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

Back in 2002, d20 Modern helped bring Dungeons & Dragons Edition 3 to life, expanding the tabletop roleplaying 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 rulebook takes it one step further. With the help of d20 Modernco-creator of , Jeff Grubb, everyday heroes lets players step into the footsteps of classic action movie heroes. You’ll soon be able to fly to Mars as Douglass Quaid, rescue prisoners of war as John Rambo and battle the mighty Kaiju with your Jaeger.

Where the original d20 Modern only offered generic action archetypes for its classes, everyday heroes brings famous licensed characters and locations. Polygon can exclusively unveil the first series of hard-fought licensing partnerships negotiated between developer and publisher Evil Genius games. they include highlanders; John Carpenters Escape from New York; Roland Emmerichs Universal soldier; Rambo: First blood, First blood part 2and Rambo’s 3rd; Paul Verhoevens Total recall; The crow; Guillermo del Toros Pacific Rim; and Kong: Skull Island.

While actors like Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone won’t appear on the pages of the final retail product, the iconic characters who made them famous will be there, and Evil Genius isn’t done with its reveals yet. But the breadth of films involved illustrates the breadth of gameplay that will be available in the final product. Fans should expect everything from gritty military dramas to mind-boggling sci-fi epics, with some post-apocalypse adventure and robot-versus-kaiju action thrown in for good measure. Owner, serial entrepreneurand author David Scott says fans can expect even more announcements once a crowdfund ing campaign for everyday heroes

goes live on May 17th.

An elaborate chase with dollar bills fluttering out of a yellow sports car. Motorcycles, helicopters and the police give chase. — Early art for the *everyday heroes* Game master’s screen.

“everyday heroes is an action game in a modern setting”, Lead Designer Siegfried Trent called. “The theme, the setting, the mood, the sense of d20 Modern; the rules, simplicity and modularity of 5e; put these things together and you get everyday heroes. Throw in a sprinkling of lots of action film tropes and ideas, then creativity from me and Chris “Goober” Ramslay, the other main designer. Then spice it up with some smart, sage advice from our good friend Jeff Grubb and others in the gaming industry. That is everyday heroes in a nutshell.”

The launch roster will feature a core rulebook (which will be available both physically and digitally) with six character classes and 18 subclasses, 50 new professions and backgrounds, and 100 Feats of Strength. It will also feature revised chase rules, expanded rules for using firearms, and brand new rules for armor and cover mechanics. It’s the gunplay, says Scott, that really makes the game different from D&D.

In a gunfight, the mechanical design of everyday heroes aims to keep players focused on cinematic action, not necessarily fetishizing weapons and armor. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, with high-powered rifles that penetrate brick walls and heavy weapons that can deliver suppressive fire to help heroes reach their objective. But movement will play a big role in how hard players are to hit.

everyday heroes‘Cover mechanics mean that the equivalent of a player’s armor class – a number on the character sheet in D&D that rarely changes – is determined in part by what they’re standing or crouching against. As characters and enemies move across the battlefield everyday heroes, this defensive stat will be in constant flux, making maneuvers much more important. body armor? Much less.

“You don’t see John McClane walking around in body armor all the time,” Trent said. “We wanted a realistic system. When 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 type of armor. What we did is a system where you don’t really need your armor if you’re good in combat. It’s a failover.”

A young woman with a painted face and black clothing holds a crow on her outstretched hand.

When a player’s hit points are reduced to zero, he must make an armor save. The type and quality of armor they wear and the type of damage dealt to them affect how hard or easy that saving throw is. That should also help bring more narrative and character interaction to each fight.

“When you go to a movie, people spend a lot of time talking under cover,” Scott said. “That’s where the romance and the history happens. [That way you’re not] just stand there and shoot at each other. […] It’s so interesting and so strategic as you seek cover and you use every single move strategically to maximize that. It’s just a completely different game than D&D.”

The inserts are also highly customizable. Gamemasters will be able to make the call if that final blow means a player needs to roll up a new character or if they just got knocked out.

The core rulebook is complemented by what Evil Genius calls cinematic adventures, and each will focus on an action film or well-known franchise. At launch, six 100-page supplements will be available individually or as a bundle. One half of each Cinematic Adventure is devoted to game mechanics designed for use in home campaigns. The other half is a movie-inspired adventure that puts characters in the shoes of well-known Hollywood heroes.

However, most players will choose to create their own characters from scratch. here everyday heroes comes very close to the original d20 Modern Mechanics. The core game will provide rules and subclasses for Strength-based Strong Heroes, Dexterity-based Agile Heroes, Constitution-based Tough Heroes, Intelligence-based Wise Heroes, and Charisma-based Charming Heroes. Each type will have their own way of interacting with the world through skills and exploits. Grubb says he’s most looking forward to Smart Heroes, who will have the unique ability to influence the narrative with Genius Points. In fact, that’s where he expended most of his personal energy in the last playtest.

“Intelligent Heroes [would be] a bit boring if they’re just very good at investigative ability,” said co-designer Ramslay, who created the Genius Point mechanic. “You need something really impressive and cool. What I ended up giving them is something mechanically similar to magic.”

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 befitting the critically acclaimed supernatural heist game is not dissimilar ringing in the darkbut balanced for the 5th edition rules of D&D.

“A great example would be knowing the layout [of a building]’ Ramsley said. “You [the player] Not sure how to get in, or don’t know how many guards are there, or don’t know what floor what you’re looking for is on. Her genius character says, “Oh, I know. I looked up the blueprints for this building last night.” [Or] They are so smart that they know how buildings are built. You know how people reposition their guards. They just know so much about everything that they could predict these things.”

A dashing woman with blue hair and mismatched clothes lets loose with an automatic pistol.

Much has been written here at Polygon and elsewhere about the incredible renaissance of tabletop RPGs. None is currently more successful than D&D, which is an integral part of Wizards of the Coast’s final $1 billion year. This success also spawns many rulesets based on the open source version of D&D. Suddenly the 5th edition spin-off marketplace looks very crowded.

Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent, by a team led by former Blizzard Entertainment CEO Chris Metzen, is slated for release later this year. The same goes for the Skyraiders of Abarax setting by Tracy and Laura Hickman – the minds behind Dragonlance. Meanwhile, Wizards is also branching out itself, launching a new Dragonlance adventure later this year and bringing back the fan-favorite space fantasy setting called Spelljammer in 2023.

With so much action in Season 5, now is the best time d20 Modern Out of retirement for another job? For co-creator Jeff Grubb, it’s about tackling the same design challenges that made making this game so fun the first time around.

“Twenty years have passed since the original d20 Modern came out and the game design has evolved,” Grubb said. “It’s not so much duplication as inspiration; basically the same things we face [while making] d20 Modern and say, “OK, how do we deal with this modern situation? How do we deal with today’s world? How do we deal with that with today’s mechanics?’ It’s a great opportunity to cater to traditional D&D RPGs d20 Modern did for the D&D of its time.”

everyday heroes is still in active development, with more than 600 playtesters around the world putting it through its paces. A Quick Start Guide and a “look book” with all 18 subclasses are now available for download on the official website. You can also Sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter campaign goes live.