Scud-O said:
first: d20 Modern is fantastic.
That's a matter of opinion not fact, the facts are some people think its great other people find it terribly disappointing, and some like myself fall somewhere in the middle. I happen think if the chap is considering spending his hard earned cash, he should be provided with a balanced view of the product.
Scud-O said:
second: to Synicism, just what genres is d20 Modern incapable of mimicking? i am not asking to be confrontational (ok, maybe a little) but i am really stumped as to what kind of "modern" game you would be unable to run with these core rules.
Well anything with a decent sense of realism. Now personally I can live with or without realism in my RP games, they are after all escapism and fantasy. But D20 Modern is Fantasy with a capital 'F'. There are in my opinion some serious problems with the way they have handled firearms, particularly rules for burst fire, automatic fire, aiming, etc. even for a D20 game.
Plus you have all the sacred cows of D20, with the armour rules and hit points, some weird class setups, etc, etc. I could go on and on about these, but I won't because on the whole they don't matter to someone who likes D&D and a class/level system, just to say if you wanted a realistic modern game, I would not recommend D20 Modern.
Scud-O said:
third: Bagpuss, yes, there are systems that are specific to certain genres (Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, the Buffy RPG). They are DIFFERENT systems. So, if the original question is "I want to run a cyberpunk campaign, which system should i use?" then the answer may well be SHADOWRUN (although, i don't ever want to roll that many six-siders again
). But when the question is, and i QUOTE:
(see below this doesn't seem to like quotes within quotes.)
...then the answer is, "Yes it is." if you like the DnD core rules and you want to do modern/sci-fi, then pick up d20 Modern. (although, if you want to run sci-fi, albeit VERY SPECIFIC SETTING-BASED sci-fi, use STAR WARS)
I was wondering if D20 modern is worth picking up for modern/ sci fi settings?
Lets look at the original question and then look at my answer. The original poster didn't give much information on any particular setting. So all I said was if you have a particular setting in mind, then there may well be something better than D20 Modern.
There is nothing wrong with suggesting different systems. Just because you like D&D (which I happen to) doesn't mean you have to limit yourself to that.
Actually looking at his original question, "is D20 Modern work picking up for modern/sci-fi settings?" I think the answer is definately NO!
If the question didn't mention sci-fi then its a maybe (or probably as you like D&D).
D20 Modern provides very, very little for Sci-fi gaming, psionics and thats about it, no spaceships, no laserguns, aliens, doesn't really provide enough even for an X-files campaign. Let alone Stargate SG-1 or something like that then the GM will have a lot of work to do.
So in my opinion. D20 Modern is 'okay' at what it does and perhaps better than okay if you want to have psionics and/or magic in your modern setting.
Its only really worth buying because its a familiar rules system. There are plenty of equal good generic systems. I can't see the big selling point if you happy to use a system other than D20.