RPG systems frozen in time

[trappedslider]

I still run d20modern and it was created and published back during the early 2000s and you can see it in the gear/item list. To keep my sanity and not having to worry about introducing more recent tech and figuring out the purchasing DCs, I tell the players that join before we officially start the game that it's set in 2004 unless i use the d20future book in which case it's the future!

Do any other GMs do this kind of thing or do you chose to work out modern advances into your games that set in the current year/tech setting?

 

[jdrakeh]

When I run TSR's Top Secret, I always run it in the Cold War era of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 

[BigJackBrass]

My general setting for CHILL is a sort of "the mid-eighties as you remember them."

 

[GrimCo]

I work out modern advances. WW nWoD is my go to game for anything modern and urban. That game started in 2004. I put all modern tech in it ( smartphones, drones, fast internet, social media). It's funny, cause it's in some ways harder to brake Masquarade now when there is bunch of fakes, cgi and AI videos circling online and flooding feeds. Clan Daeva vampire doing his "vampire gimmick" in the open on the tiktok is discarded as just another wannabe influencer.

Out of curiosity, what tech is giving you hard time?

 

[Koloth]

While generally set in the far future, watching how Traveller deals with computers is entertaining. In the 70's Traveller, computers are massive multi-ton things that sit in the bowels of a ship and can only run one or two things at a time. As the game versions get closer to now in publishing time(not game setting time), computers and related communications gear gets smaller and more capable.

 

[trappedslider]

I work out modern advances. WW nWoD is my go to game for anything modern and urban. That game started in 2004. I put all modern tech in it ( smartphones, drones, fast internet, social media). It's funny, cause it's in some ways harder to brake Masquarade now when there is bunch of fakes, cgi and AI videos circling online and flooding feeds. Clan Daeva vampire doing his "vampire gimmick" in the open on the tiktok is discarded as just another wannabe influencer.

Out of curiosity, what tech is giving you hard time?

so in the corebook published in 2002, it has separate entries for digital recorder,,camera: Digital,film,35mm,disposable and then cell phone,PDA, two entries for computers, desktop or notebook, modems (cellular or broadband), portable satellite phone, portable video camera,printer, scanner and then under survival gear there's GPS receiver,walkie talkies (basic or professional).

I don't know how WoD does prices,but money is very abstracted in d20 modern, where buying stuff is a DC roll check. which is very inconsistent anyway.

It's just easier and quicker to say we're playing in the year 2003 than figure out the purchase DCs for an all in one item, even the d20 future supplement book doesn't do tablets,or smartphones