Scheduling

I am back on campus! This means that I am one step closer to starting up the campaign (obviously). So far I have heard support but One thing that everyone seems to be concerned with is getting it started once more. With that being said, I feel that talking about timing and scheduling is important. So far, everyone I have heard from has been able to set aside saturdays for game days. This I feel is crucial as the afternoon of Saturday generally is the most free for anyone.

One thing I am concerned with is the obligations people may have once classes start up once more. With that being said, it's easy to plan ahead and say "yes, saturdays are taken" but once group meetings and other such things must be scheduled, it is likely that D20 time will be one of the first planned events to be dropped. Not that I highly expect the group to be fluxuating in who attends but rather how the deal with these issues. As a past DM/GM, I have always been uncertain as to how to advance a game when someone is not there.

At times, I feel that it is prudent to not give the player the experience they would have earned, other times, that same EXP is crucial for what I have planned. Ultimately, the group I run for probably won't have to worry about missing out on EXP. I hope to provide enough chances to gain small amounts of EXP here and there to keep the game running smoothly. If anything, I want to avoid having players fall behind. This just makes one person feel singled out in the group and holds it back.

So when a player can't make a few meetings in a row and the game must go on, what's a GM to do? Anyone have any thoughts to share? I am all ears!

D20 modern boards

Well, the offical D20 Modern boards are back up today and in a new format. So far I do not like them but i guess they'll get the job done. Unfortunately by upgrading them, they did away with some of the nice features and layout so it's annoying to deal with. I suggest people check them out: http://community.wizards.com/go/forum/view/75882/136050/d20_Modern

Other than that, not much should be said, we're getting closer to starting the campaign and that means I am onto the point of character creation. One thing I definitely plan on working on is creating a better set of characters/npcs for use in the campaign. As the campaign started, I unfortunately did not have everything set up so some characters had no idea how to answer questions asked by the players. I plan to spend some of my free time working on developing the background for the world a bit more which is no small task. That will most likely start tomorrow as soon as I have free time by myself.

zombies

ZOMBIES ARE GONNA BE SO MUCH FUN!!

that is all. sorry it's not substancial, but if players are reading this, they should be prepared for the zombie horde. Also, if anyone wants to borrow my copy of the Zombie Survival guide, they can. Additionally, for post apocalypse scenarios, I would recommend people watch "The Colony" (discovery channel or HULU). It's a decent show for ideas and just general basic learning but I wouldn't put 100% stock in what they show. Seriously though, I'd take a look players!

Diseases

I said on Sunday that I intended to talk about diseases in game on monday as a discussion topic. Unfortunately, life and tiredness got the better of me and that didn't exactly play out. Instead, I am talking about it 4 days late. Sorry everyone.

Anyways, I am not sure how i feel about diseases in the modern context. In Dungeons and Dragons, they can sometimes be a good thing to increase the excitement of the game but if anything, they feel more like a plot device in D20 modern. I feel that the diseases in this game have far too powerful a chance to ruin characters by decreasing core attributes. In D&D it is possible to use cure disease to prevent this from happening but with D20 modern, unless spells are used, that nolonger is possible. Yes you could carry around antidotes, but that seems to be against the idea of the game.

Another possibility is to get the Players to realize something is up and get the infected person to a doctor. I feel this is the best bet but unfortunately am not entirely sure how to implement it. The other flaw here is that the characters might not realize it fast enough. For instance, if you have a smart hero contract a disease that drains strength, (s)he may not realize it until it's too late to do anything about it.

I think that disease may come up at some point when the game continues, but it will be with trepedation and caution that i go down that path. Another thing that could happen is that you spook the players into being paranoid about disease. Also not a good idea.

As usual, thoughts? comments?

Illness

Sorry about the lack of posts. I must've caught a stomach bug this weekend as my stomach's been feeling awful for the entire weekend and today. I thought it was because I went out with my brother on Friday night, but now I have concluded I'm sick. Maybe tomorrow (if I feel better) I'll write about disease in d20 modern... that could be interesting.

Short break

Heading off to visit my brother for the weekend. You'll get all your D20 modern commentary starting again on SUNDAY! August 17, 2009. Enjoy the weekend folks!

Toxyderms

One of my favorite boss monsters is the Toxyderm found in the Urban Arcana book. for some reason, the idea of some gigantic nuclear sludge being fought by several PCs seems like such a cool fight. It isn't fun that it's so huge and utterly destructive/strong but I hope that by the time I can actually use it as a fair challenge, that will just add to the contest. One of these days, I would love to pit the players against one of these Toxyderms in a post Apocalypse setting. I would probably make them the beings found in the center of a destroyed city or something like that (ground zero from the nuclear blast) or roving across the planet and threatening the PCs after some time. Sounds like a good time to me, hopefully my Players agree that it'd be a good time...

Teaching the basics

One of the largest problems I've seen with playing D20 modern is teaching the basics to people. Almost everyone in the party has had no experience playing D&D let alone D20 modern, and I am the only person who has a detailed understanding of it. With that being said, I'm effectively teaching 5 people the basics of the game. So far I have tried to explain the wealth system but it's not exactly easy as it's an arbitrary system. I'm hoping to counter that by forcing the players to actually purchase things required for the game that they'll become more comfortable with the system.

The other thing I've been nervous about is the use of weapons. I'm very afraid that the players will not utilize cover and as a result will be gunned down in their first firefight. I have come to the realization that the only way to actually cover this is to get over my concerns and just throw them into it. Soon in the campaign, the players will have to defend themselves from a few armed thugs...

Basic information

Ok, I figure it would be helpful to provide some minor information on the campaign so far. I figure I should also name a few things just to get an idea going for myself.

So far the game takes place in a modern world, in a city much like New York. The campaign is centered around the Players learning that there is a rift between Planes. Through this rift, new species and creatures have been coming through and appearing randomly in this world. They are originally coming from a world called Piari (thus, the new comers are Piarians). With this, most species that could be found in the traditional Dungeons and Dragons world can be found here.

So far, the party has started asking questions about 3 individuals that have gone missing from their own organization. This group of 3 (1 dwarf, a human, and a bugbear) was investigating an issue at the local dockyards and vanished mysteriously. From here, the shopkeeper at Swords and Sorcery sent the party to find what happened to them. Once at the Dockyard, the party learned of Vehec, an individual from a competing organization to deal with the arrival of Piarians.

Digital Gaming

One thing I want to do is to transition to fully paper gaming. I feel that having a physical notebook and texts will be much easier to use than an array of digital options. Every DM has his own preferences on this but I feel being able to just scan down the page or flipping over tw would be much simpler than looking over a multipage Word document. I only run into one problem with this idea. I have no desire to hand write anything.

While having paper documents would make everything much simpler, that would require handwriting everything and for time taken to do that, the difficulty with editing, and my complete dislike of handwriting, I simply cannot will myself to write all the documents by hand. This leaves the option of printing documents which would require large amounts of paper/printing to complete. This may not be a large problem for some, but I have a limited budget for printing and therefore find it difficult to do so.

What can people suggest to overcome this?

Dice

I don't know about many other people, but I like to roll my own dice. I have a strange dislike for digital dice rollers and I do not like using other people's dice. Note that I do not have a problem lending my own dice to others, but for some reason, I don't like using other people's. Strange, and I don't believe it's superstition or anything like that, but for some reason I am paranoid about my rolls. To some extent, I believe in the Dice Gods and to some other extent I believe that Dice are random.

Last night however, I read an article on determining if dice are weighted or not. Now, I should've started by saying that this all came about because of my interest at rolling through a dice tower I just constructed of plexiglass. For some reason, my big bag o' dice ( d6's from a game called "Stack") has not rolled under average once when doing large amounts of rolling (roll 10 dice, nothing below a 32 total result). I found this peculiar so I scowered the web trying to find out how to determine if these are weighted or not. Turns out, you can use Epsom Salts in water to see how they float, after trying to combine the two (and failing) I was able to test some of my dice and determine that they are weighted towards certain numbers, but after test rolling them after they dry, they usually fall towards the opposite (and never spot on either of the two poles). Very Peculiar I find, if anything, my little test with epsom salts has shown that regardless of a weight going towards a certain number, the dice do generally come up random...

So perhaps the Dice Gods do exist after all?

Shotgun Rules.

So after looking through the rules on longarms and such, I realized something that I see as flawed. The problem I find is that Shotguns deal so little damage and have shorter range increment than other rifles. After looking through the D20 modern boards, I found someone else had already made an attempt to fix this and I will provide the general gist of it here. I am making some minor modifications (simplifications) on top of it but the general gist of the amended rules comes from board member BackStabbist. What he originally proposed was to provide shotguns with d8(d4) damage. This means, a shotgun shell would contain pellets (d8 of which could hit the target) each dealing d4 damage. This would allow a maximum of 32 damage per shot. He also added a few rules about range increments but I feel this is over kill.

I further modify BackStabbist's rules to have shotguns shoot d6 pellets dealing d4 damage. This would allow a maximum of 24 damage (or the same maximum damage of a Barrett .50 Caliber sniper rifle).

An example of this would be: Jacob shoots at the bugbear opposing him with a shotgun. he rolls 4 for the d6 shots that hit the bugbear signifying that 4 pellets hit him. he then takes 4 d4 and rolls to see how much damage they do. of that, he does 1, 2, 1, and 4 damage. The bugbear takes 8 damage.

If anyone from my campaign is reading this feel free to let me know what you think!

First Post: Preparing for school again

WELL.

I started the campaign that I'm writing about last semester and, with a few less people, will be continuing in about 3 weeks. For now the basics are that it will be a d20 modern campaign set in a world where a rift between the traditional D&D world and the current world has formed with creatures and people coming through. In the campaign, the creatures coming through the rift that are sentient are largely on one side of a war over how to interact in this world.

The first side (the "good" side): This is the side that has hired the players. It is the side that is attempting to help the people adapt and join society in this world.

The second side (the "bad" side): This side is run by those who have come through the rift and do not want to join society. If anything, they want to see it burn. The player characters (PCs) are fighting against them, trying to preserve society as it is.

I have a few ideas where this is gonna go, but I don't want to spoil it until it is time to implement everything... Thats all for now.