Rebuilding d20 Modern for YotZ: Reloaded

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Well, I've finally decided to get off my butt and put out a new version of Year of the Zombie. Unsurprisingly and somewhat unimaginatively I've decided to list it as "Reloaded" when I finally do it.

The big thing I've decided to do is rework a lot of d20 Modern. I'm going to be getting rid of the things that don't apply to the setting, change the firearm rules, the way armor works, how called shots work, how talents, feats, and AP all come together.

First to address is the problem of the base stats. With the exception of Strength (and maybe CHA) the stats themselves are never used except for the bonuses, and they've got the even number 'dead space' in them. This means I need to figure out a way to make the stat scores relevant to the game in a way that feels natural and doesn't take over for the saves or skills. Strength is easy with carrying capacity and lifting, but the rest are going to prove challenging.

The next thing I'll be taking on is the feats. Some of them will be going. The armor feat chain is completely stupid and needs redone. Some of the bonuses don't even make it worth taking the skill bonus feat, so that'll have to be redone. Feat bloat is something I'll need to watch out for, so I'll be taking the feats that were in the YotZ supplements and adding them in and checking the entire list.

Skills will need looked at. Of course they, like feats, will have to be tailored to the setting. Having "Profession" without mentioning the kind of Post-Rising professions makes no sense.

Then on to character classes. Luckily I've already done a lot of work on these. Replaced talents, added talent trees, and made them useful beyond just "+2 to BAB" crap. Of course, anything to do with psionics or shadow will be ditched.

It's a big undertaking, and I'll probably talk about what I'm doing, why, and how in here.

So far my thoughts on the stats are:

Str: Carrying capacity, lifting, dragging
Con: How long you can hold off bite infection, how long you can stay awake, max negative HP, max distance you can run before Fort Checks
Dex: This one's tougher. It's requiring a lot of brainstorming, but I'm pretty sure I'll figure something out eventually
Int: Well, I'm thinking of doing Int * 10 = I.Q. score for starters, but that doesn't really matter for the zombie apocalypse. Have to come up with something. Well, nobody said redesigning a game system will be easy.
Wis: Mental Endurance is going to come into this. Sure, there's the bonus to Willpower Saves/Checks when it comes to insanity, but the number needs to mean something beyond the stat bonus. Another difficult bit.
Cha: This one is tough. Of course it's going to matter to the amount of followers, it's going to affect your rep score, but how, and what else does the Charisma score matter to? Looks don't matter too much in YotZ, since everyone has scars, most people are dirty, and the latest fashion is heavy coveralls, a hockey mask, boots, and leather gloves.
Action Points: Not really a stat, but I need to decide what kind of mods are going to be done for expenditure, earning, replenishing, and the like. In all the playtests people burned through AP like there was no tomorrow. Being able to permanently blow an AP point to avoid a bite was a huge lifesaver.
Rep: It definitely matters now. How you gain it, what the score is, determines a lot on how you are treated. You got a bad rep people just might shoot at you rather than allow you to trade.
Wealth: Completely ditched. Part of YotZ is resource management, and it can't be done abstract like that.

Part of it is that Stats are almost legacy. I mean, without them the game just feels weird, but they should mean something beyond their bonuses, but I don't want to use them to create another type of 'currency' that the player just hates to deal with. A lot of people feel that ability scores should be done away with all together, but the majority of the ones I've talked to admit that the feeling comes from the fact that the stat itself does nothing and could simply be replaced by their own bonuses.

Modding d20 Modern to YotZ:R is going to be a huge chore, but one I'm looking forward to.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Some brainstorming on Stats.

Dex: How many bullets can be loaded into a magazine in a round. How far someone can fall without damage without a Reflex check. Divide by 3 for how many chainsaws someone can juggle. How many knives a character can throw in fifteen second. How many quarters they can put on their elbow and then snatch out of the air with the same hand. How far they can wiggle in a space too small for them to normally fit in. How many words in cursive they can write per minute.

Int: The real problem with anything I might tie the Int score to is covered by skills, same with Dex. Brainstorming only got how many bees you can fit in your ear, or how big your forehead is, or how tasty the zombies think your head is.

Wis: The main one floated is "30-Wis=X" where X is the number of days before the character gets to make a recovery roll from temporary insanity.

Anything we do with the stats would require charts, and while some segment of the gaming population likes charts for the most part they annoy a large amount of people. We've had some ideas, but all of it results in charts, charts, and more charts. We might make them optional rules so that people can pick and choose what they want to use, but I really wanted to make Stats mean something again.

Action Points One of the fun things we came up with is the ability to blow an AP and find a magazine in your pockets that you'd forgotten tucking in there. When the combat is over, any bullets left over are discovered missing, that way they can't use it to stock up on ammo for the next combat. We also figured that it would have a weapon that your character can use be right at hand when grappled or otherwise in trouble. Finding a screwdriver or pointed stick or rock while being grappled by a zombie is a zombie fiction staple. We want to make AP's usable, something that the player will want to use, and do the difference between temp use and permanent use. One thing is that instead of having to announce you're going to use an AP prior to making the roll, we're going to make it so that the AP can be used to mod the attack or damage roll on the fly.

Rep is something that will be extremely important for long term games. Both group rep and individual rep. The iconic characters from the books have massive personal and group rep. They're an army on the move, with major characters, and I want players to have that resource.

We were talking about feats that boost skills and decided that somehow they need to scale upwards with level. Otherwise they're basically fire and forget feats. A couple of suggestions was that for every 2 skill points put into the skill the feat provides a bonus skill point for free. The pathfinder "adding 1 skill point to a new skill adds a +3 bonus" was also suggested. Feats that boost willpower or reflex or what have you also need to scale. But then this might put the feats as 'everyone must have' which means that if it is something that everyone must have then perhaps it should just be rolled into general.

The trick is how to get feats be worth something that expands on the character. I don't want to make it so that someone has to plan their character exactly to qualify for AdC's or PrC's and have a non-gimped character. While gimped characters can be fun, in YotZ:R gimped characters go under the name of "food" and that's never any fun.

But there are things that we've discussed and agreed upon.

If you get bit, you are dead. No Fort Save, no nothing. There's no cure, no way to stop it. You. Are. Dead.
There will be no canon reason given for the Rising.
The timeline will be suggested only, not intended on being followed slavishly and some products will violate the timeline.

Well, in the next day or so I'll probably write a bit on if any progress has been made on the Stat front.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

OK, after some talking, we're juggling around maybe Wounds/Vitality, but at the same time I like the abstractness of the HP system.

BUT...

Con score is being considered that it might be starting HP, with either a roll or a set amount +Con bonus per level. Also 4+Con is the amount of time until someone starts suffering serious effects from a bite. Of course, you go downhill pretty damn fast.

Dex is still messing me up though.

However we did talk it out and figure that instead of generic things, it'll be tied to the classes and their talent trees.

That's another thing to work on. Talent trees and AP use. Talent trees as they stand right now just plain suck, and some of them aren't even valid for a setting like Year of the Zombie, so that leaves me with a complete redesign. And that's what I actually like to do.

Wolvorine actually pointed out that we'll have to look closely at the vehicle combat rules. We don't want to go all Twilight 2000 on our players, but we need to have vehicle facing (maybe even character facing) as well as locational damage that makes sense. (Might have to crib a bit from Battletech)

One thing I want to stress is that we aren't getting away from saying flat out: "YotZ is a game where military hardware is a goal for PC's, not an end game problem" because what's a zombie apocalypse without an M1A3 Abrams MBT to run over zombies with? After all, we all know the big weakness: Gasoline.

We're also not going to release until the following are done: Independence Day Massacre: Reloaded, Rockets Red Glare, Hold At All Costs: Zero, Slavers, Traders, Raiders, Crazies, and Quickshots: YotZ.

That way we've got a nice spread of projects that will come out for supporting the game.

Which is another reason why we're keeping the alterations as low as we can.

Speaking of building: NPC's might have a bit different of a take. No more of this "30 minutes to build an NPC that's going to get shot in the face in the first round" but more "These stats, add this "threat" to them and GO!" type building. That's always been a weakness of the d20 system is it takes forever to make an NPC or monster.

Right now we're wavering between Armor as DR and Armor as AC and Armor as minor AC and DR. But where it's going to go is probably going to be in Playtest.

 

[Wolv0rine]

Right now we're wavering between Armor as DR and Armor as AC and Armor as minor AC and DR. But where it's going to go is probably going to be in Playtest.

I was thinking that we might be able to break armor up into the 2 categories; deflective armor giving AC, and ablative armor giving DR. But I'm still not sure about the idea, again it would definitely need to be playtested to see how it performs.

M1A3 Abrams MBT to run over zombies with? After all, we all know the big weakness: Gasoline.

Funny, that's zombies' big weakness too...

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Thinking of adding something in the "Setting" section. Basically a list of questions to be asked to the players to help out flesh the world.

• How long did the Rising occur before becoming a failure state for governments and civilization
• What happened to the government leaders?
• Were nuclear weapons used, if so, what cities?
• Were chemical weapons used? See above.
• Were there any natural disasters at the early days of the Rising (Earthquake, hurricane, volcano)
• Was there a gas shortage? If so, how bad?
• Did FEMA and the CDC make any kind of effective response?
• When does the group want to start taking part in the Rising?

In other words, just starting stuff to make sure the GM and the players are on the same team. The whole "Setting" chapter needs rewritten anyway.

Wolvorine and I both figure that Action Points should really be able to have better effect in the game than normal.

We've also decided to slice up the weapons into "Light/Medium/Heavy - Pistol/Rifle" to cut down on the ammo types and everyone grabbing the Kingslayer 9000 Assault Rifle and the Desert Magnum Eagle Super Warhawk Compensator Pistol because they do the most damage.

Guess we oughta figure other things out too.

Nice to know so much of the work is already finished and most of it is just layout and adaptation.

 

[Wolv0rine]

This also helps greatly for people who aren't terribly familiar with guns and ammunition types. You don't need to know if your gun takes .32 or 5.56, or find a huge stash of 40 cal when your weapons all take 9mm.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Oh God, looking over an 8-10 year old Core Book, we need:

• Artwork
• Maps
• New Fonts
• New Layout
• New Zombie mechanics
• New Mechanics

God we got a way to go. Writing is just the beginning.

Stay on target. Stay on Target.

 

[Wolv0rine]

Oh God, looking over an 8-10 year old Core Book, we need:

• Artwork
• Maps
• New Fonts
• New Layout
• New Zombie mechanics
• New Mechanics

Oh god, so much this...

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

All right, it looks like we're going with all new artwork, and the flavor text will be new and different. We'll probably still include the iconics.

We've decided to do various level playtests once we get done. One thing that needs to be done is high level play.

And important thing me and Wolvorine talked about was the fact that by Year 2 you're finding them in either odd spots, torpid until it's too late, or you're finding huge mobs of them, sometimes numbering in the thousands.

Sure, you're 20th level, but it's still going to be ugly. And there's things like Cordelia out there who'll be happy to cut you into pieces.

There's also the Apocalypse Guard, but that's part of the overarching meta-plot that we're tenatively calling "Better to rule in Hell..." that's going to be in the later products we're brainstorming.

The archive ZIP file contained a lot of stuff that never saw publication light, like Hold At All Costs II and Hold At All Costs III, Rocket's Red Glare, stuff for the major power groups, minor power groups, stuff like that, so it looks like me and Wolvorine have a LOT of work to do on things.

We've definitely decided to go ahead and finish at least the basics before even thinking about releasing the core book. We're talking Marauders, Fleshmongers, Traders, Crazies, and Havens, that way the book comes out with supplement support, along with Eat the Rich, Rocket's Red Glare, Independence Day Massacre, and Hold At All Costs: Zero.

On the mechanics front, we've also figured a few things.

• At least 3 different talent trees applicable to the zombie apocalypse per character. Then 2-8 'generic talent trees' that everyone can grab from that are applicable to the zombie apocalypse.
• Vehicles right in the main book, along with adapting the d20 Future gadget ruling to vehicles.
• Reputation affects everything from barter checks to diplomacy checks to intimidation checks to HEY! FREE STUFF!
• Continuing with the S.A.L.U.T.E. system seen in Hold At All Costs: One
• Four stat-blocks in addition to 'roll generation' that way people can choose. There's going to be the standard one, the sub-standard one, the Heroic one, and of course, the Epic one. WHy Epic? Well, because playing in YotZ you can still challenge Epic characters. We've playtested with a group who had no stats lower than 16 and as high as 24. TPK trying to raid the hospital when an idiot opened the door to the ER waiting room.
• Mass combat rules, mostly pulled from HAAC
• Adding in the new military vehicles, gear, and weapons.
• Finishing a locations book. Probably going to be free with the Core Book for the first 30-45 days.
• Archetype pages with sample characters. Thinking like SR2E pages.
• New scavenging system. Wolvorine and I are trying to decide on making it more abstract or more exacting. We don't want to go all Twilight 2000 on you.
• CMB and CMD from the Pathfinder d20 system will probably be put into use. And armor will affect CMD. Interceptor Body Armor has lots of stuff for a zombie to grab, and that's going to make up close fighting a pain in the ass.
• Variable level skill checks, like shown in HAAC:1. That way a minor failure won't screw the group.
• More than a +2 bonus when another person is helping out. We're still debating on just how far, but +2 would be for an assistant with no training at all.
• Discussing ditching alignment and the like. Modern day is a bit more complicated.
• Ranges will be approximately tripled for firearms.
• Condition of equipment will be added in.

It's funny. All of this, and all we've really done is go over our backlogs and any d20 SRD we can get our hands on for variable stuff that might work out.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm incredibly happy that you're going to put out a new version of YotZ, as I was a big fan of the game. (As an aside, is it still being sold anywhere? I have all of the supplements but one - the very last one, which if I recall correctly is Fleshmongers 2 - and the incompleteness is irking.)

That said, you have your work cut out for you. There hasn't been a standard-setting rewrite of d20 Modern, so you're going to need to redo the base system before you can start to make it YotZ-specific.

In that regard, I think you have something of a tightrope to walk. This book is almost certainly going to appeal to the remaining d20 community before any others, and that means looking to the Pathfinder players. If you change too much, such as how some of the ability scores work, you're going to alienate your biggest potential fanbase.

That said, I echo the sentiment that a new layout is going to be king. The old YotZ was very scattershot in its presentation of what rules to use and where they were located. Also, I heard some arguments that the old game was too lethal - I could not disagree more. That high degree of lethality is a key point of a YotZ game, and it needs to be spotlighted, not shied away from.