OSR Modern was a placeholder name, and I finally have a decent name for my simplification/revision of d20 Modern: Missions & Mayhem.
A few days ago, I tried turning to ChatGPT for title ideas. Flynn, my older son, is in a school "CEO program," and the teacher had made an optimized GPT for help with branding, marketing and whatnot. So he suggested I try it. Honestly, all of the ideas it came up with were so-so at best. That's par for the course for gen-AI. But it did inspire me with a few ideas of my own. I tried an online random action movie generator, and again, so-so but gave me a few more ideas. I pitched my ideas to some of my players, and M&M was their favorite. It was in my top two, so I'm sticking with it.
Today, we did our second play test. Only two players could show up (due to vacations, winter camp work -- I'm not doing the camp this winter, and illness), but I ran them through a small action movie mission to rescue a kidnapped girl. They used some combat, some chase mechanics, some medical treatment mechanics, and some of the social interaction rules. They all played smoothly, although I forgot a wrinkle I'd added to the social interaction rules. It was fine, though, as they worked well without the need to push the results.
I realized at first that the chase mechanics I'd come up with gave out a LOT of XP for 1st level characters. But they're set values for a chase at any level of play. So while low level PCs will get a big boost out of any chase encounter, after a few levels the XP will not be overpowering. And at high levels it will barely register. I suppose another factor is that the XP for the two chases in this session were only divided between two PCs, not four or five. So I think they will be fine in the end.
It seems that modern group sizes (around 4 PCs) may be optimal for this game. Two weeks ago, at the first play test, we had six PCs. We ran through a fist-fight (and of course dynamite, knives, and a few guns were brought into it) which went really long.
I've been considering ways to make fist fights go a bit faster. In real life, yes, they can drag on without much serious damage (at least among amateurs in a street/bar fight), and in action movies the heroes can get into epic fights (like the alley fight in They Live), but a lot of the time a fist fight with mooks should be over fairly quickly. So I added a rule where any subdual damage over a certain threshold triggers a fortitude saving throw to avoid being knocked out. If all damage is low, or all saves pass, you are KOed when your subdual damage equals your current hit points.
I haven't tested this new version, as today's fights were either interrupted by intimidation or were gun fights.
With two chases (one on foot, one boat), some interactions, general tasks, and one gun fight (during the boat chase), and some loot/reward money, they earned 2nd level. We leveled up their PCs. Neither player decided to multiclass. They thought it would be better to get their BAB/saves up, and be a step closer to their second class talent. I'll have the other players also bump up to level 2 next time to see what they do.
Next time, I plan to present the players with a mystery to solve, which will involve some breaking and entering. This will allow me to test out the investigation/clue finding rules, and the sneaking & avoiding/deactivating security devices rules. Plus probably more social interaction to test out the pushing mechanic, and some other non-combat challenges. Maybe we'll work a few fist fights into it as well.
For today, I had a small scenario that was fairly linear, but with several off-ramps. I figured that since I'm only play testing at the moment, and we'll make new characters for any future campaign I run, that these play test sessions should be like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure or Endless Quest books. If you get a "bad" ending, you just flip back to page 42 and select another option. So no need to make them too elaborate. If I revise them for release, I'll add more detail and more options for non-linear play.
Now, I need to figure out some good computer hacking rules that have enough options to make it useful, but not too much to be overpowering or confusing. Also, I've switched from wealth rolls for shopping to cold hard cash, and I have starting wealth levels and starting cash worked out, but I need to add some equipment to the starting occupations and character classes (or proficiencies).
