recently decided to try my hand at GMing. I investigated a bunch of different settings material, and Agents of Oblivion (AoO from now on) sounded really promising. Here are my impressions after four sessions (spoiler alert: they aren't positive).

I believe AoO fails in two crucial ways: It violates the Fast! Furious! Fun! ethos of Savage Worlds, and Horror and Espionage don't really mix that well after all. These two elements overlap, as I will attempt to explain.

Firstly, AoO introduces a whole new set of Gear, Spytech/Special Training, and SUDS (Single Use Devices). Gear is cool new equipment, and Spytech/Special Training/SUDs are basically Edges in the form of physical objects. These items are "purchase" using a new currency called Resource Points. There is also the concept of Data Chips, which are a form of upgrade (can give agents skill upgrades or Edges). All of this stuff can be changed out at the beginning of each mission. Sounds cool, right? It sure seems that way, until everyone is sitting at the table, I outline the mission parameters... and the players spend 45 minutes deciding what Gear/Spytech/etc they want to purchase. Not exactly Fast and Furious. I plan to work around this by sending out a mission briefing to all my players a few days beforehand, but I wish I didn't have to.

My second point is that Horror and Espionage don't really mix, despite the "perfect cocktail..." tagline of this book. To my mind, Horror is about facing things you aren't physically, mentally and/or emotionally equipped to handle. AoO, as you can see from the previous paragraph, is all about the equipping the players. A Novice agent, with their starting free skill points in Fighting/Shooting/Notice/Tradecraft, Agency Branch bonuses and Resource Point equipment purchases, looks more like a typical Seasoned character.

On top of that, AoO uses the "no power points" rule variant for powers. This eliminates most of the Power Edges (since they affect power points), and makes powers and power-focused characters kind of, well, over-powered. One of my players spent most of one session casting Fear over and over and over. I spend most of that session un-shaking my mooks, while they were easily picked off one by one by the other players. Sure, I can create enemies with high Spirit or immunity to Fear or an inexplicable desire to stay more than a large burst template's distance away from one another, but that means I'm spending more of my effort working around something that was already taken care of very nicely in the base ruleset.

This brings us to a phrase you'll come across many times, "The Director has final approval ..." Basically, the authors of this setting let the GM pick and choose what elements to allow or not. I've chosen not to allow anything too science-fictiony, such as data brain chips, anti-gravity devices, and the like. Honestly, though, if you tried to remove enough to make this a real horror setting you'd be removing pretty much all the cool Espionage stuff, rendering the entire first half of this book useless.

The second half of the book is for the GM (the Director, in AoO parlance). This section is both better and worse than the player section. The first 10 pages or so is a mish-mash of contradictory "secret history of the world" conspiracy nonsense. Then there's a couple pages where they talk about creating suspense and horror by limiting resouces (again, forcing the GM to work against everything given to the players in the first half of the book). There's a few more pages devoted to vague talk about the level of aliens, conspiracy, occult, horror and technology elements in your campaign. There's not much concrete, useful information there. Then another 20 pages of synopsis of various secret societies around the globe, many of which are drawn from the real world.

Finally, we get to what is arguably the only really valuable part of this book, the Mission Generator. This is 33 pages of tables you can roll against to come up with missions, plots, goals, enemies, allies, and wonderful new creatures of all sorts. I've used this to generate two missions so far, which my players enjoyed quite a bit. It gives you all the pieces, then it's up to you to connect the dots and figure out how it's all going to fit together. For example: The first mission I rolled up said the enemy organization was the diabloist group Astrum Arentum. The Main Enemy was a Mystic Ally, which meant I had to roll on the Ally table and add some Powers. I rolled a Priest. The Plot Type was Sacrifice, the Goal was Anarchy, the Target was a Corrupted Ally (Private Detective, this time), and the Ally was a Scientist, and the Complication was a Creature (a giant Dinosauroid). Put this all together, and I came up with a mission to rescue a Private Detective, who had been hired by the Scientist to investigate mysterious goings-on in the building next to his lab. The detective had become brainwashed by the group, and was unknowingly going to be sacrificed to help summon a demon to weak havoc in the city. Due to the player's interruption of the ceremony, and its close proximity to the Scientist's lab, the Evil Priest ended up summoning a T-Rex instead of a demon, and the whole thing turned into a three-way brawl in a warehouse between the Agents, the cultists, and an enraged T-Rex. Good times.

The rest of the book is devoted to detailing some sample missions/campaigns, along with a bunch of character templates (some generic, and some specific to the sample missions). The generic templates are useful, especially since they correspond to the entries on the Ally table in the Mission Generator.

So, there you have it. 33 useful pages out of 218, definitely not worth the price of entry. Maybe some of my complaints have more to do with my inexperience as a GM than any flaws in this book, but even my players have been complaining about the time-killing equipment picks and the unbalanced nature of the powers. The player I mentioned previously, who went on a Fear-casting rampage, actually volunteered to re-spec his character to be less broken. I'm currently trying to figure out how to salvage this purchase... I think I may end up reverting to pretty much vanilla Savage Worlds, but keep using the Mission Generator. That should make it a lot easier to create some suspense for my players.

I hope you find my thoughts helpful. I'm giving this thing 3/5, despite it sounding more like a 1 or 2, because it is at least well written and laid out. Basically, it's a not-so-great concept that was executed very well.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by Tim N. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/28/2011 17:06:39

I am a great fan of Savage Worlds and of the Laundry series by Charles Stross. AoO is a very nicely produced setting that allows you to play anything from a Bond movie to Spy-Cthulhu and X-Files to Men in Black, so I shall be using it to run a Laundry game as soon as I can find willing players. Crunch-wise, the setting has a built-in power-point-free magic system and a fast and furious "skill challenge" mechanic for complex multi-step tasks. A nice touch is the ability of the GM or "Director" to give agents Single Use Devices, these allow them to use any power in the rules ONE time, so you can give them the power to confront a dangerous foe without overpowering the players. Highly recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by Michael S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/28/2011 12:12:42

Great additon to the Savage Worlds line. Finally a usable core for creating a modern-horror hybrid setting.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by Lee L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/20/2011 08:43:14

AOO has replaced all my other Savage Worlds settings as my current favorite. The combination of über spy tech, horror and espionage has really grabbed me. The setting allows for any kind of setting from 007 style games, too "xXx" style action spys, to X-files and even modern horror with psychic investigators! The book has one of the best covers ever in my opinion. There are several items on the cover that are an om-age to James Bond and Ian Fleming. The book has a very solid and clean look to it, with minimal [but amazing!] art by Cheyenne Wright [always a favorite] and no back texture to it. This not only makes for an easy read, but also makes it easy to print with out having to invest in new color cartridges for my printer. The "Powers" section is what has intrigued me the most, as it has removed power points from the setting and made it so characters can get powers that are above their Rank, with out making it impossible to play or deal with as a GM. It has inspired me to run an "Alphas" [Based on the Sci-Fi channel series] campaign. Reality Blurs and Sean Preston continue to impress me and I can not help buy purchase their games now as every one has inspired me to new ideas for my players.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by Thomas B. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 10/20/2011 01:21:19

WHAT WORKS: A great alternative for people who may have liked BLACK OPS or CONSPIRACY X but decided they weren't fans of GURPS of Classic Unisystem anymore (like me!). The book is all about options, options, options, not about shoe-horning in a single way to play...(sometimes, that shoe-horning is fine, and sometimes, you just want options, options, options). And I do so love me some random tables, even more than I do Legendary Edges.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: I always prefer a character sheet IN the book, and the PDF is also sans index. Now, while that's not a HUGE issue in a searchable, bookmarked PDF, it can be noticeable in a printed book. Also, I likes me a good bestiary, and this does look a true bestiary (though there is a sample alien or two to play with, to say nothing of the generator).

CONCLUSION: At only $10, I'm not shocked at all that this book shot to the top of the sales charts upon release. You can do straight up spies, you can do X-Files, you can do mutant super agents if you like, and it's at least 95% compatible with other Savage Worlds stuff to boot, so how can you go wrong? (Bonus points if you combine it with the Gritty options from Realms of Cthulhu for some real bone breaking action).

For my full review, please visit: http://mostunreadblogever.blogspot.com/2011/10/tommys-take-on-agents-of-oblivion.html



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by Peter A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/18/2011 14:53:34

I've been searching for a campaign setting for a long time. I love the horror genre, and I love the spy genre - getting to play them both is fantastic!

The setting is certainly a favorite of mine and Reality Blurs does a great job setting up the Director (their word for the Gamemaster) to customize the level of certain thematic factors by giving some helpful information on what each factor would entail (Aliens, Horror, Occult, Technology, and Conspiracy). Combined with some very cool, unique-to-the-setting, and inspiring organizations, the Director has the most necessary tools at his disposal to create a memorable campaign.

That said, because this title integrates with the Savage Worlds system, I felt the chapter outlining the setting specific rules and changes to the standard Savage Worlds seemed a bit jumbled. I found myself questioning some of the terminolgy because it didn't seem explained clearly.

Overall, this is a solid 4.5 - the rules aren't the reason we play. I highly recommend this for anyone who was a fan of Shadowforce Archer (for AEG's original Spycraft line).



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Agents of Oblivion
Publisher: Reality Blurs
by Thomas S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/13/2011 11:02:44

What can I say, wow! Being a fan of the spy genre and Savage Worlds, this book was awesome. It does a great job capturing the feel and intricacies of playing a modern espionage game without bogging you down. One great feature of the book, is that it takes the time to give you examples of how to run any type of espionage game you want; be it with a touch of horror, conspiracies everywhere, alien invaders, supernatural, or a straight up modern game.

The new rule content is well thought out and streamlined, and doesn't lend itself to bloating the game or mechanics. The ability to gear up before a mission and get some temporary bonuses through SUDs (Single Use Devices) is nice. Means even your desk jockey might surprise the rest of the team once he gets out in the field. The resource management for gear and perks is done cleanly, and given that the core SW book has price lists for everything you still can have your character track money, so the best of both worlds.

The only down side is that the book is fairly plain. It's scattered with great black and white art that captures the old 'espionage' feel, but I feel that some of the pages just need to be perked up a bit, this may change when it goes to print. Regardless, as a PDF it will save on printing which is a bonus and the content outweighs any this perceived shortcoming.

The rules are flexible enough as well that it can be combined with a few other settings out there, such as Wellstone City or Realms of Cthulhu.

In closing well worth the price and will be come a staple for any modern game I run.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 7 (of 7 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items
 Gift Certificates