What Would You Like To see In a d20 Modern or d20 System Supplement or Adventure?

[jeff37923]

I'm just curious, here. There is a lot of talk about what is good and what is bad in published adventures and supplements, but I haven't seen a lot of attempts to ask the people what they want to see. So here it is.
(Note: This is a slightly changed version of a similar post in order to get response from these different subgenres. I am not trying to spam the board.)

What would you like to see in a d20 Modern or d20 System supplement or adventure? Should it be long or short? Have lots of fluff or lots of crunch? New prestige classes? New monsters? What would you like to see?

For myself, I'd like to see more of what used to appear in the WEG Star Wars Adventure Journal. A short story for fluff with a few adventure seeds placed in sidebars and game stats for the main characters, settings, and equipment in the story. If this could be done in a format similar to the Legends & Lairs Instant Adventures where the final printed product has a similar price range to a comic book, then that would be even better (I'd rather skip a fast food meal if I can spend the money on a useful game module). Maybe something with about 16 pages or so for $1.95 or $2.95, have the price ceiling be $5.00 for a 48 page B&W interior saddle-stitched book.

So, what would you all like to see?

 

[Olive]

I'd like a really comprehensive ships and equipment guide for D20 Future. With ship construction rules, expanded ship combat stuff, lots of weapons that actually get better as you go up PLs, armour that isn't worse at PL7 than it was at PL5 and the like. But also more gadgets, as that system was excellent.

And, given I'm starting a new campaign in the next few weeks, I want it yesterday.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I'm mainly interested in non-FX (or Dark Matter) adventures with NPC stats but little crunch.

However, there are holes in the rules (eg Craft rules) that I would like to see filled, too.

 

[philreed]

I'd like a really comprehensive ships and equipment guide for D20 Future. With ship construction rules, expanded ship combat stuff, lots of weapons that actually get better as you go up PLs, armour that isn't worse at PL7 than it was at PL5 and the like. But also more gadgets, as that system was excellent.

You might be interested in Future: Overwhelming Firepower.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=4074&SRC=EnWorld



We've got quite a few products available for future and modern games.

 

[Prest0]

I'm mainly interested in non-FX (or Dark Matter) adventures with NPC stats but little crunch.

[shameless plug]
We've had several people tell us that our adventures fit very easily into their Dark Matter campaigns. Especially Last Rites and Bloodlines. [/shamelss plug]

As a gamer myself, I would like to see more adventures. I don't need advanced classes, prcs, or any more "crunch". I have two jobs and a family. That doesn't leave much time to prepare adventures. I'm interested in things that will save me time and let me focus on having fun at the table. That means adventures, character generation software, on so on. Oh, I'd also like to see more modern figure flats-- in color.

 

[NSpicer]

As a gamer myself, I would like to see more adventures. I don't need advanced classes, prcs, or any more "crunch".

I agree. As a storytelling-style of GM, I'm more interested in the "fluff" aspects, usually. If I want to tinker with new, crunchy prestige classes, feats, etc., I can do that on my own time...usually after the adventure's story inspires me to do so based on how I'd fit it into my ongoing campaigns. I do enjoy seeing new monsters or creatures defined by adventures, though...especially if they have a nice "story" behind them.

One other element that I'd really like to encourage adventure writers to adopt when it comes to D20 Modern and D20 Future is to make room for running it in a variety of ways. Let's face it, Modern and Future introduce a number of different "tools" and options that won't see use by every GM in his or her campaign. Some don't want F/X, mutations, cybernetics, or psionics. So, if an adventure can be written with not only a "Scaling the Adventure" sidebar, but also a "Running it with low F/X vs. high F/X", etc...I think that would be a great boost to reaching a wider audience.

Just my two-cents,
--Neil

 

[scourger]

I want more fluff than crunch. That is, I want an adventure with little new rules options. The ideal adventure for me has a good plot, initiative cards and counters. Nice options are maps, handouts and artwork downloads. Right now, I'm running the Shackled City. I'm excited about Mesopotamia, The Giant's Skull, In the Belly of the Beast, and several Judge Dredd modules. I've got Slavelords of Cydonia on order, and I'm anticipating the Horned God Complete Campaign conversion in April. I'll never have time to run it all...

 

[Committed Hero]

I like to see setting material (including equipment, applicable new uses for skills, and backgrounds), without new classes unless the core book can't accomodate the most important character archetypes.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

If I can cross-post some questions I posed in jeff's other similar thread:

A short story for fluff with a few adventure seeds placed in sidebars and game stats for the main characters, settings, and equipment in the story.... 16 pages or so for $1.95 or $2.95

I think this is a great idea -- perhaps because it's one Behemoth3 has had on the drawing board for a while now -- but these price points sound way too low to me. Comic books and WEG's old Star Wars tie-ins both have big audiences, so that they could take advantage of the economy of scale from big print runs and have it be worth their while to make a small profit margin per unit. $2 or 3 for a 16 page PDF, maybe, but the print edition would have to cost more. What's the most y'all would pay for something like this - and would you pay extra to see it in print and not just in PDF?

Some more market research questions:

- Would you rather see new fiction by relatively unknown authors, or reprints of stories by "name" authors that had previously appeared in magazines like Fantasy and Science Fiction? (Either way, the game stats would be new.)

- What ratio of story to stats would you like to see? Would you prefer shorter stories, or be open to longer novellas?

- For reprinted stories, are there favorites you'd especially like to have game stats for, or ones you thought "that'd be great to use in a campaign"?

 

[Ion]

I would like to see just a book of campaign setting things, like there were in the back of d20 modern, or in d20 future.

In short, I want a book full of cool ideas.