Now, I won't mince words: When it comes to D20 Modern, I am a brazen strumpet. I know it's not perfect, but it only hits me when it's been drinking, so I think we can make it work.

I'd love, at some point in the future, to run a Pathfinder AP using some variation on the D20 Modern rules. At PaizoCon, N'wah and I even talked about our mutual conversions we dabbled with for "Seeds of Sehan" from Dungeon (he went scifi; I took it in more of a pulp direction). This got me thinking about how I'd convert Curse of the Crimson Throne into a modern context while preserving as much of the Paizo flare and wonder as possible.

So, let's call this an open thread to toss around ideas. The update can be straight-up modern action flick without any "fx" elements, total sci-fi, modern magic, psionics, high weirdness, or whatever other elements you like in a modern campaign. How would you handle the various story elements, adventures, and NPCs if you had to bring the tale into the modern age?

My personal tastes for a D20 Modern game are usually very pulp-influenced: Two-fisted Raymond Chandler with a touch of that low-and-mysterious Robert E. Howard-style magic. That feel works wonderfully for a modern-day game or one set in the prohibition-fueled, crime-ridden 20s. Knowing my group, I think everyone would have a lot more fun playing in the 20's as hard-nosed private eyes, bored socialites, and mobsters on the run

Korvosa: In CotCT, the city of Korvosa is really the focus of the story. The heroes are trying to save the city, Ileosa is trying to destroy it, and most of the adventures showcase different parts of it. Using a real-world analogue (which I prefer to do over inventing new cities entirely) means we need a city that evokes a strong sense of "place" to the players, and has that same sort of isolation the Korvosa does. Players need to feel like they're on their own, and that they can't just run the Uncle Sam to save the day.

Both French-controlled Casablanca and British-controlled Hong Kong make great choices for an isolated city with a lot of strife between natives and colonists. And insular, gangster-run Chicago is a perfect city that is culturally isolated, if not geographically. Any of these choices gives the players an instant mental image

For my own game, I'm thinking Casablanca for two important reasons: 1) It gives me an excuse to force everyone to watch the movie again. And 2) It places the PCs in close proximity to large predators without a trip to the zoo.

With our city chosen, a lot of other elements fall into place with almost no effort: Ileosa is the daughter of a noteworthy French family married off to the governor. Glorio Arkona remains a powerful trade master, connecting east and west, and a spymaster as well (making his shapeshifter role more figurative than literal). Poor, beleaguered Cressida Kroft is the local police chief (we'll hand-wave off the historically-accurate sexism for now) trying to keep the peace. At the heart of it all is the Crown of Fangs, which can be a mysterious artifact from the darkest heart of Africa, a relic from France's decadent past, or a hidden relic of he Templars, forgotten since the Crusades.

I am a brazen strumpet.

Hm...
You need some FX here. Some of the monsters really do it for the story. You'll need some ghosts, monsters, and so on, but I guess you can keep in on Indiana Jones level. So let's keep FX special

Edge of Anarchy should be allright - except for the dead chick who gets you all together. You'll need ghosts for that. Rolth can do nasty things to corpses without magic (though zombies can work with the whole "genetic engineering" angle - turn R-man into a mad scientist!), and we can have Blackjack beat up Batman and take his cool gadgets! Do the "I'M BATMAN" thing with his voice!

Seven Days to the Grave also should work well enough - until to the end, when you have demons-in-a-jar and priestesses turning into nasty things. Big monster moment!

Escape from Old Korvosa is very doable, too. Martial Law, districts being put under quarantine, mad crime bosses with guillotines, revolving dungeons. All in the realm of the possible. At the end, you'll have a healthy dose of Indian weirdness, like Big Trouble in Little China, but with Indian flavour.

A History of Ashes will go the CoC route for a while, in a certain Temple. You'll have some dune flavour with the big worm, which can work (hey, you'll find a big desert on earth, and it's not as if they're pefectly mapped or anything).

Skeletons of Scarwal. Well, undead. Go castlevania on their arses.

And finally Crown of Fangs. You have the whole prophecy thing going, I'm thinking The Mummy here, except that we're talking classical devils here.

So you need a city with a desert nearby.

Would this be a conversion of your current CotCT campaign, with the same players? Or are you thinking of running this for other people?

Legacy of Fire could also work well as pulp, with the PCs being explorers/adventurers/archeologists/whatever who travel to Arabia.

I do really like the idea of doing this pulpy, but I don't see it working well in the later sections without FX. At least not with out significant rewriting. Could be done though... I will have to follow this thread.

I toyed with converting Savage Tide to a Sci-fi game for a while as well, so it is always good to see what others can do.

Sean Mahoney

Would this be a conversion of your current CotCT campaign, with the same players? Or are you thinking of running this for other people?

Legacy of Fire could also work well as pulp, with the PCs being explorers/adventurers/archeologists/whatever who travel to Arabia.

And KaeYoss has a point: It would be hard to run CotCT with absolutely no FX, but I also want to lean more in that “power of the individual” instead of relying on fancy gimmicks. I’d shoot for a sort of Indiana Jones vibe, where magic is something ancient and foreign and not really accessible to or understood by PCs or even most NPCs.

Character Options:
So, obviously we want to keep it open and flexible, so all the base classes are available, and we’ll keep all the Occupations from the core SRD. Human is obviously the only player race, unless we want to get a bit silly and incorporate the Orangutan race introduced in Polyhedron #153, so players could be a tame gorilla or chimpanzee… or maybe not. All of the core Advanced Classes work. From Urban Arcana, the Arranger, Archaic Weaponmaster, Glamourist, Hunter, Street Warrior, Swashbuckler, and Wildlord classes all fit the feel as well, though Arranger would mostly be an NPC class. All the supernatural abilities of these classes could simply be redescribed as extraordinary-but-mundane abilities. I also want the Supernatural to be within the reach of players who really, really want it, so we’ll include the Shadow Slayer and Occultists prestige classes.

We’ll borrow all the non-FX feats from Urban Arcana as well; there are some fun, flavorful feats in there, as well as the “Attribute-Plus” school of feats from d20 Future. We’ll need to toss out the Computer Use skill for obvious reasons, but I like the idea of replacing it with the Autohypnosis skill; it’s a very pulp-feeling skill and an excellent class skill for the Dedicated and Tough heroes.

The Crown of Fangs
This will probably be the most overtly magical element of the campaign, and I like the idea of it being a Lovecraftian artifact, something linked to an elder power beyond time and space. Last used during the Crusades by a Templar by the name of Kazavon, it allowed him to carve out a bloody kingdom in Arabia, where he ruled until slain by Catholic agents on his 101st birthday.

The Vatican agents sailed home with the crown to destroy it, but were waylaid by a storm and drowned. Their ship miraculously stayed afloat until it ran aground in Morocco and was stripped bare by the floundering Berber dynasty. Understanding there was something dark about the bound chest, they hid it away, deep beneath a mosque in the city of Anfa. When the Portugese attacked the city in 1468, the mosque was leveled, but it’s catacombs remained. The city was rebuilt into modern Casablanca, with the mosque’s historic site hosting first a Portuguese fortress, then a Spanish plantation, and finally evolved into the French gubernatorial palace, where the catacombs were uncovered by the governor’s young wife during renovations.

Illeosa
We can’t very well talk about the Crown of Fangs without discussing Queen Illeosa. In a pulp-style game, she’ll be the daughter of prominent French family, married off the the governor of Casablanca in order to seal a trade negotiation. Upon her husband’s mysterious death, she’ll assume a temporary governor status during the emergency and backed up by the French troops stationed in the city (lead by her close friend, Sabina Merrin), awaiting word from France and the arrival of a new governor (whose arrival will be delayed, when the new appointee dies mysteriously onboard his southbound steamer).

Illeosa should be clever and influential, which to me screams Smart2/Charismatic3. Talent choice is easy enough: Fast Talk, Dazzle, and Trick (normally Trick has a prerequisite talent, but we’ll hand-wave that for our boss-NPC). For feats, we’ll probably want Persuasive (imported from Star Wars and 3.5; +2 to Diplomacy and Intimidate), Skill Focus (Bluff), Combat Expertise, and Improved Feint. The Crown itself will give her a serious bump when she bonds with it later on, giving her eight or so levels of the Arcanist prestige class, plus a template of some sort (maybe a modified Sand Slave, to drive home that ‘otherness’).

First, let’s check out some notable organizations found within Korvosa and how they adapt to the pulp world of Casablanca:

City Guard
The city guard is easily replaced by the civilian police force operating within the city. Casablanca is a mixing pot of different cultures, and the police are stretched thin enough just keeping the peace that all-out rioting could easily consume the city in times of need.

Sable Company
The Sable Company is the division of the French Army stationed in the city. They technically serve under the command of the French Inspector General, rather than the Governor himself. Roughly half the troops stationed within the city belong to the Foreign Legion (non-French serving the French military).

Red Mantis
A terrifying organization of cold-blooded killers, the Mante Rouge were formed during the French Revolution to hunt down fleeing nobles and officers. They served loyally under Napoleon, but were officially disbanded after his exile. Too stubborn to die, they simply turned mercenary, and swore an oath to never slay a legitimate ruler in honor of their former master. Today, few believe the Mante Rouge exist; tales of them are simply too vague and steeped in mysticism to be believed in this modern age.

Shoanti
When the Portuguese invaded in 1468 and destroyed the city, many remnants of the Berber empire returned to a nomadic lifestyle, traveling far and wide across northern Africa. Most reclusive are the Shoanti tribes, who despise the European invaders. Their culture is a unique amalgamation of Berber and Zulu, and their faith draws on ancient Muslim and Hebrew mysticism, animism, and spiritualism. They alone know the secret history of Morocco and most of North Africa, but rarely speak of it to outsiders.

Grey Maidens
When Ileosa comes to power, under the influence of the Crown’s unspeakable master, she forms a sort of private guard/cult to support her against the French Colonial Authority. Governor Ileosa draws recruits, all female, from both the Sable Company and the local police force, as well as recruiting female mercenaries, tribals, and any other women willing to fight. Using mesmirism and conditioning, their free wills are broken and they are transformed into cultists and zealots, willing to die to protect their would-be queen. The Gris Femme ritually scar their bodies, though these marks are normally concealed by their identifiable gray uniforms.

Cerulean Society
Like the rest of the city, Casablanca’s organized crime is a bizarre hybrid of many sources. Italian mafia, German and British intelligence agencies, Moroccan freedom fighters, local street gangs, and even several religious denominations have fused together to create a brutally efficient underworld. Separate cells are largely autonomous, but can rely on others (even theoretical enemies) for support in a crisis, and must alert the society before major events. Members also frequently meet to trade information and resources. While the different divisions quietly jockey for power and territory, their low profile keeps them below the notice of the local authorities. Without a strong leader at its head, the Society would almost certainly turn in on itself, devolving into a dozen weaker organizations within a year.

Next up, some major NPCs from the series:

Lamm
Gaedren Lamm still works as a general scumbag who preys on the city’s poor and underprivileged. We can even keep his adorable pet crocodile, Gobblegut. He’ll probably work best as a Fast 2/Smart 2 with a revolver against our heroes (I don’t know how anyone else’s games went, but in ours, Lamm went down like a chump).

Sabina Merrin
Sabina is an Italian expatriate serving with the French Foreign Legion, specifically securing and protecting the gubernatorial palace. She first met Ileosa when she married Governor Bastione. As one of the local military’s few female officers, she was appointed as the young woman’s personal guard. Their relationship grew closer over time, and when Ileosa assumed her position as interim governor, she promoted Sergent Merrin to Captain as positioned her to head of palace security. Sabina is probably a Strong Hero, leading into Elite Soldier.

Cressida Kroft
Commissioner of the local Casablanca police force, Cressida is a native of the city, born from French stock. Because of her family history, she remains more loyal to the city and its people than to any specific foreign power, though she does respect her heritage and the protection the French offer the city. Casablanca’s mixed history and score of nationalities causes many cultural clashes, and the young commissioner has her hands full just keeping the peace, let alone pacifying all-out riots. In true pulp tradition, she’s a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, tough-as-nails type who doesn’t take s~&! and will sometimes work outside the letter of the law to keep the peace. Kroft is a Tough Hero with the Investigative Occupation and levels in the Investigator Adv Class.

Neolandus Kalepopolis
Neolandus serves as the Inspector general of the French occupying forces in Casablanca, or did until Gorvernor Bastione’s untimely death. His family hails from Greece, but have proudly served France since the days of Napoleon, and Neolandus sports swarthy good looks to match his charming, if intense personality. Neolandus is a Dedicated/Charismatic Hero, possibly with a rank or two of Negotiator.

Glorio Arkona
The Arkona family has been a trading powerhouse in Casablanca longer than the French have controlled it. Their import/export business handles a large amount of cargo to and from British-controlled India, as well as many of the narcotics produced in neighboring China and Afghanistan. Glorio and his twisted sister murdered their father to take over the organization, and leverage their money into total control of the Cerulean Society as well. From this influential position, Glorio can sift through every drop of information that passes through Casablanca and sell it to the highest bidder. Most recently, he has taken an interest in Germany’s National Socialist party and sees them coming to dominate the globe in coming years. To get in early, he has thrown most of his resources towards benefiting Casablanca’s German spy network.