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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 608676" data-attributes="member: 18">Anyone who buys a non-GURPS game supplement on a RL country or historical period is currently a "sucker". None of the books produced in such a style so far, for any game, have had much worthwhile content, and most have to at least some extent oversimplified things.GURPS has produced some very solid books along the same line, however, and thus they would be the model to follow if you wanted to make such a thing. Thorough research by someone who actually knows about the topic.I mean, if you wanted to run a campaign set in Afghanistan (why? would it be "macho westerners w/super-high tech weaponry arrive, blow up bad brown people"? I pray not), I would not NEED a sourcebook, I would simply, as Velenne SO CORRECTLY points out, go to the library, and do some research, or, failing that, look for a GURPS book which covered the topic, as many GURPS books are "condensed research". I can't think of any stats I would need, and if I, as a GM, can't come up with a tunnel layout, I should probably quit now!What I'd want is NOT books full of information I could get better versions of from a library or bookshop, but rather books with plenty of "crunchy bits".People have suggested an Archaic Weapons Guide. That would be a decent idea, especially if you featured some nice optional rules as well, and maybe some generic PrCs (NOT super-precise ones, please!) appropriate to the periods covered.The one exception to "information books" being worthless and not selling would be a book of floorplans. It's very hard to get floorplans for buildings, especially a large collection of assorted modern floorplans. Any d20 Modern book that did this would *also* sell to other gamers, such as those playing Spycraft, or even GURPS or whatever (I'm no fan of the GURPS floorplan line). I would personally prefer it NOT gridded, but that may just be me.What you *should* be doing, IMHO, is playing to d20 Modern's strengths. Realism is *not* one of them. It claims to be cinematic, and maybe it is, but it's *certainly* not remotely realistic, so I think the people who want more "real-world" stuff would be disappointed with what they got, unless they had fairly low standards.So books with a more "cinematic" angle might do well, an "action-movie" book, full of action-movie-appropriate PrCs, adventure ideas, optional rules on how to make the game more "action-movie"-ish, extra martial arts rules, and so on, could be very fun.Some people say "less supernatural", but I don't think that's necessarily a good idea if you actually want to sell books. People like the supernatural, at least to judge from sales figures, and a book containing alternate rules-systems for magic, psionics, and so on could do extremely well, as most d20 Modern players seem to rather dislike the dull, incomplete, and D&D-ish rules inherent to the current version.I mean, WotC has started off by position d20 Modern to be the premier modern RPG for horror and the supernatural, and I think it makes sense to take the ball and run with it, producing ideas more interesting and thought-through than the half-assed "D&D nowdays!" world of Urban Arcana, or the rather shoddy "Um, we have these psionics rules, maybe we can reprint them!" world of Agents of PSI.If d20 Modern tries to go too "modern day", however, it may find stiff opposition, in the form of Spycraft, which really has superior rules in many regards, and already has a big fanbase and many products released.Going to market with products that do NOT already exist, or which wildly out-do existing settings seems a better idea than trying to join in with "Yet another firearms guide", or "Guide to place the American military killed people in X".No-one has, AFAIK, done a good d20 Cyberpunk setting. There have been some "less than successful" attempts, but a d20 Modern-based version could definately be successful where others have failed.Anyway, the point is, d20 Modern is not remotely about realism. If it was, it would have very different rules. It claims to be about "cinematic action", and that really is where it stands the best chance.Some modern-day, non-political, non-supernatural adventures could certainly sell, though, so long as they were "action-packed" enough (think Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, or, if you have the skills, The Usual Suspects, etc.).One last idea - How about a "Noir"-style setting for d20 Modern? It's not going to sell a million copies, but it could be reasonably popular, and d20 Modern could "do" Noir pretty well, I suspect. Provide stats for 1930-50s weaponry, explain private detectives, torpedoes (the job, not the weapon), how to run femme fatales, and so on, and provide a setting in some fictional city, and you've got yourself a sourcebook I'd buy. Of course, you've also got the long-forgotten RPG "Noir", but I don't think anyone will care...You extend that to a whole range of "Genre" sourcebooks for d20 Modern, each containing rules, crunchy bits, advice and ideas for running a campaign in that genre with d20 Modern.d20 Modern: Post-Apocalypse.d20 Modern: Time-Travel and Reality-Jumping.d20 Modern: American Gothic. (The whole modern "American Gothic horror" thing is largely untapped, despite all the fairly successful movies in this genre. Rules for fear, ways to creep out the players, ways to keep things low-powered, and plenty of stats for things that go bump in the night, but that don't leap on you and growl a lot. Many X-Files episodes had the tone, as did)d20 Modern: Conspiracy. (Could either be a complete, single world, or various suggestions. If you could get the license, you could go one better with d20 Modern: Dark*Matter, based on the Alternity setting)d20 Modern: The Wild West.And so on. Much like GURPS, the possibilities are nearly endless. If you were very daring, you might even go beyond "Modern" settings, and use the rules for others, such as more-gritty-than-D&D fantasy setting.It really has massive potential, and I hate to see it being limited to giving me the stats for a Humvee or how many HP one of Saddam's Elite Guard has! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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