Lament and d20 Modern 4E (Game Design Corner)

[kent_allard_jr]

One of the things I hate about my life is that My Calling is absolutely useless: When I'm bored my mind wanders to ideas for game design. There's no money in it, it's not sexy (as, say, playing the guitar might be), you can't do it with friends and while I've tried to find professions that need similar skill sets, none use them at entry or intermediate levels. (I liked Grand Political Modeling and wove huge, intricate tapestries of it in grad school, but of course, you're not supposed to write that stuff until you have tenure!) Whatever. I have a nice job, I have little to complain about and I'll stick to this as a hobby.

Anyway... I've thought about what d20 Modern might look like as a 4th edition game. I thought d20 Modern was a bit of a mess, personally, and rather than try to translate the old stuff into 4E, I'd rather start from scratch and see how to adopt the 4E rules to a modern setting. Here are a few ideas:

1. Start out with the Martial classes, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue and Warlord. De-Medievalize the names to (say) Defender, Killer, Brawler and Leader.
   
2. Take away all but essential skills and armor & weapon proficiencies. These elements depend on a non-class-specific Profession.
   
3. Give each class a choice of one of three tactical benefits, each based on one of the three mental attributes, Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma. (Otherwise these attributes wouldn't get enough use.)
   
4. I'm not sure whether to split powers into At-Will, Encounter or Daily, as in D&D, or to have them depend on Healing Surges. In the latter case, characters would get 1-3 free "Surge" abilities every encounter, depending on tier of play.
   
5. Obviously, you'd have to change skills and equipment to fit the modern setting.
   

Unfortunately it'd be near-impossible to make money on a project like this (WotC would charge a fortune for the rights) and I'm not willing to spend a lot of time on something that will never see print, so this will remain a thought-experiment for the time being.