D&D 5E Rebooting d20 Modern With Everyday Heroes

Evil Genius Productions is rebooting 2002's d20 Modern in the form of a tabletop RPG called Everyday Heroes based on the 5E ruleset.

Our first tabletop role-playing game is Everyday Heroes™ - a roleplaying universe set in the modern era. Inspired by D20 Modern, Everyday Heroes™ provides a complete rulebook on running campaigns in the current day or the near future. The book covers everything you will need to run a modern-day campaign. This includes modern new character classes that fit within the modern-day theme. It also includes professions (e.g., Fireman, CIA operative, Chef) and backgrounds (e.g., rich kid, military brat, gang member) to help flesh out your character. firearms and equipment, modern adversaries, and revised rules on car and foot chases.

The game includes 6 new classes (the Strong Hero, the Smart Hero, etc., inspired directly by the classes in d20 Modern), 18 subclasses (such as Marksman, Scientist, Commando), along with a ton of backgrounds, feats, and firearms and chase rules.

The team includes some of the original d20 Modern designers -- the company says:

"The core elements of Everyday Heroes™ are based on the Open Gaming License (OGL) for d20 Modern. Released in the 2002. d20 Modern was the first role-playing game set in the modern era. The core rulebook was quickly followed up by a series of expansions including d20 Future, d20 Past, and d20 Apocalypse. The rules were expanded with a series of sourcebooks including Urban Arcana, Weapons Locker, Menace Manual, and Future Tech. Have you ever written something and read it again a few years later? You might say to yourself. 'Man, I would have probably done that differently.' Well, there is no coincidence that many of the designers of Everyday Heroes™ are the same designers who created d20 Modern. This is their shot to take the work that they love and make it even better."

The team includes Jeff Grubb, Stan!, and Steve Miller (formerly of WotC).

Everyday Heroes is coming to Kickstarter in Spring.

Evil Genius Games

Evil Genius Productions creates tabletop roleplaying and board games. Everyday Heroes™, based on d20 Modern, is a 5e TTRPG for the modern world. Officially licensed games for The Crow, Pacific Rim, Kong Skull Island, Highlander, Universal Soldier, Total Recall, Rambo, and Escape From New York.

www.evilgeniusgaming.com

 

[Yaarel]

I feel it is important for a (fun) game to have images of sexy men and women.

That said. It is important to have symmetry, so the number of images of serious women and men are roughly comparable.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

So one of the things with modern games and the weapons table is it could go streamlined with entries for: Assault Rifle, Sub-machine Gun, Pistol.

Or could go way too specific with: AK-47, M16A2, H&K G36, and so on and so on, on all having different entries on the table even if they all have very similar stats.

I generally hope it's the former one with generic entries rather than the later one. I don't think most want to go over the fine details of what makes one different from another.

 

[Von Ether]

It amazes me that it has taken 7+ years before someone got around to rebooting d20 Modern for 5e, which I genuinely believe will fit better with d20 Modern's design model than its original 3Era d20 System did.

As for using the moniker "d20 Modern," yes. But there is at least one 5e modern style game, Ultramodern 5e, which got an expanded edition last year from Dias Ex Machina Games.

I think the thing that hurt the pre-expanded version, which was put out around 2016, was the lack of supernatural classes be it magic, divine, or psionics. Not even guidelines to use 5e magic classes. Strange hill to die on considering their audience. The expanded version ad copy says it offers up technomagic.

The PDFs of both 5e editions are Mithral sellers.

They had done the same for 4e as well but only reached Gold with that one.

 

[Mezuka]

So one of the things with modern games and the weapons table is it could go streamlined with entries for: Assault Rifle, Sub-machine Gun, Pistol.

Or could go way too specific with: AK-47, M16A2, H&K G36, and so on and so on, on all having different entries on the table even if they all have very similar stats.

I generally hope it's the former one with generic entries rather than the later one. I don't think most want to go over the fine details of what makes one different from another.

Agreed. It is better to go generic because, as I have see in the past, gun enthousiasts really love to argue over gun performance. On Gleemax we would get multi-page of threads on gun performance.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Yep, the tape has him surrounded! How will our hero escape the yellow tape!? Better than dealing with red tape, though, in which case he'd be really screwed.

It should be noted that the yellow tape only requires caution before proceeding, whereas red tape requires a full stop.

 

[Von Ether]

Probably the coolest thing to come out of d20 Modern was The Expanse book and TV series.

I think the story goes that one of the authors had a ton of lore for a video game project that never happened. He turned it into the setting for his home d20 Future game and the other author was one of the players. When both of them agreed the setting's timeline would make a great sci-fi book series, they partnered up to write it.

Later at some Q&A, someone asked one of them how he felt about the changes between book and TV, he said he was on the writing team and that he's had to change the story for different mediums about three times now.

 

[Von Ether]

Agreed. It is better to go generic because, as I have see in the past, gun enthousiasts really love to argue over gun performance. On Gleemax we would get multi-page of threads on gun performance.

I've seen gun enthusiast willfully ignore the concept of firearm categories in a 5e sci-fi game to stress that guns, especially their favorites, need separate special rules. Or how they visualize the effects of shotguns and ballistics in their heads don't match 5e rules.

It's like the katana argument, over and over again.

 

[el-remmen]

Someone looked at that image of the EMT in a halter top and a mini-skirt and thought, "Yeah, that seems right."

 

[Weiley31]

sexy fireman that rushes out to calls so fast he forgets his shirt.

LOL and his hat!

The Zombie Apocalypse will do that to ya.

 

[Weiley31]

You know, by combing this with regular Dungeons and Dragon's 5th Edition, we already have Urban Arcana for 5E now.