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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralts Bloodthorne" data-source="post: 2734251" data-attributes="member: 6390">The biggest thing about writing d20 Modern is the following:You have to heavily support it.If you buy a Forgotten Realms book, how many other books out there support it?If you buy a book of 100 Arcane Spells, how many campaigns can use it?If you buy a D&D class book, how many campaigns can handle it.Now...How many books support a book entirely devoted to cybernetic ninja's who work both in the real world and cyberspace, with limited magic to back them up?How many books have supported Urban Arcana?How many books does the Menace Manual support, outside of d20 Modern and Urban Aracna?See where I'm going here?And writing a d20 Fantasy book, and writing a d20 Modern book are two different animals.Number one, nobody can come along and say:But go ahead and out the manufacturing data of the M-4 Carbine as 1979 as a typo, and see what happens.Plus, things are a lot more difficult, when writing an adventure, for d20 Modern. You have to take into account:Police response.Possibility of armed citizens.New casts.The Internet.Federal Law Enforcement.Ambulance times.You have the big showdown between the PC's and the Styrofoam Cyborg in the large computer labs of E.V.U.L. Inc. and the PC's first action is to hit the sprinkler, then the Halon system, choking out the Styrofoam Cyborg as he tried to access the mainframe.Great. now your bad guy is dead, and the PC's didn't break a sweat.Plus, in D&D, if you stab some orc in the face in the slums, nobody usually cares.If your Strong Hero kicks an evil hobo to death whose been skinning school children to make himself hand puppets, he's now on the run from the law.So, a lot of people found out that writing d20 Modern is a lot more difficult than writing for d20 Fantasy. This turned them off, and many projects never got beyond bare bones conception. Many products started out with one or two good books, and weren't supported.Too many gaming groups run waaaaay too different d20 Modern games. I don't think I've EVER seen the same two types of games in two different gaming groups.And writing a setting for d20 Modern is a lot more work, a lot larger investment in time, research, effort, etc than writing a setting for d20 Fantasy. With fantasy, people can handle it if there isn't much detail on the lands. You could probably get away with detailing an area only the size of Oregon for your first product.With d20 Modern, you have to account for the whole world. Mainly due to travel times. In D&D it will take the characters week to go from Waterdeep to Daggerdale, with all kinds of encounters.Getting from Seattle to NYC is a plane ride.See the differences?As to what I'd change?<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ditch the craptacular unarmed combat rules. Use them MAYBE in conjunction with d20 Fantasy unarmed rules. Combining both of them works fantastic.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Upgrade armored vehicles into rolling death machines, unstoppable by anything less than anti-armor weaponry or massive amounts of explosives.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Multiply the ranges on the weapons by 3.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Change the auto/burst fire rules.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Change modern body armor to equal DR, that is bypassed by reaching over the Defense Bonus. (Example: Tactical Vest adds _6 to Defense. But if the strike gets between 10-15 the damage is reduced by the DR. 16 or higher, it's subtracted from hit points.)</li> </ul>Just my not-so humble opinion.</blockquote>

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