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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Universe" data-source="post: 2264167" data-attributes="member: 8944">I didn't get the impression that the book was rushed - in fact, I am relatively certain that it did everything that the designers wanted it to do. D20 Past merely reflects the same sort of design philosophy for D20 Modern products that we were introduced to in D20 Future. A tip-of-the-iceberg approach to a genre/time period or two with a couple of examples for how one might flesh it out for their own purposes. In all honesty, this seems to be one of the greatest weaknesses of the current Modern design philosophy. I certainly don't expect D20 Modern to take the GURPs route (publish an in-depth book about EVERYTHING), it's not really taking advantage of the strongly successful strategy that D&D employed. While in a D&D game my players will know they need a Players Handbook (and not really anything else), and that with that book alone there's a wealth of possibilities, the background necessary for anything other than a "straight" modern game requires the use of several books for the players alone (or that you write an extensive set of rules on your own). I'm currently pulling together a game set in an ostensibly real 1879 that D20 Modern alone is ill-equipped to handle. In order to get everything I needed/wanted, I've brought in D20 Modern, Urban Arcana, D20 Future, D20 Past, Sidewinder: Recoiled, Modern Players Companion, Martial Arts Mayhem, and Grim Tales - and that's only for the rules immediately applicable to the players!Obviously, I'm playing right into the marketing director's hands by purchasing the same fractured products that I'm complaining about, but the only reason I've needed so many products is because there's really no other way to create a game with enough depth to play more than once. What I'm trying to say is that there's been no effort to find the balance between unified expectations and genre flexibility that the D&D side of D20 seems to have found and latched onto (which is great). Of course, your mileage may vary. --The Universe, who's going to buy D20 Apocalypse, even if it doesn't have enough depth.</blockquote>

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