D20 Modern Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook

d20 Modern

by Stan!, Bill Slavicsek, Jeff Grubb

A complete d20 roleplaying game that handles any contemporary fantasy theme.

This product is designed to be the sole core rulebook for all modern roleplaying game settings using the d20 System, which is the basic rules system for the Dungeons & Dragons&reg roleplaying game. Thematically aligned with the highly popular heroic fantasy and horror genres, this book will build on the strength of the growing d20 System while attracting new players. The product contains everything needed to run an entire campaign, as well as four campaign models and adventure hooks to add to existing campaigns.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Games, Reference, Nonfiction, Dungeons and Dragons, Contemporary

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Some say Stan! is an author who has published over a dozen short stories and two novels. Others say he is a game designer with more than 60 credits to his name. Yet others say that Stan! is a cartoonist whose work can be seen online and in major hobby games products.

Rumors abound that he is currently plying his trade as a freelance writer and illustrator, and that he is a founding member of Rogue Genius Games. Faceless voices whisper that he's worked for such industry-leading companies as Wizards of the Coast, TSR, Harper Collins Children's Books, and Viz Media.

A few conspiracy theorists say Stan! is all these things and more . . . including a prize-winning karaoke singer and raconteur par excellence. All we know for certain is that you can find him online at Stannex.com (which remains the Home of All Things Stan!) and track his current activities on Twitter @stannex.

Reviews

[R J Royer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great RPG rulebook that is going to be given away and hopefully going to a good new home.

[Benjamin]

What?
This is a generic d20 game meant for modern settings -- so essentially the same game engine as D&D 3rd edition and a replacement for the Alternity line that TSR published around the time of the WotC takeover. Or like a replacement for part of Alternity, since the remit of that game was modern and future settings, mostly science fiction-ish (but really they always had some fantasy in there).

D20 Modern was pretty short-lived: there's 11 books from 2002 to 2006, including: the core book, a monster book, two equipment books, two settings (Urban Arcana and Dark Matter), a book of locations, and four extensions/genre sourcebooks (Future, Past, Apocalypse, Cyberscape).

I honestly don't know anyone who played or even collects these books.

So, why did you get it?
Well, I got this partly for the thrill of the auction, partly because it was a good price (until the unexplained and completely ridiculous shipping and handling cost was added on, which is why I won't be buying again from 2nd Cents Auctions as long as they use Shipping Saint), and partly because eventually I'll pick up the Dark Matter book to complete that collection.

So, is it a hidden gem?
Nope, it's pretty much what you'd expect: like Alternity, they can't get away from classes and levels as a way of balancing the game, but since it's generic, they go with classes based around the character's attributes (e.g., rather than fighter, wizard, cleric, they have strong hero, fast hero, etc.), and expect the characters to be more defined by the advanced and prestige classes that they turn into.

(Nice bit: alignment is replaced by allegiances, so rather than being "lawful good", you might be "devoted to family, obeying the law, and Department 7." (But again, their examples include law vs chaos, and good vs evil -- because they cannot get away from the structures they've already got/think their audience will understand.)

One last note: the three campaign ideas here are
* Shadow Chasers (where you play people who can see the horrors and fight back, a la Buffy);
* Agents of PSI (where you play psionic secret agents, almost reminiscent of Spycraft's Shadowforce Archer -- a game I owned and recently sold at a loss because I thought their implementation was so bad, but luckily this version of that idea is simpler and cleaner); and
* Urban Arcana (where magic and monsters are coming back into the modern world, a la Shadowrun, but maybe also the Shadow world is still mostly hidden from regular people, which feels like it kind of doesn't know what it wants to be? Like, either be Shadowrun or be Shadow Chasers, don't try to be both)

Of those three, the least interesting to me is Urban Arcana, which feels like an excuse to draw D&D-typical monsters in modern attire, which actually is some of the most fun art here, with, say, an illithid as a preacher.

Again, it smells too much like they're trying to get people from D&D to pick this up or people who pick this up to pick up D&D. Rather than being an interesting game, it feels like corporate synergy.

And of course, Urban Arcana was the first campaign setting released for this, and I also got that in the same auction, so let's see how that is.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's definitely some pretty cool ideas in here. The campaign settings chapter has some fun stuff, with three proposed worlds: psychic super spies, supernatural horror, and modern day D&D. And the monsters chapter has a few neat examples of how to integrate D&D staples into the real world, from goblin street urchins to mind flayer mob bosses. But a lot of it doesn't quite work as well. I was especially disappointed by the magic chapter, where most of the spells are standard D&D fare with no attempt to give them a modern twist. The psychic powers don't seem to be too bad, except that there's barely any of them - they take up around ten pages in total. I know that D20 stuff tends towards being a toolkit, but I still would've liked to see more creativity in terms of converting D&D tropes to the modern action genre. The rules themselves seem relatively good, with stuff like basic classes based on what stat you focus on the most, and advanced classes that are easy to get into and represent wide archetypes like martial artist, scientist, or monster hunter. Plus, the wealth check system is a neat way of getting around having to keep track of every single dollar and line of credit your character owns. Still, D20 Modern doesn't manage to inspire me the way some other modern supernatural games do. I'm left wondering if it would have worked better using D&D's three core book system, giving the authors more room to expand on the setting ideas. I won't rule out ever using it, because it could be fun with some extra work, but I'm still a bit disappointed with the core rules. Perhaps some of the supplements, especially Urban Arcana, will change my mind.

[Mark Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

d20 Modern and Future were the eventual replacements for Alternity, giving a much faster, more streamlined, and simplified game. For a while, all was good, until the problems of leveling and hitpoints in modern and future settings began to grind on us. See, fantasy was fantastic, distant, and somewhat abstract and we could justify the whole hitpoint thing. Our modern and future games tended more towards "realism" which the D&D-inspired d20 model clashed with.

For what they did, they were great; generic systems that could get you into a game and playing quickly and smoothly. But in the end they instead killed modern and future gaming for us since we missed the grittiness and level-free advancement but now had faster and more streamlined rules from d20. Lacking something between the two, we stuck to D&D, Exalted, and Star Wars.

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for general settings but my real love is still 3rd ed D&D.

Non fiction: roleplaying, D20, rule book, setting, campaign, RPG, gaming, Wizards of the Coast

A complete d20 roleplaying game that handles any contemporary fantasy theme.
This product is designed to be the sole core rulebook for all modern roleplaying game settings using the d20 System, which is the basic rules system for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Thematically aligned with the highly popular heroic fantasy and horror genres, this book will build on the strength of the growing d20 System while attracting new players. The product contains everything needed to run an entire campaign, as well as four campaign models and adventure hooks to add to existing campaigns.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't started playing my D20 Modern (Urban Arcana) game yet, but I found this book well laid-out and easy enough to use when rolling up my character. Personally, I'm not as excited by a modern RPG setting as I am by traditional D&D, but I'm pretty sure nostalgia is the culprit here. The group I'll be playing with is very experienced and creative, so I'm fully expecting to love this campaign. As I said in my review of the fifth edition Player's Handbook, what matters are the players, not the rules. So I give this one four stars for now.

['Nathan Burgoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty kick-butt system, by which using the d20 rules set up in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition, you can craft any sort of Modern-era style game.

It comes complete with three "mini-setting" campaigns, "Agents of Psi" (a la X-Files), "Urban Arcana" (a la Charmed), and "Shadow Chasters" (a la Buffy, the Vampire Slayer).

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been more than put off with WoTC recently, but I picked up this one a couple months back and actually like it quite a bit. There is plenty of stuff that I throw out, but for the most part this is a pretty solid title for modern adventuring.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still defend this as my favorite implementation of d20, but I have to admit that its flaws are many.

[Horrorsage · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good evening and welcome fellow Children of Chaos.

Really rough design. But I like what it was going on. I love the idea that classes instead of being a route list of abilities. Dodge at level 2, evasion at level 3, ext. You take a talent from a tree allowing you to customize your character's class.

Sadly the game is also rife with 3.0's issues. Pointlessly long completionist lists of things like guns and cars. Ugly monster stat blocks. And a needlessly complex combat system. Also subdual damage here is awful.

However the 3 supernatural scenarios in the back of the book are a lot of fun. Especially the shadow hunters one.

[Isaac Timm · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a bad book, it's the d20 system that is not the right vehicle for this type of game. We need a more fluid, rules light system to run a nail biting, seat-of-your-pants thriller game.