Modern Player's Companion [Paperback]

Stan! (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2005

Heroes can face some pretty tough decisions. But nothing compares to the choices a player has to make. Whether at character creation or when leveling up, just figuring out how to get the hero on your character sheet to match the one in your imagination can be the toughest challenge in the game. Modern Player's Companion provides expanded options for creating, developing, and equipping characters, offering even more ways to personalize and customize the heroes of any modern-world d20 game. Modern Player's Companion includes seven new starting occupations, including Bohemian and Tribal; nine class combinations that illustrate how to flesh out a character concept by multiclassing with just the six basic classes; eight new advanced classes, such as the Enforcer and the Survivalist; twenty-five feats including Cross-Training, Poker Face, and Sidestep; new equipment, from duffle bags to laser pointers, along with equipment packages that enable heroes to quickly gear up for action; and a whole lot more. Give your d20 character the edge with the Modern Player's Companion.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing (September 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932442057
• ISBN-13: 978-1932442052
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,948,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Patches the holes in D20 Modern, August 7, 2005

By 

Michael J. Tresca "Talien" (Fairfield, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Modern Player's Companion (Paperback)

There's nothing quite like witnessing the D20 license used by authors who contributed to rulebooks printed by WOTC (Monte Cook comes to mind). You get that impression that the original creators were frustrated by editors who prevented them from implementing their idealized version of the game. Thus, their D20 products are ultimately their ideas, often raw. Sort of a director's cut of "what I would do if *I* ran WOTC.

So here we have Stan! and The Game Mechanics putting together their own book as a supplement to D20 Modern. It's unfair to compare just about anyone else's work to this book, because a lot of these folks worked on the D20 Modern Core Rulebook to begin with. When you've got all that talent, odds are that the book will be good.


LIKED: The Modern Player's Companion does not disappoint. It has fantastic art and layout along with clean, readable text. We get a smattering of occupations and then we hop to the first of many gems in the book: class combos vs. advanced classes. See, the point of D20 Modern's class system is that it's not supposed to be thought of as a class system. Rather, it's a system to regulate power increases. Thus, you don't join a lawyer advanced class, you join a combination of Smart, Charismatic, and Dedicated levels so the lawyer can do what he does best...sue the pants off of people. It's a subtle concept but an important one, perfectly illustrated in this book.

Feats and equipment round out characters. Most of it isn't innovative, but was so common that you didn't notice it was missing from D20 Modern. Which is why anyone who plays D20 Modern needs this book.

It also includes equipment packages, an excellent means of kitting out a character without having to go shopping each time (a godsend for GMs!).


DISLIKED: The advanced classes cover the gamut of archetypes, from the Survivalist to the Profiler, Enforcer to the awkwardly named Opinion Maker. "Politico" would have been better, but it was used as the title of an occupation.

But that's a minor quibble. Really, the only problem with The Modern Player's Companion is that it covers a lot of generic territory. It's not going to overwhelm you with crazy new feats or weird powers. The book is meant to patch the holes in D20 Modern, and in that respect it achieves its goal. But then, what did you expect from the people who wrote the original game?