D20 Modern Adventures/Publishers?

[reveal]

And lets not forget Dark Inheritence (forgive mispelling). I am dying to get my hands on that. Read some of the stuff and I think it will be an absolute blast. I say give it time and we will be up to our eyeballs in Modern fun. Plus with the right web site you can make anything D20, I have seen some conversion web sites that sound intresting.

What's Dark Inheritance?

 

[Darke]

Dark Inheritance: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41360

 

[Ranger REG]

Its the wide range of premises that's the problem, with D&D you release a dungeon adventure and you can be pretty sure of a lot of people will be able to work it into their campaign.

So, what you're saying, Bagpuss, is that they should have focused on one modern genre premise, and simply let third-party publishers do the rest?

 

[Carnifex]

I believe Horade will be working on some d20 Modern stuff.

 

[Emiricol]

I love the fact that they gave us so many approaches. I think, however, that it does make it difficult to find the right approach for product development, since it hasn't been out that long.

I'm betting a bunch of stuff will come out once the upcoming WotC setting book comes out.

 

[Bagpuss]

So, what you're saying, Bagpuss, is that they should have focused on one modern genre premise, and simply let third-party publishers do the rest?

No not particularly. Nothing is stopping publishers using Modern's rule to do there own setting, but...

Every new setting dilutes your market even more. And...

Since neither Agents of PSI, Urban Arcana and Shadowchasers are not SRD, that's three of the most interesting concepts already taken as PI. You can't really do an adventure for those sort of settings without risking stepping on Product Identity. Otherwise I would have expected to see a Shadowchaser's style module produced by now as its seems to be the setting that might have the widest appeal.

 

[Ranger REG]

You can make the same argument for Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and the upcoming Dragonlance. But that hasn't stopped authors from flooding the market with d20 fantasy products.

OTOH, I don't see how keeping mage and acolyte advanced classes as PI, but we're hoping that with the release of Urban Arcana, we will see those classes Opened up.

 

[Bagpuss]

But each of those settings is similar enough that you can. You can do a product on with an Elven fortress set in a forest as the adventure base, fighting an expanding goblin warren that threatens the trade route with the nearby human population and it can be used in all those settings (although perhaps Ravenloft will require some more drastic alterations to make it suit the mood). In each of those settings elves are generally good and live in woods, goblins are evil and live in caves and both races exist.

You write a D20 Modern adventure involving an arms company recently taken over by a doppleganger, who now secretly sells weapons to criminal organisations, and sells defective ammunition to frontline troops. The players are part of Department 7 and are sent into investigate why the ammo the troops out in the Gulf is suddenly not working. They discover that the doppleganger is in league with demonic forces set to stage terrorist attacks throughtout the country, for whatever reason.

And a large fraction of your customer base won't buy it because they don't have any supernatural creatures in their setting. Others won't buy it as in there campaign its the government that is corrupt demons and the players work against it.

You see with D20 Modern, you can't even assume that in most players campaigns that the Government is Good or that Demons and Dopplegnagers exist.

 

[Vigilance]

I have written 2 sourcebooks for d20 Modern which will be out soon (April to May) in PDF form, and shortly following in print.

One is called Blood and Relics, and is a mystical occult conspiracy campaign model.

The other is called Blood and Fists, and is a martial arts supplement, and will include adventure material in the form of a full-contact tournament with rules and NPCs.

Follwing the release of Blood and Relics, we'll be doing at least one, quite possibly two adventures for the setting.

In answer to Bagpuss' concerns about market dilution, let me say I've given this some thought, and I don't think it's a big problem.

For instance- the adventures I am writing for Blood and Relics will be VERY playable by any Shadow Chasers campaign model, as well as being adaptable to any Modern model where magic and monsters are in play.

Blood and Fists and its tournament work very well in special ops and espionage type games (there's a hook to the tournament where a spy with extensive martial arts training is asked to join the tournament to find out who the Yakuza in charge are).

So- my feeling is- adventures will be more adaptable than people think.

Just one designer's two cents

 

[RodneyThompson]

Just for everyone's information, The Game Mechanics have thrown their hat a little more fully into the ring with some updates today.

The Modern Player's Companion has been released. It's quite good, and I think lots of people will like it.

Come for the Reaping, their Urban Arcana adventure, has been announced for a May release.

Martial Arts Mayhem will be getting the full book treatment, with a release date in August.