d20 modern or Spycraft 2.0

[The Shaman]

Can d20 modern pull off spies and military campiagns close to as well as Spycraft does?

Take a look at Wing and Sword, our Modern military game - we're using the core rules, Weapons Locker, and a couple of house rules. Other material (feats and AdCs) from Ultramodern Firearms and Modern Player's Companion are conditionally available, but so far all of the characters are core.

A number of gamers complain that Modern doesn't do "gritty" very well (no called shots, firearms damage doesn't scale relative to hit points, &c.), but I think it works fine if you remember a couple of things:

• Start with lower-level characters and reasonable stats (25- or 28-point buy) - allowing the players to begin with 36-point buy, 10th level characters then complaining about the lack of lethality in the game is a bit backwards, IMHO
• Massive damage is the great equalizer: the MDT equals CON, making saves more frequent - failure drops the character to -1
• Healing is different and may have a definite effect on campaign pacing - absent magic or future-tech, adventurers will need time to recover between actions
• Repeat after me: cover and mooks...cover and mooks...cover and mooks...

It's been mentioned already, but it bears repeating: Modern is a game of cinematic heroes, so as GM plan for player characters that can survive damage from firearms and explosives more often than might seem "realistic" at first look - google the U.S. MOH and DSC citations to see real battlefield heroics, and expect to find similar in your game. Some gamers don't care for this - I do, so the system is a good fit for me.

 

[trancejeremy]

Spycraft 2.0 has better rules than d20 Modern, but just comparing the two core books, d20 Modern is far more flexible.

Spycraft, shockingly enough given its name, is pretty much a spy game. You can do some genres outside it, but for most you'd need to make up new core classes. d20 Modern can pretty much handle anything.

One of the things I like to do a modern day RPG is stat myself out (I have something of a big ego). In d20 Modern I can. In Spycraft 2.0, I cannot.

Beyond the core book, while both games will have 3rd party support, for Spycraft it pretty much seems like you have to be a friend of someone at AEG or work there. Anyone can publish stuff for d20 Modern.

 

[Psion]

Spycraft, shockingly enough given its name, is pretty much a spy game.

I'm gonna take a moment to differ with that.

SC 1.0 was pretty much honed in on the espionage genre.

SC 2.0 is much more flexible, and I would consider it for any modern cinematic action or investigation scenario.

 

[wingsandsword]

One of the things I like to do a modern day RPG is stat myself out (I have something of a big ego). In d20 Modern I can. In Spycraft 2.0, I cannot.

I also consider this something of an "acid test" of a modern-day RPG, how well it can handle real people, like myself and my friends. I've found it's quite easy to stat up real people in d20 Modern, but Spycraft made my head hurt when I tried.

Yeah, it's a bit of an ego trip, but it's also a good way to learn character creation

d20 Modern is also a lot more flexible, those 6 base classes can work for anything from historic to far future, and the talents system makes it so modular that you can describe most characters without even Advanced or Prestige classes (but they do add a lot as well).

Now, I do prefer VP/WP, but you can plug that in to d20M easily (they even had a column on the d20 Modern section of wizards.com saying what other things may have to be adjusted, like weapon damage), and said outright that the only reason d20M didn't use VP/WP was for ease of transition of gamers from D&D to d20M.