My D20 Modern Campaign

[The Shaman]

Shaman, that is exactly what I want to do... but my players don't really want to operate in warzones - they've told me that they want to operate in cities waging an almost invisible war rather that a quite open one.

No problem - take those same elements and scale them back to an urban setting:

• The player characters' private military company
• A multi-national corporation's main production facility, headquarters, and research and development laboratory (make it three separate compounds, rather than one big one - you'll get more mileage out of them this way)
• The municipal government (police, city hall, &c.), replete with corrupt elements woven through the simple, hard-working public servants
• Various civic groups: I would include a group of local businessmen allied as a sort of champer of commerce, a vocal poverty-abolishment group led by a street-clergy(wo)man, a Guardian Angels-style street vigilance organization
• Organized crime: a couple of warring mafia families, a gang for each of the various ethnic groups in the city - each has their hooks into the corrupt elements of the municipal government
• Economic refugees: no reason you can't have people fleeing from a war zone or natural disaster to the city
• Rival corporations and their industrial spies and security forces

Throw them in a jar and shake well.

I would suggest a city in maybe someplace like central Europe or the Balkans, though a fictional southeast Asian city-state on the style of Hong Kong or Singapore or Macau, or some big African city like Lagos, would be an interesting change of pace.

 

[SWBaxter]

"Or use the second run Top Secret organization" -Warlord Ralts

What?

Top Secret/SI, an espionage RPG produced by TSR in (IIRC) the late 80s and early 90s, featured a shadow war between two multinational super-secret spy organizations, Orion and WEB. Orion were the good guys, recruiting agents from all sorts of espionage organizations; WEB were the bad guys, comprised of rogue agents, illegal arms dealers, terrorists, etc. Both sides kept the war secret. Decent enough background as an excuse for James Bond-style hijinks.

For a different approach, what I would do with a mercenary spy group is drop them in the middle of a shadowy world of conspiracies. They'd start off doing missions for various employers, and start to discover things about their employers' agendas. Of course, the employers wouldn't play straight with them - they might think they're working for NATO to shut down a nuclear arms smuggling ring in one of the 'Stans, when in fact their employers are a terrorist group using the PCs to gain their own nukes. In the shadow world of mercenary spies, it's hard to know when you're on the side of the angels.

 

[EditorBFG]

Don't tell my employers I did this, but...
Here's a talent tree I put together for POSTMODERN: The Versatile Hero that ought to be fun for a spies and assassins game. Let me know if you get any use out of it.

New Charismatic Hero Talent:
1,000 Faces Talent Tree
Like the super-spies of cinematic legend, the character has an amazing facility for disguise and impersonation.
Quick Change: Once per game session, as a standard action, the character can change his mannerisms and clothes just enough to appear to be someone else. Essentially, he can use the Disguise skill without the usual time and without suffering the penalty for not using a disguise kit. The character cannot use this skill while being observed, unless he is momentarily able to step out of sight (e.g. behind a column at a bus station). This disguise will not make the character appear to be a specific person (at least, not to anyone who actually knows that person well), but can definitely make the character appear not to be himself. The quick change disguise stands up normally under casual scrutiny, but any careful inspection receives a +5 circumstance bonus to penetrate the disguise. This talent can be taken multiple times, allowing an extra use of this ability per game session each time.
A Thousand Faces*: The character becomes a master of the quick disguise. He can don a convincing disguise in one-tenth the normal time (1d4 minutes).
Convincing: Once per session, you may spend 1 action point to force an opponent to re-roll a successful skill check that would penetrate your disguise or cover.
Fake It: Once per game session, the character may credibly pretend to have a skill that he does not possess. This does not allow him to use the skill; it merely allows him to act as if he can. Thus, he could stand next to a surgeon and pretend to know what’s going on, but he couldn’t perform the surgery himself with the actual skill required to do so. When required to make a Bluff check to fake having the skill, the character gains a +20 competence bonus. This talent can be taken multiple times, allowing an extra use of this ability per game session each time.
Prerequisite: Quick change
Face in the Crowd: When the character uses his Quick Change talent while in a crowd or large group of people, that Quick Change does not count against the number of times the character is permitted to use the ability per game session. The presence of the crowd makes it much easier for the character to disappear. He cannot use this benefit if the crowd is hostile or if the character does not share the crowd’s basic dress or ethnicity.
Prerequisite: Quick change, a thousand faces
Perfect Mimicry: Once per game session, the character may perfectly imitate the appearance, speech, and mannerisms of any one person. After studying the target for a number of days equal to the target’s level, the character may add his own character level to any Disguise or Perform checks made while imitating the target.
Prerequisite: Fake it, quick change
“*” = Modern advanced or prestige classes exist which may provide the character with a class ability similar, or identical, to this talent; a character who already possesses this talent may choose another talent from this talent tree instead, or any talent which is specified as a prerequisite for that talent.

It looks like the one thing everyone in this thread agrees on is that you should seriously consider making the characters' own employers the overarching bad guys in one manner or another. Perhaps their usual contact is a rogue, using them against his parent organization?

 

[Captain Boff]

Thanks for that, great talent tree.

 

[jaerdaph]

New Charismatic Hero Talent:
1,000 Faces Talent Tree

Thanks! Was this cut from Versatile Hero, and if so, why?

Good stuff.

 

[EditorBFG]

I thought we did put that in Versatile Hero...

Now that I think about it, I believe it is only in the Revised version of POSTMODERN: The Versatile Hero. If you downloaded the old one, you're due a free copy of the Revised one. A lot of people have the option to receive e-mails from RPG Now set to off, so they have not gotten their revised versions, and may never get them. If you need to get one and have not received an email, sent a message to bigfingergames@earthlink.net

We have a lot of talent trees that the company owner and myself have cooked up, and we are trying to figure what to do with all of them. Sooner or later, there's a whole lot of talent tree content that will end up in one product or another.

 

[jaerdaph]

I bought it on Sept. 19th of this year, and had the link sent to me again last night to download it again. Still no 1000 Faces.

I'll drop you guys an email ASAP.

Thanks again

 

[EditorBFG]

Oh, crap.

Okay, I am an idiot. We dropped 1000 Faces in favor of the Privilege Talent Tree.

If your version has the Privilege talent tree, it is the newest and best version, and you've missed nothing. I was on a public computer when I posted those emails, not at home, and therefore did not have my own copy of the pdf to double check.

Obviously, we included 2 talent trees for each existing base class. I wanted 1000 Faces as one of the two for Charismatic hero at first, but Privilege was deemed more useful in a wider variety of campaigns than 1000 Faces, because there are some games where Disguise isn't used very often.

I apologize for the confusion. I hope it doesn't reflect too badly on Big Finger Games that I am usually the guy whose job is catching other people's mistakes

Either way, you all got a new and previously unpublished talent tree, something from an upcoming product, not an pre-existing one. Totally new content: Isn't EN World a great place?

(I am the stupidest man alive.)

 

[jaerdaph]

(I am the stupidest man alive.)

Not at all. Besides, more is better

Thanks again!

 

[Morgenstern]

Quick Change: Once per game session, as a standard action, the character can change his mannerisms and clothes just enough to appear to be someone else. Essentially, he can use the Disguise skill without the usual time and without suffering the penalty for not using a disguise kit. The character cannot use this skill while being observed, unless he is momentarily able to step out of sight (e.g. behind a column at a bus station). This disguise will not make the character appear to be a specific person (at least, not to anyone who actually knows that person well), but can definitely make the character appear not to be himself. The quick change disguise stands up normally under casual scrutiny, but any careful inspection receives a +5 circumstance bonus to penetrate the disguise. This talent can be taken multiple times, allowing an extra use of this ability per game session each time.
Convincing: Once per session, you may spend 1 action point to force an opponent to re-roll a successful skill check that would penetrate your disguise or cover.
Fake It: Once per game session, the character may credibly pretend to have a skill that he does not possess. This does not allow him to use the skill; it merely allows him to act as if he can. Thus, he could stand next to a surgeon and pretend to know what’s going on, but he couldn’t perform the surgery himself with the actual skill required to do so. When required to make a Bluff check to fake having the skill, the character gains a +20 competence bonus.
Perfect Mimicry: Once per game session, the character may perfectly imitate the appearance, speech, and mannerisms of any one person. After studying the target for a number of days equal to the target’s level, the character may add his own character level to any Disguise or Perform checks made while imitating the target.

Those look familiar. I hope we get a nod in the section 15 if you get around to including them in a product. The others are a nice expansion on the concept - quite nifty .