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<blockquote data-quote="mxyzplk" data-source="post: 4688816" data-attributes="member: 16450">I liked D20 Modern OK.&nbsp; The generic stat-based classes made me somewhat sad, and so often I prefer variants that are more genre-specific - like I find Spycraft 1e is better for normal modern action.I agree with the derivative writing thing.&nbsp; It seemed to me that all the proposed settings were custom designed to cannibalize other popular games.&nbsp; Urban Arcana is Shadowrun with the serial numbers filed off.&nbsp; Shadow Chasers is Buffy/Hunter.&nbsp; Agents of PSI is...&nbsp; Well, it came out very close to Shadowforce: Archer for Spycraft and is the same deal as Dark Conspiracy, Conspiracy: X or other previous games.&nbsp; Then they repurposed Dark*Matter weakly - as someone who had and enjoyed the Alternity version I was quite underwhelmed.The later supplements similarly were very short and unfocused.&nbsp; Face it, d20 is a very crunchy game, so the amount of detail published was insufficient to actually play in any of the many genres they covered.&nbsp; Take d20 Future.&nbsp; In one book, it tries to cover various tech levels, starships, mecha, robots, cyber, mutations, aliens, and settings that were their own big ass book previously (Bughunters, Star*Drive, etc) all in one book.&nbsp; So all you really had were &quot;hints on how you'd do this if you wanted to largely implement it yourself.&quot;&nbsp; It couldn't decide what it wanted to be.&nbsp; I think if rather than going for &quot;very light spread of generic&quot; they had published some more directly usable stuff...&nbsp; There was a lot of good d20 Modern addon stuff done, mostly in PDF, by third party folks.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mxyzplk, post: 4688816, member: 16450"] I liked D20 Modern OK. The generic stat-based classes made me somewhat sad, and so often I prefer variants that are more genre-specific - like I find Spycraft 1e is better for normal modern action. I agree with the derivative writing thing. It seemed to me that all the proposed settings were custom designed to cannibalize other popular games. Urban Arcana is Shadowrun with the serial numbers filed off. Shadow Chasers is Buffy/Hunter. Agents of PSI is... Well, it came out very close to Shadowforce: Archer for Spycraft and is the same deal as Dark Conspiracy, Conspiracy: X or other previous games. Then they repurposed Dark*Matter weakly - as someone who had and enjoyed the Alternity version I was quite underwhelmed. The later supplements similarly were very short and unfocused. Face it, d20 is a very crunchy game, so the amount of detail published was insufficient to actually play in any of the many genres they covered. Take d20 Future. In one book, it tries to cover various tech levels, starships, mecha, robots, cyber, mutations, aliens, and settings that were their own big ass book previously (Bughunters, Star*Drive, etc) all in one book. So all you really had were "hints on how you'd do this if you wanted to largely implement it yourself." It couldn't decide what it wanted to be. I think if rather than going for "very light spread of generic" they had published some more directly usable stuff... There was a lot of good d20 Modern addon stuff done, mostly in PDF, by third party folks. [/QUOTE]

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