So I made them a handy guide. In the most 80s cyberpunk visual imaginable. Feel free to steal and redesign for your players!

What GM doesn’t like having good visual tools for their campaigns, esepcially for science fiction. When your PCs can hop entire galaxies it can be helpful to show them and yourself where you are and where you are going. https://starmap2d.appspot.com/ http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/starmaps/mapindex.php STAR SYSTEMSA star system can contain one star or multiple stars. Humans are more…

We are LIVE! Gamma World (d20) with @doomsdaydoopy --> https://twitch.tv/doomsdaydoopydoo <--

It is close enough to Halloween that I feel justified in spending an inordinate amount of time on cataloguing and describing cool monsters in the style of @bogleech​ or @titleknown​. There are a lot of posts on the Internet about interesting monsters from various TTRPGs, but I’ve never yet seen one about the monsters from d20 Modern, Wizards’ d20 System game for heroes in a modern or futuristic setting. d20 Modern wasn’t just an attempt to run Die Hard or James Bond with the d20 System, though - it also provides models for modern fantasy campaigns. “Shadow Hunters” lets you do things along the lines of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; “Agents of PSI” pushes the game into MK Ultra territory, and “Urban Arcana” is that “magic is returning to the world” trope we all know and love. The game also expands to d20 Future, which covers a wide array of sci-fi settings.

To populate these campaigns, therefore, Wizards provided stats for nonhuman monsters, a lot of which are really cool and imaginative and, since nobody else seems to appreciate them, here goes! This is the first part of a two-part post; this one focuses on alien beings, the next will focus on other strange creatures. Monsters presented in no particular order.

1. Gardhyi. These long boys originate in Alternity, but I found out about them from the Menace Manual, and I really like them as an alien. They’re not the Men in Black - the MIBs are a human organization - they simply resemble them. The gardhyi are, in fact, spies from an alien invasion fleet, chosen because of humans’ uncanny resemblance to their species. They have double thumbs and big toes, and psionic control over shadows, and I like them because they’re just as confused as we are about the Greys and the like. Their alliance had no idea that other powers were interested in Earth, and while I think they’re well-designed as an “almost human but not quite” alien, what really gets me is that they imply that not every other interstellar-capable species knows about all the others, which I haven’t seen in sci-fi before.

2. Bodak. The bodak is a D&D monster ported to d20 Modern, also described in the Menace Manual. In D&D, the bodak is simply a death-dealing undead creature, but d20 Modern expands on it to make a bodak the result of a Grey dying in an area or event tainted by pure evil. The fact that the Greys not only exist but have their own unique kinds of undead makes d20 Modern very special to me, and I really wish they’d expanded the “alien undead” thing further.

3. Fraal. Described in the Menace Manual, d20 Modern also gives us information on the regular, non-undead Greys. Not only do they tell us the species’ name for itself - fraal - they also tell us why exactly they visit Earth: it’s a grand sociology experiment to see how a culture develops when repeatedly contacted by extraterrestrial visitors. The fraal are powerful psionicists but ultimately not hostile to human life, and are one of the player species in d20 Future. I know that explaining the Greys kind of undercuts their “cool mysterious alien” factor, but I’m really touched that d20 Modern spent the time to make them a functioning people. Sure, they may not be “realistic” as aliens, but they’re a part of modern folklore, and I admire that Wizards had the guts to say “They may be overplayed, but we’re using them anyways.”

4. Yazirians. The Yazirians are originally from Star Frontiers, but show up as a PC species in d20 Future. I put them in here because they’re Wookiees with patagia. That’s badass.

5. Sasquatch. In the Menace Manual, it is revealed that Bigfoot is, in d20 Modern, the regressed primitive form of an alien species employed by the fraal as heavy laborers. This is the first time I’ve seen “Bigfoot is an alien” theories make sense and that deserves recognition.

Their modern form has big ol’ tusks.

6. Sesheyans. These are also from Alternity, but show up again in the Menace Manual and as PCs in d20 Future. I like ‘em because the “primitivist hunter-gatherer aliens just now adapting to interstellar life” are eight-eyed nocturnal gargoyles who think humans look just as freaky as we think they do rather than cat people or the like.

7. Rods. In reality, “rods” are photo artifacts caused by bad camerawork and flying insects. In the Menace Manual, however, they’re an invasive species that was introduced to the ecosystem when an alien spaceship dumped contaminated supplies in our airspace back in the ‘90s. They also dive-bomb psionic creatures like it’s Australian magpie season, which is why some areas of Earth are fraal no-fly zones. This rules.

8. Extraterrestrial Spider. d20 Future gives a template that can be applied to Earthly animals so you can use them as strange alien creatures. The sample art is this beautiful boy with asymmetrical leg and eye placement and an awful yonic mouth. This could totally be an alien creature in my book - it looks like a bad scribble drawing and that’s way more representative of otherworldly life than I think most sci-fi does.

9. Zeikune. These things show up in the Menace Manual with no explanation or ecology, only an unknown buoyancy method and a hunger for organs, and, also, art that depicts them as STARYU WITH A GUN.

I actually like it and I’ve played it a few times before. I ran a future based campaign where one of my players played a cybernetically enhanced character who once pulled the door off a minivan while in it was moving to use as a shield to protect himself from Yakuza members shooting automatic fire at him and throws it like a Frizbee™ to decapitate the driver making them veer into a wall.

Yeah I said I'd do this if it got 5 notes and it got 0, but what do I care?

Here's the backstory for my dumb episodic sci fi game and the inspiration list:

The classic Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (book)

Dimension 20's A Starstruck Odyssey (live play)

The Young Lief spinoff from Midnight Burger (podcast) ((honestly 90% of the inspiration for the bonkers premise is this and hitchkers))

Oz 9 (podcast) ((players if you hear me say "its not my fault" in a very specific accent thats from this))

a larp a friend started working on a system for where there was a robot revolution

a d6 starwars game i played in where my pc was a robot assassin

my episodic zine based off the combination of those two games! which once i upload it to kofi will be linked here i'm sure

Backstory below the cut for keeping the post succinct on whoever's home screen this winds up on