[UPDATED] WotC Gives You Some Official 5E Modern Armor!

This took me rather by surprise - WotC has just posted statistics for D&D 5E versions of modern armor types, including leather jackets, tactical vests, forced entry units, and other items straight from d20 Modern. The article is titled "Firearms", but its focus is adding armor to use alongside the existing firearms in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

UPDATE: WotC has just renamed the article from 5E Firearms to My New d20 Modern Campaign.

Find the article here.

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[Zaran]

Is it really official? It's just a GM making some rules for their game and telling us about it. I'm not sure I would call them official.

 

[I'm A Banana]

VERY CURIOUS

The thing reads a bit like a blog post cross-posted to the WotC site - all "in my campaign and "next time."

But I am kind of into it - the WotC "stamp of approval" on people doing their own awesome things with their games is a pretty good thing!

It's a cool use of the "behind the screen" articles. Very nice!

 

[Sacrosanct]

This is the point where I flip out over the inaccuracies of the table

And there are plenty...

 

[Kramodlog]

Who is Dan Helmick, the author of the article?

Edit: Scrolled down and saw his street cred.

 

[Mistwell]

Is it really official? It's just a GM making some rules for their game and telling us about it. I'm not sure I would call them official.

It's not just some GM, in my view. "Daniel Helmick is a contractor attached to the Dungeons & Dragons R&D department, formerly of the D&D Insider studio at Wizards of the Coast." WOTC posted it as the "Behind the Screens" Article. That's a lot more than "just a GM", to me.

Also, his LinkedIn says:

Researching content and continuity for RPG R&D [WOTC]
Curating and organizing internal research libraries [WOTC]
Concepting products for the D&D brand, both digital and analog [WOTC]
Editorial passes for tone and canon on several upcoming products [WOTC]
Creating research reports for internal use [WOTC]
User design and testing for internal tools [WOTC]
Designed and wrote two adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons Adventurers League Organized Play program

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Is it really official? It's just a GM making some rules for their game and telling us about it. I'm not sure I would call them official.

It's as official as anything else. One of the big selling points of 5E is that you should be able to just make stuff up, and use it in your game.

From a practical standpoint, it's official if you can convince the DM to let you use it. This kind of stuff isn't going to show up unless you're actually playing a Modern game, though, so it's more likely to be officialized through a DM wanting to use it rather than a PC wanting to add it to an existing game. And, as they say, the DM's word is law.

 

[Morrus]

Is it really official? It's just a GM making some rules for their game and telling us about it. I'm not sure I would call them official.

It's an article commissioned for and written for the official D&D website and published by WotC.

 

[TerraDave]

Its like something you would have seen in Dragon "back in the day". Which is a good thing.

Its "offcialness" is probably 1 degree below a UA article, and they are very clear that UA is less official then the stuff in print.

 

[Waller]

It's an article commissioned for and written for the official D&D website and published by WotC.

Ah, but was it "announced"? If not, it doesn't exist. Has WotC ever actually announced the existence of Mike Mearls?