This is something I've been looking for for a bit now: a good system/conversion system for a "contemporary fantasy setting". Think something along the lines of Hellboy, Harry Potter, Underworld, Hellsing, Buffy the Vampire slayer etc. That sort of "magic and other species exist in the shadows of the real world" sort of a setting. I've had a setting cooking based upon this idea for ages, but can't really make 5e as it stands work with it.
I've now bought/read a couple 5e-derived rule sets, but by in large, they cleave too far in either direction: high-fantasy with classical races and lots of magic, or modern/near-future with ONLY humans and precisely zero magic. D&D 5e by itself doesn't do contemporary very well I feel: since it's missing some skills that would be logically present and it's very wedded to its existing, very much fantasy-coded classes and an inherently high-magic setting.
The obvious answer is "just use a different system": World of Darkness or Shadowrun being obvious contenders. But as any DM will tell you: trying to get a group to try/learn a new system can be like pulling teeth. So; was wondering if anyone knew of some good conversions to look into.
It’s not modern as much as steampunk, but Iron Kingdoms has been adapted to 5e. I played it back in the late 3e-early 4e days, so I don’t know about how this conversion works. But it might be easier to re-skin into a more modern style.
I would highly recommend checking out the system 'Liminal' it's built with a closed world urban fantasy vibe to it and does it very, very well. It is a completely different system from 5e, but that's honestly a very good thing. 5e and 5.5e are good at a few things but can be difficult to wrangle into shape.
My honest advice though is to take what you feel useful from something like Liminal or Shadowrun and implement it into your 5e games.
I'd also advise taking your time to work out what should or shouldn't work in your world. For example, in my current campaign I have disallowed any spells having to do with planar travel, summoning of fiends, or suchlike. I've done this because a particular arc of the adventure revolves around a long ritual where an NPC will be summoning a fiend. It makes no sense to have it be a long involved ritual if summoning a fiend is a trivial task for the player characters.
Too infrequently are we as GMs being given the advise to alter the choice available to players in order to serve the world building. It is a legitimate choice. If there are no 'real' gods in your game world, then it's not unfair to disallow Clerics and/or Paladins. That divine source of magic logically wouldn't exist in your world. The same is true here of character races and background. If your starting location for an adventure is in the middle of a desert you're simply not going to find a Sailor there. It is okay then to disallow that background at character creation. Similarly, if you're starting the adventure in a small isolationist town of tabaxis, then there's no reason to allow any other race. The term 'player choice' is thrown around an awful lot but frankly, allowing unlimited player choice ironically often limits the choices of the GM and the world building. There's an adventure in Pathfinder where everyone plays as Leshys (plant creatures), there are other adventures out there where you play as goblins. The reason we don't see this as much in D&D is, I believe, that DMs too often get told not to infringe on player choice.
My very first 5e adventure that was self-designed was one where the only options available were Fighters or Warlocks. No multiclassing, and no feats. The only Races allowed were Human, Halfling, or Dwarf. The players to their credit bought into the in world rationale behind this and the campaign lasted the full level 1-20. Every few sessions I'd offer the chance for feedback and I heard more often in that campaign than any since was that they loved having to think about D&D differently. They loved having to strategise differently. Of course, the players were on board and interested in what I was offering.
Personally, I still think that running different and existing systems will always work better than hammering 5e into a shape you want, but if you really can't encourage your players to branch out then there's nothing wrong with going through the rulebooks and deciding what to keep and what to eliminate. Just make sure that you explain to your players what isn't going to be allowed before they embark on the adventure.
Final thought - ignore 5.5e entirely if you're going to be altering the ruleset - I've been looking at them for the last six months now with an eye to how I would possibly run a low-magic world in that system and I genuinely don't think it can be done well.
Thanks for all the thoughts: and I have to say I agree completely that it's become somewhat unfashionable (much to the worse not the better) to embrace limitations as a part of both world-building and DM-ing generally. In my mind: a coherent fictional world IS just as much, if not more about what "doesn't exist" as what "does" as it were. If I'm being brutally honest: it's why I immediately discarded games like "Kids on Bikes"; because it's all about "how we're all equally telling a story together!": NO: I'm the DM; I'm the one desperatley trying to hold this world hastily assembled from grid paper and marker together week to week: I NEED the authority to say "no" once in a while!
And agreed: that is another thing I've been struggling with vis-a-vis 5e: running anys ort of "low magic" setting is almost impossible rules as written. You'd have to ban entire classes and levels of spells in order for that to work at all... Which honestly still might not stop me from trying that given your story there...
I think you discovered the conceit of World of Darkness (now Chronicles of Darkness) and its many subsystems! Notable entries include Vampire: The Masquerade/Requiem; Mage: the Ascension/Awakening; and Werewolf: the Apocalypse/Forsaken (Yes, that does make the Acronym WTF...). Here's a link. The system features pools of d10s with exploding 10s. It's an interesting challenge to GM, because the probability results in minimal success in most cases, so either you're employing situational modifiers when rolls should fail or you're giving part of the desired result but not all until a good roll comes up... It's a lot of fun to play a character, because the system emphasizes motivations through the alignment analogue. You can stake out a space for a lot of good drama. You may find combat to be less rigorously defined than 5e. Obviously your interest will depend on what you're looking to get out of the system...
D&D 5e by itself doesn't do contemporary very well I feel: since it's missing some skills that would be logically present and it's very wedded to its existing, very much fantasy-coded classes and an inherently high-magic setting.
There's several sets of minimal 5e rules that limit character level to tier 1/tier 2 which gives a much lower magic feel. You can pretty easily swap around skills without changing the basic math/balance of 5e.
Alternatively, there's Monster of the Week or Cult of Cuthulu which much more easily adapts to modern world setting.
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This is something I've been looking for for a bit now: a good system/conversion system for a "contemporary fantasy setting". Think something along the lines of Hellboy, Harry Potter, Underworld, Hellsing, Buffy the Vampire slayer etc. That sort of "magic and other species exist in the shadows of the real world" sort of a setting. I've had a setting cooking based upon this idea for ages, but can't really make 5e as it stands work with it.
I've now bought/read a couple 5e-derived rule sets, but by in large, they cleave too far in either direction: high-fantasy with classical races and lots of magic, or modern/near-future with ONLY humans and precisely zero magic. D&D 5e by itself doesn't do contemporary very well I feel: since it's missing some skills that would be logically present and it's very wedded to its existing, very much fantasy-coded classes and an inherently high-magic setting.
The obvious answer is "just use a different system": World of Darkness or Shadowrun being obvious contenders. But as any DM will tell you: trying to get a group to try/learn a new system can be like pulling teeth. So; was wondering if anyone knew of some good conversions to look into.
It’s not modern as much as steampunk, but Iron Kingdoms has been adapted to 5e. I played it back in the late 3e-early 4e days, so I don’t know about how this conversion works. But it might be easier to re-skin into a more modern style.
I would highly recommend checking out the system 'Liminal' it's built with a closed world urban fantasy vibe to it and does it very, very well. It is a completely different system from 5e, but that's honestly a very good thing. 5e and 5.5e are good at a few things but can be difficult to wrangle into shape.
My honest advice though is to take what you feel useful from something like Liminal or Shadowrun and implement it into your 5e games.
I'd also advise taking your time to work out what should or shouldn't work in your world. For example, in my current campaign I have disallowed any spells having to do with planar travel, summoning of fiends, or suchlike. I've done this because a particular arc of the adventure revolves around a long ritual where an NPC will be summoning a fiend. It makes no sense to have it be a long involved ritual if summoning a fiend is a trivial task for the player characters.
Too infrequently are we as GMs being given the advise to alter the choice available to players in order to serve the world building. It is a legitimate choice. If there are no 'real' gods in your game world, then it's not unfair to disallow Clerics and/or Paladins. That divine source of magic logically wouldn't exist in your world. The same is true here of character races and background. If your starting location for an adventure is in the middle of a desert you're simply not going to find a Sailor there. It is okay then to disallow that background at character creation. Similarly, if you're starting the adventure in a small isolationist town of tabaxis, then there's no reason to allow any other race. The term 'player choice' is thrown around an awful lot but frankly, allowing unlimited player choice ironically often limits the choices of the GM and the world building. There's an adventure in Pathfinder where everyone plays as Leshys (plant creatures), there are other adventures out there where you play as goblins. The reason we don't see this as much in D&D is, I believe, that DMs too often get told not to infringe on player choice.
My very first 5e adventure that was self-designed was one where the only options available were Fighters or Warlocks. No multiclassing, and no feats. The only Races allowed were Human, Halfling, or Dwarf. The players to their credit bought into the in world rationale behind this and the campaign lasted the full level 1-20. Every few sessions I'd offer the chance for feedback and I heard more often in that campaign than any since was that they loved having to think about D&D differently. They loved having to strategise differently. Of course, the players were on board and interested in what I was offering.
Personally, I still think that running different and existing systems will always work better than hammering 5e into a shape you want, but if you really can't encourage your players to branch out then there's nothing wrong with going through the rulebooks and deciding what to keep and what to eliminate. Just make sure that you explain to your players what isn't going to be allowed before they embark on the adventure.
Final thought - ignore 5.5e entirely if you're going to be altering the ruleset - I've been looking at them for the last six months now with an eye to how I would possibly run a low-magic world in that system and I genuinely don't think it can be done well.
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Re: martintheactor
Thanks for all the thoughts: and I have to say I agree completely that it's become somewhat unfashionable (much to the worse not the better) to embrace limitations as a part of both world-building and DM-ing generally. In my mind: a coherent fictional world IS just as much, if not more about what "doesn't exist" as what "does" as it were. If I'm being brutally honest: it's why I immediately discarded games like "Kids on Bikes"; because it's all about "how we're all equally telling a story together!": NO: I'm the DM; I'm the one desperatley trying to hold this world hastily assembled from grid paper and marker together week to week: I NEED the authority to say "no" once in a while!
And agreed: that is another thing I've been struggling with vis-a-vis 5e: running anys ort of "low magic" setting is almost impossible rules as written. You'd have to ban entire classes and levels of spells in order for that to work at all... Which honestly still might not stop me from trying that given your story there...
I think you discovered the conceit of World of Darkness (now Chronicles of Darkness) and its many subsystems! Notable entries include Vampire: The Masquerade/Requiem; Mage: the Ascension/Awakening; and Werewolf: the Apocalypse/Forsaken (Yes, that does make the Acronym WTF...). Here's a link. The system features pools of d10s with exploding 10s. It's an interesting challenge to GM, because the probability results in minimal success in most cases, so either you're employing situational modifiers when rolls should fail or you're giving part of the desired result but not all until a good roll comes up... It's a lot of fun to play a character, because the system emphasizes motivations through the alignment analogue. You can stake out a space for a lot of good drama. You may find combat to be less rigorously defined than 5e. Obviously your interest will depend on what you're looking to get out of the system...
There's several sets of minimal 5e rules that limit character level to tier 1/tier 2 which gives a much lower magic feel. You can pretty easily swap around skills without changing the basic math/balance of 5e.
Alternatively, there's Monster of the Week or Cult of Cuthulu which much more easily adapts to modern world setting.