d20 Modern
What do you get when you take Dungeons & Dragons and put it in the 20th century? d20 Modern.
Back in the good old days of 3e (not 3.5), some brilliant bastard at Wizards decided that there was no point in having only one game using the d20 System. So, they took the D&D rules, replaced the classes, and added guns. The result was d20 Modern, an easy enough to play modern RPG (if you don't mind rules skewed toward magic and monsters, as opposed to, you know, REALITY).
Like D&D, Wizards also belched forward a number of accessory books for d20 Modern, which unlike the D&D ones, were fewer in number, and actually worth buying. They still handled guns with shitty attempts at realism, but then every RPG does.
If you look carefully, you'll see some of the ideas from d20 Modern survived into D&D 4e, which some would say is a brief glimpse of win amidst the fail, or just more failfuel for the failtrain. Or if you're idealisitic and hopelessly naive, a glimps of win pilling onto epic win.
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Differences from D&D
- Action points, like 'karma' or 'luck' points in other games. You can use them to either boost the number you rolled on d20, or to use a feat that requires an action point (usually to do something totally awesome). Action points spent do not return until you level up.
- You didn't keep track of how much gold/dollars/nuyen you had; instead, Wealth was a skill check, and getting big wads of cash was a bonus to your Wealth rolls. Purchases had a DC for Wealth checks, and buying something with a higher DC than your Wealth score + bonus meant you lost some bonus (because you spent beyond your means).
- No alignment system; instead you had an "allegiance." You could have an allegiance to a religion, a nation (patriotism), an organization, a philosophy... and you'd get a +2 circumstance bonus when dealing with people that have the same allegiance.
- In fact, you could have multiple allegiances, although most people were too dumb to take advantage of that fact.
- There were three noticeable tiers for characters: levels 1-7, levels 8-15, and levels 16-20.
- Every class only has 10 levels; you had to take an "advanced" (read: prestige) class or multiclass if you wanted to go higher.
- You had an Occupation, which was like your level 0 class that gave you some class-skills and maybe a bonus feat.
- There are six basic hero classes, one for each of the six base attributes: Strong, Fast and Tough heroes (Str,Dex,Con), and Smart, Dedicated and Charming heroes (Int, Wis, Cha). There's no penalty for multiclassing. Each attribute also has two advanced classes. Some splats added additional advanced classes, as well as some 3- and 5-level true "prestige" classes.
- Basic classes had "talent trees" which provided abilities like the retarded half-cousins of feats. You got one every other level, and they were class-specific.
- No spells/miracles/psi (called "FX abilities") for base classes. Only prestige classes can have them, and refreshingly little of the rulebook is dedicated to listing and describing spells.
- Had several supplements, including d20 Future, game for playing (you guessed it) in the future, which also had some supplements (d20 Apocalypse, d20 Cyberscape and Future Tech). Why you would need a modern game to play a futuristic one is kind of hard to figure out, but hey, now you have some variety.
See Also
- d20 Modern System Ref Document hypertext open-gaming license book of the whole enchilada.