The main card of the set is Debt, which is gainable through various means and at the moment, I'm having it come in a supply pile twice the size of the Curse pile:
Lots of tiny text, but it was hard to make a card "just barely bad enough" to make it a worthy penalty central to the whole game universe without going too far. It still causes many games to be too slow. The main culprit against game tempo to keep an eye on is this one, the Insider:
This one definitely needs to cost at least $5, but $6 may be too much. If it ends up borderline in terms of power, then I will probably err on the expensive side in the end, because nothing slows games down more than this card, and a card that is only sometimes good is still better for the game than a card that always slows games down too much.
I love this card. I mean, really, where would we be without Google? This is a bit of a Sage variant, only it's more accurate, and it has such massively different best-use cases. It chokes on junk attacks where Sage can be a savior, and it thrives on Provinces where Sage chokes. (Sage is still a great Dominion card, mind you, and Sage can be very strong when your deck is still mostly Estates and Coppers, and all the way into the mid game.)
This is a fun card, but it often does nothing, and can potentially help your opponents. It's slightly more likely to help you, though, because if you play some other cards and cycle a few things through, you'll ultimately have more candidate cards to consider "downgrading". For example, you can Kids These Days your Duchy for a Google and then Google your Province for a Gold or whatever, or you can Kids These Days your Duchy for a Consolidator if you have two or more Debts already in hand. (The wording is a little wacky, but it's designed to prevent being able to trash $0 cards for free. I should have just specified that you may only reveal a card not costing $0, but for some reason, that thought escaped me. Whoops.)
Not the most original card in the world, but it's so much better than Moat in a lot of ways, and Dominion needs a card like this. Like Tunnel, it's a decent source of extra VP at the end of the game in any case.
The Consolidator uses the uncommon "return to the supply" mechanic to bypass the painful and crippling design of Debt. However, he only consolidates, so you'll still have some Debt left over. Sure, Chapel and Smithy would be nicer, but these are Modern Times. This card is by far stronger when you were going to accumulate Debt regardless.
This card, like Mint, has an on-gain "penalty" that is actually one of the strongest reasons in favor of buying it. This card is best bought only on turns where topdecking a Gold or Silver is likely to help you next turn. (I should have made the player reveal the topdecked treasure, following the well-thought-out "accountability clause" design of Dominion.)
This card may have a lot of potential that's yet to be seen, but Debt tends to stop big engines from getting up and running, so far, but I could add more cards or expansions in the future. This is also a deliciously thematic card. The downside is that it leads to tough decisions, such as whether it's worth giving up one Action for one VP when your other card is a +1 card, +1 action card. But that's just Modern Times for you.
I kind of like this card, but I seriously doubt I even know how to properly use it half the time. Having it in play during a double-Province turn could really help out your engine, for example, but that's tough to pull off. Other than that, you often need villages, and you might not have any other source of +buy. If you're expecting a slog, you'll just need more Amazons to avoid missing reshuffles. You also may want to keep track of them, and use the last one to store any Victory cards you won't be "shipped" to you until after the next shuffle.
It would be charitable to call home ownership a double-edged sword in Modern Times, wouldn't it? (Balance work pending. This card used to be horrible, but I improved it some, and the above version might be ok, but a very niche buy. A debt-free player gains 4P overall on their first House, but the downside is immediate and very bad. I could rescale the VP penalty, cost, and number of Debts gained at some point, though.)
Pretty close to being the world's derpiest card, I have no idea what to say about this one other than that it's sort of balanced maybe, and that it's really derpy on purpose - the above scene shows Bart pranking the local graduates with fake adjunct positions at "the university of psych!". Master's Degree... Do what you were going to do anyway, for slightly more money! But go into debt!
I have not play tested this card, but there's almost certainly no way that it can be balanced ever, not even in theory. I'd love to be wrong, though, even if not being balanced at all is probably sort of the point. (I really need to find or make a treasure-victory template, like the Curse template I made very badly for Debt in MS Paint. But I'm just leaving this card as is for now.)
I trust the theme is coming across by now... (Both of the lines after "If you do:" only occur under the above condition. I probably should indent the last paragraph so it looks more sub-clausey.)
A card I haven't yet tested that I'm really curious about. Image is taken from a beer bottle, a stout I used to buy whenever I could in Michigan.
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