Running and playing in a modern setting

Well, in any system with shooting worth a damn, a firefight is a very mobile affair, there'd be almost zero sitting in cover plinking at each other until someone manages to roll a good hit. You should give players the option to get positional advantages on targets. While also having the badguys do the same.

>You should give players the option to get positional advantages on targets. While also having the badguys do the same.
Can you give me an example.
Also explain why breaking cover is a good idea.

Because that's how it works in real life. Sitting down and camping in a spot makes you a sitting duck. Everyone knows where you are. If they keep you pinned down, they can advance and kill you. You need to maneuver and flank.

Well, alright. In a real firefight mobility is key, because if you bunker down in cover you're just going to risk getting suppressed and having the enemy assault your position. The target that doesn't move is a dead target. Not to mention things like explosives and such exist and hunkering down in one spot just paints a big target. So you should say give players a chance to leave half the party in one spot to lay down suppressive fire on a group of badguys, while the other half breaks to the left and climbs a flight of stairs to engage them from a catwalk for example.

Another thing to note is that I'm not advocating for breaking cover and just running at the enemy, but rather use cover and concealment to advance on an enemy who can't escape to encircle and destroy them from a position where they can't fire back effectively.

Okay, since that seems the most fitting thread right now on Veeky Forums for this.

So i have a game running where the PC's got hold of a small colony on a barren planet.

Aaaand I'm missing an engaging antagonist.

What are some good ideas for sci-fi BBEG's. I was thinking about space pirates but i can't find a way to insert them without a "haha Antagonist Time !" feeling.

The antagonist is them.
The people are unhappy about their new overlords.

Tell us about more about this "barren planet".

okay

50% of surface covered with water

breathable but thin atmosphere

Strong vulcanic activity

"terraforming" (dropping some seeds from orbit) finished just a few decades ago and is now covered mostly by flora in form of moss and small scrubs.

The solar system is close to an unimportant trade route between a mining world and a civilized world with 300 thousand-ish population and mostly covered in water.

The planet is barren in the sense, that there is nobody on it, besides the PC's and their workers (which may or may not be there out of their own free will).

The place on the trading route is shared with another system. Their main world is barren in the classic sense but has already some population in the hundred thousands.

The PC's don't own the planet, just the ground on which the colony stands.

>I have been using maps so far. So any tips on mapping places would be appreciated and advice on how to transition from mapped areas to high speed chases.

As someone who GMed a lot of d20 Modern, let me give you some advice.

First, use anything but d20 Modern for modern games.

Second, don't map out high speed chases on real maps. Abstract that shit. Exact maps leave your players looking at maps and wondering about the next turn instead of the car full of guys shooting at them. All you need is some basic details and bits of flavor for each area.

I just sketched out pic related in about fifteen minutes from a quick look at Google Maps and what I remember of being in Atlanta, GA. The "Size" numbers in brackets represent the number of turns it would take to get out of that zone and into another. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with size so much as the number of roads, traffic density, shortcuts and so on. The various qualities are just things that come immediately to mind and may affect the outcome of the chase. Druid Hills is somewhat more affluent than the rest of Atlanta, so police response times are bound to be a little shorter. Hartsfield-Jackson International is a major airport, and if someone is following the players with a helicopter they'll get waved off by air traffic control. The Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) runs trains to all the places on this map, but it's especially easy to get on a train in Downtown Atlanta and at the Airport, which is important for foot chases.

Some of the lines connecting each zone have Size numbers, which just tells you how long it'd take on the interstate or the train. But that's basically all you need for chases.

Maybe have an uprising.

Rapture in Bioshock was setting that was also isolated.

Try looking up uprisings, rebellions, and other shinanigans that happened in European colonies in the new world for cases of shit happening in places relatively isolated from their home civilizations and only connected long shipping routes, sometimes close to other colonies, sometimes not, and sometimes close to non-allied colonies.

Okay those are somewhat helpfull.

So far i have two ideas, one is that the workers are mostly released convicts which got the job offer after their punishment was done, are mostly frome the same prison and aren't exactly happy about their new position.

On the other side there could be a faction of freetraders who are worried that their source of free fuel (the planets water) could be texed and raid the colony from time to time when their trade went bad.

you could also have a neighboring colony world who's population has a problem with yours come and offer some sort of trade agreement that looks good from a casual outside observer but would be bad for the party's colony, then use the refusal as pretext for war.

whether or not the powers that spun off the two colonies know this is coming or care can be however you want it to be.

You definitely want to watch Lord of War. It's set in the early-mid 1990s, so it's slightly out of date, but it's still a phenomenal movie about the black-market arms trade.

At the moment i have the idea for one short term and one long term antagonist.

Short Term is a gang boss, that is part of the workforce that came with the basic colony kit, that is having "trouble accepting that his new bosses are basically unknown nobodies and also clearly foreigners. His goal is to ursurp the PC's and bring the colony under control as soon as it is self sufficient.

Long term is a freetrader from the barren world system next door. He is less of a generic "bad guy", his goal is mostly to have his homeworld
proper and by extension his family live better lives. The finshed terraforming of a more hospitable world would quickly draw the trade route to the other planet and leave his world even more poor and desolated.

His method is sabotage at first a la "if i bother them enough, maybe they will go away" since he is not a psychotic killer and just wants to create a better home. But he will escalate as the situation becomes more dire (as the players become more sucessfull).

shit i forgot that existed.

I ran several lengthy modern campaigns using Google Earth extensively. It worked very well.

I like the idea of running a game in Detroit. It has tons of abandoned areas, that could work for anything.

My problem in modern games is always "when do cops get involved/when do the cops show up to gunshots & monster screams"

>I ran several lengthy modern campaigns using Google Earth extensively. It worked very well.

explain what you used Google Earth for and how you did what you used it for.

Consider the following snippet from GURPS Horror (a phenomenal book, applicable to any horror game):

>Austerity is the degree to which the heroes are held accountable for their actions. Consider a vigilante who shoots a black magician in a modern horror campaign:

>>In a very austere game, he’ll have the local police department on his tail, using every weapon in the modern forensic arsenal: fiber matching, fingerprints, DNA typing, etc. If caught, he’ll be indicted and tried. If convicted, he’ll go to prison or be executed.

>>In a moderately austere game, he’ll merely be “on the lam.” He’ll be unable to cross the path of the law again, but he’ll be able to go “underground” in the same city without the police finding him.

>>In a lenient (low to no austerity) game, he’s home free, provided that there are no eyewitnesses. The police might even decide that the black magician deserved killing, and conveniently ignore any clues the assassin leaves behind!

And also give this article a whirl: npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of-murders-in-america-go-unresolved
Murder clear rate's about 64%, so while the odds don't favor your players, it's clearly more than capable. If you assume the average criminal is stupid, basic cleanup of the crime scene and precautions against being linked to it (don't brag, don't talk about doing it, hide your identity and don't leave DNA at the crime scene), then you can give them the benefit of the doubt. It's more about keeping up appearances. As soon as they stop keeping up appearances, the trail goes hot with the cops getting a breakthrough.

how do you do this for cities you are not familiar with?

the US state of Michigan is over represented on Veeky Forums and the internet for some reason.

you should be able to find someone who can tell you about police response times in detroit.

I like this.

Any tips for doing this for a city you don't live in?

>the US state of Michigan is over represented on Veeky Forums and the internet for some reason.

looting my friend

when the economy tanks old computers become easy to get.

I just used it because I read how it was basically abandoned to the point they were going to relocate everybody closer together & fuck off with the outer edges of the city. That level of urban decay makes for prime areas of supernaturals to hide in.

The police response times are for modern/shadowrun settings in general, not exactly tied to running games in Detroit

>The biggest problems I'm having are finding urban locations where there aren't tons of civilians

Industrial complexes are your friends, especially if the country is post-industrial now. Not many civilians, you can probably move goods without much of fuss. And you'll be surprised how much shit goes on IRL in your ports, the ones you probably go through in a car and don't give a shit about, btw. Granted, it's more counterfeit clothes than a container full of guns, probably, but still, it's something people don't think about.

> and working out what are places where modern criminals and villains would prefer to do deals and exchanges.

Well, it depends. A street dealer would use perhaps a car at most, wouldn't he?

If said criminal is something greater.. well, usually organized crime doesn't really have this much need for lairs and shit regarding talking. They actually do make deals in their homes. I mean, if they are going to investigate your phone calls, counter-measures aren't location-critical.
For money exchange: consider that yes, criminals do use electronic money. Anyway I guess in more "practical" exchanges of big ol' suitcases of bills they use accorded location innawoods.

>nd you'll be surprised how much shit goes on IRL in your ports

tell me more.

I hear about shit that happened in the docks of london and shanghai and new york in the 1800's and early 20th century but nothing about how crime works and where "business" is done in 21st century modern ports

somewhat related to the topic:
How do you deal with PC and killing? My last session ended with a PC having killed for the first time, albeit in self defence. Should I try to get the player to address it, or just make that fact a footnote and continue on as is?

Am I the only person autistic enough not to run a game in modern Earth because I fear my lack of knowledge about the regions the game will take?

depends on the tone of your game and what the character is like.

If you've ever lived in a sort-of slummy apartment complex, you'll know that small-time drug deals can happen in stairwells, in entranceways (like the small space between a pair of doors going out to the parking garage), or just in apartments. The local residents don't even respond to the fire alarm going off twice a week because of shorts/pranksters, so they're not going to give a shit about someone buying weed. The walls of older apartment buildings are usually concrete and the doors are usually steel, so while collateral damage can definitely happen it's less likely.

Going up in scale, the lower level parking garages are usually empty places at night, so doing exchanges out of the trunks of cars becomes possible and there's little in the way of witnesses/innocent bystanders. Parking lots in general are pretty good, especially if it's some out-of-the-way spot like a car wash in an industrial park or something.

Organized crime pulls off major deals inside of front businesses, again at "docks"-like locations. Doesn't have to be big, a small garage or a window framers' or something, something where there's a building surrounded by other buildings/warehouses that nobody lives in or goes to. If you're really looking to get away from collateral damage, have your deal go down on a small rural property half an hour outside of town. Biker- and mafioso-approved, and there's lots of farm equipment, outbuildings, barns, garages, fields and piles of wood, hay, pipes, etc. to have interesting fight scenes in and around.

The game is Persona-esque, and while it isnt overly serious its not a comedy light hearted game either. Character in question is a young adult who hasnt seen much action or violence til recently, and most of that were unintellgent/animalistic monsters or nonhumans.

Just fluff it as a modern but parallel/alternate Earth

user, cops don't have to get involve unless you said so.
Just like how all town guards and noble militias disappear from your plot in medieval fantasy until you need them in the plot.
And like how in all superheros campaign, cops magically lose access to guns, snipers and SWAT.
You the storyteller, so you decide what happen.

This also include tanks, ICBM, helicopters and such. They don't get into play unless you want them to.

That's the power of the DM.

Also if you doing a campaign in modern or futuristic setting, do not fucking dump your donut steal technobabble on the players unless its immediately relevant to the current situation they are in.

Don't over explain.
Just go along with the flow and make shit up.
The best mindset to have is to think the players as crazy superheroes and you are a comic author telling and engaging their silly escapades.

Ignore it until you want to use it as a plot hook to bring in a new enemy or railroad the players into an adventure you don't think they will bite.

>Detroit
>cops show up

Pick one. The open secret of modern life is that cops only give a shit about "good people" areas. In "bad people" areas they're going to get some coffee, wait for backup, and then poke around just to tick the box before going home. DNA evidence? Forget it, they're not checking for fingerprints either. They'll knock on the nearest doors, probably get turned away by the residents who will have a no-snitch policy, and drive on.

cool.

Damn, another cop lurking here as well.

I've seen a lot of shit go down in the industrial are where I work. As soon most businesses close for the day, this place becomes a ghost town and you start seeing weird shit happen on the parkinglots. That would probably be where most intermediary "business" deals go down where there's little trust between the parties involved.

Like someone above said, for low level drug deals it can happen pretty much anywhere, usually in or near a dealer's place if it's a low quantity or out of a car if it's bigger.

>I've seen a lot of shit go down in the industrial are where I work. As soon most businesses close for the day, this place becomes a ghost town and you start seeing weird shit happen on the parkinglots. That would probably be where most intermediary "business" deals go down where there's little trust between the parties involved.
>Like someone above said, for low level drug deals it can happen pretty much anywhere, usually in or near a dealer's place if it's a low quantity or out of a car if it's bigger.

please give me examples. I've spent my life living out in the middle of fucking nowhere and then in a quiet suburb in Oklahoma and I want to run a game set in New York City.

what if it's really high value stuff like a stolen art or gold or something?

>Got any other movie suggstions?
It's a 5-season series but still: watch Leverage. According to the showrunner they've done extensive research for every episode into how crime really works. This also applies to antagonists who are mostly based on real life cases, though, again, according to John Rogers, they had to tone it down quite often or people would find them unbelievably evil (and I can see that, the show comes off as too black and white already)

>according to John Rogers

who is that?

Main showrunner and bearded alcoholic

I don't know how assign honesty value based on those factors.

I've never played persona and got bored with the let's play I tried to watch so I know next to nothing about it other than pretending to shoot yourself in the head gives you magic powers.

>d20 Modern for modern settings

no. just no.

He said "anything but".