D20 Modern is out!

[cbatt]

How are skills - like driving, working on machines, kissing the girl - handled? Is an exotic weapon feat required to use a sword? When are the setting books due?

Good question. (I didn't even think about this until you asked...)

You do not need Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use a Sword. In fact, the exotic weapons listed (table 4-7) are: Chain, Chain-Saw ("Come get some!"), Kama, Katana, Kukri, Nunchaku, Three-section staff.

However, Swords do require the Archaic Weapons feat. Which is basically like Martial Weapons, from DnD.

Skills are skills. They work like they do for the rest of the d20 system. They are very well described though. Each skill is broken down into 5 parts: Description, Check, Try Again?, Special, Time. Each part greatly reduces the ambiguity surrounding a skills use. Very nicely done, imho.

EDIT: I guess I should add... the 5 parts of a skill description are the same as those used in D3D (though "Time" is new), however what I meant with that statement is that, from what I've read, they are very well written in comparisson to D3D's equivalents. They seem clearer. Might just be my perception though.

 

[Felon]

I went to my FLGS today, and this is what happened:

Me: Do you have D20 Modern yet?
FLGS: D20 Modern?
Me: Yes, it's the latest release from WotC.
FLGS: Hmm. Never heard of it.....
You might be asking why I'm calling them my FLGS. After today, so am I. StupidLGS, perhaps.

Hmm. You wouldn't happen to live in Decatur, Georgia would you? I had an identical experience.

Oh, wait a second. The guys at my LGS wouldn't even bother going to look on the Internet. What're you complaining about buddy?

 

[bwgwl]

i feel sorry for you guys. how can a store remain in business when they are so obviously clueless about the business they are ostensibly in?

that'd be like going to a grocery store and no one there's ever heard of milk.

my problem is that my FLGS is a WOTC store, so they're not going to be selling d20 Modern until the actual street date.

 

[Ketjak]

Sad but true... and common

i feel sorry for you guys. how can a store remain in business when they are so obviously clueless about the business they are ostensibly in?

I honestly don't know. However, I'm not rewarding tht sort of behavior. If I walk into a store that's empty of other customers, I want to be greeted. Maybe I'm spoiled... or maybe I'm just looking for something a little better than sub-McDonald's level of customer service.

I lived in Charlottesville, VA for a number of years. There's a Men's clothing shop on the Downtown Mall, a pedestrian small-business shop/large office second floors/apartment place that's essentially the center of culture in the town. That shop, The Men's & Boys' Shop, greeted me and every other customer who walked in that door no matter how busy they were. If they were busy, they apologized and said they'd be with me as soon as they were done with another customer, who might be buying a pair of socks or an entire silk suit.

That's customer service. When it came my turn, at least one person was on me all the time, helping me choose what I wanted for as long as I chose without doing a hard sell. When I go back to Charlottesville I always spend $200 in that store and walk away happy.

Contrast that with the experiences related here and my own in Washington State. It's amazing, how these stores hire people who don't look up when customers enter the store, let alone greet and engage them.

Amazon, frankly, is friendlier. They know me, too. I'll help them reach profitability before I help my FLGS (and the "F" doesn't mean "favorite") stick around. It's enough to make me interested in opening a new store. I'd knock these asocial dweebs out of the market within a year.

And they'd wonder why it happened.

- Ketjak

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

i feel sorry for you guys. how can a store remain in business when they are so obviously clueless about the business they are ostensibly in?

that'd be like going to a grocery store and no one there's ever heard of milk.

I strongly suspect that the owner of my FLGS hasn't heard of it yet, either.

Yet I will continue to do business with him because he will order anything available I ask for, open any shrink-wraps, and because he is an all-around swell guy.

So he doesn't use the Internet to keep on top of the latest developments in the RPG industry. So what? I can do that on my own. To me, there are more important things that matter when it comes to FLGS.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

i feel sorry for you guys. how can a store remain in business when they are so obviously clueless about the business they are ostensibly in?

that'd be like going to a grocery store and no one there's ever heard of milk.

I strongly suspect that the owner of my FLGS hasn't heard of it yet, either.

Yet I will continue to do business with him because he will order anything available I ask for, open any shrink-wraps, and because he is an all-around swell guy.

So he doesn't use the Internet to keep on top of the latest developments in the RPG industry. So what? I can do that on my own. To me, there are more important things that matter when it comes to FLGS.

 

[Knight Otu]

How are monsters/non-humans with class leves handled? From what I've seen, all classes are written under the assumption that they will be taken by humans, gaining an additional feat at first level and an additional skill point at each level.

Does the book tell do take away these bonuses?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'll answer the bit about the NPCs, because it's something that really impressed me about this game.

Pages 271 to 283 cover 15 two-class combination "Ordinary Archetypes". Each at three different power levels.

Thanks for the info, that is exactly what I was hoping for.

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

Re: Sad but true... and common

I honestly don't know. However, I'm not rewarding tht sort of behavior. If I walk into a store that's empty of other customers, I want to be greeted. Maybe I'm spoiled... or maybe I'm just looking for something a little better than sub-McDonald's level of customer service.

You might find this funny -

I've recently returned from a visit to the States, and one of the things that seemed really strange to my wife and I was each time we walked into a shop and an assistant (or someone at the counter) would call across "Hi, how are you?" or some other welcoming message. This would NEVER happen in the UK, and it took us by surprise again and again!

We agreed that it was quite a nice and friendly policy, although our natural English reserve probably meant that we only gave them a shocked mumble in return until we got used to it

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Re: Sad but true... and common

This would NEVER happen in the UK, and it took us by surprise again and again!

Actually, this did happen to me in a chain store in the UK, but only after I became a regular there. Still, since I am German, this surprised the hell out of me...

(Note to the Americans our there: In Germany, Wal-Mart had to ditch the all-smiling attitude to its customers because they found out that (a) Germans don't want to pay anything extra for good in stores, and (b) smiling chain store employees only served to freak the customers out...)