D20 Modern in 2007?

[jezter6]

Ralts,

Zombies must have eaten his copy of YotZ.
That's why I keep mine on USB drive so that it's ultra portable and can't be easily eaten by zombies...unless they kill me and take it, at which point I won't care anymore.

 

[Ranger REG]

Urban Arcana wasn't sold as "D&D Modern." It was sold as an expansion you had to pay for that had D&D critters and magic but no core story like D&D's.

That's not how many gamers perceive it before they crack open the book to look inside.

 

[jezter6]

GURPs is as much of a toolkit as d20M. GURPs players just happen to see that as a feature. To people who bought d20 Modern, it seems to be seen as a bug.

I mean, after d20 Future there were people on all sorts of forums saying "now where's the FULL LENGTH Bughunters sourcebook".

The Modern Toolkit plus the Future Toolkit plus a brief campaign model wasn't enough.

Similarly, from a personal experience, when we released Blood and Relics at @ 50 pages, the #1 comment we got was "it's too short".

When we revised it for print, we doubled the size.

What do you think the #1 comment on the revised edition is?

Yep, "too short".

Basically d20 fans seem to have this expectation of MULTIPLE 300 page hardcover sourcebooks.

Im not sure what the answer is to that expectation, because it's not very realistic.

I mean, there's Urban Arcana, Dark Matter, Blood and Relics and Dawning Star out in print. So we have "modern high Fantasy", alien conspiracy, gothic/occult conspiracy and sci-fi and people are still saying "well it would do better if it had more settings in print".

Chuck

PS My apologies if I missed a printed setting, that was off the top of my head. If there are more settings out there, that just strengthens my argument. And of course this doesn't even count PDF.

You could do that, then see the threads fly about "Why does my 8000 page RPG super-core-setting book cost $350?"

Or you could just hit them with Ptolus and tell them to shut up and buy a fricking softcover. As much as I like Blood and Relics *cough* (and YotZ) *cough*...it's not really a setting to me. It's just like UA is not a setting. It's just earth with some minor mods.

I don't think you can HAVE a setting if it's just earth...earth is it's own setting. You can glam it up a bit, but in the end...if the highway that runs behind my house is still there...the setting hasn't changed.

 

[Vigilance]

I'm not too familiar with GURPS, but don't they actually publish a lot of individual campaign books? That's always been my impression of them.

~Qualidar~

I think I wasn't as clear as I should have been. My point was NOT that GURPs doesnt have settings.

D20 Modern has settings. Just not 300 page hardcovers.

My point was that people asking for "a killer app setting" or "a definitive setting" seem to be looking for Forgotten Realms, Eberron or Ptolus and I don't think that's realistic for a modern game at all.

GURPS publishes a fair amount of canned settings, but most of their product line is historical (ie GURPS China, GURPS Egypt etc) or Genre toolkits (GURPS Horror, GURPS Space etc).

So to run an Indiana Jones game you'd take say, GURPs Egypt and GURPS Horror, along with the core rules.

To run a time travel game you might take GURPS Time Travel and GURPS Old West.

But most GURPS books are soft cover 128 pages. To my knowledge they never did a huge mega-hardcover, other than the core rules.

When they do a full-fledged campaign setting, those are likewise softcover and 128 pages.

Their actual settings also tend to be limited runs of licensed books.

In other words, even if you bought GURPS Conan, you'd still likely want a couple of toolkits to go along with it (maybe GURPS Fantasy, or GURPS Horror).

Alternity and D20 Modern are the games I've seen attempt most strongly to emulate the GURPS model.

But still, I think *every* GURPS book counts as a toolkit the way folks are using it here. Again, Blood and Relics was about the size of GURPS Conan.

In other words, GURPS uses more or less the same model that d20 Modern uses. The people who buy GURPS books just see it as a feature and not a bug.

Chuck

PS In case it wasn't totally clear, I'm a huge fan of GURPs. I ran GURPs for years after 2nd Edition D&D turned me off to D&D and until d20 brought me back.

 

[Vigilance]

No excuses!

I can't believe you forgot me!

I knew as I typed that I was going to forget something and be embarrassed lol.

YOTZ rocks. I personally endorse it.

 

[buzz]

Still, for them to try to scoop up, or even create flagship products for each, there's a massive investment of time and effort.

Oh, yeah. I was proposing just one flagship setting, at least to start.

Personally, I like d20 Modern.

Me, too. Though I do also have traitorous love for SC2.0.

 

[buzz]

I don't think you can HAVE a setting if it's just earth.

Three words for you:

World.

Of.

Darkness.

 

[buzz]

Basically d20 fans seem to have this expectation of MULTIPLE 300 page hardcover sourcebooks.

I don't think it's just the d20 fans.

But, yeah, exactly why I think giving UrA the FR treatment would have been playing to the fans' expectations.

 

[jezter6]

Three words for you:

World.

Of.

Darkness.

Three words back at you:

Go.

LARP.

Yourself.

Please not that is only in jest. Not all WoD crazies are larpers, and not all larpers are WoD crazies. There is just a generous crossover between them. It's like southern inbreeding.

Back to the topic - even WoD isn't a 'setting' it's more of a campaign model. It's still the same old earth, just with people wearing tacky clothes and bad accents.

I'm wondering how many little twists it takes for me to believe it's a setting and not a model. For some reason, I'll buy Etherscope as a 'setting.'

 

[buzz]

But most GURPS books are soft cover 128 pages. To my knowledge they never did a huge mega-hardcover, other than the core rules.

GURPS' 4e line is all full-color hardcovers, none of which are less than 240 pages. They have stated publicly that this format sells the best in the current market.

Anything shorter and not in color is a PDF-only release, the one exception being GURPS Mysteries (which you can also get in PDF), but that's being done POD exclusively from W23.