d20 modern Failed...why? (or did it?)

[Drowbane]

I, personally, did not like d20 Modern. It just wasn't my genre. If I'm gaming in something "modernish" its either going to be Supers (Champions or M&M), Malls&Morons, or something World of Darkness (Werewolf and Mage being two favorites).

That said, I don't think Modern "failed". I know plenty of gamers with entire d20 Modern libraries.

I think it failed because Rabelais only ran two sessions and I missed both of those.

I rolled up a character, put everyone's info on the wiki, and was ready to go.

I blame Rabelais. :fist:

Thats cause Nick's "steve buscemi inspired daredevil/stunt-dude" tried talking to the Cthuloid-horror McGuffin.? I would still like to give Dr Tsin some more tabletime.

 

[doomwh]

I enjoyed it.

Our first game we made Jack Burton and Wang and had a blast saving a local mall from a horde of zombies. Even got to throw in some classic Burton lines "Sonovabitch must pay!" and "You know what Jack Burton says in a situation like this...Jack Burton says what the Hell!" We had a blast for one night. The next time we played we used the Urban Arcana rules and I got to paly a werewolf and we played that for about 2 months and enjoyed leveling up and got into it but we went back to D&D. I'll play it again given the chance but most my buddies prefer straight up fantasy so we will see.

 

[questing gm]

I adore the system. It was flexible and generic but did suffer from it. Then came along the era books which I thought was really useful to expand on the system so that it doesn't stay in the modern era.

Sadly, the system died a slow and silent death by the time Dark Matter came out. Anyone remembered Project Javelin and D20 Supers? As far as I'm concern, WotC has laid this line to rest and there probably isn't a dedicated design team behind it anymore. Most of the initial batch got laid off and went on to form their own companies which continued to support the system.

Did it fail? I would say yes as far as WoTC is concerned if not they wouldn't have let it die.

Did it succeed? The legacy lives in among the 3PP and thankfully it was made during the OGL period so that's the source of supplements to look for (and there are already numerous good ones) if you want something more out of the system.

Btw, I voted 'yes' but it was to the question of did I love the system.

 

[maddman75]

I like modern RPGs, most of what I play is basically modern - most of my Dread games, CoC, Buffy, even All Flesh has basically normal people as PCs. I find it more challenging to GM, and players can get into character more easily.

But I didn't like d20 modern. I can barely tolerate classes and levels in fantasy. Having them in generic form just makes it feel constricted and artificial. If they'd abandoned classes and levels for a purely skill-based game and had some compelling setting behind it, maybe I'd be interested. I'm not really too into toolbox games. I want a game that does this and does it well. I'm no more interested in d20 modern than I am GURPS or Hero, for that reason.

 

[Burrito Al Pastor]

d20 Modern was a strong product line by the end of its lifetime - Urban Arcana is, to date, one of my favorite setting books, but Dark•Matter was good too, as I recall, and the rebranding/re-releasing of Ultramodern Firearms as Weapons Locker was smart, because it was a great book both times.

Ultimately, I think the problem of d20 Modern was that it started off on the wrong foot. The core classes were underwhelming and sometimes unintuitive, which wasn't good. The d20 mechanics weren't really ideal for firearms as presented, which was wasn't good. But the biggest nail in the coffin, in my opinion, is a lack of campaign content; the d20 Modern core book just didn't have any clear sense of direction. It gave no particular indication of what kind of campaign it would be good for; there was virtually nothing about the d20 Modern system to make you want to put a game in it at first. That's what did it in. If they'd released a book like Urban Arcana as the "default campaign setting" for d20 modern and put it out the month after or something, d20 Modern would have done much better with a clearly defined theme and niche.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I really liked a lot of the elements of D20 Modern, but I admit that I never played it much at all.

Ultimately, I think they tried to be a bit too generic with the base class system. For example, the Smart Hero tried to be both "the scientist" and "the guy with the plan", and thus failed at both. Ultimately, the Advanced Classes (which were proper classes, mostly) were the "real" classes and the Basic Classes were just filler.

Unlike others, I actually really liked the D20 Modern scheme of providing lots of "mini-settings" that are not fully fleshed out, but still have a few solid ideas going for them, particularly since many of these elements were fairly modular and could be combined in different ways. That said, I can understand if people wanted something more substantial. I still think that Urban Arcana was a poor choice for the only true setting book to be released for the system, though... Shadow Chasers or Agents of PSI would have been better.

Also, the supplement support for D20 Modern was pretty inconsistent. D20 Future was an absolutely horrible book, throwing out countless different mechanics and ideas with no idea on how to make them all fit together. One chapter in that book (I think it is called the "Scientific Engineering" chapter) is probably the worst segment of any WotC book that I have ever owned. I don't even want to get into how disappointing the mecha rules were (they don't even clearly explain how you are supposed to actually control a mecha, and they had the worst implementation of progress levels by far). A few later supplements were better (D20 Future Tech and D20 Apocalypse, in particular), but still suffered horribly from having to be based on what came before (and for constantly introducing wildly imbalanced rules).

Basically, I think D20 Modern failed simply because there really were not enough unifying ideas and mechanics holding the entire mess together. It turned into a giant garbage pile of new settings and rules. A new version of D20 Modern that takes something closer to the 4E approach (which has very large numbers of unifying themes and mechanics frameworks) would probably be better off.

 

[jdrakeh]

I liked it and don't think that it failed. I do acknowledge that it failed to achieve the same kind of success as D&D 3x but what did? I think d20 Modern's biggest issue is that "modern" isn't a genre and that the core d20 Modern book was essentially a robust generic rule system crippled by equipment lists limited to modern America.

It was as if somebody said "Hey! Let's create something as flexible as Hero or GURPS and then take out all of the options for everything except modern combat!"

I would have preferred to see the flexibility of the system supported out of the gate with equipment lists and other rules for multiple time periods (or actual genres) in the core book but, instead, they split off rules for other time periods into later supplements (both of which were heavy on 'filler' content and delivered far too long after the game's initial release to have any real chance of success).

I really think that d20 Modern had the potential to be the GURPS of the d20 System at one point in time but was horribly mismanaged in that regard.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I think it suffered from the GURPS Transhuman Space problem: "Great! Now what do i do with it?"

Really, the Mongoose Traveller method would have been awesome: 1 Corebook, and after that, a couple of high-profile setting books.


So, Wizards, are you reading this? Do. It.

 

[xechnao]

It fails as a system. Levels and stuff is a D&D fantasy thing where there are parts of the worlds unexplored, unknown challenges to be found so leveling kind of makes sense. It does not make such sense in a modern game -where information is much more available. There should be room for some improvement and flexibility but not the way the D20 Modern system handles it.
Players could buy training on some skill-equipment (firearms for example) by paying with their time and money. Much more simple and to the point.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think d20 Modern was fairly succesful, but probably never could compare to D&D (but as others pointed out - what can?).

Unfortunately, Project Javelin and further adventure campaigns were never realized, and I think d20 Modern is "dead" now from a WotC support perspective.

I am not sure I would want to go back to d20 Modern now, with 4E around and many d20 Modern or OGL offshots of d20 Modern that probably show how much potential for a modern d20 game is still unrealized in d20 Modern.

I'd see as its failures:
- No real adventure and campaign support. The system is a toolbox, which is great in some ways, but it really hurts its ability to be used out-of-the-box and to motivate people to play it for a longer time. (I think that's a problem of many OGL games that consist mostly out of core books)

- There is not a lot of mechanical innovations for the non-combat stuff. Seriously, d20 Modern needs more material for creating organizations, running investigations and similar stuff. Skill Challenges or similar mechanics should have been made core already in d20 Modern!

- The talents are either boring (Oh, wow, Melee Smash lets me deal more damage And I can take it 3 times!) or needlessly convoluted (okay, I roll a Charisma Check against a DC to activate this power, and then the opponent makes a Save, and then he might get a penalty?).
Star Wars Saga did this a lot better.

- Toolbox not thought to the end. D20 Future was very interesting, but it also showed a few problems of the entire approach. Higher PL gear was plain better (well, who would have thought!), but there was no clear way to model this for stuff like CR or overall power level. Games like Mutants & Masterminds (Campaign Power Level) or Torg (Axioms, Value Chart) do this a lot better. The game was supposed to cover all this, but it couldn't really do it so well.


It also had a few good ideas (beyond the solid foundations of the d20 System):
- Wealth System. Really, you don't want to deal with Dollars, Euros and Yen in a modern game with its credit cards, banking account, speculation and rents. Abstract it. The specific implementation might have its flaws, I think, but the basic idea was right.

- The Multiclassing focus of the system. I would change the way classes worked, but the general idea of mixing and matching abilities of different classes or roles is sound. It avoids the complexities and imbalances of a fully fledged point buy build system, but still gives a lot of ways to tailor your character and create interesting archetypes (including unusual ones). For example, mix Strong with Smart!