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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9235776" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 93/152: Jul/Aug 2002part 6/10First Watch: This continues to mix previews, the release roundup and spotlights. First up, they answer another question that’s been on my mind. They said there would be 4 example settings in the D20 Modern corebook, but in the end we only got three. Well, here’s the 4th. Genetech, a world where animal hybrids and augmented people are being produced in secret labs and have just become public knowledge. How will the world react and how will the PC’s deal with it, particularly if they’re one of said hybrids trying to gain legal rights, public acceptance, or simply escape from the people that created them? Definitely room for some interesting roleplaying in there, but it could also get rather dark. Exactly when and why they decide to cut it I still don’t know, but hopefully we’ll find out more in the next few issues. The release roundup is full of familiar names and games. AEG’s Spycraft gets it’s first setting, Shadowforce Archer, pitting psychic superspies against conspiracy weirdness. Sounds pretty similar to WotC’s agents of psi, but then again, we’re seeing lots of competing takes on the same concept lately. On the other hand, Atlas Games doing Nyambe, their take on fantasy Africa, has far fewer competitors than you would think given the size and diversity of the source material. Avalanche Press are also going travelogue with Terror of the Aztecs, which sounds pretty self-explanatory. Citizen games engage in a little affirmative action, hiring an all-female team to do Way of the Witch. Fantasy Flight games are also busy with their series of class-based sourcebooks, with the wizard one out next. Goodman Games are a little more specialist, releasing the Complete Guide to Velociraptors, with plenty of other dinos on the way if this one sells. Green Ronin release the Pocket Grimoires, which collect lots of the best OGL spells from all sorts of sources and put them in an easy to carry format. Malhavoc release Requiem for a God, in which Monte Cook returns to another of the topics he did in 2e and talks about the adventure possibilities in gods dying. Mongoose does so many that they can’t even be bothered to list them all this time, but the most notable is a D20 adaption of the Slaine comic series. Mystic Eye Games takes on one of the topics WotC is a bit too sensible and concerned with game balance to really do justice to anymore, in Wild Spellcraft. Necromancer Games converts Rob Kuntz’s obscure adventure Tower Chaos to 3e so a whole new generation can be baffled and die in true 1e style. Finally, Paradigm Concepts brings back spell decks, another of those relatively obscure 2e supplements that WotC probably couldn’t make a profit on, but a smaller company could do quite nicely with. Talking of Paradigm Concepts, they’re also the company getting a profile this time. They’ve been doing Living Arcanis with the RPGA for a year now, which has turned out to be a pretty good deal for them in terms of attracting new customers. Like the Living Death adventures, they’re taking care to give their adventures multiple outcomes rather than being pure railroads, so the players can influence the metaplot. They’re also working with Green Ronin to incorporate the Freeport material into their setting, In another instance of the OGL allowing easy cross-pollination. As usual, this is firmly focussed on the positives, but since they’re still going today, they must have been doing something right all these years. Hopefully we’ll see more from them before they cut out the d20 material and go back to being all adventures, all the time.Bolt and Quiver are captured by zombie security guards and condescended to by the Xorn secretary.</blockquote>

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