Has anyone used the Modern Magic rules along with 5e to run an Urban Arcana game?
Beyond what is in the DMG and MM rules, how would one go about reskinning the backgrounds, skills, and classes to use in a modern setting? I loved d20 Modern and all of the related supplements when I ran a campaign years ago. I would very much like to run something similar with 5e rules now.
In my humble opinion the true challenge for the game designers is the right power balance with the modern technology. Megafauna could be a true menace for a group of heroes, but with the right firearms a bear or an elephan can be killed with only one shot. Driving a truck can be enough hit over a horde or walking dead.
In the first movie, Alien, the eight passenger, one xenomorph was enough to kill almost all Nostromoe crew, but in the sequele dozens, maybe hundres, were killed from the next room with two sentinel gun turrets. In Sylvester Stallone's movie "Cobra" the girl, played by Briddgit Nielsen, couldn't face the main antagonist, the night stalker, only to hide and run away like in a survival horror, but the main character, a one-man-army with enough ammo and weapons could kill all the members of the New Dawn Cult.
Do you remember when a enemy was higher challenge rating/XPs reward if a monster template is added? With modern weapons the power balance is broken. Let's use as example a Battle Royal videogame. The first enemy is only an axe. Easy to be defeated if you have got a firearm. The second is a sniper. Then it is like surviving a traps of a remote-control gun turret. Now let's imagine the same enemy, but with an exosuit like the ones from "Call of Duty: Advance Warfare". It would be practically a mini-boss. Worse against a powered armor (for example Iron Man, or Fallout). And the ultimate final boss would be a mecha (Titanfall or the B.R.U.T.E from Fortnite).
A psico-killer with a knife can be a nightmare for unarmes civilians PCs in a d20 survival horror, but only walking targets or cannon fodders for soldiers PCs in a battleground campaign.
Thanks for yoir input, but nothing you wrote addressed the questions I had. In the time I ran an Urban Arcana game, we never had an issue with any of the things you mentioned. Our games were on par with Buffy, Supernatural, and the Dresden Files. Few normals know that magic and the supernatural exist, so militaries taking action was not, and will not be, an issue. I want to know how to flavor the D&D 5e classes, backgrounds, and skills toward a modern setting.
I found a 5e Urban Arcana game on YouTube called the Unsleeping City. So far as of the third session, they've done a good job utilizing the Unearthed Arcana Modern Magic homebrew rules as well as reskinning the flavor of the classes. They have a hair stylist drunken master monk, a drug dealer wild magic sorcerer, a sewer-dwelling circle of the shepherd druid, a nurse city domain cleric, a Broadway star lore bard, and a firefighter devotion paladin. I'll continue watching for inspiration for my game. It's especially cool because its set in New York, and my wife and I vacationed there last fall.
I'm in the process of updating my cousins' d20 Modern characters to Urban Arcana 5e. They were a Dedicated/Shadow Hunter, a Fast/Gunslinger, and a Smart/Mage. The Shadow Hunter will be a Monster Slayer Ranger, the Gunslinger will be Matt Mercer's Gunslinger Fighter, and my DMPC Mage will be an Evoker Wizard. They made it through my modified Urban Arcana version of the Age of Worms adventure path from Dungeon Magazine. The game was flavored like Supernatural and the Dresden Files. The characters are a trio of hunters investigating mysterious goings-on in Diamond Lake, New Jersey.