A NEW D20 Modern MSRD...

[geekworx]

So I have been working on Fantasy Grounds II for a couple of weeks now getting my Twilight Wars campaign ready. I initially bought the Modern MSRD and was slightly disappointed that it didn't support some of the new 4E and 3.5E features (i.e. combat tracking, etc).

I then thought, well why not use the D20 JPG ruleset and include the MSRD source books in it ... this has worked ... kind of. While adding a new character this morning I notice a few glaring issues and some things I am not able to get past.

So I am now at a crossroads:
Continue as is and fudge it (alot)
Modify a 4E ruleset and fudge it a little
Modify a 3.5E ruleset and fudge it a little more
Create a Brand New MSRD ruleset that supports some of the nifty automation


I am leaning towards the last one - this might mean my campaign is a little delayed, but the campaign will allow me to playtest the rules ... :)

So I would like to hear your thoughts on this and whether I am completely "bonkers".

The ruleset will include the following:
Themed Skins for D20 Modern, Urban Arcana, Future Tech, and any others
Themed Tokens and Portraits (where possible)
Ruleset automation where possible
Extra sourcebooks as addon modules (i.e. Urban Arcana, Futuretech, etc.)


Obviously this is dependent on the licenses for the above sourcebooks and lagalities thereof.

So any suggestions, hints, tips, or words of encouragement are most welcome.

[Phystus]

You might want to check with Doug Davidson, the last I had heard he was looking for someone to update the D20 Modern ruleset. I think his general plan was to do it as an extension to the 3.5 ruleset, which would give you quite a bit of 'baked-in' automation.

At the time he announced this (about a year ago) there was some mention of payment for the person taking up the job. My experience with selling stuff through Smiteworks (I produced the Summoned Monsters module) is that they're very prompt and fair with their payments, but it's a very small market, so you're not going to get rich. Still, if it's work you're going to do anyway you might as well get a little money. Plus, it can be a nice ego boost to see your work for sale! :)

~P

[ddavison]

Phystus is correct. You can contact me at ddavison at smiteworks dot com if you are interested in doing anything officially. Even if you did it just for yourself, I'd recommend the extension route. The new 3.5E ruleset already has sections that handle differently depending on whether or not the campaign preference is set to 3.5E or PFRPG. You could use the same approach and select "D20 Modern." Moon_wizard could probably work with you to get it somewhat integrated in from the beginning and to make it easier to have plug-in extensions that would more easily support changes for MSRD, Iron Heroes and Arcana Evolved.

A lot of the work is already done thanks to the library module being built. The XML might need to be transformed a bit first, but it should be possible to create a set of XSL documents and push it through there to get the slightly updated format.

Once we got some proof of concepts work complete, I could reach out officially to the publishers of the other products you listed and see if they would be willing to license those out as well.

All future commissions on the product (for as long as it is maintained) would go to you. We try to make everything backward compatible as much as possible, so maintenance shouldn't be too bad.

[geekworx]

@Phystus: Thanks for the info.

@ddavison: Email sent to address as requested, looking forward to moving ahead with this.

[geekworx]

I thought I would share some of my progress so far.

Started initial negotiations with Smiteworks to make this an official ruleset, I will have more information come the middle to end of next week.
Regardless of whether this will become an official ruleset or not I have forged ahead with converting the d20 MSRD into library modules. This is about 20% complete and I have finished all the scripts to get the base stuff in place.
I have also worked on all new custom graphics for the interface and have attached some screenshots to this post for your viewing pleasure.
The new d20 MSRD is built of the 3.5E base and I have already put all the d20 Core skills in place of the normal 3.5E ones. I am awaiting an answer from JPG, but hopefully I will be able to use his Game Campaign Selection Scripts to allow a person to choose d20 Modern; d20 Modern - Urban Arcana; or d20 Modern - Future; when first starting up a new campaign off the ruleset. This will enable certain features for the various rulesets and hopefully make it easier for people to use the ruleset.
I will be including a full series of tokens and portraits in the ruleset ... time permitting ... but at the bare minimum it will include a full Alphanumeric Token set in Friend, Foe, and Neutral colours.


Some solid progress has been made this weekend and as I make more I will continue to update this thread.

Please note that none of this is official yet and there is no guarantee that this will become an official ruleset. The bottom line is that I need this ruleset for my Twilight Wars campaign and so I will be going ahead and building it ... only the future will tell how the ruleset will be shared with you all.

Happy Gaming.
Q

[Blahness98]

I thought I would share some of my progress so far.
Regardless of whether this will become an official ruleset or not I have forged ahead with converting the d20 MSRD into library modules. This is about 20% complete and I have finished all the scripts to get the base stuff in place.


I thought the d20 MSRD stuff was already inside modules? I know that I already have a few of them on my system from when I bought them back in the day. Maybe they aren't the complete document, but they must be pretty damn close. But the libraries themselves aren't the most put together things out there..

[Doswelk]

I thought the d20 MSRD stuff was already inside modules? I know that I already have a few of them on my system from when I bought them back in the day. Maybe they aren't the complete document, but they must be pretty damn close. But the libraries themselves aren't the most put together things out there..
As the creator of the original d20 msrd rule set I can confirm that the srd documents are certainly in the rule set.

[geekworx]

@Blahness98 and @Doswelk: Yes you are both correct. I am doing this more for myself and if I do it by myself it means I can distribute it to other people without ruffling any feathers. I also wanted to create new icons and re-structure some of the pages ... so it has been easier for me to start from scratch.

My pipeline is now complete and I am making good solid progress on the whole conversion.

I also wanted to change the graphics, and bring the ruleset in line with 3.5E. I also wanted to include some tokens in the ruleset (as a module) and provide it as part of the release.

Finally I am using the Campaign System Selection scripts from JPG to allow the user of the ruleset to select what version of D20 they want to run.

By doing this all from scratch (or gaining permission where necessary) I have been not only able to learn how the whole process works (and streamline my pipeline accordingly) but I am able to claim that 100% (where applicable) is my own work.

[Areaus]

I was just about to ask if there was an updated D20 modern ruleset being built. Keep the thread updated when you can, you have some people interested for sure.

Thanks

[Areaus]

I was really hoping to see more activity on this project. Looking forward to see a newer D20 modern ruleset in place. The current one is junk. Shame to see this idea become stagnant.

[Doswelk]

Junk!

I spent hours on that rule set you know :(

To be fair it is out of date compared to 3.5e but blame Moon Wizard for being so productive :p
I was interested to see what this new version would have looked like d20 modern was my first ruleset on both FG1 and FG2

[Areaus]

My apologies, I did not intend to insult. I was simply hoping for an equivalent interface and ruleset in comparison to 3.5/PF which I currently use for my game. At this point, I'm trying to figure out how to import the MSRD modules into that one so I can just use 3.5 for everything, even though its not quite the same, it would be close enough.

Again, my apologies.

[Blahness98]

You can try doing an extension for 3.5e that changes it to match everything in d20. Might be a little easier than building everything new..

[Moon Wizard]

Module files are just ZIP files with a different extension. You can rename, unzip them, and pull out the files. You may be able to get away with just changing the definition.xml file to point to 3.5E instead of MSRD, and rezipping the files. It depends on what window classes that MSRD assumes. I think most of the 3.5E changes were backward compatible, but it's been several years since they were forked.

Regards,
JPG

[smokedgoalie]

So Geekworx, what's the status of the new ruleset? I would like to have a copy.

[nad3ooo]

So Geekworx, what's the status of the new ruleset? I would like to have a copy.

+1

anyone got any updates on this ruleset? i would be willing to make a donation