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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Drew Id" data-source="post: 981653" data-attributes="member: 12175">Sources for MedallionsJeez, everything, really. We use Vitality Point/Wound Points from Star Wars. We use the Chase system from Spycraft (which I highly recommend). Plus, the entire magic system is a custom job that I have done, which is very different from standard d20 Modern, and which probably most closely resembles a cross between d20 Cthulhu and Unknown Armies. (I will post it up at a later date.) We use the Modern Arms guide and the Modern Player’s Companions as well. Oh yeah, and we use a homebrew edit of the Wealth system to supply custom stats for used cars. As far as magic goes, I wanted Medallions to have magic that felt different than anything we as a gaming group had seen before, especially the standard fantasy magic. Essentially, I wanted everything but standard fantasy magic. I did not want magic to ever be “flashy” or for it to be taken for granted. There should always be a price and a risk in using it, and a large element of the unknown. I did not want magic to replace anything, including skills and weapons. I figured magic should be its own form of tool, not just a different kind of gun or a different way to bump up a certain skill. So, I threw out the standard d20 Modern magic system and just started over. I started keeping notes of everything I wanted to throw in to a new system. The initial list included voodoo, Dr. Strange comics, prestidigitation-taken-too-far as in “Lord of Illusions”, Kabbalah, Asian mysticism, and Wicca just to get started. I wasn’t worried about rules at that point, just flavors, and I wanted every kind of flavor available.Then I started pulling together lists of spells from every source I had, which included all the 3E books, numerous splat books and 3rd party books, and Call of Cthulhu, among others. Then I went back and ripped out all of the spells that were just too visually “flashy”. Some illusions could stay, but nothing like Bigby’s Interposing Hand or Teleportation made the cut. Then I removed all of the spells that directly caused damage (which greatly shortened the list). If the characters want to just cause damage, they use guns, not magic. I also removed almost all divination spells, since the vast majority of the d20 modern episodes would involve solving mysteries. Finally, I removed all of the spells that essentially replaced a given skill, like Jump or Spider Climb or that otherwise replaced some easy modern method of doing things. The characters get skills for a reason, and it would be a shame to replace them with spells. So, what was left was a collection of spells that were all “weird” enough. Spells that allowed the caster to do things that they simply could not do with normal methods, but never so flashy that it would attract crowds, or so powerful or reliable that the caster could get too comfortable with their magic. I would offer a list, but even the players have not seen more than a handful of spells from the list yet, and that is part of the way it works. I further pruned a few spells that I just did not like, and added some of my own as needed, and edited what was left to twist it and make it unpredictable. The players know the rules for spellcasting, if their characters use it. They know the exact details of a handful of spells, and they know the names of a handful of others. That’s it, though. They don’t really know what is available out there, and that seems to work well to maintain the mystery. There is no published spell list for them to view, read ahead on, or plan their advancement around. There are no “published” rules for the players regarding magic items, though they do exist. Magic items are even more rare and bizarre than magic spells. I wrote up a new spellcasting system that does not have spellcasting classes or spell per day. Instead it uses skills for spellcasting based on magical schools (like abjuration, illusion, etc.) and where the caster burns a feat to gain access to a set of schools. The caster spends weeks studying each spell that they find and then must make a skill check to actually learn the spell. Then, the caster must make another skill check every time they cast a spell, plus they pay a cost in vitality points, ability drain, etc.Then I went in and tried to set up ways for each method of magic to “feel” different. This is still an on-going project, but the idea is that if one player wants to play a voodoo priestess, and another wants to play a Kabbalah mystic, then they would likely never learn the same spells, the costs for their spells would be different (perhaps one usually pays in vitality points and another pays in ability drain) and other side effects would be different as well. This part seems to be going really well so far.</blockquote>

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