Talk:D20 Modern Equipment

Multiple Light-sabers

Is there a rule against light-sabers knockoffs, because I expected AT LEAST 2000 different homebrew versions. Zau 17:22, 23 July 2009 (MDT)

Might be that most people see it as a cliche concept by now, so no one bothers. There are, however, several versions in the regular D&D homebrew; I don't think many people work on d20 modern anyway. --TheWarforgedArtificer 17:26, 23 July 2009 (MDT)

Merge if possible (keeping the best). If too different then, of course, not. --Green Dragon 04:50, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Making this Page Readable

I was kind of hoping this page was kept manually, and I could update it to include a table with all the stats. But instead I see that it is an autogenerated list, so that's not really possible. Instead, I will separate it out into categories (weapons, armor, etc), so that it's easier to find the kind of equipment you are looking for. At least, that's the hope, I've never dealt with autogenerating functions before! JazzMan 03:21, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree; something akin to DnD Equipment. If you would not mind could you post an example here and we can review it? --Green Dragon 03:24, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually I tried it, what do you think? One thing I noticed right away is that a lot of the equipment is miscategorized, and some of the categories are empty. Do you think all the equipment should be one one page, or should it be separated into multiple pages like it is with DnD Equipment? There's so little Modern stuff that I don't know if it's necessary to add another click.JazzMan 03:34, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree. For now I think this works. When more is added we can think of something else. Looks good, thanks a lot! --Green Dragon 04:21, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

No problem! It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. The hard part is going to be to make sure everything is in the right category... JazzMan 04:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Do categories still have to be looked at? And what are your thoughts on including Halo CS information within the standard setup (or is their some reason - such as a gross variation)? No other campaign setting has its information split on content pages; since it can all be found within the campaign setting. --Green Dragon 04:49, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I think there are still some things in the wrong category; I was gone all weekend so I had to put my little project on hold. I did make sure that everything was in one of the categories (weapons, armor, etc), but there might be a few that are miscategorized completely.

Hrm, the more I think about it, the more I think this page should be set up closer to the D&D equipment page, but with the equipment separated by campaign setting, as necessary. I think it's a little silly to have "all equipment" and "Halo equipment" as the only two categories, but at the same time someone looking for a new weapon to add to their vanilla d20M game wouldn't want to use any of the homebrew stuff. What if we did something like this:

	General	Halo	Star Wars	Etc.
Armor	General Armor	Halo Armor	Star Wars Armor	Etc. Armor
Weapons	General Weapons	Halo Weapons	Star Wars Weapons	Etc. Weapons
Etc.	General Etc.	Halo Etc.	Star Wars Etc.	Etc. Etc.

...with formatting and wikilinks as appropriate. Most campaign settings (I believe) already have a separate equipment page so we can link to those; for the general homebrew categories we can create pages with the dpl's on them, just like the D&D page does. Does that make sense? If so, does it sound like a good idea? JazzMan 05:29, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I think I've fixed the overall categories on everything (armor, weapon, etc), though I haven't checked 100% of the subcategories (rifle, pistol, etc). I noticed a couple things though:

1. I think we would definitely benefit from the table I suggested above, along with categories for each homebrew setting. A lot of the equipment only makes sense within a custom campaign setting, and someone reading it expecting to find something useful in a core campaign won't know what's being talked about.
2. The templating is all over the place, and there are some equipment that is not designed to be used with d20 Modern, even though it's "modern" equipment. Don't know if this is the right talk page to address this, but this definitely needs to be sorted out.
3. While we're on the subject of categories, it seems strange to me that we categorize things as "pistols" and "rifles", when d20 Modern uses the broader categorization of "handguns" and "longarms". Shouldn't we use the same categorization?
4. Each category would benefit from a table with all the stats of the individual items. Don't think this would be possible using DPL, though, so it'd have to be a manual list which would just be messy.

Let me know what you all think. JazzMan 06:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

First you do not need a "general equipment" category. You can get the same results with |notcategory=equipmentsubset1, |notcategory=equipmentsubset2, |notcategory=equipmentsubset3, etc for each and every subset of equipment. That category should be removed and replaced with such a dpl for the general equipment.

Second,I think we should do equipment based on time-frames. For example D20 Modern has a few variations. One: D20 Modern; main. Two: D20 Modern Future, etc. We could maybe split the Halo things, etc into a more time-specific area (although maybe not just for Halo). I don't know - what are your thoughts? What time frames would even work?

How I see it.

1. D20 Modern Main Equipment
   1. Subset 1
   2. Subset 2
   3. etc, as appropriate
2. D20 Modern Future (or are the rules different)
   1. Halo area?
   2. Starwars area?
3. RC

Your thoughts? --Green Dragon 18:09, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The reason I added the General Equipment category was not so I could use the DPL tag, but so that they could all be categorized. It seemed like if we have a category for weapons and armor, we should also have a category for "not (weapons and armor)". I can remove them if you want.

Sorting by time period is actually a really good idea. (I think I saw that suggestion somewhere else, actually, but I don't remember where anymore). The easiest way to do it would be to sort by Progress Level (PL), as that's the most organized system, plus it's already a game mechanic. The obvious downside is that none of the articles currently reference PL, but it should be easy enough to figure out, and they really need to have it there anyway. This also eliminates the problem of having to create a new category for all equipment: all Halo equipment will be PL X, so it just goes in the PL X category. (Maybe this should be mentioned on the page though? A note or table that says "for Halo Equipment, see PL X".) The table could look something like this then:

Progress Level	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 0 (Stone Age)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 1 (Bronze/Iron Age)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 2 (Middle Ages)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 3 (Age of Reason)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 4 (Industrial Age)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 5 (Information Age	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 6 (Fusion Age)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 7 (Gravity Age)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 8 (Energy Age)	Armor	Weapons	So on
PL 9+	Armor	Weapons	So on

I'm guessing that PL 0 - PL 3 will most likely be empty, since people are more likely to search through the D&D equipment, which is largely interchangeable, though technically it is possible to have d20 Modern equipment at these PLs (Urban Arcana has a lot of "d20 Modernized" D&D equipment). PL 4 falls into d20 Past (though I don't think there's currently any PL 4 homebrew equipment), PL 5 is standard d20 Modern, PL 6 - PL 8 is d20 Future, and PL 9+ isn't even really defined (it's reserved for anything more advanced than PL 8).

Could it work? JazzMan 19:23, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I like it, I think it should be implemented. Also, no CS specific areas, right? They would just have to fit into a specific progess level?

I think Starwars would be PL 6 (no major colonies in space, but some planet colonies). And still projectile fighting is used. But no teleporting. I think Halo would also be 7... They have shields but also projectile fighting is used. But also energy fighting is used. I don't know. Your thoughts?

Or should the structure be entirely equipment-item specific and a CS able to span multiple PL's? --Green Dragon 21:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I think, in general, all equipment from a given campaign setting should be the same PL. Even if your space-age game uses gunpowder weapons (like Battlestar Galactica), these will be made better than modern weapons, so they are of a higher PL. If for some reason someone creates a campaign setting with vastly different PLs (which might happen if you are visited by advanced aliens or something), then we just spread the equipment across the PLs. I think for figuring out which PL everything belongs, it should be pretty easy to compare to existing d20 Future equipment to decide. (I don't know enough off the top of my head to know where Star Wars and Halo would fit, but PL 6 and 7 seem about right). If not, we can always drop a line by the author and see what they think it should be.

I've got band practice tonight, but I'll start getting this underway in the next couple days.

• Phase 1: assign PL to all equipment, contacting original creator if necessary. Create categories for each PL.
• Phase 2: create separate DPL pages for each category (PL3 armor, PL4 weapon, etc)
• Phase 3: redesign this page to link to the phase 2 DPL pages
• Phase 4: rejoice! JazzMan 23:47, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Do names like "D20 Modern Equipment Progress Level 1 Armor" sound good? --Green Dragon 04:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

←Reverted indentation to one colon

You mean for the titles of the separate DPL pages? To be consistent with the D&D equipment page it should probably be something like "D20 Modern Progress Level 1 Armors" (remove the word "equipment", pluralize "armor") or "User Progress Level 1 Armors". JazzMan 05:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

D&D equipment pages are a little outdated (name wise). It's best to have the entirety so people know no matter what. I think the setup you came up with is great, however I have a question. Should the Armor, General, Weapons, and FX Items columns be organized alphabetically? So Armor, FX Items, General, and Weapons? --Green Dragon 21:18, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why not. The only reason I put them in the order they are in now is because it's the order the MSRD uses. JazzMan 22:34, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Kotor LOL

A big "lol" at whoever transcribed all the equipment from Knights of the Old Republic Video Game. --Jay Freedman 04:27, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Categories to Seperate Pages

But what would a page containing all PL 5 equipment contain that the PL 5 category does not contain? And what does the category contain that the page does not contain? It just seems to me that linking to the categories is a whole lot easier than copy/pasting the 10 categories into 10 new pages. JazzMan 16:09, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

D&D Wiki uses pages not categories to organize pages. Why is this? Off the top of my head I can think of three reasons. The first is organizational value. We can split content when organizing it or transclude information. The second is aesthetic value. We can make pages look however we want, for example with columned dpls or dpls with inclusions. The second reason is categories are used differently. For example (if possible) categories should link down from themselves, having subcategories down to where it is not possible. See also Category:Categories. Anyway, for example, if we wanted to split the all pages by the "Improving, Reviewing, and Removing Articles" method we would need pages. Does this have to be the case? No, but then this would have to be discussed. --Green Dragon 21:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not convinced, but create the pages because those redlinks have been there way too long and I'm tired of looking at them. I just don't see the point, at this moment in time. JazzMan 22:34, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I take it back, there is a difference: The DPL throws up an error message when there's nothing in the category. Should I just use the other DPL function? That one doesn't look nearly as good, but it won't throw up error messages, either. JazzMan 22:42, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind, I got it to work. JazzMan 22:59, 11 May 2010 (UTC)