What would you change for d20 Modern 2.0

[HeapThaumaturgist]

My complaint is that, even when finished, on a good day, with a tail wind, something like that is going to be twice to three times more confusing and time consuming than the base classes as they are now to stat up AND will invariably lead to "perfect tweaks" and munchkin/roleplayer GURPSism dichotomy again.

For what I see, at least, to be pretty minor gain. I, for one, haven't come up against anything I couldn't satisfactorily stat up, but I walk in with the expectation that working within the rules I might not have all of the cake and be able to eat it too.

I want lots of skill points, but I don't want any of the Smart talent trees. Then I guess I have to put more points in Int and take a different class. It's a hard choice, but that's pretty essential.

I want to fight really well in ranged combat, but there's not alot to offer me in Strong that will enhance my ranged combat. Which might be a hard choice, but I see as a good thing. A better thing, at least, than letting people buy 1/1 BAB and 1/1.5 defense and gun feats every time we run a modern game and having to tweak the expenses of those things up through the roof on rewrites again and again to account for it until nobody can have 1/1, 1/1.5, and gun feats at the same time without losing out on anything else and have it STILL worth it 9 times out of 10.

With a point buy system like that, there will always always be no-duh "eat my cake and have it too" purchase choices. Which I don't like apparently just as much as you don't like the Base Class concepts.

Now I think there should be more Talent Trees. Especially for Smart, which gets bootstrapped into the Science Geek a little too readily. But I think that can be fixed with adding some more trees from various sources instead of tossing the baby out with the bathwater. Same with adding some switch-o-change-o feats for making Cross-Class Skills into Class Skills or taking a feat for More Skill Points. Things that add OPTIONS but keep within the outlines.

It's easier to balance a feat across the known possibilities than it is to account for point-buy and its effects on one style of PC from another.

--fje

 

[Thanee]

It's a lot different still from GURPS or other full point-buy systems, because it is still based on the d20 class structure. Every little bit is within a minimum and a maximum boundary, you cannot overspend points on some things, which is the basic problem of point-buy usually.

Therefore I don't think your concerns really hold true, since they are based on different takes.

Same with adding some switch-o-change-o feats for making Cross-Class Skills into Class Skills or taking a feat for More Skill Points. Things that add OPTIONS but keep within the outlines.

It's easier to balance a feat across the known possibilities than it is to account for point-buy and its effects on one style of PC from another.

But isn't that exactly what D&D does and what people like better with d20 Modern, since it is not heading in that direction (yet)?

Add new feats and stuff for all the various options and combinations instead of making them available to begin with in a solid and flexible base concept. A huge patchwork mess of feats and classes and whatnot. Sure, that works. D&D works. But it's not the idea the system seems to imply, or is it?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

I want lots of skill points, but I don't want any of the Smart talent trees. Then I guess I have to put more points in Int and take a different class. It's a hard choice, but that's pretty essential.

I want to fight really well in ranged combat, but there's not alot to offer me in Strong that will enhance my ranged combat. Which might be a hard choice, but I see as a good thing.

I totally agree that there must be choice and compromise, that's basically what the whole idea is about. I just want enough freedom to actually choose what fits the concept and not get dictated choices, which don't fit at all. That's not compromise in my eyes, but rather constriction.

Which I don't like apparently just as much as you don't like the Base Class concepts.

Which is not a problem at all, of course. Opinions will always be different.

Bye
Thanee

 

[The Shaman]

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a 12th level module for d20 Modern that can be put into ALL campaigns. Get artwork for it. Layout. Editing. Printing at $0.12/page in a minimum lot of 100.

Now, price it so that you are not losing money.

Climb down from My Little Pony, Warlord Ralts - I already qualified that my response was limited to those elements you chose to mention, not the challenge of writing a generic Modern adventure.

If you would like me to write a treatment for a Modern adventure, provide me with a detailed scope of work and a project timeline, and send it to me by e-mail. I'm not a graphic artist, so artwork and editing are YP, not MP, but I'll be happy to offer some suggestions on artwork to get you started.

I'll tell you right from the giddyup that it won't be a very good adventure, since as we already established it's finding-a-black-cat-at-midnight-in-a-dark-basement-on-a-cloudy-night hard to write something that covers all possible genres, but I'll do my best.

Back to you.

I was addressing why there is limited support available for the d20 Modern market.

And I was addressing the specific bits and pieces you mentioned as problematic.

Honestly, if you find it that easy to write d20 Modern adventures, by all means, start cranking them out. There's plenty of publishers willing to pick them up if you can write one that can be used in nearly every d20 Modern campaign.

Nearly every Modern campaign?

Now that's a horse of a different color. How 'bout an adventure arc that incorporates incantations, monsters, enchanted weapons, genetically-enhanced supersoldiers, and psionics? I ran a Modern campaign for more than two years with those elements - that's in my wheelhouse.

Back to you.

That's beyond the difficulty of writing pan-genre modules. When writing for d20 Modern, unlike d20 Fantasy, as Vigilance pointed out, you have to narrow the to a specific sub-genre, AND place that within the ad/blurb/purchase page.

And I agreed. Yesterday.

If you throw down $6.50 for a module, you don't want to rewrite CRAP, much less 40 NPC's, redo a map.

Now I think you're overstating your case just a tad.

GMs rip and tear adventures all the time - many run their entire campaigns this way. They'll convert from one genre or system to another, file off names and serial numbers and plug them into their campaign as whole cloth, or blenderize encounters from a half-dozen sources to make an adventure.

Bottom line: good material gets used.

You state that clerics are comparable to hospitals. Well, the cleric is usually within the party, where as a GM needs to know how long it will take EMS to arrive on the scene, will they be allowed to enter if it's a live fire zone.

Modern has healing as well, often right there among the adventurers - I don't recall ever playing in a Modern game, come to think of it, where somone in the party didn't invest in Treat Injury.

Healing in Modern tends to be less powerful than the healing in fantasy games, which affects encounter level and pacing, but it's not wholly dependent on formal EMS systems - I think that's why it's called the Field Medic AdC, instead of ER Resident.

You state that the King's Guard are equevalent to SWAT/Police forces, but when you get right down to it, there's a lot more complexity. You vastly over-simplified the problems that occur.

Nowhere did I say they're equivalent - please don't ascribe quotes to me that I never wrote.

I drew an analogy between the role that nobles play in many medieval fantasy games with that of local law enforcment in Modern.

However, how exactly is a SWAT team encounter more difficult than any other Modern encounter to write or run? Guys with guns, flashbangs, and close teamwork - you don't include this in your games anyway?

And how does this differ from a group of fantasy NPCs that use magic, stealth, and brute force? Please pass on the generalizations this time - be specific.

In a d20 Fantasy game, when the PC's cross blades and blow off a fireball, it will take what, 10-15 minutes for the guards to be alerted? In a d20 Modern game, when the first burst of automatic weapons fire happens, how long till the police are notified? Seconds? Throw in cell-phones, helicopters (which are different than flying mages, before you even try), how amny police are in the area.

In a fantasy setting, it depends on the guards, doesn't it? A couple of devils on guard gate in a couple more devils the next round - throw in some sorcerer levels, and they summon some other monsters as well, all "in a matter of seconds."

Still not feeling the difference here, Warlord Ralts. Have you much experience with running say 12th to 14th level Dungeons and Dragons games?

When I want to know police response times, I look up the community where I place the adventure on the internet and pull the numbers directly from the source, but for the sake of argument, let's go with three to five minutes for the first four one-man cars to arrive - that seems to be a consistently reported response time in most affluent communities, at least along the Left Coast. That's thirty to fifty combat rounds in d20 Modern, which IMX is a hella long time in most games. In your experience, how many encounters run that long? How often do you write encounters that are designed to last that long? And how many groups have characters willing to sit around that long and wait for the police to arrive (unless the characters are the ones doing the calling, of course)?

And a police helicopter is unlikely to be blasting a cone of cold or an entangle spell on the adventurers (though that is an interesting idea...!).

All of this of course postulates that you set your adventures in an urban or suburban area someplace in the Western world - have you tried setting a Modern adventure in the Amazon, or the Yukon, or the Kalahari? Now you're lucky if cellphones work at all, and police response is an hour by plane, provided anyone even knows they're needed, of course.

I've never read any of your work, so please forgive me if I'm wildly off-base, but it sounds like you haven't written for Modern very much.

Yes, the fact that there are many different d20 Modern campaign styles is a strenght, but at the same time, it makes it so that there are VERY few companies willing to produce d20 Modern products, because they don't (and can't) have the same kind of cross platform application that a d20 Fantasy product does.

Good job defining the scope of the issue - now throw down a couple of constructive suggestions on how to affect a positive change in the Modern marketplace.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

The Shaman:

I'm done. You win. Whatever.

Back to changes:

Another thing I'd like to see, if or when a d20 Modern 2.0 should come out, is gadgets from d20 Future added into the base system, as well as hard and fast vehicle construction/modification rules. I'd also like to see additional support for non-wealth (IE: Cash) money tracking systems.

I'd also like to see FX in it's own book, rather than the Core Book. If we're going to go with the toolkit approach, I'd rather purchase a seperate book where the time can be taken to deal with the whole thing in depth.

I'd also like to see more support by WotC for the system. A good campaign setting isn't that hard to come up with, but once again you run into the niche problem. Spies/Military/Law Enforcement/Freelancers.

Maybe a setting run-off? Like the did for Ebberron, only for a d20 Modern setting? In order to avoid problems with offending people of religion and nationality, you could even include the requirement that it be a seperate world.

That might be interesting. A campaign setting contest with the requirement that it be a whole new world, with new religions, new nations, all at current times tech/morality level.

 

[Eternal Knot Games]

Then comes another problem.

What happens if I want to run a game where guns are seldom seen, where I don't pop down to Walmart but pop to Tesco. Or even take my Yamaha m'bike to the next town in five mins rather than the Harley half hour to the next town.

But that's just me...

 

[kroh]

Ah yes...
Armor as DR with only the Level based Defense progression and Dex modifier for total defense.

I second this.
Regards,
Walt

 

[Thanee]

Yep, armor as DR works better for modern, I believe.

Bye
Thanee

 

[JPL]

Slightly OT...I used to love Top Secret S.I., which was a point-based system, and it had just wonderfully broken character generation...different skills for each class of weapon and so forth, plus the cool martial arts stuff was cheaper during character generation than if purchased later. Unskilled skill checks were possible, but woeful.

So all the college-educated, multilingual characters? Cannon fodder.

And this was the eighties, when no game ever just said, "...or you can start at 5th level, or with twice as many character points, and play experienced cinematic heroes." And to do so would've seemed like cheating, really.

Most of my character concepts started with, "He was a two-tour Green Beret in Vietnam..." [again, this being the late eighties, when every action hero did two tours in Spec Ops fightin' Charlie], but the stats never backed this up in the slightest.

And then the Commando supplement came out, and you needed 85% accuracy in both Pistol and Rifle to qualify for a counter-terrorist unit, so even if you min-maxed like crazy, there was just no damn way you would EVER qualify for Delta Force. And yet, Chuck Norris did, and apparently had level 4 or 5 skills in Martial Arts and Motorcycles, too. Frustrating.

Anyhoo...I can see the appeal, in theory, of something like GURPS, but in practice, I never REALLY want to play a guy who's useless in combat / action scenes. The Smart Hero? That's what I want to play. A guy who may not view himself at a warrior [and isn't as good at it as some] but who can use logical thinking and clever planning [as modeled by the Plan and Exploit Weakness talents] to prevail in a fight.

 

[Thanee]

Why do you assume, that what I'm suggesting means all characters are all combat and nothing else!?

I really have no clue how you come to that conclusion.

Bye
Thanee