The Best Of D20 Modern

[sinmissing]

Highly recommend Modern Player's Companion 1 and 2 and Modern Backdrops.

 

[critter80]

Modern Players Companion by the Game Mechanics. We refer to it in our group at least as often as we refer to d20 Modern itself, since it fills in all of the gaps (especially for low-combat characters). It completely changed d20 Modern (and, to a lesser extent, future, past, etc.) gaming.

 

[solomoncane]

Grim Tales - get rid of those advanced & prestige classes.

 

[C. Baize]

A friend of mine just discovered D20 Modern. I'm looking for what people think are the best resources (on-line or in print) available for the rules set. Step up and champion your favorites!

Honestly, it depends on what you're looking for, and what sorts of resources you need.

Modern Players Companions are certainly valuable for a few more player options, including Feats, the invaluable (but woefully few) equipment packages, a few more Talent Trees (good ones are hard to come by), a few more Advanced Classes, a few more spells.... the works. Really, though, the shining points are the Equipment Packages, and the Class Combinations examples.

If you're looking to add really well done Martial Arts into your campaign, Blood and Fists, and Blood and Fists 2 are your babies. Hands down. No doubts.

I would recommend the Blood and Guts 1st Edition package because even if you're not running a military campaign, there are non-military specific feats, classes, new skill uses, and equipment to use. My group considers the entire package to be core. It NEEDS to be in your library. The Ganger and SWAT classes from one or two of the books are worth getting, in and of themselves.

If you have a mild FX / Horror game in mind, Blood and Relics 2 is the way to go.

If, on the other hand, you're doing an Urban Arcana type game, I suggest Modern Magic, and Modern Magic 2.

My wife wrote Modern Backdrops, and we make money on it (obligatory disclaimer).
If you think 5 fictional cities, 22 maps, a load of NPCs, a bunch of plot hooks, a couple of new critters, and a bit of narrative talking about our home game sounds intriguing.... You might think about picking this up.
This one is, of course, core to my group.

If you're planning to have a Smart Hero who is a builder type... Blood and Circuits REALLY hits the nail on the head for making those Craft checks a lot more interesting and fun. This one, too, is considered core by my group. I couldn't conceive of my builder doing his thing without me consulting this book, anymore...

For some options specifically for the a couple of the basic classes, I cannot recommend enough the excellent Modern Heroes: Martial Avengers. I seldom see anyone recommending this, and I can only conclude that very few people have actually seen it. I would dearly love to see this company put out more of these books.

Modern System: Characters, and Modern System: Gangland are both excellent and valuable resources for any group to own, read up on them at the RPGObjects site to really see if they would be useful to you.

Blood and Brains, and Blood and Spooks... If you're looking for a little light-hearted ghoul and ghost bashing... by all means, pick these up... they're both great for it... Aside from that, they both have some pretty valuable bits to pick and choose from them.

If you're stuck for an adventure idea, and you need one NOW... Get the Quickshots line... It's quick, it's dirty, it's basic, and it's fun. I've found myself in precisely the situation where I need something like that, a few times. "Oh... we're doing D20 Future tonight..." then when gaming starts, "Uh oh... I don't have my character... Can you whip something up for the Americanarchy game?" It's a nice resource to have at hand.

If you're going to use D20 Modern for Super Hero genre gaming... Blood and Vigilance all the way, baby! I can't crow enough about the value of this supplement for Super Hero gaming....

If you want a GREAT couple of adventures bashing zombies.... Come for the Reaping by The Game Mechanics, and Weekend Warriors by 12 to Midnight are equally ranked in my book. Come for the Reaping would be for civilian type characters, and Weekend Warriors would be for more military themed characters.

In any case, whatsoever, I highly recommend the Modern Dispatch subscription from RPGO.

For print books, Menace Manual is a great resource, as well as any of the RPGO D20 Modern print books.

Hmmm.... That's all I can think of off hand... I'm sure more will come to me, and I'll post again, then.

Oh!
Someone mentioned the 22 Talent Trees books....
I got the first one, I read through it.... then I read it again, to make sure I didn't miss something... I have yet to open the file, since. You may find something useful in it.... but neither I nor my group did. I didn't bother with the second book.

 

[malladin]

For some options specifically for the a couple of the basic classes, I cannot recommend enough the excellent Modern Heroes: Martial Avengers. I seldom see anyone recommending this, and I can only conclude that very few people have actually seen it. I would dearly love to see this company put out more of these books.

Thanks for the plug. I was hoping someone would mention us on this thread before I would have to give in to temptation and plug my own work .

I would agree that there are probably quite few people who have it. It's certainly our worst selling product, and certainly not our worst product. I don't know what we did wrong with pluging it about, but it didn't get much attention on RPGNow.

Here's some reviews on Martial Avengers:
http://www.enworld.org/reviews.php?do=review&reviewid=2011259
http://www.enworld.org/reviews.php?do=review&reviewid=2011285

In regards to us releasing further products in this line, we certainly intend to. However, 'When?' may prove to be a difficult question to answer. We're well entrenched in writing our Etherscope product at the moment (which will have a good range of D20 Modern-usable systems in it, too, btw). See our announcement on Etherscope for more details:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=126933

Cheerio,

Ben

 

[malladin]

Just to return the favour and plug a few other people's stuff which I've used:

Modern Backdrops is a very useful product - I run D20 Modern mainly as one-offs between longer campaigns and this really saves me some time in planning these adventures.

I also like Hell on Earth 1939-1945 by Bloodstone Press (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2284&).

I'm not mad keen on Blood and Fists, as I prefer a less specific martial arts supplement, but I just can't help mining it for little bits here and there. I don't use the big systems in it, but the the most of the advanced classes, the weapons and some of the feats are great.

Cheerio,

Ben

 

[Bobitron]

I also like Hell on Earth 1939-1945 by Bloodstone Press...

I just picked that up, and I'm using parts of it for my WWII campaign. It's working well, but I have to admit, there's nothing there that a resourceful DM couldn't do on his/her own. It's a good read, though, and cheap enough.

I'll add my voice in regards to Blood and Guts, I bought the pdf deal with the first edtion products for $8 and am pleased so far. Good stuff, and of use to characters with a military history or in a military campaign.

Blood and Relics looks great for a dark, fighting evil in the shadows type campaign. I haven't read the entire book yet, but the quality is very good so far.

 

[Roger]

Lots of good suggestions for print and PDF products.

On the free online side, I'd recommend:

Modernized
http://www.intrepidheroes.com/modernized.htm

Quasi-defunct zine with a couple available issues. Disclaimer: I wrote the Alcatraz article in Issue #1, so I might be a bit biased.


Knowledge (Current Events)
http://members.shaw.ca/rcarbol/K_CE/

A very short zine with 8 issues available. Disclaimer: I wrote all of these, so I'm definitely biased.


Free Adventures from WOTC
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/oaa/full

Many of these are pretty decent.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[Andur]

Grim Tales, what ya can't find here to tweak your own house rules, well the template has been provided for ya.

The Game Mechanics: Have yet to get a bad product from them yet.

Mongoose's OGL series if you don't mind some typos and rules left on the editor's floor, but want a quick setting/flavor.

The Modern Dispatch series is good to cherry pick to get the feel or tweak you might be looking for, but can't quite nail down.

 

[trancejeremy]

I find the Menance Manual to very useful. If nothing else, it's got lots and lots of stats for NPCs, which is very useful.