Running Modern D&D without d20 Modern?

[Dunjin]

I have an odd twist coming up in my game--it turns out that the PCs are all the result of a mad time god (named "He Who Lives Between The Moments") mating with mortal women, and as a result they live simultaneously in multiple timelines. While they live in a D&D fantasy world, they also live unconscious lives in the modern day, the sci-fi future, and so on. They are being sought by unscrupulous people as weapons and tools for shaping time, and there are others out there who share their situation but who don't necessarily have the best of intentions.

Whenever it is that they discover the ability to move their perceptions to their lives in another time, I'd like that time to be the modern day. The problem is that I don't want to have to hand them a new character sheet that I made up approximating what their characters would be like in the modern day. So I don't necessarily want to go over to d20 Modern or Spycraft and start telling these folks (who are pretty new to D&D to begin with) that they're now Smart Heroes with levels of Sleuth or whatever.

So can rangers and rogues and sorcerers work out in the modern day without a lot of tweaking? I am going to assume that, since they've really been living that life all along, they know all they need to know about operating machinery and hi-tech devices (in the future time). Clearly, the ranger will be able to use rifles in the present, the rogue will likely be able to hack, etc. Of course, this is a low-magic fantasy version of the present, where one of their goals might be to reintroduce the worship of Pelor or find out what happened to the civilization of elves who lived in the forest that used to be where this large section of city blocks now stand.

Also, I would personally appreciate it if anyone wants to ask me rat bastardly questions about the premise, because I'd like my idea to be bulletproof when I present it to the group finally. So if you want to poke holes, go right ahead.

Thanks!

 

[alsih2o]

sounds like fun.

i would use the "assumed success" rule here, if the rogue or ranger thinks something tied to their character should translate a certain way into modern, let them. give them a few early successes and you have them hooked. the tougher portion for me would be spellcasters. is your modern world already populated with spellcasters?

questions-

will they remember their d+d selves? will their physical stats be the same? when and if they return, will they be able to bring technology back? just awareness of certain tech advances can really change the "old" world. if you die in one time do you die in the others?

 

[Henry]

I have an insane thought, though it probably won't help you if you've already started D&D characters:

Use Mutants and Masterminds as the base system.

It is sufficiently flexible to allow fantasy, modern, and future characters together, albeit in a more cinematic genre. However, as new roleplayers, that might not be the best option.

Failing that, D&D will work fine, but I suggest you work out a chart of "skill equivalents" - where Ride becomes Drive, Alchemy becomes Chemistry, etc. Then, instead of being a person simply shunted into a new body, they are more distinct:

-A ranger who was an excellent horsemaster now races the Grand Prix Circuit, and lives life on the edge.

-A wizard who studies at an academy of magic is now star Chemisty and Electronics pupil at the University.

-A Rogue who is a master jewel thief and boxman is, well... a master jewel thief and boxman.

-A cleric fighting the cause of righteousness is A skilled Neurosurgeon with strong faith in his god.

Successful skill mappings could make things very easy to translate.

 

[Dunjin]

will they remember their d+d selves? will their physical stats be the same? when and if they return, will they be able to bring technology back? just awareness of certain tech advances can really change the "old" world. if you die in one time do you die in the others?

The wya I have it imagined is that they exist outside of time to an extent. Their lives are linear, whereas time itself isn't. So if they spent three minutes in the past, two minutes in the future, and fifteen minutes in the present, then they've all aged 20 minutes.

When they go to another time, they're not really traveling there, but instead they're shifting their attention to the other time. The mad god lives in all times and no time, and all time is as one infinite moment to him, but the characters can't expand their minds to accept that. They can't transfer items back in time, because they simply can't have those items in the past. Nor can they really have knowledge of technology, as their past minds can't make the leaps needed to make modern tech out of medieval things. Just like their modern minds couldn't conceive of cities with poop piled in the streets; the knowledge adapts to represent whichever era they're in at the time.

If they die in one time, they die in all of them. Their linear lifeline has ended.

I'm trying to think of a way to limit them to two or three real timelines unless they find ways to open up more. I'm also thinking that there are items that were touched by the god and that have temporal intertia, meaning that if they're moved in the present, then they'll be in that new place when the PCs return to the past.

Since they're taking over themselves in time, a character can't be in a fight and go back to fifteen seconds ago to help himself out in the fight. Instead, he'd be reliving those seconds as himself in the past; in such situations I'll likely allow a re-roll like the Luck domain power.

For game reasons, the group will likely have to do this together in most situations. In some situations, I can work different timelines the same way I'd do normal splitting-the-party scenes. "Okay, you chase down the speeding corvette that contains the Chromium Shard. You place it in your bag. Now, you other guys in the Duke's court find your bag getting heavy. You reach inside and find the Chromium Shard you'd promised him in return for his letting the kobold princess go free."

More questions! Poke holes!

On topic (this might get moved to Plots), it looks like I can run modern and sci-fi stuff without a big problem. I'll just let them get away with certain things using the D&D skills as printed.

 

[RangerWickett]

D&D can work fine in the modern day. It doesn't have everything you might want, and it's not geared to certain types of modern stories like spy thrillers, but you can make it work with minimal effort. For an example of this, see the Savannah Knights storyhour, in my .sig. We played this game well before d20 Modern came out, using normal D&D rules for a modern fantasy setting, and though a few pieces didn't quite fit (it was hard to make a hacker character, for one), the problems were few.

Of course, you'll still want to have d20 Modern available for rules about technology and such, but you should give your idea a try. It sounds rather cool.