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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 3790295" data-attributes="member: 710">This is a very difficult question.I think, a good setting is required if you want to continually create material for it. For a real success, you need a few adventures for the game, otherwise many people will shy away due to the big preperation need. Rule Books are fine and dandy, but if I don't have a story to use them with, they are worthless.D&D has a great advantage over d20 Modern - the D&D settings have been established a long time ago, and people are also accustomed to its "implied setting" (even if you don't use a specific setting). It's a lot harder to point out something like this for the Modern World. There are just so many things you can do in the Modern World, and it's hard to find a D&D implied setting equivalent for D20 Modern. In some way, D&D has an "everything including the kitchen sink"-approach to its setting. It got magic, dark gods, monsters of all kinds and all mythologies.A D20 Modern setting that is equivalent to this needs to combine a lot of modern elements:- Espionage (Realistic & James Bond Like)- Private Detective / Film Noir Stories)- Law Enforcement- Gangsters and other Criminals- High Level Action (Martial Arts & Shot them up)- Tactical Military (Mercenaries or Soldiers)- Superheroes (Heroes, X-Men, Genetic Engineering)- Conspiracy Theories (X-Files, Alien Invasions, Secret Organizations)- Sci Fi / Fantasy Elements (including Alternate Histories, like "Cold War didn't end/turn hot", "Fatherland", "Terrorists Nuke Washington DC", Dragons terrorize Europe)To put this all together in a campaign setting _and_ in a rule setting isn't that easy.Mechanically, the Superheroes part needs probably be cut to a lower level (Dark Angel Style instead of Heroes or even X-Men). The rest? It might work. The question is - how do you present it in a way that makes it clear that you can do it all. How do you create a back story that is complex enough to fit it all in, and yet not too over-defined and not too important to the setting (so it's easy to ignore it if you don't like it.)How much focus do you want to give on current themes in the world ("War on Terror" is big today, but how does it interact with conspiracies, magical beings, superheroes? Can it be an offending to some if you include the theme and mix them? Will the setting make sense without them? Maybe people are more interested in older stories - like the Cold War spying.)The above list isn't well thought out. Make a better one and polling the themes might be interesting to find the most interesting campaign setting.What I think is generally a good idea:Research the real themes you use enough so that people who know about them don't get annoyed by all the wrong "facts" put in the game. Alternately, put in a disclaimer "this is not Earth, it's a parallel world. Many things are as they are with us. But a few things only appear to be that way, and other things are outright different. Basically, if someone designs a D&D fantasy setting the first time, he can make up all kinds of stories and history to the setting he likes. You can't do it as easily with the modern world, because the modern world has a real history. If you diverge from it, people will notice it, and if you don't present it correctly and make clear where our knowledge of the real world diverges from the game world, people might find it ... well, annoying, uncomfortable. It's especially difficult because gamers can have very different types of knowledge for a topic, and if they base their expectations on it, and the setting diverges without notifying for it (or accounting for the expectation and give an explanation why it is actually different, contrary to what even a normal person in that world would assume), it's annyoing.</blockquote>

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