For those DMing d20 Modern: How different do your players act than in "normal" D&D?

[slingbld]

The game I just started I had the players write up themselves in this world. I had them start at 2nd level but they had to prove to me that thier real life activities could justify the classes they took. This realy grounded thier way of thinking. I also had them keep thier 1st names but allowed them to change thier last. They could also embelish thier backgrounds a wee bit

The end result were players that though more in the now as far as laws & manners and such.

I've had them stop an attempted robbery of the "Ed Debevic's" restaraunt and wind up getting into that lovable barroom brawl with some Half Orcs, 'course they didn't know they were half orcs, they just thought they were UGLY!
It was awsome seeing them react to save patrons & employees of the place. The funniest thing was to see the look on my strong/tough (1/1) player's face as he tried to wrestle one to the floor and wound up on the street outside through a non to big window...

They are working for the Hoffmann Institute now (yeah I'm doing a Dark Matter esque game)...

Slingbld~

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I've been pleased with how my players have handled having characters with "normal" lives. Admittedly, every one of them came from a military or investigative background, so there's still a bit of "arrest them and confiscate their stuff" going on, but in the last session they ended up incognito in Miami and so mostly went around living as you or I might if we were heavily armed, slightly unhinged, and had access to a huge expense account.

I find that once you start suggesting real world elements, they're quick to take them up. And somehow it seems (with my group at least) that it's been easier to get them to suggest setting details that I haven't mentioned. Several of my players had spent time in Miami, for instance, so when I had no idea of what a good local restaurant would be for a meeting, they suggested a quiet out of the way Cuban place.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

3) They have explosives (boy, do they love det cord).

That's about it.

Oh god. I personally DM a group of thermite grenade addicts. They have a generic policy that has so far served them well: If it's over 8 feet tall, or seems to have any sort of vaguely divine element to it, blow it up.

Luckily though, their funds should start to run short soon... *cackle*

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

The most obvious difference; some of the players always seem to think they're obligated to affect a faux British accent when playing D&D. When they play D20 Modern, no bad "British" accents.

Just once I'd like to see someone play a D&D character with a Texan accent or something and how the other players would react to him. Who's to say what accent people have in a fantasy world...

 

[Privateer]

They have a generic policy that has so far served them well: If it's over 8 feet tall, or seems to have any sort of vaguely divine element to it, blow it up.

Come to think of it, that works in just about any campaign.

 

[Pielorinho]

Heh, Bran -- my longest-running character was a dwarven PC with a mumbly voice inspired by Clint Eastwood's taciturn gunman in Unforgiven. Not Texan, but definitely not British, either .

I've played on D20 Modern short-campaign (four sessions), and we started shooting pretty quickly; of course, our enemies started baring their fangs and flying down stairwells pretty quickly, too, so we didn't feel so bad about it. When we were facing bona fide humans, even if they were organized crime figures and not vampires, we played out tense standoffs instead of gun battles: though we edged our way toward cover, we all knew, PCs and NPCs alike, the perils of flying bullets.

Daniel

 

[Von Ether]

And some players never learn.

I was doing a 1920's d20 horror game. When things got wierd at the airport (after a great, tense scene where the gangster fought with his FBI minder within the landing airplane) said gangster tried to go on a murder spree. When I denied him his actions, he commited suicide and went over to some more card flopping. He thought I was a control freak, truth was he was just a bored teenager.

"I want to shoot all the passengers!"

"Why?"

"I am a mafia boss, they should be afraid of me!"

"They are, I told you they were huddling in their seats."

"Then I shoot them because they are all eyewitnesses!"

"Dude, that would be just more murder charges if you ever get caught. None of them are armed and they are scared, just run across the deserted tarmac, there's doesn't seem to be anything out there (then I made scrabbling noises under the table with my fingernails.)"

"This is dumb. I kill myself!"

"Okay, you made a real mess in the passenger cabin, bye. So the rest of you ..."

Later, I learned that he loved to play "Chaotic Neut" in D&D.

 

[Pielorinho]

He thought I was a control freak, truth was he was just a bored teenager.

Although that player sounds like my worst nightmare (well, that's not true--ask me sometime about the flesh-eating weasels with baby's faces), I think you did break one of the cardinal rules of DMing. If the player wants to shoot up a roomful of innocents, you gotta let him try. A warning is fine, but denying him his action is a little bit control-freaky.

Of course, it might also be the time to go rules-lawyer on him: have him roll initiative. And after he goes, the unarmed passengers who decide to die as heroes get to go, trying to mob him and tackle him (and remember, holding a ranged weapon means you don't threaten the space around you, so no AoOs). And after that, his teammates, thinking about the electric chair that awaits them if they're accessories to this massacre, get to go. And they get a friendly GM warning too, that they can see their entire lives taking a very dramatic turn based on what they decide to do in the next six seconds.

Daniel

 

[Vanor]

Generally speaking yeah, my players tend to act slightly differently in moderen then they do in D&D. My players aren't really into hack-n-slash D&D anyway, so it's not a huge difference, but there is a change in their attudes.

They're more likely to consider non leathal actions because they know the cops might show up and bust them.

One of them espcially is also always on the look out for improvised weapons... He gets a kick out of using folding chairs, popcorn makers, sawhorses, what ever he can get his hands on.

I agree with the comment about picturing the enviorement without a huge amount of description by me. I say coffie shop and they have an idea. I say 7-eleven they get an idea.

For example, I was running them though one of the adventures from the WotC sight, the one about the demon machine... Part of the adventure they were in a video store, one PC said "Hey they got those popcorn popers in here, I'll use that to bash the ghoul."

Funny, but part way though that adventure, one of the players brought up the movie Fargo, and said he hopped there wasn't a woodchipper involved someplace.

 

[Von Ether]

In my current group, we are alternating between "dark and angsty" D&D and a "pseudo-real" low-level super game. Our group dynamics have completely changed.

During D&D, our group goes by alpha male syndrome, the fighter and paladin threaten on anyone who doesn't follow their orders (or the cleric's suggestions.) My rogue get scoffed at repeatedly

In our supers game, everyone seems to be able to ruin everyone elses day on an almost rock/paper/sissors mentality (or is that mentalist/brick/Energy Beam?) and we all get some proper respect.

Or perhaps it's because we discover that we all "suck" at super hero names.

Von: "My big steel guy is called Iron Horse!"

Former Fighter: "Iron Horse? That's a stupid name!"

Von: "What's yours?"

Former Fighter: "My character pulls up his vest collar and pulls down his hoodie and says, 'I'm G!'"

Former Paladin: "G? One letter? Man, with that you have no leg to stand on when it comes to picking on 'Iron Horse.'"

Von & Former Fighter: "What's your name?"

Former Paladin: "I am professor of crimonlogy, I am a profesional. I don't have a super hero idenity or super hero name."

Von & Former Fighter: "Coward!"

A warning is fine, but denying him his action is a little bit control-freaky.Daniel

I won't argue that, but I've learned that when you run a rpg at a game store (which I was doing that day) some people will do stupid stuff because they have no fear of the consequences. The game is either a one shot, or they could care less about showing up the next game.

Truth be told, I kicked that kid out of my games that day. Next week no one showed up to my game and he tried to rub it in my face (sorry, the opinion of a 15-year old doesn't rate high in my book) and a year later I was running a successful rpg with like six players. The kid hasn't said anything to me since, no loss.

The key to GMing is knowing when to pick your battles about being a control freak.