Your experiences with d20 Modern?

[Bran Blackbyrd]

1: Yes

2: Yes and No

3: I like D20 Modern, but the campaign I'm currently playing in leaves a lot to be desired. The DM was depending on his knowledge of 3E D&D (first print PHB, no errata) to carry him through, rather than thoroughly reading the new rules. He had no idea how driving, healing, and a number of other things worked as of game time. He seemed to ignore rules for range.

Also he is a bit out of touch with reality on a lot of points. This leads to player frustration when things aren't working like they normally should.

A good example of our frustration: Two PCs, mine and another player's, walked into a room in a suburban house. The DM had us roll search checks, we both rolled rather well. He told us a few trifling details about the room, but it wasn't until later that he told us that the floors, walls, and ceilings were all covered in metal tiles. A detail that unusual should be noticed immediately upon entering the room (unless the lights are off) by any PC that isn't blind, or a total vegetable. Heck, even a blind PC could roll Listen to notice the metal sound when walking on the floor. He finally told us about the floor, and it wasn't until quite a while later that he made a remark that we never asked about what the ceiling was like. Come On! Details like that are a 'gimme' anyway, but to withhold the info about the ceiling after we already noticed the floors... That's road-blocking and I have no idea why he does it, or thinks that it should be done. It's like he just doesn't want us to figure out what's going on too quickly and figures if he can't outsmart us the honest way, he'll simply screw us.(?)

The PCs never get downtime, so we have no chance to heal ourselves properly or buy equipment unless the DM says, "Poof! You're healed. Poof! You have stuff."
He is morbidly afraid that if our wealth bonuses get too high (anything over 11 apparently) we'll become walking equipment lists and stomp all over his bad guys (who are always grossly high in level or numbers compared to us).
He once had one of us make a DC 15 Wealth check to mail a 14 pound package from Detroit to San Diego. That's five hundred dollars!? I'm convinced he chose DC 15 just so someone's bonus would drop. Further proof of this was that when I informed him of the dollar equivilent of DC 15, he admitted that he had never seen the chart in the book!
Incidently, we had to ship the package because we were taking a plane to California and had to have our weapons meet us there. When we got there, he immediately hustled us on to the next objective without giving us the downtime to wait for our package. In the next session he hit us with 3rd and 4th level guys wearing heavy body armor carrying automatic weapons (we were 2nd level). We barely survived the session. He chastised us for not using our weapons, that's when we informed him, for the hundredth time, that our weapons were in a fricking mail bin waiting to arrive in Cali... He hadn't bothered to remember or even write down our lack of arms...

I'll start enjoying the sessions a lot more once he gets his crap together.

I'm terribly sorry about this rant. My apologies.

My advice to anyone playing D20 Modern is to thoroughly read and understand the rules before sitting down to play. This goes double if you're the one running the show. Having a firm grip on reality and societal norms helps too...

More on topic:
Thr group seems to enjoy D20M. I like it and think the potential is huge. You can use it for so many settings it's not even funny. I have a hatfull of ideas for campaigns, but I'm holding off on starting one until I can get the time to complete my (2 years in planning) D&D game, which has been postponed for our D20M GM's campaign.

4: I'd like to see a near future setting, not as angsty as cyberpunk, but a little gritty perhaps. I'd also like to see a vehicle book with plenty of sample vehicles, rules for their creation, and rules for modifying them, adding weapons and so on. If they could do it for guns with as little variation as is allowed with them, they can do it for vehicles.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

1) Yes, d20 Modern: Morrow Project

2) Very much so.

2a) I'm playing with one slightly experienced gamer and two novices. The game is written well enough that the newbies can easily digest it and make their characters.

The action is easy, fluid and well written. The game is cinamatic enough to make it enjoyable for the players and me.

3) Oi. I love equipment. Something along the lines of Ultratech or such like GURPS does but for "modern" settings.

 

[Ruland]

1) I'm GMing a D20M campaign.
2) The players are participating enthusiastically; I like this group very much.
a) Because - well, we all have a thorough picture of THIS "game world" and an awful lot of examples for character play (mostly from TV and cinema). And especially the Wealth-Rules work perfectly; no currency - difficult to imagine what problems some people have with them. Do you realle want to calculate currency exchange rates?
3) Most desired supplements: For me, a Shadow Chasers setting book. But the best "supplement" is the daily newspaper, todays newscast and the latest novel or comic I have read.

 

[suburbaknght]

1) No, but I've GMed two campaigns and one mini-campaign (same world).
2) Very much so.
2a) Modern fantasy has always been an intriguing subject to me and I like being able to play in it.
3) A book of modern magic (i.e. technomagic, enchanted computers, etc.)

 

[Kefka_Rowantha]

1) Have you played in a modern campaign?
2) Did you like it?
2a) Why or why not?
3) What would you most like to see come out to suppliment it?


1) Nope (planning one though)
2) N/A
3) N/A
4) Well Urban Arcana would be nice to see, maybe some supplements on areas of the world, like an Urban Arcana Britan book?

 

[Quickbeam]

1) Not a campaign per se, but rather a one shot adventure during the Ohio Gameday in Columbus last month.

2) Yes, quite a bit actually.
2a) Because it's easy to get into character, and the mechanics of the game and its setting correspond directly to RL.

3) I can't say yet, other than more material in general...modules, additional advanced classes and the like. I'm still pretty new to d20M, so I haven't played the game enough to want more than I already have .

 

[Desdichado]

1) Not a true campaign, per se, but a mini campaign and a coupla one-shots. I've got campaign ideas in the back of my head, certainly.

2) Yes, I love it. In fact, I'm thinking I'd like to run something in d20 Modern soon. I might do an online game if I can't get something together locally.

2a) I think this is what d20 should have been. It's tons of fun in spite of (in fact, IMO, because of) it's "generic-ness." If you want a D&D-like modern game, use the advanced classes from the Urban Arcana mini-section (and presumably the full-blown campaign setting when it comes out here in the near future) if you want a darker, grittier setting, use the rules for Shadow Chasers and maybe toss in a little of CoC to spice it up. You really can do all kinds of things with the game. It's still an action game, but it's not nearly as over-the-top as D&D is: PC's are scared of overwhelming odds, at least. I don't, however, like the replacement for subdual damage that they used: in every game I've played so far, we just used D&D subdual damage rules.

3) Nothing in particular that I'm looking for, although anything that comes out, I'll see if I think it has any use to me. I can probably work it in somehow.

 

[jonrog1]

With a little tweaing, a very groovy system. Vehicle rules are still ugh, and I'm not nuts about the BAB bias for Strong heroes, but cool. Still, Spycraft is the way to go for pulpier adventures.

 

[Desdichado]

I've got to agree with John on that as well -- the vehicle combat rules are work fine, but are hardly exciting.