Urban Arcana

[buzz]

Riiiight, lots of gamers out there are fantasizing about playing a scummy-lookin' teenage skank.

You might not have heard of them, but there's this company called White Wolf, see...



A couple things about the UA cover:

First off, they're *drow*, so if they give of a slightly malevolent vibe, it's probably intentional.

Secondly, I'm not sure when the last time was you actually looked at what people are wearing, but I don't see the characters as overly "scummy-lookin' teenage skank."* One guy is wearing a leather jacket, shirt, and pants; one woman is wearing an ensembe pretty common among the 18-24 set; and *one* other woman has more traditional hip-hop/club gear. Big whoop.

Thirdly, a lot of the art in d20M reflects a certain 21st-century action-movie vibe. Like your average Vin Diesel film or "The Italian Job," d20M dresses its characters with a fair amount of glitz and contemporary fashion sense. How a game about modern settings can be faulted for keeping up with the times is really beyond me.

Anyway, what matters is the content. And the content is dang good.

*Leaving aside for the moment how disturbing I find comments like this and the ones in your original post.

 

[Moonsword]

I suppose next someone's going to drag affirmative action into this? *shakes head*

Like the people have said, this is a generic setting. It's not specific. I can speak on the issue of building a campaign setting, I'm in the process of it. FR and Greyhawk are pretty generic, which is good, because I'm stealing from them (mainly generic PrC's and domains) . It's generic so the GM is the one making the decisions on what to use. As for not appealing to the target audience, there are several issues here:

1) The front picture of a book is supposed to draw attention. These are drow (read: dark elves) folks! They're fantasy, but dressed as modern characters. That would be the point of the campaign setting. I'd say it's a pretty good representation of the content, personally.
2) You would prefer the Easter Bunny, perhaps Merlin?
3) Face it, how many of us want our pictures on the front cover of an internationally published book?
4) These drow are actually dressed more respectably than some of the idiots running around my high school. Blakbyrd's right. Believe me, it could get worse. Much worse.
5) The content is very good, and we're all really focusing on the cover.
6) This genre is one that's pretty intriguing for some people. It's just not everyone's cup of tea. Variety is the spice of life.
7) Some people do play characters outside of their own ethnic and gender type. Granted, the latter is usually the province of the GMs running amok out there, but it can be interesting stepping into someone else's shoes for a little while. After all, how many elves, gnomes, and half-orcs do you know in real life?

Now that I've managed to annoy Felon (and probably everyone else), I'm done.

 

[Friadoc]

*chuckles*

Man, all this from hip-hop clothes and high-cut panties. *muahahah*

I've read Urban Arcana from cover to cover and, for the record, I not only like it, but I'm running two games with it and d20 Modern (A Monthly Game and a every other saturday game). Oh yeah, when my Saturday crew decided to revolve the D&D game Urban Arcana was requested by the DM for the D&D, as he wants to play in it and who I think is one of the better DMs I know.

The average age of my group is 30s with, I'd say, a 100+ years of total, gaming experience.

Basically I guess it's a call of preferences and defining a game by your play in it and not the art upon it.

 

[KDLadage]

It is not that I was unimpressed, but...

I thought it was good... but now quite what I was hoping for.

URBAN ARCANA. It is not a bad setting. It is a decent look at how to apply the Modern d20 Rules... but why did the first, flagship modern setting from WotC have to be 'D&D in Modern Times?' I don't get why this was the way to go. Consider that TSR/WotC had other options for a Modern Setting. Is it just me, or does this setting not seem to be what most people would be looking for in a modern setting?

Just a few I can think of that would be more in keeping with a true modern RPG include:

• TOP SECRET SI -- this setting, was attached to a fair to below average rules set the first time. Seems that it would showcase modern Role Playing fairly well. So why not do this? My only thought is that the SPYCRAFT game made this a tough one to select for fear of appearing like a Johny-Come-Lately. So... purchase the license and do...
• JAMES BOND -- this is what SPYCRAFT and TOP SECRET tried to be... so just be BOND and be done with it. However, if the license for this proved to be too costly, then go with...
• OMEGA SECTOR -- this would be the RPG based upon the film TRUE LIES. Enough material to get you started on the path to a cool modern world of spies, with enough room left over to fill in the gaps any way you like. Combine this with TOP SECRET SI and make it a division of the main organization. However, if spy is not what you want, how about...
• BOOT HILL -- although I am not much of a fan of Old West RPGs, this seems like the ample time to re-try this. Only the Weird West things seem in your way and can cause the same Johny-Come-Lately affect that TOP SECRET might have been burried under. Still, rather than going into the past, you could do something like...
• STAR FRONTIERS -- unless you are saving this as the default setting for the Space Rules, I cannot see why this one would not have been your default setting for the modern rules. If this is to be the default Space Setting, then forget it and go with something really hot like...
• THE MATRIX -- of modern settings, this one would seem to be the king for potential. I don't know what the license would cost... but I figure it could be done and WotC is the only company I can think of that could afford it. Asside from initial costs, I can see no drawback for this one.

And this does not take into account appololyptic settings (aka Aftermath-style), early exploration and colonial period, or even such thngs as wartime settings (WWI, WWII, Vietnam...)

I don't know. I guess Urban Arcana was just not what I was hoping for when I caught wind of d20 Modern Rules.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think the Urban Arcana isn`t bad, including the campaign setting, though it will probably always remind me of Shadowrun, and then - why don`t just play that?

I wonder why they left Genetech out of the D20 Modern Core Rulebook - it was really distinct from the other three settings, and had much more "modern" aspects. I read the Genetech PDF (I found it somewhere in the Net), and sometimes it screemed "Dark Angel" to me. I see a Market for it...

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[NeuroZombie]

I think the reason they did not focus on the modern spy genre is simply because Spycraft does that better. If they were to put out a spy book for their first d20M setting, it would have died. I certainly would not have bought it with spycraft on the shelf.

I bought d20M because it was generic and I could fit it into any campaign style I could ever want. I am getting ready to go pick up a copy of UA, and I will post my views on it in a day or two.

As for the disparinging and completely uncalled for comments by someone whom I will not name, Get a life, open your mind, and quit judging people by their dress.

 

[takyris]

Well, as I said earlier, I don't intend to run an Urban Arcana game, but that doesn't mean that it's not a good idea. It's a great transitional game for players who have only played D&D. It's an ecology that'll be comfortable for those players who only want to play in familiar worlds. That's all good stuff.

As for:

TOP SECRET SI -- pretty much what you said about SPYCRAFT already having been there.

JAMES BOND -- not sure how well it'd work. 007 stuff always works better with one person. The flavor isn't really the same with a party-type deal. This is why a lot of media tie-ins fail to translate well to game form, in my opinion -- the things that people liked about the movie were the things that won't work well in games.

BOOT HILL -- It's neat to see westerns making a comeback. I'm considering running a d20 Western game using Modern rules. The one thing that this would largely sacrifice is the speculative elements -- monsters and magic. Some people wouldn't care, but other people game FOR the monsters and magic. You could do a Wild Wild West kind of Steampunk thing, but a mutant dog who breathes little puffs of fire is still a poor substitute for a genuine hellhound. Good for homebrews, but I don't see it working on the large scale.

STAR FRONTIERS -- Saving it for the space setting, would be my guess.

THE MATRIX -- I really fervently massively disagree hugely with this being an ideal campaign setting. I just do. Maybe I'm all alone on this, but I don't think so -- others have said similarly. d20 Modern might be heroic, but it's still basically realistic in terms of what the average guy can do. THE MATRIX is not. You'd have to tweak the rules a bunch to account for that. Beyond that, you'd have to have two effective character sheets -- one for what your character can do in the real world, and one for what they can do in THE MATRIX. The fact that skills can be instantly acquired makes levelling somewhat useless -- "I thought about making runs and dodging Agents to become a better fightter, but instead I'll just download a training dealie, and now I have a BAB of +20/+15/+10/+5. Ta-dah. Hey, pass the exotic weapon trainer, wouldja?" Perhaps this is just me being somewhat jaded, but characters in THE MATRIX never had to WORK to learn new things -- and the d20 system is based upon having to work to pick up new skills and abilities.

Anyway, good ideas, and I could see all of them working in a Homebrew, but I can also see why the nice folks at WotC would put out Urban Arcana as their first d20 Modern campaign setting.

-Tacky

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Yeah, I think a lot could have been done with Genetech. Although, almost any monster in the D20M books released so far could be the result of dna manipulation and biotech. Hehe, Dark Angel is certainly on the right track for the whole "armies, faceless corporations and governments tampering with biology" sort of feel.

I too would have preferred something other than arcana to come out first, but it could be as simple as this; The future and modern stuff has to be made from scratch, the arcana stuff is based on preexisting material. So the future stuff comes out later...

I'm looking forward to the Menace Manual.

 

[buzz]

Re: It is not that I was unimpressed, but...

It is a decent look at how to apply the Modern d20 Rules... but why did the first, flagship modern setting from WotC have to be 'D&D in Modern Times?' I don't get why this was the way to go.

The setting came first, according to Stan! and the other designers. They cam eup with the UA concept, and then built a game to make it happen. d20M happened to be that game.

More settings will come. I think UA will boost interest in d20M in general, and then we'll see more games come out based on the moders SRD. Heck, the d20M-based Gamma World should be out soon.

 

[NeuroZombie]

Well, I went to my local store to pick up my reserved copy of UA and found out that some dumb s*** put it on the shelf, and it was sold. No other copies in the store... GRRRRR!!!!!

So... I spent my money on Arsenal and Factory... groovy books from what I have glanced at, including d20M conversions in Factory, and on web site for Arsenal.

Anywho... maybe next pay check, or i'll order it online.