About to take the D20 M plunge!

[EricNoah]

Ok, I have a group of about 3 players to entertain this weekend and I think we might be doing d20 Modern. Yikes!

I have a couple of adventure ideas (I may do my last Alternity/Dark Matter adventure -- stopping the bombing of a convention center on New Year's Eve 1999 -- as d20 Modern; or I may try to do a sci-fi adventure I wrote for Stardrive).

What I need, though, are either some pregenerated characters of around 3rd-4th level, or a good semi-automated character sheet (Excel, PDF, etc.).

And I could use any tips, hints, pointers, etc. that make the GMing experience different from running D&D d20.

Thanks!

 

[Dareoon Dalandrove]

Here's an excel sheet.
http://soldarin.tripod.com/rpgpages/id7.html

I'm not at home right now or I would put the link for the self caculating pdf that someone posted.

Two good screens are avialable (they have the correct devation charts for genades, missing weapons) very useful.

Another thing with genades. It might just be me, but i'm always having problems with the area of effect. If you've got a template use it. Make sure that you look at auto fire rules. Good way to blast many foes at once. I made up some small items, check them out you may find something that you like.

Overall everything is easy and there are only a few rules differences between dnd and mod.

I can have some characters for you later (as in midnight) tonight if that's what your looking for. Let me know what you have in mind. I can also send you some villians and mooks (i don't like using the ones from the book). let me know.

 

[jeffhartsell]

Character sheet

Attached is a character sheet that I put together that is semi-automatic for BAB, saves, and skill points (you need to add skill points per level gained on the lookup tab). Prints out nice and is straight-forward to use.

 

[Mistwell]

Ok, I have a group of about 3 players to entertain this weekend and I think we might be doing d20 Modern. Yikes!

I have a couple of adventure ideas (I may do my last Alternity/Dark Matter adventure -- stopping the bombing of a convention center on New Year's Eve 1999 -- as d20 Modern; or I may try to do a sci-fi adventure I wrote for Stardrive).

What I need, though, are either some pregenerated characters of around 3rd-4th level, or a good semi-automated character sheet (Excel, PDF, etc.).

And I could use any tips, hints, pointers, etc. that make the GMing experience different from running D&D d20.

Thanks!

As far as pre-gen characters, let us know what kind of thing you are looking for and I am sure we can whip some up for you. For example, do you want 1 of each character class? Do you want multi-classing? Any special focus you want for any of them (like do you want a Strong character that is a brawler, a martial artist, a melee weapon user, a throw weapons specialist, or a guy with a gun - similar questions for the other classes).

 

[Henry]

Hopefullly these will be helpful.

1) Keep the action running fast, but that's kinda universal advice. d20 Modern seems to play best when done cinematically.

2) Carefully read and re-read the rules on autofire and grenades (both I believe are on page 121).

3) Remind the players about action points. I have yet had a single player use action points - they are inveterate D&D players, yet they keep forgetting about them!!!

3) Be very wary of wealth. Be VERY wary of wealth with pre-genned higher-level characters. Unless you make some sort of ruling about them having pre-spent some of their money beforehand, the PC's will literally be millionaires by the time wealth as rolled for 4th level. I know this from our current game - characters had wealth bonuses somewhere between 26 and 40 by 4th level.

4) Do your research ahead of time. It's funny, but my D&D games I don't have to prepare as much, but my d20 Modern games I have to study a good bit ahead of time, because when I set my players in Miami, or Philly, or D.C. some of them have BEEN there, and it breaks their suspension of disbelief if you make a glaring error (like going to D.C. or L.A. and having no street gangs in the whole area, or putting a major landmark where it isn't supposed to be.)

5) Remind yourself studiously about the massive damage check, because it varies from character to character, and I have driven myself nuts forgetting about it time and again, because it comes up so rarely in other d20 systems.

Do you have access to the program Roleplaying Master? If so, it handles d20 modern characters exceptionally well, I am told. But there are very few yet available, which is disappointing.

Good luck, Eric, and let use know how it went!

 

[jeffhartsell]

Joining the club

I too am about to take the d20 modern plunge. And when I go, I just dive right in! We've been huge DnD fans and love d20 DnD. We are going to maintain the DnD campaign and start up a d20M campaign, which should be a nice change of pace on off-weeks.

I'll post how the first sessions goes later at the end of the month.

 

[JDragon]

I don't know how you do things normally, but remember that with Modern and the advent of Action Points you must be very guarded about the DC's for things.

Anytime someone makes a skill check, make sure not to tell them the DC, so that way they have to guess if they have made it or if they want to spend a point.

Also remember it doesn't take a high level bad guy to take a party, a street punk with a few lucky shots can wipe a party out, thans to the MD rules. This also means it's even easier for a party to kill the big bad guy with out much of a challenge. (last game I critted the BBG on a double tap shot and did 5d10, then he faild his MD save

Another thing that has to be watched much closer (mainly by players) is weight. They can only carry som much without incurring penalties. The penalties start with a medium load and effect skills and ranged attacks. The other part of this is depending on the campaign their will be no bags of holding to store everything in and very little if any ability enhancing items.

Have fun, its a blast.

JDragon

 

[Bibliophile]

Here's an excel sheet.
http://soldarin.tripod.com/rpgpages/id7.html

I'm not at home right now or I would put the link for the self caculating pdf that someone posted.

Two good screens are avialable (they have the correct devation charts for genades, missing weapons) very useful.

Another thing with genades. It might just be me, but i'm always having problems with the area of effect. If you've got a template use it. Make sure that you look at auto fire rules. Good way to blast many foes at once. I made up some small items, check them out you may find something that you like.

Overall everything is easy and there are only a few rules differences between dnd and mod.

I can have some characters for you later (as in midnight) tonight if that's what your looking for. Let me know what you have in mind. I can also send you some villians and mooks (i don't like using the ones from the book). let me know.

Dareoon, how would I add weapons to that sheet? It's missing the AKM/Ak-47 assault rifle from the core book.

 

[Thain]

4) Do your research ahead of time. It's funny, but my D&D games I don't have to prepare as much, but my d20 Modern games I have to study a good bit ahead of time, because when I set my players in Miami, or Philly, or D.C. some of them have BEEN there, and it breaks their suspension of disbelief if you make a glaring error (like going to D.C. or L.A. and having no street gangs in the whole area, or putting a major landmark where it isn't supposed to be.)

Of course, if you do make such a mistake feel free to fall back on the "cinematic" genre that D20M represents. After all, in every action movie about Detroit I've ever seen they have at least one shot where we can seen the Renissance Centre and the Detroit River...

Any local, or casual vistor, will of course note that in order to get this veiw you have to be in Windsor, on the opposite side of the river, in Canada to see this.

Similar things happen to NYC... how exactly do three un- or underemployeed 20-something women afford a 18,000 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan? (Oh, I know, they cheat the Wealth system! )

 

[EricNoah]

Thanks for the tips!

I'm almost certainly going to do this as "D20 Modern Lite" -- probably won't even get into the wealth system, for example, and we'll probably use very low level characters. Now I just have to build characters and design an adventure.