Modern Necessities - Old School Rules for Modern Themes
by The Scrying Dutchman
- You can purchase the pdf and the drivethru rpg version of the printed book here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com
- You can purchase the the lulu version of the printed book here: https://www.lulu.com
- I have not seen the product on the Necrotic Gnome website but I believe they don't stock print-on-demand products, in house.
For the record, I purchased the Lulu version, as I have never had a bad Lulu print but I've had numerous poorly printed books from Drivethru. As of 31 July 2023, the Lulu version is also $6 cheaper! Get on it folks, you won't be disappointed!
Four days.... I've been alive in this Hell for four days. Again we hear the suppressive fire starting from across the river - the Volga - that bitch of a river that has drunk the souls of my entire platoon... and the platoon before that. Four days. My beautiful twin sister, Olga, is dug in beside me. Poor Olya, I pray that her scars don't keep her from a good husband some day. She is adjusting dials on some device sent down from Moscow. She was told it will protect our emplacement from explosions - something about radio frequencies and tuning ley lines. My Olya is the smart twin. I'm the sniper. With shaking hands, I finish loading my battered Mosin. I know from experience that they will stop shaking when the iron monsters of the 14th Panzer (Ork) roll into view. I pray that if she and I survive this battle that Olga returns home. Stalingrad is no place for my sister. Four days...
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Modern Necessities is a set of character classes, equipment, and rules for adding modern combat into an Old School Essentials (OSE) game. This book cannot be used as a complete game, as is. You need to have either OSE, a TSR version of Dungeons & Dragons, or some form of retroclone or OSR product for the basic rules. There is also a version of this book for the 5th edition of what WotC calls "D&D". I haven't seen it and won't spend my hard-earned scrilla on 5e.
Physically, the book is a bit taller than normal, US-sized books. For my fellow 'murcans, this book is 11.5" inches high and 8.25" wide. This equates to 29.5cm high and 21cm wide for my Euro-friends, Aussies, and Canuckistanis.
The cover is pretty cool but I'm not exactly sure what it represents. There's a pointy-eared fellow, a chick with a pistol, maybe a medusa with a gatling gun and an ogre holding an old timey bomb. This is just a guess.
After the title page, table of contents, and introduction from the author, the book jumps right into the new classes. There are a lot of them. Each class, in OSE tradition, is detailed on one page. The format uses bullet points with paragraphs as needed for more detailed information. The second page includes tables for each class (XP, HD, attacks, skill success, saving throws, etc.)
The classes are: Soldier, Heavy Gunner, Crook, Tech Expert, Sniper, Survivalist, Hired Killer, Medic, Psychonaut (magic-users who get their spells from hallucinogenic drugs and communing with inter-dimensional entities), Wheelman, Ninja, Exorcist (what it sounds like), and Face (the sexy, talker folks). The rest of the classes should be self-explanatory. I wish Mr. Dutchman would have reorganized the class chapter to keep all of a character class' details on facing pages. Sometimes it is but sometimes you have class information on the front and charts on the back of a single.
Note that some of the classes have access to spells. For a more realistic setting, the referee will have to ignore this. Tech Experts get access to technomancy spells (detailed in this book), Medics and Exorcists get access to cleric spells. Psychonauts get access to magic-user spells. Faces get access to magic-user spells (illusionist spells, if Advanced OSE is in use).
After classes, we get a 2-page spread on races. Dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, half-orc, and human are the options. They are the same as the OSE versions but are given traits and flavor on how they might behave in a modern society. Dwarves are old-time fans and are good with revolvers, sawed-off shotties, and the like. Half-orcs are [apparently] dressed as gopniks are best with "spray and pay" weapons. You get the idea.
The next 35 pages are guns and gear.
There is a simple way to use "spread quality" tagged items, such as shotguns. In this case, if your character is blasting some schmuck with a 12-gauge, and his homie is standing within 5 feet of him, there is a 2-in-6 chance that he sucks up some shot himself. I am not sold on the "full auto quality" tagged weapons. Each character has a standard Armor Class but full auto targets AC 5 [14] and anyone within 10 feet is hit with this as the target number but then saves for half damage. I can see a player whose character has a better AC complaining about this. With D&D-style AC to be hit and not armor reduction, I don't know if I could come up with a better mechanic. I don't know. I'd have to think about it.
The author has some fun with the weapon descriptions and it tickles me. Here is the description of the Fire Axe, as an example. "Carried by firefighters and often stored away in buildings for use in emergencies. Sometimes slamming it into someone's chest counts as an emergency." Dry and funny.
I won't spend too much time on the weapons, even though it is dang near half the book. Weapons are broken out into tables based on the class of weapon, light, medium, heavy, etc. Taking two pistols to compare, James Bond uses a Walther, .32 caliber pistol, according to the Dr. No movie. Bond can take out the evil SPECTRE schmucks at 30/60/90 range with 1d4 damage. Dirty Harry, on the other hand, with his .44 magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world", blows away rapists at 60/120/180 range with 1d8+1 damage.
The rules eschew bullet counting and the game relies on a Reload Number, instead. A d6 is rolled after an encounter and if the result is below a certain number, the weapon must be reloaded (again, not "bullets" but rather an item called "ammo reload", which is whatever number of bullets are needed). Don't worry. it appears to work better than how I am describing it. This simplifies counting ammunition, which is probably good for a military game with bullets whizzing by. If emulating a spy novel, where maybe only a handful bullets are ever fired, it might not be necessary. Overall, I enjoy the reload. For the record, our famous British spy has to reload with a 2-in-6 chance and our favorite San Francisco ass-kicker has to reload with a 4-in-6 chance.
Later on in the book, we get a rules and table for damaging vehicles and occupants of vehicles. I think that the table could have been included in the main weapons tables easily enough. It is always a single-digit number and the tables have room.
I am really happy to say that Mr. Dutchman lists weapons by "type" and not specific weapons. He does include examples in the description. My dad's old Winchester .30-30 is a "lever action rifle", journalist's favorite punching bag death machine is listed as "assault rifle". The author failed to take into account the +1 Charisma bonus that the AK-47 wielders get when shooting next to those inferior AR-15 chumps. Oh well, maybe in the next edition!
There is a list of firearm attachments (night vision, suppressor, etc.) Armor affects AC, as expected in OSE. I think the author went a bit too crazy with armor types but I understand his reasoning because some "armors" have special properties (NBC suit makes you immune to diseases while wearing them, etc.)
The next chapter is for vehicles. There is a very simple mechanic for shooting into vehicles. Each vehicle has a Vulnerability Rating (VR). Vehicles are immune to weapons which have a Vehicle Damage (VD) stat equal to, or lower than, the VR. Let's go back to our two literary heroes for a minute. Bond has his Walther in hand and wants to stop the Peterbilt bearing down on him. James empties is mag into the truck's hood and not a damn thing happens. Bond's 'Murcan comrade whips out his .44 magnum heater, *BOOM* *BOOM*, he drops two rounds into the engine block, damaging the truck.
The vehicle list is by type, just like weapons, and not specific models of cars, boats, helicopters, or tanks.
Technomancy spells are next listed. Some are super hacker type spells. Some make weapons "magical", imparting a bonus to hit. There are six levels of spells, with eight spells per level. It would be nice to have a line delineating the breaking point between spells. Or perhaps a table break.
A chapter on NPCs follows. There are 16 NPCs included. You get a commando, detective, cyber criminal, some other humans, and a cybernetically upgraded dog, called Drone Dog. It reminds me of one of the Sprawl Trilogy books where some tinker in the woods had a pack of enhanced dogs.
Chapter 10 is optional rules. Hit locations, "cinematic" mode, damaging armor, gun jams, etc. Cinematic mode is when the players want to run either a Rambo game or a James Bond game. Characters damage enemy Hit Dice rather than Hit Points. Enemies damage character's Hit Points, but all weapons do between 0 and 4 points of damage. This is the same rule from the excellent Scarlet Heroes OSR game. There is also an optional rule for Experience Points that I think would be needed for any modern game, other than a game where the PCs are bank robbers. James Bond is a bad ass but he isn't looting the corpses of fallen enemies, looking for chump change. He is a bad ass because he has completed missions.
⇨ GRIT: ★★★★☆: This supplement definitely brings OSE into the modern age. The rules are mostly useful for modern campaigns which involve heavy firepower. The game is guns heavy and light on spy gadgets, is what I'm saying. I don't know if Mr. Dutchman intended it this way, maybe he is planning a spy supplement for spy craft? Mr. Dutchman states in his introduction that players can "revisit old classics with an AK-47 in hand and a vest full of grenades". He then mentions what I believe are hints about Ravenloft and Isle of Dread. I think it would be a heck of a good time playing this.
⇨ VIGOR: ★★★☆☆: As a set of rules, they work. There is no setting information in the book and this might be intentional, as the rules are generic enough for most modern combat settings. If the author ever does a second edition, I would love to see a few 1-2 page mini settings. Maybe he does a mini setting which is very D&D but with guns, another which is very realistic but the characters go to a lost dinosaur island, which may or may not be Jurassic in nature, another where the characters are womanizing superspies, out to foil the plots of some supervillains with goofy names, another where they are cowboys who defend the herds from rampaging ankheg, etc. Giving the referee and players a handful of samples, to me, is always a plus.
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