Dark Inheritance (for d20 System)

Pyramid Review

Dark Inheritance (for d20 Modern)

Published by Mythic Dreams Studios

Written by Sam Witt, Wil Upchurch, Chad Justice, Aaron Rosenberg, Jason Olansan, & Gareth Hanrahan

220-page b&w hardcover; $34.99

Modern fantasy is a tough duck. You've got one of two ways to look at it. Type A is the World of Darkness/Buffy the Vampire Slayer philosophy: magic is all around, and most people just don't notice it. Type B is the Shadowrun philosophy: You wake up one day and there are dragons (creating a setting where Magic has always been all around is just right in the Alternate History field).

Dark Inheritance chooses to take both of them, weaving together an ancient hidden mystical history, with a sudden explosion of magic and mayhem.

The game is set now (it starts February, 2003), in the aftermath of an inter-dimensional tear that brought a demonic city to Earth in the space inhabited by Jerusalem. Now, the holiest city on Earth gets to share real estate with the least so.

Dark Inheritance is a setting for the d20 Modern system. The merge, called The Rip, acts as a good jumpstart point to transition from Type A to Type B. The difficulty of Modern Fantasy basically consists of pedantic players who desire nothing more than a good long game of "if that's the case, then why didn't . . .?", even if you're in the middle of a good game of something else. The rationale (hidden mysticism that explodes so as to be not-so-hidden) allows for both a "secret history"-type . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: July 25, 2003

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