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<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4688287" data-attributes="member: 32536">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 &quot;the scientist&quot; and &quot;the guy with the plan&quot;, and thus failed at both. Ultimately, the Advanced Classes (which were proper classes, mostly) were the &quot;real&quot; classes and the Basic Classes were just filler.Unlike others, I actually really liked the D20 Modern scheme of providing lots of &quot;mini-settings&quot; 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 &quot;Scientific Engineering&quot; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 4688287, member: 32536"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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