Review: Ultramodern5 - bringing high tech mayhem to your D&D 5E games

Ultramodern5 is a weird product. It's definitely a toolkit, and is full of useful content for creating a specific kind of modern or near-future SF experience to your D&D 5E-powered campaigns. It's published by Dias Ex Machina Games, who are also behind Amethyst, an RPG which tries to create a D&D-powered variant on Shadowrun-esque fantasy and future tech. Ultramodern5 borrows somewhat from that setting, but provides all of the content in a context-free environment, with two sample scenarios at the end modeling zombie apocalypse and alien invasion settings.

The core mechanical bits for U5 are introduced right off the bat, which is mostly a few new rules (such as for auto and semi-auto weapons fire), some skills and a few feats. The new skills include some basic crafting rules (engineering), which are serviceable and in the "scope" of 5E's mechanical depth. U5 also introduces a detailed lifepath generator that's kinda neat, and is strongly reminiscent of the old lifepath systems characteristic of R. Talsorian Games' RPGs (Cyberpunk 2020 and Mekton).

The core character generation rules are modified in some interesting ways: characters are defaulted to human in U5, and the rules, while allowing for other races or species, assume you're running a humanocentric campaign. As you read through the book, this will become increasingly evident just why this is so: the toolkit is aimed at very specific kinds of games.

Character generation now focuses on three items: a ladder, a class, and an archetype. The two new steps are designed to allow for a more customized class experience. There are seven ladders, which each describe a core conceit of your character, such as "born leader," "survivor," or "warrior."

There are ten classes, and these function more or less just like regular D&D 5E classes, with the caveat that they have left room open for the archetype (and ladder) to add level-acquired abilities. The classes include more task-specific skill sets, such as the Infiltrator, Gunslinger, Medic, Sniper and Techie. They are all fairly combat-oriented.

 The archetypes replace the more class-specific format in standard 5E where you gain an archetype, domain, school or other specialist feature at 3rd level with any of the twenty-five archetypes included in U5. These are designed so that any class can pick from them, but some classes will naturally have a better synergy (and those classes are mentioned in the archetype descriptions).

As a result, you can get some really odd and interesting character designs out of this....but with the caveat that some will be mechanically superior combinations. For example:

Veteran martial artist ring fighter
Born leader medic anti-hero
Savant Grounder Selfless Protector

Those are all viable (though not necessarily optimal) builds.

The next section of the U5 core rules consist of a massive amount of equipment, weapons, vehicles and armor with extensive details on various forms and types of power armor. It was around this point that I got the feeling the game was heavily influenced by the likes of Starship Troopers and Bubblegum Crisis. Notably absent from this section are rules on cyberware and wetware, as well as pretty much anything you could otherwise use to craft starships or more exotic SF vehicles. The equipment rules do include lots of high tech equipment and a bewildering array of high tech future weaponry, though. There's enough meat here to run a high tech near-future SF technopunk campaign, just minus the cyberware part.

As I was looking through the weaponry and armor rules it quickly became apparent that the game will feel incredibly deadly at lower levels (levels 1-5 most especially) but as things escalate and hit points grow, the damage dealing value of PCs and enemies will have an interesting impact on how high level play feels. If you get shot and take 78 points of laser fire damage, but you don't drop because your a level 16 grounder....well, I'll have to say I need to reserve my judgement on this until I try some actual high level play, but my intuition already is telling me that the feasibility of this in regular D&D 5E works best when you are assuming semi-mythic fantasy heroes, but I don't think that suspension of disbelief will work as well as one might think in a high tech future version of the same,

Aside from copious equipment rules, the book has an reasonable bestiary of foes (about 35 stat blocks) aimed squarely at the new-future technopunk thematics it is best designed for, and follows up with a section on adventure design that includes several "set piece" locations that are presented as archetypal encounter locations with enough info for the GM to run with as-is. After that are two scenario/setting locations: one is "Biohazard" which deals with a zombie apocalypse taking place in pleasant Happyland, and provides five additional zombie stat blocks. The second, "Invasion Proxy" deals with an invasion of aliens in Baghdad. Each  scenario could reflect a new world/setting in its pages, but they actually work just fine for a single campaign where weird stuff like this happens all the time and the PCs happen to be the special ops dudes who get to fix things.

There's some implication that you can use U5 to run all sorts of high tech, modern, western historical and other campaigns in this book. My take on it is that U5 works best for what I would call the "Tom Clancy/Michael Criton/toned-down William Gibson" futures, and has loads of gear and thematic classes to support such. For example, I had experimented a few blogs back with the idea of using Tom Clancy's The Division for a Savage Worlds campaign....but honestly, a setting like The Division would be a natural fit for U5. However, I don't think there's enough here in U5 for me to comfortably be able to run this as a cowboy western, for contrast....you could probably do it, sure, but it would require a lot of reskinning (so whether that's an issue for you or not depends on taste) of the existing content and careful vetoing of thematically inappropriate choices.

However, if you want to run a future tech setting with lots of hardware, maybe some power armor, and a general vibe that feels like "Bubblegum Crisis" mashed up with more recent films like Babylon A.D., Elysium or even Judge Dredd (the new one) then you are probably exactly the kind of person that U5 is going to really benefit.

I'm kind of hoping Dias Ex Machina puts out a sequel that includes starship rules, cyberware, wetware and maybe even some rules on creating aliens and biogenically modified humans and near-humans --not just the "people are special in weird ways" rules U5 offers, but actual simulant, android, and transgenic rules. If it adds these rules in, then you've got a great set of rules for handling just about any contemporary or future setting using the 5E mechanics to run hard-hitting techno futures with lots of potential for brutal firefights and investigation.

So who would get the most out of this book? I'd suggest that anyone who wants some near-future high tech SF (but without cyberware or starships) or modern gaming will find this a useful tome. It's the only thing we've got right now, and I think it would serve any number of possible modern or futuristic campaigns until (or if) WotC ever decides to cough up a revision to D20 Modern.

The pitfalls could be unintended synergies in the class/ladder/archetype design that lead to suboptimal characters for games where optimizing is preferred....and the other side of that coin, where certain optimizers dominate the game due to their character design. In my read through the game I saw plenty of ways to make a suboptimal character, although nothing egregious (if you're going for an rp-focued PC this will not bother you), but not many ways to make an optimal PC build. I think the stricter design focus, keeping people to three "moving parts" helped.

If you are a fan of D&D 5E and want a toolkit to add modern and future tech themes to your games, or design a new modern/future setting from whole cloth (that sticks within the scope of what this book offers) then I think you'll find a lot to like in Ultramodern5. If you're looking for a broader book in terms of theme, scope and options for design, then I think you'll want to wait to see if U5 comes out with a sequel, or look to other systems like GURPS which provide the largest pool of resources for what might suit you best.

I could also see this book working well for a "Dragonstar" style campaign. If you don't recall Dragonstar, it was a setting for D&D 3rd by Fantasy Flight which merged fantasy themes with a future space-fantasy empire, complete with starships, laser guns, dragons and more. Think Warhammer 40K circa. 1990ish and you've got a good picture of Dragonstar. You could easily use the setting from those books with the rules from this to do a space-fantasy themed D&D 5th; and maybe borrow the starship design rules from Dragonstar to hold you over until U5 gets a proper sequel with such, too.

For me, I'll definitely be using this soon. Probably for a post-apocalyptic style "future tech society that has collapsed" type setting. I'll provide actual play details on how well it all works together soon.

Monday Musings...Saints Row: The Third as a Premise for a Modern Day RPG (mildly NSFW)

This was the NSFW one!

I realized as I was playing Saints Row: The Third this weekend that the D20 Modern system would work really well for this sort of game. You'd have level progression, hit point mechanics, a rule set just buff enough to handle some weirdness....

I suppose it goes without saying though that Hero System or GURPS could both do the "Saints Row" genre (because it really is its own weird thing) rather well, too....GURPS especially if you do it with every possible cinematic rule and quick-use short cut turn on (i.e. the group skills and such). Not sure how fun such a game would be, though....Saints Row: The Third has the distinct advantage of being so wild because of it's medium (open-world GTA-esque game in which you run around causing trouble for a virtual city) which not only allows for characters with remarkable resilience, but in a break from convention it sort of assumes that the game universe really is a "game" universe, the sort of place where the rules can and are broken Just Because There Are No Limits. Hyper deadly Japanese game show? Sure, why not! Gun which fires mind-controlling cephalopods? You got it. Gun which sprays targets with chum, attracting ferocious burrowing land sharks? Absolutely! There are no bad ideas in Saints Row: The Third, only fully realized dreams and madness. Hell...it's sequel (#4) features an all-out alien invasion of the city....so there ya go.

Anyway...the thing I get from playing this game is that sometimes it pays not too take one's fantasy realms too seriously. Also, internal logic is only as reality based as you care to make it. I am definitely considering how I can apply these lessons in some future game campaign...

Okay, the SR3-inspired idea I have: a world in which the most flamboyant and over-the-top super villains won, and society has been operating for decades (or longer!) based on some principles (such as they are) established by those winning villains long ago. While society madly plunges along into a state of increasing anarchy, it turns out that the super villains won so long ago due to the meddling of clever aliens, who are pulling strings behind the scenes; the aliens have a massive ship in space powered by a reality-warping engine, which is accidentally responsible on occasion for especially strange and bizarre manifestations on Earth, up to and including worm holes to other times and dimensions (pulling in everything from dinosaurs to cowboys and zombies). Meanwhile, the heroes --okay, protagonists-- are out to profiteer from the whole sordid mess....

One game I haven't considered, but which I really should: Mutants & Masterminds 3E. Seems like this sort of crazy would be very easy to execute in MnM!

Shadow Slayers - A Modern Urban Fantasy Campaign Seed

I wrote this years ago...around 2003, I think, when I was running some D20 Modern and was trying to shoehorn the system into a setting that would play to the game's strengths. The actual write-up is fairly system neutral, so I could (and may) one day revise it for use with BRP or GURPS. So continuing with my "lost campaigns" theme for March.....I present Shadow Slayers!

Major Players:

   The Forces of Shadow are dominated by a series of very old, powerful covens. These covens dominate lesser groups of the Shadow and so forth in turn. Each of these covens are tied to their racial heritage, the genetic memories that drive their unifying spirit, and also fuel their ages-old hatred and loathing for both man and each other.

   All beings of Shadow have the following traits in common:

   Veil of the Shadow: all such entities, tied inextricably to the Shadow planes, are veiled within its confines, and when destroyed, are also reclaimed by this nether-essence when destroyed. The lore of the supernatural suggests that they believe the Shadow is the lingering tether they hold to their native dimensional realm, a plane close to Earth, from which all beings of Shadow originate. Some (the vampires, ghouls, and such) believe they were exiled from this dimension, which they call Gehenna and other names. Others, such as the Elohim, believe they chose to leave it and do not wish to return. They see Earth as paradise, the Elysian Fields of which they long ago sought out and found.

   The ancient history of the Shadow has pervaded much occult lore, if one can seek it out. All beings of Shadow believe they descend from an ancient legacy. The Elohim contend that their oldest ancestors were the very Annunaki proto-gods of old Mesopatamia. The vampires ascribe so many supernatural myths of predation to the legacy of their ancestors.

   All beings of Shadow, veiled in shadow, cannot be discerned for what they really are by man. It is believed that the essence of Shadow protects its own, obscuring its kin in a clever mental illusion. As such, the legacy of the Shadow Slayers is frightening to the beings of Shadow, for this small percentage of humans are gifted with the powers to penetrate the illusion.

   The veil of shadow waxes and wanes with the eons, and astrological charts have been known to exist which seem to divine when these periods of strong and weak shadow are forthcoming. During periods of weak shadow, the veil becomes easier for mortals to penetrate, and such periods are a time when the supernatural are more readily exposed, hunted, and destroyed. The last great period of waning shadow was during the middle ages, and then later the renaissance. Waxing periods of Shadow mean that the veil has become noticeably stronger, and the veil is more difficult to penetrate, such that open acts of destruction can go unnoticed by mortals, who become like easy cattle. Such periods always seem to mark a rise in the number of Shadow Slayers, as well. The present day is one such period of Waxing Shadow.

   The beings of Shadow operate under an ancient pact, called the Concordance in the present, which sets aside specific rules of conduct among their own kind. Specifically, it requires that no being of Shadow be allowed to fray or damage the veil under which they have protection. A being that damages the veil, and exposes it or others like it to the mortals in an egregious manner, is punished for his transgressions. However, it is very difficult to do this; such an being would have to go public, and openly display his or her supernatural talents to mortals. Even then, the veil will work to deceive, and mortals will take him to be huckster or stage magician in all likelihood, but his brethren will know, and seek him out for destruction.

   The beings of Shadow have held a secret war for countless generations. At times one faction may ally with another, but they all struggle to maintain their sense of superiority in the world. The Lycanthropes are age-old enemies of the vampires, for example, but loose allies with the Elohim. The Elohim are enemies of the vampires, see the lycanthropes as occasionally useful, and are violently opposed to the Old Spirits (whom they fought against in the ancient days to be recognized as gods by man, before pacts of secrecy drove all beings of Shadow in to darkness). The Old Spirits, of course, are enemies of all, even themselves, and occasionally have been allies of all factions at one time or another.

   Most beings of Shadow strongly believe in the notions of a defined war of Order and Chaos. They subscribe to the notion that agents of their factions are split down these principles, and that it stems from a much older legacy of worship to the True Gods, the gods which they all know, in fact, exist and are the true seeds of creation. These gods are ancient and largely unknown by mortals. The most esoteric and learned of occult writings reference these deities, which are sometimes confused by old beings of Shadow who have long been misidentified as deities by men of old or occult agents in the modern day (Baal, for example, or the Elohim Sol, who are both currently active).

Awesome Source

Current Factions:

   The Vampires: a series of covens defined by their type, and led by dark queens and kings. They answer to no one save the True Lord of Night. The vampires worship a selection of ancient deities believed to be their creators, including Khoth, Nerul, and Yitzam. They believe that their homelands of the Shadow were the true Gehenna, Pandemonium, and Hades.

   In the present day, a movement among the vampires suggest that their destiny is to bring the Shadow to the mortal realm of Earth, permanently. Certain architects, such as the Nosferatu vampire lord Edward Gamble and his minions, are attempting to create occult spells which will drag large volumes of the Shadow Plane in to the mortal realm, with the intent of transforming an entire mortal city in to a new Necropolis. They believe this will herald the end times for man, and will merge the two planes.

   Edward Gamble is also in control of a militant sect of vampires known as The Necropolis Sect. They are led by Malcom Blaylock and others, and are truly grotesque vampires who have lived long but suffered much under the hands of mortals, and who now work as assassins of known Shadow Slayers. They are thaumaturges, summoning demons from the Shadow to destroy the Shadow Slayers.

   The vampires use many pawns, including risen dead, ghouls, enthralled mortals, summoned demons, and an occasional bound spirit. They are also well-entrenched within the communities of man, and in any given city the lord of that domain will have a firm grip in the civic government, police force, or media (and sometimes all three).

   The vampires are opposed by several enemies. The Elohim have held an ancient grudge, and will always seek to destroy the vampire power structure. Some vampires blame the elohim for Shadow Slayer manifestations, but no truth to the matter has ever been established on this. The vampires have also attracted the attention of more conventional mortal interests; Department 7 of the FBI is a well-funded, very secretive unit which operates against the vampire threat on most occasions (though it will just as easily target other factions). Finally, a mortal cult dedicated to Khoth, a subsect of the Rosicrucians who have identified Khoth with Set, seek to attain occult mastery over the vampires. The Cultists of Khoth, led be Araham Al’hadim in Egypt and Clarence Monahan in the US, are well aware of the fire they play with, but have discerned much of the beings of Shadow, and believe that they are an aberration meant to be controlled by men, who are in turn empowered by the mystical teachings of Khoth.

   The Elohim are a much smaller but still very powerful faction, and rival the vampires in tenacity and interest in controlling mortal affairs. Elohim are secreted away at the tops of tall buildings, nestled in corporate offices, or operating secluded communities of enlightened mortals who worship them like gods. They seem to yearn for such worship, and though they contend that they were not exiled from the Shadow Plane thousands of years ago, but instead left of their own choice, it seems clear that some ancient legacy haunts them.

    The Elohim use minions, mostly enlightened mortals, and some summoned demons and other spirits. They never affiliate with the undead, and are violently opposed to the vampires (yet they do not seek to destroy the vampires, merely contain them, explaining that the balance of chaos must always be appeased). Only when the vampires get too strong to the Elohim seek to destroy them, culling their numbers. Some elohim have been known to approach or manipulate Shadow Slayers, but all contend that they have no part in the creation of such enlightened mortals.

   Lesser factions of power include Lycanthropes, who are often loosely organized clans throughout the backwoods of the world, and rarely gentrified. The loose honor system keeps them united against common foes, but they dislike politics, and seek instead to keep to their own diabolic desires and aims. They do not like nature, even though they often hide within it; the embrace of their beastiality drives them to psychotic passions and madness. Too many lycanthropes were once human, and the taint of the beast, said to have been granted to them eons ago by dark gods, along with the racial memories which flood the minds of its victims, creates seriously unstable personalities.

   The Old Spirits are a diverse faction, entities which claim to have been inherent to the land, though a few occult scholars suggest that this is not possible. Likewise, such beings are very well versed in hiding in shadow, and their connection to the Shadow Plane is evident. More likely, they represent a much older migration of supernatural beings, going back to the dawn of mankind or even before. The Old Spirits are highly diverse, having long ago changed and manipulated their forms to reflect the demons and spirits of the day, and are often identified as manifestations of old mythic monsters and gods. Medusa, the Minotaur, Pazzuzzu, and the Black Forest Ogre are all known old spirits, and very powerful. Though not united, each Old Spirit is individually and with its followers an army in its own right.

    Other Shadow beings, which have no true faction, but are often part of the fray as either participants or fodder include the Fae, the ghosts and spirits of the dead, and the monstrous manifestations (horribly mutated beings that defy classification). The demons, summoned and manipulated so often, are also suspected by some to be a hidden faction, and perhaps hold the trump card over all other factions. They may either be summoned from the Shadow Plane, or comprised of the literal essence of Shadow, and are perhaps the dark guardians of its gates, placed there to forever bar the beings of Shadow from re-entry.