When does D&D become d20M?

[ledded]

Personally, our group is using the base d20 Modern class system for most of the stuff we do from now on. We have a fantasy D&D-esque campaign, and another Future Sci-fi campaign, and work on both of them has been pretty easy to do with the d20 Modern base. Occupations and talent trees, among other things, make it so much easier to avoid feeling *too* shoe-horned by classes, while still giving you a class framework to work with. But we also have exhausted our patience with the old D&D magic system and it has been tossed by the wayside also, we use a skills/feats and cost-based system for anything from psionics in Sci-Fi to Magic in fantasy.

I think you can use it for whatever time period you are trying to emulate fantasy/fiction-wise, and keep a nice degree of flexibility. It's been easier for us to emulate books, movies, and historical figures with a much better feeling of verisimilitude than with D&D. Not that there is anything wrong with the D&D class system, it's just not my preference in shoehorns.

 

[Hawkshadow]

I've run some fairly decent near-future games (2050 to 2075) with high magic using the standard fantasy rules. For some of the equipment I borrowed from DragonStar, Spycraft, and d20M.

I'd imagine you could use d20 Past (which, I believe, is d20M based) to run pre-industrial revolution games.

Standard Fantasy d20 settings usually have technology from the early renaissance (somewhere around the late 1400s) with a large number of exceptions (like no guns or cannons).

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

The way I see it D20 Modern is for settings that are like the real world cranked up to 11, and D&D is for setting that are like how the world never was or never will be.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think never. The world of DnD is not our earth and its classes, even given NPC classes, just don't match up with any historical time frame. On the other hand, d20 M is specifically intended to model the real world, mostly.
I think d20M can be used for any time period, with some tweaks for technology. The same can most likely be said for DnD, but with more revisions, but it will never be a world that resembles ours.
They weren't intended to slide one into the other, they represent different and often competing world paradigms.

This would be my take as well. Some things can slide over, but for the most part they are not systems that share a setting, but rather two systems that share a set of core mechanics.

The Auld Grump

 

[Psion]

Topic says it all. Im wondering when d20 Modern classes would "take over" from D&D and I keep pushing the boundary forward in time.

If you had asked me a month ago I would have said the 19th century, then I would have said the mid-late 19th century (say the 1860's).

Now Im waffling between that number (1860) and the 20th century (1900).

What do you guys think?

I've always thought the Renaissance was when it really the sort of shift represented by the different class structure really would have started, though it would have varied widely by region and social class. The Renaissance was known for the period in which advances in art, science, and education began to introduce a person to a wider variety of skills (the origin of the term "Renaissance man"), and it's arguable that as this convention spread, the walls between professions and people who hold skills became less rigid, more resembling the d20 Modern "occupation second" model as opposed to the "class is profession" model of D&D.

 

[Galethorn]

Or just use one book for all of them: Grim Tales.

What he said.

What they said.

 

[Vigilance]

What they said.

Look, if I was interested in GT I would have asked about it. I understand you guys like it and I'm sure it's well done. However, could you stop trying to tell me something I didn't ask for?

If I walk up to computer vendor and say "Which is better the dell or the HP" and he starts trying to sell me a Mac, do you think that's polite, helpful and informative on his part?

It's rude.

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

I've always thought the Renaissance was when it really the sort of shift represented by the different class structure really would have started, though it would have varied widely by region and social class. The Renaissance was known for the period in which advances in art, science, and education began to introduce a person to a wider variety of skills (the origin of the term "Renaissance man"), and it's arguable that as this convention spread, the walls between professions and people who hold skills became less rigid, more resembling the d20 Modern "occupation second" model as opposed to the "class is profession" model of D&D.

Yeah I can see all that. I was having trouble drawing a fine line I think, because it depends more on the campaign than the time period.

For instance Three Musketeers, imo, would work great as D&D, and so would Pirates of the Carribean.

Master and Commander, I'm on slightly iffier waters.

I realize its a bit silly discussion, since I *could* in fact make any genre work with either system (as some have suggested).

However, the issue came up while I was planning out some future Legends book, and since I was stumped, I thought I'd see what you guys had to say, and you were all immensely helpful.

Well, ALMOST all of you

Chuck

 

[Galethorn]

Look, if I was interested in GT I would have asked about it. I understand you guys like it and I'm sure it's well done. However, could you stop trying to tell me something I didn't ask for?

If I walk up to computer vendor and say "Which is better the dell or the HP" and he starts trying to sell me a Mac, do you think that's polite, helpful and informative on his part?

It's rude.

Chuck

In that case, I guess the right thing to do is answer the thread's original question...so...

I personally think that D&D and D20 Modern are mutually exclusive. They're two completely different things. D20 Modern is a fairly broad and customizable system which is for games taking place in time periods fairly close to out own, with supplements for less similar times. D&D is a system meant for a very, very specific type of setting which is very, very different from anything the real world has ever seen.

So, on that vein, I have to say that it's equivalent to asking "When does Star Trek become Warhammer 40k?"

Long story short...

D&D, as a rules kernel* can handle any imaginable setting where experienced warriors survive multiple blows from heavy weapons, magic is real (and common, and safe to use), and so forth. All it takes is renaming things, and changing classes around flavor-wise.

D20M, as a rules kernel* can handle any imaginable setting where every fight is a risk...and, well, that's about the only stipulation. All it takes is renaming things, and making setting-specific occupations and so forth.

My experience is that GT is just an extension of D20M, making the setting-specific elements mutable by default so you don't need a 40-page house-rules document to run a campaign with it, or worse yet, three expensive supplements. Hence my seconding (or the seconding of) the GT suggestion.

* Rules Kernel: the basic set of rules; the general concept and mechanics; the stuff in the SRD