d20 Modern Dark*Matter hardcover from WotC?!?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I don't think that's fair. V:tM had just one thing—vampires—and it put WW in the #2 spot. Again, I see no inherrent problem with the UrA concept. The book just wasn't very inspiring. Frankly, I loved stuff like sending spells via email and enchanted ID cards. Lots of fun things to do.

VtM is a game where the PCs are usually ... Vampires. However, they get to do lots of things. They don't always have to (for an example) follow plot threads that involve smashing 4th generation elders and Antidiluvians.

Pretty much every supplement for Savage Worlds has followed this model. Ghostwalk for D&D was similar, as well as Ruins of Intrigue for AE. It seems to be a newer concept, but, IMO, it's a damn good one.

I missed all of those. I guess I miss a lot

Buffy and Angel work exactly like Shadow. Everyday people see thigns and their brain, unable to deal with the idea of a werewolf, sees a big rabid dog.

Did this big rabid dog walk on its hind legs and talk? Because that's a pretty good hint that there's something wrong there. People aren't actually that stupid. If the werewolf simply remained in wolf form and didn't do anything to reveal its intelligence, it's easy to see how someone could mistake it for a big rabid dog.

IMO, the problem with Shadow was that it was so ill-defined. Other than "it's what brings fantasy creatures here" and "it's what keeps normal people from freaking out", the book kept Shadow incredibly vague. As I said earlier, I really wanted a setting, not a toolkit.

I still think it's stupid that, if people see an ogre, they think it's a hairy drunk. It just seemed like a heavy-handed plot device to ensure only the players could solve problems, and keep cops and the military out of it. Same thing with the "shadow decomposition" when a monster dies.

 

[Wasgo]

I still think it's stupid that, if people see an ogre, they think it's a hairy drunk. It just seemed like a heavy-handed plot device to ensure only the players could solve problems, and keep cops and the military out of it. Same thing with the "shadow decomposition" when a monster dies.

That's what happened in Buffy all the time. People saw vampires, demons, and many other things and rationalized it as gangs, hallucinations, and many other excuses.

 

[Staffan]

That's what happened in Buffy all the time. People saw vampires, demons, and many other things and rationalized it as gangs, hallucinations, and many other excuses.

However, once they were told about the supernatural, most seemed to be able to perceive it just fine. To quote Oz, "Actually, that explains a lot." In Buffy, it's more a matter of people having been indoctrinated from an early age that monsters don't exist, so when they see a monster they try to rationalize it away. From what I understand of Urban Arcana, "Shadow" keeps people from perceiving the supernatural altogether.

 

[hobgoblin]

so, it works just like a illusion spell that you basicly fail to resist unless told about it being there. ok, so some may well want to put in into a padded cell but thats another story.

it may well allso be that the goverment knows. but either have some kind of agreement going with representatives of shadow, or in some other way want to use the knowledge for their own reasons. see, instant conspiracy

And gangers and Lone Stars and arcologies and soy-stuff and political backstabbing and insect shamans and a wide variety of other things. Shadowrun adventures have so many different plot points to lock onto that each adventure is different. UA just has one thing - Shadow-born monsters.

and the gangers, cops, corporate hq's, political stuff, evil magic users and more is allso available in urban arcana. its just that you do not have it spelled out the way that shadowrun have. its basicly a urban setting with magic and d&d style creatures. time to break out the creativity i say

 

[buzz]

However, once they were told about the supernatural, most seemed to be able to perceive it just fine. To quote Oz, "Actually, that explains a lot." In Buffy, it's more a matter of people having been indoctrinated from an early age that monsters don't exist, so when they see a monster they try to rationalize it away. From what I understand of Urban Arcana, "Shadow" keeps people from perceiving the supernatural altogether.

Keep in mind, OZ is a *PC*, probably with a feat or talent that keeps him unphased all the time. Regardless, somebody in the know still had to tell him the truth, and then the mystic light bulb went on. IIRC, that's all it really takes with Shadow, too.

I always saw it as an urban fantasy version of "They Live". Until you are given a means to see, you simply don't. A reasonable conceit.

 

[buzz]

VtM is a game where the PCs are usually ... Vampires. However, they get to do lots of things. They don't always have to (for an example) follow plot threads that involve smashing 4th generation elders and Antidiluvians.

My point exactly. UrA had a far more expansive canvas on which to paint adventures, so I don't see how it could have been more limiting than, e.g., any product thhat WW makes.

Same thing with the "shadow decomposition" when a monster dies.

Again, this is pretty much how vamps in Buffy and Angel worked. Demons would generally leave bodies, though.

Anyway, another workable conceit. How else to help thwart PCs from convincing the authorities they're innocent?

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

It's nothing new, the Shadow thing.

Buffyverse HAS to have it. Jeez. Every fifteen minutes some demon or vampire or vampire-demon is opening a portal to hell or another hell or another dimension or a hell-dimension and the world will be destroyed/remade in its image/consumed.

And yet vampire-demons aren't on the evening news. And the monsters all seems to just boil away off screen.

Not "only the PCs" can see Shadow in UrA. IIRC, isn't there a racist hate-group made up of humans that strikes against the Shadow creatures? The MAJORITY of people ignore things ...

Heck, the concept is in the WhiteWolf games! In the original Mage (haven't looked at the new one), the reason the Technocracy's brand of magic works is people can believe in "science". Mages have to watch what they throw so that people are able to rationalize it away, and if you don't you get eaten by Paradox.

It's just ... not new. Not really all that special to Urban Arcana.

I could run a whole Urban Arcana adventure centering on, I dunno, some historian that gets his hands on a spell book and starts raising the dead with an Incantation. Or Vampires.

Those are my bag, anyway.

Or maybe some Druids in the woods somewhere raising hell with man's encroachment on nature. Or reports of a dragon that turn out to be an illusionist (human, self-taught).

It turns into a Takasi-level chicken-and-egg cycle though. Does an Urban Arcana adventure have to have Shadow creatures? No. Is it an Urban Arcana adventure if it doesn't have anything to do with Shadow? No.

You can certainly do other things ... but why? And why is that really a BAD thing?



I didn't like the whole Sasquatch angle in Dark*Matter. It never came up. Ever. In any of the games I ran. White Section came up, but usually only in whispers and frantic phone calls. The Greys only came up once.

--fje

 

[Sketchpad]

I hope this is true and supported I always loved the D*M setting and have used it on occasion in my d20 Modern games (as well as some Dark Champions games and d20 CoC).

 

[Falkus]

Not "only the PCs" can see Shadow in UrA. IIRC, isn't there a racist hate-group made up of humans that strikes against the Shadow creatures? The MAJORITY of people ignore things ...

The Fraternal Order of Vigilance. They played a big part in my d20 Modern Campaign. I had Carlton Ashe found the group after being paralyzed below the waist when mugged by a bugbear. When the PCs finally confronted him, he ended up chasing them around his mansion whlie shooting at them with a M60 attached to his wheelchair. They had to eventually shoot him with a LAW to get him to stop.