I’m ready to talk about the quick one-off modern fantasy thing I want to run for funsies. We’ll be using the 5th edition ruleset as the starting point.

Here’s how character creation will work:

1) You are welcome to use your character from the Rocks Fall campaign, for their stats, their personality, or both. Whatever the case: they’ll be completely and totally human for Operation: Prophet, but they’ll keep all of their stats, racial and otherwise. If you’re borrowing your character’s personality, you’re transposing it onto a character who grew up in and understands the 21st century. This is Alternate Universe fic, not a time warp plopping confused medievals into 2015.

2) You may, instead, create a new character using any of the 5th edition rules that are allowed for Rocks Fall. I don’t care to tweak all the rules for one session of modern fantasy, so anything that doesn’t seem very modern is fine; we’ll just reskin it. Anyway, if you create a character, create a level 4 character. If the Rocks Fall party levels up before we play, you can level up to match them.

3) Here are setting-appropriate arms and armor. Full rules for the weapons are in the DMG. Don’t worry about what they cost.

4) The game is set in 2015 earth, the one we live in, but not. If your character is a spellcaster, they are a practicing occultist, or a faith healer, or a pagan ritualist, or something of the like. Give as much or as little thought to that as you wish. Whatever the case is: most people (in the western world, at least) don’t believe in magic or refuse to believe in magic, and your character has probably found that it’s best not to be noticed using it. See: Masquerade.

Some meditations on the game itself:

1) I usually strive for there to be consequences for the things you do in a game. In the year 2015, there are more eyes, more ears, and more institutions which exist to enforce those consequences, and I’m much better acquainted with them. I’m not saying that this is going to be completely grimdark srsface; I’m just saying that in 2015 breaking windows in a downtown hotel while eight of you wear weapon holsters will attract attention in a way that adventurers goofing off in a D&D setting might not.

2) I’m writing the adventure with a starting point where you guys are a gaggle of, you know, outsiders… punks, freaks, occultist weirdos… who have been called completely-out-of-the-blue into an office in Langley, Virginia for an interview with an unnamed government agency. This presumably surprises you and intrigues you. If your character would be 100% averse to working with the United States Government or you guys think your characters would all be sooper straight-laced or that hook just doesn’t work for you, let me know and we’ll tweak it. In the end, though: it’s one session; I don’t think you should make a huge deal out of this unless you think it’s really going to ruin your fun.

3) Think punk.