ABOUT:
The D20 Modern World Project is a concept in its infancy, spurred on by a rash of popular D20 fantasy settings that were recently terminated. Darwin's World and Urban Arcana aside, D20 modern suffers from a horrid lack of any well developed setting. What we have is a lot of little subsettings. Swords Edge Publishing has its Spec Ops adventures taking place in a fictional state in central asia in the Albenistan Series. 12 to Midnight has it's setting of Pinebox, TX. LPJ Designs has Haven: City of Violence. Here at ARP, we have developed New Jersey as an expansive pseudo-horror setting, and will soon also publish the Neo-City Project Sourcebook, a floating city at sea. Then we have all the settingless genre books from The Game Mechanics, RPGObjects and Ronin Arts.
Under the D20Modern World Project, Third Party D20 Modern RPG publishers would work together to establish a groundwork of rules used to create an "uberschauplatz", or oversetting, in which our numerous smaller regional settings can be manipulated and orchestrated to interoperate smoothly with or against one another in the hands of gamers everywhere. I envision a code of conduct similar to that of the well respected fantasy anthology series, Thieves' World. The writing for that novel series was conducted under the understanding that each contributing author created one character, or perhaps a handful, around which the author's writing revolved. Other contributing authors could also use those characters, with one significant caveat: Unless the character's creator gave permission, another author could not write anything that would result in permanent harm, disfigurement or death for the borrowed characters. The same could very easily be done using regional settings as a substitute for individual characters.
I believe that in the long run, such an undertaking would not only be a most excellent endeavor, but it would also provide the gaming community a level of superior, integrated support that they have never had before, casting a shadow over even the astounding support offered through OGL, since choices from multiple publishers would suddenly be designed to work together, rather than stand alone.
Of course, if this comes to any sort of fruition is entirely in the hands of publishers. And yeah, I do realize this is most likely nothing more than a pipe dream.
Dana Jorgensen
Owner of Alternate Realities Publications
