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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9307397" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 96/155: Jan/Feb 2003part 9/10Characters: Continuing the inversion of previous minigame designs, there’s a mere 4 pages of new systems, as they’re assuming you’ve already read the D20 Modern corebook and hopefully Urban Arcana as well. All the previously listed types of Moreaus are allowed, plus Orca ones, which obviously gain an improved ability to hold their breath compared to regular people, plus blindsight from their sonar. Franks get stats, but their changes are relatively minor, merely adding +2 to one stat, -2 to one or two others, since they still think physical stats are more valuable than mental ones, plus low light vision for some of them. You might be able to squeeze a bit of minmaxing out of them, but the choice between one and a regular human will be mostly flavour. There are only two new prestige classes, both restricted to specific types of moreau by including race specific abilities in the prerequisites. Guerilla intruders, which take the blindsight of bats & dolphins and hone them further for nighttime special ops missions. And Patrol Pointers, which require Scent and make you extra good at spotting traps & close quarter firearms work. Most prestige classes are allowed, apart from anything with supernatural abilities, which means some Urban Arcana ones are partially permitted but capped at low levels before they push from the merely improbable to outright supernatural levels of skill. That leaves it as by far the lightest minigame yet, systemswise. I guess it wasn’t written as one in the first place, but it definitely sticks out put next to the past six issues. Adventures: The adventures section is also crunch light and surprisingly long, filling another 10 pages with advice and adventure outlines. First up another reminder that this is supposed to be a techno-thriller, so keep things moving and don’t forget the thrills or the technology. Second, a three part starting campaign arc where the PC’s start off as subjects at a top secret military base, escape, try to make their lives in the city, then their previous owners come calling with a full special forces team that they have to defeat or evade. Fortunately, since the whole organisation isn’t supposed to exist, raising a public enough stink about what’s going on might be enough to get them off your back, or you can kill them in self defence without getting in the same kind of immediate escalating trouble you would if they were regular police. Don’t expect that to be the end of the matter, but at least by this point you’ll be mid level and a little more able to determine your own path. Then there’s a couple of smaller standalone adventure ideas. A sabotage mission in Turkmenistan. A city being held hostage by racists who say they’ll detonate the bombs if the USA doesn’t deport all the moreaus. While not enough to build a whole campaign, it is enough examples to work with and actually more material than this would have got as one of the example settings in the corebook. I guess there are some advantages to being cut material that’s then released standalone and given Dungeon’s circulation, there might actually be more people reading this than bought D20 Modern. I know the magazines do better than many D&D supplements, after all.</blockquote>

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