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

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

If they did I would get in accidents more often.

On a serious note, it is too bad that "sex sells" in RPGs hasn't stopped and is alive and kicking...

Sex sells everything. It's just a fact. Look at every type of media.

 

[sigfried]

I'm hoping this newer version incorporates 5E's bounded accuracy and the subclasses work better for the game. And that it doesn't have weird level/feat-gating with automatic weaponry.

Hey, Stormonu.

I'm one of the lead Developers on Everyday Heroes.

We are indeed sticking with bounded accuracy, it works pretty well for a game in the real world, and frankly makes combat balance easier to achieve. We are leaning heavily into subclasses, even more so than 5e core does.

We are leaving the gating of automatic and military-grade weapons in the GMs hands, though we provide guidance on this topic, both in terms of campaign tone and in terms of combat encounter balance. So we are not telling anyone what technology they can or can't use, but we are trying to provide support for the GM so they can either set their own limits or have the tools to balance against the big guns and give players a challenge when they want to.

 

[sigfried]

Everyday Heroes??? Looks more like "Everyday Villains" to me...

Hey there!

I'm one of the lead designers on Everyday Heroes.

Honestly Reborn, you have a good eye. A number of those characters in the splash image were commissioned as bad guys! Were still in the process of filling out art orders and our chief composited that image using some of the striking illustrations that had come in early on. That gang looks good together I think, but ya, there are some baddies up in there. Though we are certainly not trying to tell people what a Hero or Villain has to look like, they come in all shapes and sizes. Heck, you can play a bunch of bad guys in Everyday Heroes if you really want to.

At any rate, I'm sure you will find some of our future illustrations more in a heroic vein as more of our talented team continues their work. And honestly, we appreciate the feedback, positive or negative, it's good to know people's honest reactions. We can't make everyone love it, but we can always lookout for ways to hone the game!

 

[sigfried]

No Modern setting is legit unless a PC can grab a rotary phone off a desk and pummel a bad guy with it.

Hey J!

One of the elements we are going to have is a technology timeline of the last 60 years or so to help Game Masters who maybe weren't alive in the age when dialing a phone actually meant something literal, yet want to run a game in a near-history period matching a favorite movie or TV series.

 

[sigfried]

(anyway this is going to be USA centric as with so many other modern day rpgs, isn't it? x'D )

Hello Masked one,

I'm one of the game designers on the project. It is largely USA-centric as our inspiration is Hollywood Action Cinema. That and pretty much everyone on the team is American, and as they say, you write what you know. I do try to be a bit more broad-based in my research, and I go out of my way to say things like "In the US, X weapon is legal for civilian use but many countries have greater restrictions." to point out to readers it is US-centric rather than act as if everywhere was exactly like America. Since spy movies are one of our genre targets, we also have some notes about language, nationality, and so forth, though not extensive details.

My own campaign I'm using for playtesting is about a group of Canadian covert CSIS operatives operating in Vancouver Canada.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Hey there!

I'm one of the lead designers on Everyday Heroes.

Honestly Reborn, you have a good eye. A number of those characters in the splash image were commissioned as bad guys! Were still in the process of filling out art orders and our chief composited that image using some of the striking illustrations that had come in early on. That gang looks good together I think, but ya, there are some baddies up in there. Though we are certainly not trying to tell people what a Hero or Villain has to look like, they come in all shapes and sizes. Heck, you can play a bunch of bad guys in Everyday Heroes if you really want to.

At any rate, I'm sure you will find some of our future illustrations more in a heroic vein as more of our talented team continues their work. And honestly, we appreciate the feedback, positive or negative, it's good to know people's honest reactions. We can't make everyone love it, but we can always lookout for ways to hone the game!

Nice to meet you and thanks for your response!

While they look like villains, I get it that a lot of people like to play the "dark hero" or "anti-hero", much like many of my characters in Shadowrun. So, for me, the more--um, "positive" term hero seemed misleading given the graphic.

And of course, some players like to play the bad guy, in D&D or whatever game, so that is fine if it is your cup of tea (not mine, personally, but I don't begrudge others).

I am interested in the mechanics, even if the genre isn't to my taste, so I'll be looking into it for that if nothing else. Cheers and thanks again for your response!

 

[sigfried]

I wonder if it will have cash? Should it?

Hey there TerraDave,

At the moment (we are still very much in the midst of game design), we are not tracking Heroes bank accounts or the like. We have a Wealth Level, and equipment has a Price Level, and if Wealth is equal or better you either can buy the item or you already own it.

We do have guidance on how to handle buying stuff above your pay grade and what happens if heroes come into big money, or get robbed in the course of an adventure, but generally speaking, in the age of Amazon, we didn't make shopping a big part of game-play.

 

[Stormonu]

Hey there!

I'm one of the lead designers on Everyday Heroes.

Honestly Reborn, you have a good eye. A number of those characters in the splash image were commissioned as bad guys! Were still in the process of filling out art orders and our chief composited that image using some of the striking illustrations that had come in early on. That gang looks good together I think, but ya, there are some baddies up in there. Though we are certainly not trying to tell people what a Hero or Villain has to look like, they come in all shapes and sizes. Heck, you can play a bunch of bad guys in Everyday Heroes if you really want to.

At any rate, I'm sure you will find some of our future illustrations more in a heroic vein as more of our talented team continues their work. And honestly, we appreciate the feedback, positive or negative, it's good to know people's honest reactions. We can't make everyone love it, but we can always lookout for ways to hone the game!

Welcome, and thanks for taking the time to respond!

I think what bothers me about the images is that the game is named "Everyday", but the eclectic group shown is anything but that. I don't know about others, but when I run modern games I tend to imagine the heroes looking in a manner as if they had been pulled off the street - or could easily blend into a street scene without standing out too much. The displayed group, while striking are a bit "too out there" - no need to use Investigation or Perception to find these the folks in a crowd!

 

[Tonguez]

Nice to meet you and thanks for your response!

While they look like villains, I get it that a lot of people like to play the "dark hero" or "anti-hero", much like many of my characters in Shadowrun. So, for me, the more--um, "positive" term hero seemed misleading given the graphic.

that might be a cultural perspective though, for instance the guy with the guns and tattooes might suggest Yakuza to some, but to me he looks more spanish than Japanese and the big guy in the middle looks like one of my cousins . I’m not sure if the female with the ribbons is suppose to be channeling some Japanese fashion or is a hooker. The whole splash image invokes a “King of Fighters/Street Fighter” vibe to me rather than ‘villains’

speaking of which sigfried does the game allow for Street Fighter type martial arts, stunts and powers?
how far does it go into weird tech, supers, psionics/magic?

 

[sigfried]

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.

Hi Kobold Avenger,

I'm the fellow that's done most of the firearms work, though all the designers work together to polish the work. I felt there were audiences that like both approaches. In the end, we primarily list firearms by category as you suggest, but we often cite real-world example guns for those who are into such things. I wouldn't want to disappoint all my old high school buddies and their Red Dawn fantasies!

I typically approach game design by first doing a bunch of research on a topic, then I try to reduce it down to what is going to be fun and interesting at the gaming table. With guns, I tried to reduce the categories down by the "use cases" for the different types of weapons, though in a few cases I have a category that exists mostly to highlight an iconic firearm often featured in action cinema even if in real life, it's a bit of a turkey.

Still, exactly which categories make the final cut will depend a bit on playtesting and feedback, yours included!