d20 Modern TTRPG reboot licenses Rambo, The Crow, Pacific Rim, and more

It was 2002. d20 Modern helped to breathe life into third edition Dungeons & Dragons, expanding the tabletop role-playing game into a far more contemporary setting — less swords and sorcery, more ninjas and automatic weapons. A new game based on the open-source version of the 5th edition D&D ruleset will go a step further. The help of Modern by d20’s co-creator Jeff Grubb, Everyday HeroesThis will allow players to take on the role of iconic action film heros. Soon you’ll be able to get your ass to Mars as Douglass Quaid, rescue prisoners of war as John Rambo, and stride your Jaeger into battle against towering Kaiju.

Original whereabouts d20 ModernIt only offered generic action archetypes that could be used for all classes. Everyday HeroesFamous licensed characters and settings are being brought in. Polygon is proud to reveal the first set of licensing agreements that Evil Genius Games has negotiated. These include Highlander; John Carpenter’s Escape New York; Roland Emmerich’s Universal Soldier; Rambo: The First Blood, Part 2 of First BloodAnd Rambo 3; Paul Verhoeven’sTotal Recall; Crow; Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim Skull Island, Kong.

While actors like Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone won’t be making an appearance on the pages of the final retail product, the iconic characters they made famous will be there, and Evil Genius isn’t done with its reveals quite yet. However, the sheer breadth and depth of these films shows how much gameplay will be included in the final product. Expect everything, from gritty military dramas and mind-bending science fiction epics. There will also be some post-apocalypse action and robots-versus kaiju action. David Scott is a serial entrepreneur and author. Fans can also expect to receive more information once the crowdfunding campaign has ended. Everyday HeroesLive on May 17

Evil Genius Games

“Everyday Heroes is an action game set in a modern setting,” lead designer Sigfried Trent said. “The theme, the setting, the mood, the feeling of Modern d20You get the 5e rules, simplicity and modularity; combine these things and you’ll have Everyday Heroes. Throw in a dash of a lot of action movie tropes and ideas, then creativity from myself and Chris ‘Goober’ Ramslay, the other lead designer. Next, season with wise, insightful advice from Jeff Grubb and other game industry professionals. That’s Everyday Heroes in a nutshell.”

Evil Genius Games

A core rulebook will accompany the launch lineup, available digitally as well. This will contain six characters classes, 18 subclasses, 50 professions and backgrounds, 100 feats, and include 100 character classes. The new rules will include updated rules for chase scenes and expanded rules regarding firearm use. It also includes all-new armor/cover mechanic rules. It’s the gunplay, Scott says, that really makes the game feel different from D&D.

The mechanical design of a gun is crucial in a gunfight. Everyday HeroesThis system aims to focus players on the cinematic action and not on armor or weapons fetishization. Of course there will be exceptions, such as high-powered rifles capable of breaking through brick walls or heavy weapons that provide suppression fire in order to aid the heroes with their mission. However, players’ ability to move will determine how difficult they can hit.

Everyday Heroes’ cover mechanics mean that the equivalent of a players’ armor class — a number on the character sheet in D&D that rarely changes — will be determined in part by what they’re standing or crouching behind. Characters and their enemies will move about the battlefield. Everyday HeroesThat defensive value is constantly changing, makes maneuvering far more critical. What about body armor? It is much less common.

“You don’t see John McClane running around in body armor all the time,” said Trent. “We wanted a system that was realistic. If you’re running a scenario and you have armor on, you want it to do what it’s supposed to do [in the real world]: stop a bullet, or deflect a sword if it’s a more traditional kind of armor. What we did is we made up a system where, if you’re going good in combat, you don’t really need your armor. It’s a failsafe.”

Evil Genius Games

If a player’s hit points go to zero, they’ll need to make an armor saving throw. The type and quality of the armor they’re wearing and the kind of damage they’re being dealt will influence how hard or easy that save is. It should be possible to add more story and character interaction to every battle.

“When you go to the movies, people spend a lot of time dialoguing while in cover,” Scott said. “That’s where the romance and the story happens. [That way you’re not]Simply standing still and shooting at one another. […] It’s so interesting and so strategic about how you’re hunting for cover, and you’re strategically using every single step in order to maximize that. It’s just a completely different game than D&D.”

You can also customize the stakes. Game masters will be able to make the call if that final blow means a player needs to roll up a new character or if they’re just knocked out.

Evil Genius will add Cinematic Adventures to the core rules. Each will feature an action film or well-known franchise. Six supplements of 100 pages will be made available as either a single item or as part of a bundle at launch. Each Cinematic Adventure will have one half dedicated to home campaign game mechanics. One half of each Cinematic Adventure will be dedicated to an adventure that is inspired by a movie. It places characters in the shoes famous Hollywood stars.

Most gamers will however choose to build their characters from scratch. These are some examples. Everyday HeroesThe original is faithfully reproduced. Modern d20 mechanics. Rules and subclasses will be provided for strong-based Strong Heroes and dexterity based Agile Heroes. Constitution-based Tough Heroes. Intelligence-based Wise Heroes. Charming Heroes. Each type will interact with the world differently through its skills and feats. Grubb says he’s most excited about Smart Heroes, who will have the unique ability to impact the narrative using Genius Points. In fact, that’s where he’s spent most of his personal energy in the latest playtest.

Grid View

“Smart Heroes [would be] a little boring if they’re just very good at the investigation skill,” said co-designer Ramslay, who developed the Genius Point mechanic. “They need something really impactful and cool. What I ended up giving them is something that resembles spell-casting mechanically.”

Essentially, Genius Points allow Smart Heroes to retroactively change the narrative of the story, improvising on the spot how and why their superior intelligence is able to save the day — a system not unlike the critically acclaimed supernatural heist game Blades in Dark, but balanced for the rules of 5th edition D&D.

“One big example would be knowing the layout [of a building],” Ramslay said. “You [the player] aren’t sure how to get in, or you don’t know how many guards there are, or you don’t know what floor the thing you’re looking for is on. Your genius character says, ‘Oh, I know. I looked up the blueprints for this building last night.’ [Or] they’re so smart that they know how buildings are built. They are able to reposition guards. They just know so much about everything, that they could predict those things.”

Evil Genius Games

There has been a lot written about the amazing revival of tabletop roleplaying games. None right now are more successful than D&D, which is an integral part of Wizards of the Coast’s recent $1 billion year. That success is also spawning many rulesets based on the open-source version of D&D. The market for spinoffs of 5th edition is becoming very competitive.

Auroboros, Coils of the Serpent by Chris Metzen — a former executive at Blizzard Entertainment, will launch in the second half of this year. So too is the Skyraiders of Abarax setting from Tracy and Laura Hickman — the minds behind Dragonlance. Wizards is expanding its offerings, with a Dragonlance adventure set for later in the year, and Spelljammer, an iconic space fantasy setting, coming back to Wizards 2023.

Why is this the right time to make your contribution? Modern d20Do you want to leave retirement and take on a second job? For co-creator Jeff Grubb, it’s about tackling the same kind of design challenges that made the creation of that game so much fun the first time around.

“It’s been 20 years since the original d20 Modern has come out and game design has evolved,” Grubb said. “It’s not so much duplication as it is inspiration; basically taking the same things that we face [while making] d20 Modern and saying, ‘OK, how do we handle it with this modern situation? How do we handle today’s world? How do we handle it with today’s mechanics?’ It’s a great opportunity to do for traditional D&D role-playing what Modern d20 did for the D&D of its age.”

Everyday HeroesIt is currently in active development with over 600 players around the globe testing it. A quick-start guide and a “lookbook” showing off all 18 subclasses are available to download now on the official website. To be alerted when the Kickstarter campaign is live, you can sign up.