Classic Adventuring in Urban Arcana

[Obergnom]

Hi,

I allready posted this at wizards Urban Arcana boards, but as no one answered and only a hand full of people viewed the threat, I thought it might be a good idea to post over here.

I am currently thinking about running an Urban Arcana Campaign. What I really want is something like D&D in a Modern World, although I am not sure how to accomplish that.

I want the PCs prime motivation (besides all the personal stuff there will and should be of course) to be money, money to survive, money to get better equipment, money to rise in status, money to build a residence. And I want the source of this money to be "Monsters". Maybe even using a Dungeon or two. The fun will be, doing this in such a different setting.

Why that? Because it is easy, and otherwise I am afraid to run out of ideas for an ongoing campaign. I think it is pretty easy to come up with a one shot or a campaign focused upon a big story line the players have to follow, but to run a "classic" adventuring campaign seems hard to do. And I prefer running campaigns where the players have a goal (Well, getting rich and powerful) and develop plans to accomplish that.

One idea I had, was making some kind of Apocalypse Light happen because of the incursion of shadow. I think the whole loot thing becomes hard to do once you have far reaching governments (It is pretty close to stealing, isn't it?). But, actually, thats a bigger change to the setting than I am currently willing to make.

I have been a player in a modern campaign using dep7, and I found the whole concept of "here is your next mission, you will get this amount of money, you may use this money to buy stuff at our shop, Why you do that? Do not ask me" far more depressing that just doing it for money, like in good old fantasy adventuring.

Any ideas would be highly appreciated

 

[Stormborn]

Sigh, big post that got eaten somehow - maybe i will reconstruct it later.
The essentials:
-Push the arrival of shadow back a hundred years or so.
-Add the melding of a few areas, mostly in areas of low population. These zones are tightly controled in the western world, but in many areas (former soviet union, africa, middle east, etc) circumstances prevent their being isolated. New areas appear all the time, some as small as afew city blocks, some are several kilometers wide. A few new islands have appeared in the Pacific and Carribean.
-Small immigrant communities have popped up in most major cities, and a few reservations outside of them. An elven tree city has replaced a national park in California and has won status as the first non-human independant nation.
- PCs, based on your description, are "adventurers" who illegal go into these areas looking for magical artifacts and other treasures they can sell to legitimate and not so legitimate markets. Remember, in DnD a goblin doll would be worthless, in the modern world its a rare and valuable find for a museum.
- Magic is studied in universities in the same way theoretical physics is, and only the brightest are welcomed although numerous cybermages and other fringe elements have shown their profficency in its use.
- Divine Magic is embraced by many, and rejected by others.
- Occasional "incursions" of savage goblinoid/humanoid hoards or worse -dragons- have neccesitated an emphasis on domestic security and a few urban centers have special units to deal with such.

No need to make things to radically different, just start tweaking things here and there. Remember that magic doesn't always follow scientific methodology, so its been difficult for humanty to get a grip on, at least in the West. So no major changes in world culture or technology, but there are a lot of example of magitech begining to crop up.

 

[bento]

Greed is a fine motivator, but I think a primary focus of any Modern d20 campaign is conspiracy. Whether it's the government, cults, the media or whatnot, there's always something larger lurking in the background. The parts of the Urban Arcana that I read in the Md20 book mentioned character's fighting the good fight against monsters that no one believes is there. So where would these monsters come up with their money?

I'd ask the players what their goals in the game will be, and then start working on a campaign framework that takes this into consideration. As you start out playing have the first game or two help the players focus on establishing their role in the group while completing a basic task - could be a mission or just a night out that ends up going in a crazy direction.

Once they have this worked out (and you see what they are enjoying) then start putting in those touches during the adventure to begin weaving something larger together. Just going out and robbing monsters will get a little tiresome without a larger goal. Maybe they do stumble into the middle of a conspiracy or cult and decide it would be a great way to rip off both the cult and the groups that are out to get them. Double cross everyone!

I'd also take a look at some of the adventures posted on the D20 Modern site. I believe there are a few there that describe the kind of adventure you're looking for.

 

[Obergnom]

@stormborn: Hmm, thats seems to be a very solid idea. I like that. That campaign would assume, that everyone can see through the shadow, wouldn't it? But I like that to, I'm just unsure how much work that would be. Having nerver GMed a modern campaign, it is hard to forsee the work load... I'm kind of hoping to get the shadowrun effect, where you can do a lot without any preparation as long as you are able to do some good winging...

@bento: You now, the problem with the whole conspiracy thing is, neither me (As a player or DM) nor my players are huge fans of such things. I don't know, most of the time such plots do not feel right to me, they feel to artificial.

Compared to fantasy adventuring, crawling through a Dunguen, because you want the gold and power you might find there, and at the same time fighting an evil cult that follows a terrible demon lord is a strait plot, you know it will work. It is not to much.

It is the same with movies, there are somany conspiracy movies out there, but I can't stand most of them, the plot just seems constructed, unrealistic most of the time. Even if the whole setting was fictional... adding layers to a conspiracy by inventing them later does not make a good conspiracy. My players would just say, well okay, now those are our enemies, we had no chance to forsee that, we did not know they exsist.

The cult thing, on the other hand, is a good idea. As I said above, simple plans seem to work. (In my experience)

 

[Stormborn]

@stormborn: Hmm, thats seems to be a very solid idea. I like that. That campaign would assume, that everyone can see through the shadow, wouldn't it? But I like that to, I'm just unsure how much work that would be. Having nerver GMed a modern campaign, it is hard to forsee the work load... I'm kind of hoping to get the shadowrun effect, where you can do a lot without any preparation as long as you are able to do some good winging...

Well, that setting would assume that at first only a few people could see Shadows and slowly it became obvious to everyone. As for everyone seeing shadows, no work involved at all. Its amazing how quickly people can adapt to some things when the culture has to do it on a large scale. Given the level of contact the average person would have it would be no different than the way most people react to immigrants of any kind. Some will embrace them, some hate them, some ignore them. But they will still, for the most part, hire them and buy and sell from them and get along with them as coworkers. Just do away with the idea that all goblins (or orcs, or whatever) have an allegiance to evil. They will be in just as much diversity as humans, and some of them will be 2nd or 3rd generation - which means in the US that some will be citizens. When reading d20M/UrbArc remember the diff between Setting and Rules (fluff and crunch). Seeing Shadows is Fluff nor Crunch. If you say "this is the way it is" then thats the way it is.

Although if you are really hoping for a Shadowrun effect, just using d20M you can do that. Just use the world/setting info of shadow run and the d20M rules. Whether WotC or 3rd party, there are pleanty of materials out there for cybertech, hightech, etc. to make Shadowrun possible. No need to create from scratch.

EDIT: Why, might I ask, do you want a modern game, exactly? What draws you to it and what makes you think your players want to play in a modern setting? I had a player who HATED modern settings - of all my attempts he only liked one (but overall that was an issue with him and may not be germaine to the discussion). If you just want a more modern feel for DnD you might try XCrawl - a DnD game set in a "modern" world where America is an Empire and Dungeon Crawls are televised sporting events.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I want the PCs prime motivation (besides all the personal stuff there will and should be of course) to be money, money to survive, money to get better equipment, money to rise in status, money to build a residence. And I want the source of this money to be "Monsters". Maybe even using a Dungeon or two. The fun will be, doing this in such a different setting.

That won't work unless you take a heavy hand with the Profession skill. The Profession skill represents money making through jobs or real estate deals, etc. Those things take time, but if you want to be technical, Profession gives you money at level-up without exception, even if you blow your roll.

Furthermore, PCs don't have many things to spend money on (except bullets, but those are so cheap that PCs won't lose Wealth on them unless they're starting characters who spent money on cars and sniper rifles and so dropped to like 3 Wealth). Other low magic systems like Iron Heroes run into the exact same thing. You got a stack of cash for adventuring, but there's almost nothing to spend the cash on. The most expensive things you can buy are a car (which a starting character might afford, at the cost of dropping their Wealth to zero, but that's okay because only one PC needs to do so) and then a house. If you're letting heroes max out Profession and don't control it they'll be able to afford a house even if they get no cash from adventures.

Shadowrun (a campaign setting and also rule set) kind of assumes the PCs are "starving" (a lot of adventures start assuming the PCs got drunk and spent more money than they should the night before, and are now hung over when they get a job offer), for lack of a better word. There's no "free stuff" rule, but even so bullets aren't too expensive, and only some characters really need a lot of money. (Cyborgs are a money sink!)

Zhab from the WotC boards had a really neat Profession house rule. You only make checks when called for. Furthermore, there's a cap to the rank benefit you gain at each level equal to your Profession score. (So, if you have 10 Wealth right now, enough ranks in Profession to gain 3 Wealth from a level-up rank benefit, but your current Profession value is +11 (no Wis bonus, no Windfall feat), you would only gain 2 Wealth.) At that point, you can only raise your Wealth through adventuring instead of just getting windfalls every level-up.

I agree that the conspiracy is more important. Getting a house is suddenly less important than saving the world, you know.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Neil Gaiman has some nice tropes on modern fantasy. His Neverwhere book and the derivative comics and BBC miniseries were excellent. Like Urban Arcana, modern minds simply gloss over and "edit" the magical aspects of certain events.

His American Gods was also pretty well done. (Some of) the gods we know from mythology are still alive and well and up to their old tricks...and manipulating humans in the process.

Clive Barker's Imajica would be another nice sourcebook, as would some of his other books, like The Great and Secret Show.

 

[DarkKestral]

I agree that the conspiracy is more important. Getting a house is suddenly less important than saving the world, you know.

Honestly, why not just have the PCs adventure for fun, fame, and profit? Lots of people do that now, and really, it's reasonable to assume that yeah, they blow through their cash in a Shadowrun-like effect. Boom-n'-bust.

Just give 'em a chance to buy the pretty weapons and all that, and assume that between adventures, they blew a good portion of their cash. (I'd say lose 2d4 after each adventure sorta thing.. they level up, yeah, but that wad quickly gets consumed by other things.) Prior to losing the bonus, however, they get to buy their new combat gear. So they can have a lot of combat gear, and not have much wealth gain over time, or not have much, but gain wealth, even if only slowly.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How you run this will also be affected by your overall metastory.

I'm designing one right now involving fallen angels manipulating humanity, items of power (The Spear of Destiny, Excalibur, the Holy Grail, etc.) hidden as mundane items by powerful magics, and a "Chosen One" trying to redeem the fall of man for the first time in 2000 years... I'm lifting from Biblical legends, Gaiman, Lovecraft, Barker, and many others. Magic is in the world, but only those attuned to it notice unless they're in the heart of someplace like Stonehenge when the mana lines flare up...

A campaign in which the players are in Waterdeep of the 20th Century will be very different from that- less complex, but in a way, more recognizable. Think of "Cast a Deadly Spell" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101550/ ), Glen Cooks "reimagined Nero Wolfe" novels featuring a guy named Garrett (technically, its modern concepts in a classic fantasy setting, but...), or most of Lovecraft's stories.

There are settings where people go back and forth between fantasy and RW/Sci-fi settings (at least once), like Piers Anthony's Split Infinity and Xanth novels, Brooks' "Magic Kingdom" books, Rosenburg's "Guardians of the Flame" novels, or even the D&D cartoon.

You could even alter the trope from Larry Niven's "Dream World" books. In those, LARPing was an internationally televised sport, accented with holograms and robots. Think of a fantasy version of "Westworld." X-Crawl was an approximation of this...

But you could twist it- in a "20th Century Waterdeep," adventuring would be the new televised sport or reality shows- "Survivor: Myth Drannor," "The Great Race: Dragonspine Mountains," "Monday Night Dungeon-delving," "The Graveyard 500" and so forth. PCs would either be pros or amateurs, depending upon the setting. Think "Rollerball" on magical steroids.

(Note to self: I like! Will post that in the Campaign ideas thread...here's a link in case you want some more cool ideas from other posters http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3095024 )

 

[Obergnom]

Thanks for all the great replies!

You largely seem to agree that such a campaing is hard to pull of. Thats why I thought about maybe go post apocalyptic. It is not really what I want, but if that apocalypse was not that severe, classic adventuring would be possible. Still, it is not really what I was aiming for. I know XCrawl (I have got that Necromarica Module with pregenerated chars)... using TV to construct Adventuring Game Shows surely is a cool thing, I just do not not for how long...

About the wealth system... I do like it, but I hate the "Auto-gathering" system. In the campaing I played in as a PC, I had bad luck with stats, had to invest all my skill points to quallify for a advanced class (Acolyte) due to my low Int score, while the rest of the group got huge amounts of "auto-loot", allthough their characters did the same things I did, there was no down time we spend with going to work.