A favorite element of D&D’s Third Edition (3E) debut in 2000 was how the designers made the revised core rules truly adaptable to other genres (just not superheroes as Champions proves it still CANNOT do well). They immediately proved my point with their licensed take on Star Wars which remains the best adaptation of the franchise since it’s Space Opera (a fancy term for Fantasy with starships and guns). Third parties made attempts to do Spy-Fi (oddly called Archer), Superheroes (warned you, Mutants & Masterminds) and the revered Traveller Hard SciFi got modified to d20 since it had been offered to GURPS four years earlier.
The writers at WOTC continued to tinker with one-shot ideas in the back of Dungeon for several years until they released d20 Modern in 2003 which provided the “ground” rules to run a setting circa 1950 to our current era. The near future is tricky yet it went out on a limb with the likely technologies we hope to see. Supplements followed to cover the past (when D&D historically tends to end, most say the Renaissance while all agree the Enlightenment for sure); d20 Past starts around the Golden Age of Pirates to WWII; two for the future (technically SciFi with recycled material from past WOTC/TSR settings: Star Frontiers and Star•Drive), Cyberpunk, Post-Apocalypse (Gamma World was oddly licensed out) and Dark Matter (WOTC’s take on The X-Files). The best supplement WOTC did in the batch was Urbana Arcana, or how to have a D&D setting in the contemporary world. I’m not a huge fan of Harry Potter but this book’s eye for detail, namely how a spell can be cast via e-mail, was superb; the writers must have a few players similar to the ones who annoy me with their Tobining (a term I’ve coined after my friend Phil Tobin, master of pulling rules out of his ass from books the DM doesn’t own).
Sadly, WOTC never got d20 Modern to any level of decent success. It was a shame too. I felt they solved the “class” problem by doing away with the traditional ones D&D and Star Wars used because those are impractical in a Modern, Sci-Fi or Horror setting by using the six attributes as a “class” for a foundation since all protagonists in film, TV, novels, so on, are really a mix of smarts, guts, toughness and whatever. Then you throw in an Advanced Class should the heroine have a specialization: Daredevil, Celebrity or Martial Artists. Some poo poo’d Modern for continuing promote levels and therefore, guns would be ineffective against anyone with hit points exceeding the maximum amount of damage those can inflict. Again, the designers solved this by applying a new rule with all weapons. If the damage roll equalled or exceeded the target’s Constitution, then the target had to make a Fortitude saving throw of 20 or better. Success, normal damage subtracted from their hit point total (a Movie/TV cheat we see all the time); Failure, the target dropped to zero hit points and begins dying unless medical attention is applied in time. Given the Fantasy crossover parts (you can’t kill an orge or troll with standard beat cop’s revolver), they didn’t add the rule Star Wars has to keep the players from being bogged down by Stormtroopers, those guys’ hit points just equal the Constitution scores since they’re “fodder.” I think Modern GMs are free to use this option and I would, Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh frequently knock down “nobodies” with a swipe or two.
Whoops! Six hundred words of nostalgia and I’m finally getting to my point! Today, the crew known as Evil Genius launched their Kickstarter campaign to bring back Modern in the new 5E form after 20 years. There never was a Fourth, ugh, the worst D&D iteration. Many involved in this update and new set were there in the beginning. Most are new blood helping out. I downloaded the free PDF which is a preview even though I already donated my $50 toward a physical, hardback copy, due to arrive in March 2023. This was one of the easiest Kickstarters I’ve seen too. They needed $15K USD to get it rolling. A modest goal for a physical book since they’re pre-paid versus the gamble of printing 10,000 and hoping the majority are bought by Customers, not the retailers. When I put my money down, they already exceeded the goal three times over. Unlike 2003’s attempt, this game, relabelled Everyday Heroes, scored license deals with eight well-known Action/Sci-Fi flicks to strengthen its appeal to the fair-weathered gamer: Highlander, The Crow, Pacific Rim, Rambo II, Total Recall, Universal Soldier, Escape from New York and Kong: Skull Island. Not a bad collection to choose from. I hope they do well enough to pick up some other well-loved choices in the B group: Robocop, Commando, Predator, Big Trouble in Little China, Face/Off, Black Belt Jones, The Thing and Super Cop.
One thing I’ll never get used to is how the Mills and their thin skin had to be inserted. In the PDF’s credits, there’s a “Sensitivity and Diversity consultant.” Huh? We now need a self-proclaimed guru to remind us (unnecessarily) not to use racial slurs or stereotypes? Like we old Gen X gamers were going to? I guess somebody’s undies got put in a knot when they watched the kids playing D&D on Stranger Things and they got on the hotline with the Limo Liberals campaigning to say the Drow usually being evil is racist. What’s next? It’s also racist to fight cannibalistic monsters for they can’t control their dietary restrictions they were born with.
In the end, I will just follow the saying I learned during my 15 months with GDW, once the players bought the game, they own it, they’re free to do whatever the hell they want to do with it. There is no orthodoxy on to play it right as per Gygax’s litany when he was alive. One day, these thin-skinned Mills will find out the hard way too.
Meanwhile, I cannot wait to see the finished product as it will be another good source on how to solve ongoing flaws in other RPGs, namely in the skills department for Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu and D&D. As for the licensed properties, I was already beat out to play Snake in Escape yet I think I could do a good job as the Duke of New York, the ever impressive and classy Isaac Hay…shut your mouth, I was only talking about Isaac Hayes and I know you can dig it!
