Why so little D20 Modern Support?

[The Overlord]

I am begining to wonder why there is so little D20 Modern support from large game companies. Sure, fans are creating sites and there are a few D20 modern .pdf games but the amount of print material for D20 Modern has been.. well lacking.

Any idea why this is?

 

[Bagpuss]

I think most D20 publishers would rather publish to what is a much larger target market and so put their money and developers working strickly for the D&D Fantasy market.

The problem their is the D&D Fantasy market is already flooded with products which cover pretty much everything, where as the D20 Modern market although the audience is smaller they are more desperate for product so anything published is likely to stand out more.

I suppose it depends on how many folks you think will buy your product. The fact that the Modern Player Companions (original PDF) have been combined and published as hardcopy, must be a good sign, as if it didn't produce enough sales as a PDF it wouldn't have been picked up for a hardcopy release.

The Horizon's line is a little weird as they are like the Polyhedron standalone games that even though (often) set in a modern setting don't use the D20 Modern rules, so you can play them with any D20 core rulebook. Obviously these are going to have a larger possible market than something that depends on the purchaser owning the D20 Modern rules.

There doesn't seem much finacial incentive to support D20 Modern as far as I can see.

 

[JPL]

d20 Modern just plain isn't as popular as D&D.

There's actually been a pretty good-sized stack of supplements fro d20 Modern, however. Game Mechanics and Chuck Rice have both put out a steady stream of good support.

Too bad that White Wolf decided against d20 Modern for its Adventure! d20 [and its forthcoming companion games]. Sounds like Masque of the Red Death d20 will also use D&D rather than d20 Modern.

 

[Bagpuss]

Too bad that White Wolf decided against d20 Modern for its Adventure! d20 [and its forthcoming companion games]. Sounds like Masque of the Red Death d20 will also use D&D rather than d20 Modern.

Lets be honest nearly everyone that owns D20 Modern will own D&D core books, but most people that own D&D core books won't own D20 Modern.

Your about to release a D20 games, which do you think will appeal more.

a) One where you buy the rulebook for $40 and can use your existing D&D core rulebooks.

b) One where you buy the rulebook for $40 and they have to go and buy D20 Modern for another $40.

A publisher is going to go for option (a) everytime even if you think D20 Modern is a better rule system, using it is commercial suicide.

Although to be fair because of the SRD you could actually produce a rulebook that reprints so much of the D20 Modern rules that you don't require it to play, but then won't the D20 Modern players feel a bit miffed that they only actually need 25% of the book they just paid for.

 

[JPL]

I think in some cases a game is so well-suited to the d20 Modern engine that the developer should use it and trust that it will be more successful that if he had used D&D as his core.

Darwin's World and Gamma World both gave this a shot. Unfortunately, the latter seems to have gotten rather lukewarm response...but at one time, lots of people on rpg.net were talking about buying d20 Modern just so they could play Gamma World.

 

[malladin]

Hi folks,

Just thought I'd chip in with a few of my own points fo view on publishing D20 Modern material.

Our latest product, Modern Heroes: Martial Avengers is a D20 Modern supplement. We have been designing and writing this since we first got hold of D20M in the first week of its release (or at least as soon as it came out in our local games store here in Blighty). So, one aspect is likely to be turn around. Publishers usually have their schedule booked up 12-24 months in advance with products they're currently working on (I know we do!). Add to that that they're also going to be sceptical about how well D20M is going to do and how much of a market there is likely tobe there for it. I don't think the market is as big as I had initially thought it could be. Unfortunately quality is no guarantee of success in today's market, otherwise I think D20M would be doing a lot better.

Secondly, I think that when you're writing a complete setting, such as WW did with Adventure, I think (as mentioned already) that you're going to your basic game usable with D&D rather than D20. This is just simple economics. That said, I think publishers can learn from D20M and as a result produce stuff that fits in a lot better and is much more easily convertable. For exmple, our DarkLore game is a dark fantasy game, with the basic characters a little bit powered down from basic D&D ones, but with added versatility which comes from using ideas we learned from D20M. We have 6 very generic base classes which use talent trees to determine their powers. On top of the advantages in terms of feel and flexibility we feel that this adds to DarkLore, it also means that there are new talent trees that are very easily integratable with D20M. This way you can add sneak attack to your fast hero, or wizardly spellcasting to your smart hero. Charismatic heroes can gain some paladin-like powers of desity. Tough heroes can gain some ranger abilities. Obviously these are all quite fantasy oriented (well, DarkLore is a fantasy game, but should the flavour fit you can use them in D20M).

This is a design criteria we're taking through to our upcoming Etherscope game. We're designing 6 basic classes which are in many ways like the 6 D20M classes. However, as with DarkLore, we felt it was important to resdesign these classes to add flavour to the setting. With them I think we've really managed to get a 'best of both worlds' approach.

Cheerio,

Ben, Malladin's Gate Press

 

[Psion]

All things considered, I think d20 modern gets pretty good third party support. RPGObjects and The Game Mechanics (brought to print via Green Ronin) have some nice products for it and other parties are supporting it as well. Not to mention big players like S&SS and Mongoose are throwing some books d20 Modern's way as well.

But if you think that it should get support comparing to the big cahuna of games, I think you should reconsider the situation.

 

[Aaron2]

Although to be fair because of the SRD you could actually produce a rulebook that reprints so much of the D20 Modern rules that you don't require it to play, but then won't the D20 Modern players feel a bit miffed that they only actually need 25% of the book they just paid for.

The way I see this is that you can make a plain d20 game and just import the parts of d20M that you want or need. As I've stated before, I'm of the opinion that d20 Modern has too many power level and play style assumptions built into it, making it more difficult to adapt to various settings that plain ol' d20. I view d20M as similar to Unearth Arcana in this respect; as a toolbox for exporting various rules. Once a game goes full d20M, it has to use all (or most) of those assumption and rules and thus limits the designer's ability to match the genre.

As such, I'd prefer "modern" or historical type games to be released d20 rather than d20M. I don't dislike d20M at all, I just wish they made some of the rules changes (forex Basic classes, Occupations) more modular than they are.


Aaron

 

[teitan]

D20 Modern suffers from the mistaken belief that WOTC had that it could help bring in new gamers. As such, the failure to accomplish that goal with D20 Modern has made support a mixed bag, as someone pointed out, most people who have D20 Modern also have D&D 3.x. Which should say something to publishers at the same time... go ahead and use D20 Modern because the people who are going to buy your modern product might just have D20 Modern, especially if you assume they have D&D.

I love D20 Modern, so do most of my players. One refuses to play it, he gives limp excuses to all my campaign ideas for it... but if I bring up a similar idea with a different system his eyes twinkle... weird.

I would like to see some gothic punk stuff for D20 Modern myself, not Dark INheritance (which I am sure is a fine product but doesn't sound like my cup of tea), but something along the lines of Underworld or Steve Niles comic work.

I also think the D20 Modern class system is perfect for D&D4, start with 4 basic classes (warrior, expert, adept and acolyte) and then use the PHB classes as Advanced classes and then integrate Prestige CLasses. That would better emulate the idea you are a beginning hero in D&D. ANyway... UI must not reveal my plans!!!

Jason

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

D20 Modern is probably my current favorite system to use and run ... my frustration isn't so much that there's not enough product for it (and that IS a big frustration) but that it tends to loan itself very well to settings that have been produced for other systems, etc etc. I really like it for Dark*Matter, for instance, and there was a touch of rather clunky support to that tuned in Poly, but not a wholesale refit and reissue. Sure it wouldn't sell that well, but Dark*Matter is my current baby.

Next up, I've been offline for a while because I'm on vacation and getting a chance to do some light reading. My fiance is a huge fan of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. I'd never read them (not a huge space-navy guy, usually). She was excited that somebody was "making" an Honor Harrington RPG, so I've been sitting around the house reading. Ends up it's a worldbook for Traveller D20.

D20 Future is a supplement for D20 Modern, but I have a distinct feeling it'll be "better" for Harrington (at least for me to work with and run) than T20. I downloaded the T20 free release to look over their rules. While competent, it's clunky compared to D20M and I'm sure D20F will do alot of the exact same things in much smoother ways. Unfortunately, the Honorverse is going to be T20 and I'll have the choice of running it with a system I like less (T20) or busting hump to convert to D20Future on the fly (though it should be much easier than Alternity-to-D20M).

I'd like to see Modern take a forward role in alot of ways ... more product and support would go a ways toward that. I think part of it is that the rules themselves can't stand on merit alone. People tend to buy a PROPERTY as opposed to a ruleset. D&D happens to be an odd duck in being The Big Dog and both ... the intellectual property that is the D&D 'Universe' and the D20 Rules. D20Modern is a good rules-set, but it's properties are lackluster at best ... I have Urban Arcana and it doesn't do anything for me, and it's the only property they released for it. Their bit about "the world outside is your campaign setting" doesn't really seem to cut it. I'm using it to run all the OTHER games out there ... they'd be getting alot more of my money if I didn't have to do all the conversions on my own.

--fje