D20 Modern is 20 years old!

[Art Waring]

The D20M system worked well in some respects, despite flawed design choices like too many dead levels among classes. I had a lot of fun however running a lot of different types of games and genres both for new players and DnD players who wanted a break from fantasy games.

Not to mention that there is still an extensive D20M SRD that is still useful for OGL creators who want to take a look at a modern-era ruleset or urban arcana.

 

[Committed Hero]

How different was d20 Modern from d20 Grim Tales?

Grim Tales was OGL as opposed to d20 license. I don't think it had advanced classes like d20 Modern did.

 

[Alzrius]

The D20M system worked well in some respects, despite flawed design choices like too many dead levels among classes.

The six base classes didn't have any dead levels that I recall, receiving either a talent or a bonus feat at each level.

 

[Art Waring]

The six base classes didn't have any dead levels that I recall, receiving either a talent or a bonus feat at each level.

Oops! Ya got me, this shows how my memory can be far from perfect and I might finally be getting old. From my memory I always think of the bonus feat every other level as a dead level because feats were all over the place in D20M.

Don't mind me... keep talking folks.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You could definitely make an argument that feats were worth less than talents, so while describing the feat levels as "dead" might have been an overstatement, those levels were distinctly less valuable than the ones that got talents.

Besides some issues with parts of D20 Future, as I recall the couple things I had most issue with were the way the game handled autofire and related (having to have a feat each to get value out of Double Tap and Controlled Burst was just dumb), and the kind of pointless way it handled non-lethal damage. It also made it impossible for a starting character to have any psionic ability, though Steve Kenson's D20M option in his Psychic's Handbook addressed that.

 

[giant.robot]

I really wanted to like D20 Modern just like I really wanted to like D&D 3E but it was not to be. I felt it had all the same problems as 3E: too many skills and too few skill points, too many feats, feat traps, and overly fiddly subsystems. It then introduced its own problems with its guns and vehicle rules. It's made worse by just being a toolkit system with very little setting support.

I think it could have been improved with a 3.5-type revision and some more setting support. I would have liked to see an actual Star*Drive setting for instance. Unfortunately that never happened and it was third parties that made better "modern" D20 games.