CASTING MISSILES - Adapting DnD to Other Levels of Technology

This week on the RPGBOT.Podcast, the hosts ask the eternal tabletop question: what happens when your beloved fantasy RPG grows up, gets a driver’s license, discovers firearms, and immediately becomes everyone’s problem? We begin with PishPash My Memory is Trash merch, accidental mug design crimes, Pride, wizard bazookas, and Ash’s long-simmering legal case against the movie Bright. Then we get to the real issue: how do you let someone fight Tiamat with an Uzi without turning your campaign into a spreadsheet, a war crime, or Shadowrun with the serial numbers filed off?

Show Notes

In this episode, the RPGBOT crew takes a deep dive into adapting fantasy tabletop RPG systems like D&D and Pathfinder to other technology levels, including modern fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk-adjacent worlds, post-apocalyptic settings, and anything else where a greatsword might have to share table space with a grenade launcher.

Tyler walks through the history of previous attempts to drag D&D-style mechanics out of the dungeon and into other genres, including d20 Star Wars, d20 Modern, Star Wars Saga Edition, Star Wars 5e, and the often-forgotten Modern Magic Unearthed Arcana. Along the way, the hosts dig into how those systems handled things like armor, hit points, wounds, vitality, class design, talents, occupations, reputation, and the eternal question of whether getting shot with a blaster should feel worse than being poked with a longsword.

The conversation turns into a practical design checklist for anyone trying to run fantasy rules in a modern or sci-fi setting. The big issues are weapons, armor, hit points, movement, vehicles, skills, tools, hacking, currency, magic, classes, monsters, and access to dangerous gear. A gun that does more damage than a sword is easy to write down. Making that gun fun, balanced, available, expensive, illegal, scary, and not immediately campaign-breaking is the actual work.

The hosts also wrestle with the big philosophical question: at what point have you changed D&D so much that you should just play a different game? Tyler’s rule of changing three major things makes its return, Ash argues for fantasy with modern aesthetics, Randall brings up comet-based magic awakenings and Maximum Overdrive, and everyone briefly imagines what happens when a party of adventurers has to fight a kaiju from inside a tank.

Finally, the Question of the Week asks the most important dice-related question possible: what is your favorite die, and which one deserves to be thrown into the sea? Ash defends the d8 and declares war on the foot-stabbing d4. Tyler gives some love to the underappreciated d12. Randall hates the actual d100 because it is basically a tiny chaotic bowling ball that refuses to stop rolling.

• D20 Modern on DMsGuild (affiliate link)

• D20 Future on DMsGuild (affiliate link)

• SW5e

• Bright

• RPGBOT.Store

• DnD 5e modern rules UA “Modern Magic”

• Dan Helmick’s update

• IMDB Maximum Overdrive

• Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey

• Dice Miner (affiliate link)

Key Takeaways

• Adapting fantasy RPGs to modern or sci-fi settings is not just about adding guns. You have to rethink combat assumptions, armor, hit points, movement, skills, equipment, enemies, and the economy.
• Previous d20-based games offer useful examples. d20 Star Wars experimented with wounds and vitality. d20 Modern used basic classes tied to ability scores, occupations, talents, and advanced classes. Star Wars Saga Edition showed some early design DNA that later appeared in 4e.
• Firearms and modern weapons change the math quickly. A pistol, rifle, grenade, or blaster can make traditional fantasy damage assumptions look very strange unless the system accounts for armor, accuracy, availability, legality, and consequences.
• Armor may need to work differently. In a modern game, characters probably are not walking around in plate armor, so armor might reduce damage, resist ballistic attacks, or be replaced partly by class-based defense or plot-armor-style scaling.
• Hit points can still work, but they need a clear interpretation. They might represent luck, stamina, near misses, tactical positioning, or cinematic survival rather than literal meat points.
• Vehicles change encounter design. Horses and overland travel are one thing. Cars, motorcycles, tanks, aircraft, and spaceships make movement, chase scenes, distance, and random encounters much more complicated.
• Skills and tools need updating. Computers, hacking, piloting, driving, engineering, and modern medicine may need to be skills, tool proficiencies, lore-style specialties, or full subsystems depending on how important they are to the campaign.
• The modern world makes Strength harder to justify unless the game gives it a reason to matter. Close quarters, carrying capacity, melee restrictions, grappling, armor, and specialized builds can help keep strong characters relevant.
• Classes may need reskinning rather than replacement. A barbarian might become a super-soldier, a rage-serum bruiser, or a minigun-wielding menace. A cleric might serve an ideal, philosophy, cosmic force, AI god, or belief system rather than a traditional deity.
• Magic can stay magical, become technology, or sit beside technology. Fireball might still be a spell, or it might be a grenade, a rocket launcher, a plasma weapon, or a problem for your insurance provider.
• Monsters still work if you treat them thoughtfully. Vampires, mind flayers, zombies, kaiju, and the Tarrasque can all survive in modern settings if their defenses, tactics, environment, and narrative role make sense.
• Access matters. Just because tanks, RPGs, and military hardware exist does not mean the party can buy them at Fantasy Costco. Price, legality, scarcity, black markets, and consequences are balancing tools.
• Currency may be better handled abstractly. Modern money can become tedious fast, so a wealth stat or resource system may work better than tracking every nickel, dime, credit card, crypto wallet, and suspicious suitcase full of cash.
• Tyler’s three-change rule is a useful warning sign. If you need to make three huge changes to force D&D into another genre, consider whether another RPG already does what you want better.
• The episode’s greatest lesson may be this: you can absolutely kill Tiamat with an Uzi, but first you need to know what that does to armor class, encounter balance, campaign tone, and the local black market.

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Meet the Hosts

• Tyler Kamstra – Master of mechanics, seeing the Pathfinder action economy like Neo in the Matrix.

• Randall James – Lore buff and technologist, always ready to debate which Lord of the Rings edition reigns supreme.

• Ash Ely – Resident cynic, chaos agent, and AI’s worst nightmare, bringing pure table-flipping RPG podcast energy.

Join the RPGBOT team where fantasy roleplaying meets real strategy, sarcasm, and community chaos.

How to Find Us:

In-depth articles, guides, handbooks, reviews, news on Tabletop Role Playing at RPGBOT.net

Tyler Kamstra

• BlueSky: @rpgbot.net
• TikTok: @RPGBOTDOTNET

Ash Ely

• Professional Game Master on StartPlaying.Games
• BlueSky: @GravenAshes
• YouTube: @ashravenmedia

Randall James

• BlueSky: @GrimoireRPG
• Amateurjack.com
• Read Melancon: A Grimoire Tale (affiliate link)

Producer Dan

• @Lzr_illuminati