[D20 Modern] The T.A.R.D.I.S. Campaign, aka "The Kitchen Sink Project"

Hey all. Things are going pretty well in Cashel World. My wife and I are working on a garden, some other home projects, and expecting our first baby in December! (The child's 'working title' is Skeletor.)

But best of all (well, second-best of all), we've got a weekly game night up and running! Eris be praised and genuflectified! My counterpart is running Deadlands, and I'm to be running a D20 MODERN game.

The campaign is going to be all over the place. I'm starting with the default Department-7/Agency/Bureau thing, but will soon blow it wide open: Yes, I've decided to have my players stumble upon an abandoned T.A.R.D.I.S. that looks like an American phone booth with tinted windows. No Gallifreyans in sight, just their (slightly malfunctioning) travel device. Then I will proceed to mix and match D20 Modern, Future, Past, Cthulhu, Gamma World, Omega World, etc. etc. Any time period, any planet, any dimension, any alternate history, any possible future will be fair game for this campaign.

So, my first question is...has D20 Call of Cthulhu gone out of print? Can't seem to find it on the Wizards site, although I've seen it for sale.

Secondly, what supplements would you consider indispensable for this kind of thing? I have the core book and the Gamma World Players Handbook, and I will definitely pick up the Menace Manual and D20 Future. What else?

Finally, the catch-all: gimme some ideas for times/places/settings of great action and danger into which I can drop my dimension-hopping PCs.

Thanks!
Tom

Tom Cashel said:

My wife and I are working on a garden, some other home projects, and expecting our first baby in December!

Click to expand...

Congrats, man! Both to the new greenery and the new gamer.

...I've decided to have my players stumble upon an abandoned T.A.R.D.I.S. that looks like an American phone booth with tinted windows. No Gallifreyans in sight, just their (slightly malfunctioning) travel device. Then I will proceed to mix and match D20 Modern, Future, Past, Cthulhu, Gamma World, Omega World, etc. etc. Any time period, any planet, any dimension, any alternate history, any possible future will be fair game for this campaign.

Click to expand...

Holy Crap, Man!!!! That's ambitious! Hope it goes well.

So, my first question is...has D20 Call of Cthulhu gone out of print? Can't seem to find it on the Wizards site, although I've seen it for sale.

Click to expand...

Yes, and their contract has expired, too. It departed either late last year or early this year, can't remember. So you won't see any further print runs. All of the fandom from WotC's site moved to (I think) Yogsothoth.com or something similar.

Secondly, what supplements would you consider indispensable for this kind of thing? I have the core book and the Gamma World Players Handbook, and I will definitely pick up the Menace Manual and D20 Future. What else?

Click to expand...

I would pick up Grim Tales from Bad Axe Games. THough I don't have it, it sounds like an excellent way to add low-magic to the setting without adding the full-on d20 modern magic.

Finally, the catch-all: gimme some ideas for times/places/settings of great action and danger into which I can drop my dimension-hopping PCs.

Click to expand...

A Gallifreyan-style time/space romp? You can't get any better than picking up a Doctor Who episode guide (especially for the Fourth Doctor!) and robbing liberally from the plotlines. You could as a GM cruise on autopilot for a year or two with that thing!

http://www.tvtome.com/DoctorWho/season1.html

Good Luck!

Tom Cashel said:

Hey all. Things are going pretty well in Cashel World. My wife and I are working on a garden, some other home projects, and expecting our first baby in December! (The child's 'working title' is Skeletor.)

Click to expand...

what if it's a girl?

So, my first question is...has D20 Call of Cthulhu gone out of print? Can't seem to find it on the Wizards site, although I've seen it for sale.

Click to expand...

i believe so, but there's probably a few game stores here and there that still have copies lying around.

Secondly, what supplements would you consider indispensable for this kind of thing? I have the core book and the Gamma World Players Handbook, and I will definitely pick up the Menace Manual and D20 Future. What else?

Click to expand...

i was going to suggest things like Sidewinder: Recoiled for the Wild West and Blood & Fists for martial arts stuff and what-not. but... if you're going to do this in traditional Whovian style, you're probably not going to be spending more than a single adventure (a couple of sessions) in each era/place. so do you really need a whole book for each? probably not. you could probably run a single Wild West adventure with just the d20 Modern book without having to worry about picking up S:R. the amount of detail you'd need wouldn't justify the price tag, IMO (though S:R is my favorite d20M supplement to date and an excellent resource if you were planning on running something in the Old West...)

i guess i'm basically saying you don't really need much more than what you've already got (or are getting soon), because you're probably not going to need that much detail just to run single adventures.

Finally, the catch-all: gimme some ideas for times/places/settings of great action and danger into which I can drop my dimension-hopping PCs.

Click to expand...

the Wild West, of course
Chicago, 1920s
Crusades-era Jerusalem
China during the Opium Wars
30 Years War Germany
Berlin in the 1960s
the Caribbean during the late 1600s
the Third Intergalactic War of 2385

shouldn't be too hard to come up with more... what are your own historical/setting interests?

I don't know about indespensible, but some really good ideas for what I see would be the following:

Modern Backdrops (sounds perfect for what you're doing)
Blood and Guts
Blood and Guts: Soldiers
Modern Player's Companion 1
Modern Player's Companion 2

This one isn't out, yet.... but Blood and Circuits would probably also be a good bet.

Even if you don't like the game, GURPS has some of the best settings books out there, and they sure pumped out a ton of them in the past decade. You could easily justify splurging on a few set in periods you expect to use a lot. I would recommend trying eBay for some of these.

Wow! Thanks for the well-wishing (if it's a girl, well, Skeleta will have to do) and all the suggestions.

Henry, that episode guide is great. I looked at one like it, and for some reason I was envious of all the cool ideas but forgot that I can just yoink some of them. It's better than the RPG Plots list!

d4, I'll definitely be sending them to the Wild West. Since our other game is Deadlands, I'm going to have to come up with a crazy crossover that results in them saving the lives & reality of our characters in the other game. It'd be irresponsible to do anything else.

As for historical periods, I have a penchant for WWII stuff, so I'll have to include that. What about Berlin in the 1960s? Are you suggesting Cold War/Berlin airlift adventure? That'd be cool. Constantinople in 1204 would be, um, fiery. I'll be getting prehistoric on their butts too. Tell me more about China during the Opium Wars...what years are we talking here?

C. Baize, thanks for the suggestions and links. I picked up Modern Backdrops a few weeks ago and flipped through it, and thought If only I was running a modern-day game... but totally forgot about it until now.

Insight, the GURPS route is a great one to take. I own Places of Mystery and GURPS: The Prisoner (yes, I am evil enough to drop their T.A.R.D.I.S. into The Village), but some others would be worth looking into.

By the way...I was recently running Beyond the Mountains of Madness using the BRP system. My craven characters fled the antarctic upon their first sighting of a shoggoth, though, and skipped the best parts of the campaign. Sheesh...what some people will do to survive...

Anyhow, I'm thinking of running a modern-day sequel to that adventure, so they can see what was going on in the frozen wastes. That's why I need D20 stats for Elder Things and Shoggoths. It'll be neat to see them go after those nasties with some modern weaponry!

This campaign is meant to be extremely episodic, but I'm sure I'll trap them in one milieu or another for a few sessions, just to make them think they're staying. You know, like when Genghis Khan decides that he'd like to keep their T.A.R.D.I.S. for himself...

Anyway, thanks for the ideas so far and keep 'em coming!

Tom Cashel said:

Wow! Thanks for the well-wishing (if it's a girl, well, Skeleta will have to do) and all the suggestions.

Henry, that episode guide is great. I looked at one like it, and for some reason I was envious of all the cool ideas but forgot that I can just yoink some of them. It's better than the RPG Plots list!
Anyway, thanks for the ideas so far and keep 'em coming!

Click to expand...

You know, don't you, that if your players don't hear computer-modulated cries of "EXTERMINATE!!!" at least once in that game, I'll be cross with you.

It's very funny that you mention it.

I was thinking today of confronting the players with Daleks. I do pretty good voices, accents, impressions, whathaveyou...and I couldn't help thinking that the Dalek voice would send my players into a fit of uncontrollable giggling.

Then the 6d10 damage disruptor ray would snap them out of it.

This is gonna be fun for a rat-bastard like me. I really like the concept of a massive damage threshold equal to CON. Adds that cold gritty taste of reality to the heroic such-and-such.

I think it could be fun to drop them into the relatively recent past. Like the 80s or even early 90s. Especially if one or more of your PCs is a tech head.

Player 1: "We need to find out about this guy."
Player 2: "Ok, I'll do a web search...d'oh!"

Or how about feudal Japan. Just in time for the appearance of Godzilla!

JimAde said:

Or how about feudal Japan. Just in time for the appearance of Godzilla!

Click to expand...

It would have to be Godzilla's ancestor. Even in the movies Godzilla is a young pup, born in the late 1940s early 1950s.

I've always loved the "lost in time" style adventures. Does your TARDIS have a "chronometer" that tells them what time they have jumped to?
If not half the fun of some adventures could be doing change-ups with tech levels etc.

Gotta do something with the 11 days that didn't exist(Sept.3-13 1752) It's a staple for my time travelling campaigns.

-tdr-