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"The world has… changed. Goblins ride the subway. Dragons rule the boardrooms. Monsters haunt the alleys of the urban jungle. It’s the dawn of a new era—the modern world is in the midst of a transformation and most people don’t even know it. A quantum shift has occurred in the fabric of reality; magic has suddenly become very real, and creatures that before were only found in fairy tales and nightmares now walk the streets. It’s the world outside your window, with a serious twist." –p.4
Urban Arcana is a 320-page full-color hardcover campaign setting intended for use with the d20 Modern role-playing game from Wizards of the Coast. It depicts the modern world we know so well, but with a twist: the "wall between realities," known in the setting as Shadow, is currently in a weakened state, and creatures from another universe—one populated with elves, dragons, and wizards—have begun to slide into ours. This melding of realities generally goes unnoticed by the populace at large, however. The human mind, Urban Arcana tells us, trained to believe that such strange creatures and phenomena simply do not exist, tends to gloss over and rationalizes any encounters with Shadow creatures. An ogre becomes a large man, a werewolf a big dog, and so on. The player characters, on the other hand, have pierced this veil of mundanity, and are fully aware that strange creatures walk the earth.
Now, I’ve heard detractors claim that this is a hackneyed idea, stolen whole cloth from sources like the World of Darkness and such, or that it’s just D&D with guns and techno music, big whoop. To them I say: bollocks. Conceptually, the ideas behind Urban Arcana are fairly ingenious, definitely distinct from the ol’ WoD, and, even if boiled down to "D&D in the modern world," are rife with possibility. It’s sort of like They Live, but with dwarves, and that, my friend, is pretty damn cool.
Unfortunately, the real problem with these ideas, as we’ll see, is that Wizards has done a really shoddy job of presenting them to us.
The Substance
A quick run-down of the chapter listing reads as follows:
Introduction (6 pages)
Chapter 1: Characters (56 pages)
Chapter 2: Equipment (17 pages)
Chapter 3: Spells (35 pages)
Chapter 4: Magic Items (20 pages)
Chapter 5: Running the Game (30 pages)
Chapter 6: Organizations (30 pages)
Chapter 7: Creatures (47 pages)
Chapter 8: Locations (25 pages)
Chapter 9: D&D and Urban Arcana (11 pages)
Chapter 10: Adventures (2 pages)
Adventures (30 pages)
Character Sheet (2 pages)
(No, there’s no index. Boo!)
If you’re like me, you might notice that there seems to be scant space dedicated to actual setting material; no history chapter, no geography chapter. This will seem ever more scant when I mention that Chapter 5: Running the Game is a collection of general GM’ing advice, e.g., the virtues of one-shot adventures vs. ongoing campaigns, pacing (addressed TWICE), running villains, where you get ideas, and so on. Or when you see that a good chunk of Chapter 7: Creatures are stats for such D&D stalwarts as dragons, beholders, efreeti, orcs, wererats… oh, and a complete repetition of the descriptions and abilities of ALL the available player-character races that you’d already read in Chapter 1: Characters. Or that Chapter 8: Locations doesn’t actually describe any specific locations in the Urban Arcana setting, but instead provides guidelines on how to build a city of your own, with general info (and, admittedly, some useful floorplans) on common city components, such as "Historic Ethnic Neighborhood" or "Red Light District." Or that Chapter 6: Organizations hastily describes 28 organizations in about as many pages, not counting the big stat blocks that take away even more space. Or maybe that the 30 pages of adventures are really one connected mini-campaign fairly pedestrian enough that it’s likely to be 30 pages that you may never use.
So, one feels the need to turn to their copy of Urban Arcana and ask: "Yo, G. Whassup with that?" To which your copy of the book will respond: "You don’t need us to describe the world to you—just walk to your window and look outside… This book is a toolbox and a toy box filled with the pieces necessary to play an Urban Arcana game." (p.8). Which is funny, because I was sort of expecting a campaign setting, partially due to the words "campaign setting" emblazoned on the front of the book.
Which gets to my main issue with the book as a whole. Urban Arcana is not so much a setting, but rather an extended campaign model akin to those presented in the main d20 Modern core book. There are few if any specifics presented here. In a way, this makes Urban Arcana much like the core D&D books; a collection of mechanical pieces and default assumptions with which to build a campaign in the Urban Arcana "mode."
Now, for some people (even me, on a good day), this can be a positive thing. World building is a favorite pastime among many gamers. And Urban Arcana certainly does provide the reader with a lot of doodads, gewgaws, and tool-thingies to use in crafting a campaign world beset by Shadow.
The chapter on characters, for example, provides us with new starting occupations of a decidedly arcane bent (apothecary, hedge wizard, novitiate, psychic, shadow scholar, and squire), more feats (though mostly imported metamagic/metapsionic feats from D&D, and a reprint of the Wild Talent feat from d20 Modern… for some reason), "shadowkind" species for PC’s to play (all the standard D&D races are here, as well as orcs, snakeblooded humans, and more powerful races like drow, bugbears, and tieflings), new advanced classes (arcane arranger, archaic weaponmaster, glamourist, mystic, shadow hunter, shadowjack, speed demon, street warrior, swashbuckler, techno mage, thrasher and wildlord), and introduces the concept of prestige classes to d20 Modern (archmage, artificer, ecclesiarch, and the holy/unholy knight).
The equipment chapter is one of my favorites in this "toolkit" regard, particularly because it’s filled with a lot of gear and information that should rightly have been in the d20 Modern core book. We get stats for a whole slew of new weapons both archaic (crossbows, slings, nets, maces, swords, polearms, and so on) and contemporary (including fun additions like paint-ball guns and super-soakers), not to mention various armors (chain mail and the like), numerous vehicles (including the ever-bitchin’ 1967 Chevrolet Camaro), and general equipment (parabolic mics, hydraulic compressors, road flares, etc.). The piece(s) de resistances here, though, are nifty little sidebars such as "Operating a Bicycle," "What’s Inside a Police Cruiser?", "What’s Inside a Fire Truck?", and "What’s in an Emergency Aid Vehicle?" This chapter is useful for any d20 Modern campaign, and simply should have been in the core book.
The spells and magic item chapters give us a fair share of reprinted D&D material, as well as some elements "modernized" for the Urban Arcana setting. Sure, we see spells like Obscuring Mist and Dancing Lights, and items with ghost touch abilities or the ol’ Sphere of Annihilation, but we also get cool spells like Synchronicity; your PC will never have to sit at a red light or wait for an elevator ever again. Or Recharge, which allows you to cure yourself of various aliments by literally sticking your finger in an electrical outlet. Or how about the Chain Saw of the Psycho, the Decoder Ring, Bad Hair Day Clip, or Universal ID, which are all pretty self-explanatory, and all pretty dang cool. There’s also a host of magical add-ons for vehicles, such as the Nondescript Paint Job, Seats of Safety, and the Fuzzy Dice of Luck. Oh, and let’s not forget the sidebar on "Casting Spells Through Email."
Also, Urban Arcana introduces us to the concept of Incantations. Wondering what happened to all those spells above 5th level you don’t see in d20 Modern’s FX rules? Well, they’ve been transformed into elaborate rituals that can be cast by anyone with enough ranks in Knowledge (arcane lore). Each incantation requires a number of successful skill checks, at least 60 minutes casting time, and often a certain number of secondary casters. These casters do not make skill checks unless the incantation in question involves a skill check other than Knowledge (arcane lore); they just need to be present. A number of standard incantations are presented (e.g., Create Undead, Polymorph), as well as a system of "seeds" to use in creating new ones. Those of you who’ve read the Epic Level Handbook for D&D will recognize this system as being pretty much the same as epic spell casting.
Still, it’s a nice addition, reminiscent of the excellent spell casting rules in Call of Cthulhu d20, and very much in keeping with a lot of modern fantasy ("We must stop Mr. Dunhill before he can complete the ritual!"). Some of the suggested seeds were a bit goofy to me, though. With a minimum of 60 minutes casting time, it would seem that incantations would be sort of pointless to use for say, damaging spells that allow a Reflex save. "Somebody tie that orc down so I can cast this mutha!" Nonetheless, incantations are a great concept.
Unfortunately, the spiffy ideas kind of begin and end here. As I mentioned above, chapters five through eight range from too general to too uninspired.
The Organizations chapter, for example, crams a lot of information on a lot of groups into a fairly small space, and the information presented is awfully ho-hum. We’re presented with some possible Big Bads, such as disguised efreeti businessman Franz Draco and Draco Industries—the AOL Time-Warner of evil—or the Corsone Syndicate, a mafia family led by illithid Louis Corsone and his minotaur cronies, the Kuzzer brothers. There are also benevolent (and shadowkind-friendly) organizations such as the all-Halfling Cirque des Moitie, the society-for-wayward-monsters known as The Displaced, or the Swiss Juncture of Gnomes ("SJG", a little in-joke for you Illuminati fans). The ubiquitous PC-employing Department-7 is also mentioned, as are other PC-centric groups such as the Knights of the Silver Dragon and PSI.
My biggest issue here is simply that the descriptions are alternately too brief, too boring, or too repetitive. One group, The Beloved, simply made no sense to me: a secret Skulls-esque fraternity/sorority that deals in blood sacrifices and is "devoted solely and wholly to death and mayhem." Its members tend to be captains of industry who foment discord and introduce design flaws in consumer goods. And they worship… Wee Jas, D&D’s lawful neutral deity of death and magic? Nonsense. Nerull or Erythnul maybe, but Wee Jas?
The monsters, as mentioned before, reprint a lot of standard D&D creatures. There are some new creatures, such as the Demonic Auto, Gear Golem, the Giger-esque Grendelspawn, and the Living Dumpster, but they constitute maybe 30% of the creatures in the book. They also seem to revolve around a small handful of themes, namely garbage and toxic waste.
The D&D and Urban Arcana chapter gives us about two pages of material on importing rules and items from D&D into your Urban Arcana game, and then rounds out the remaining ten pages or so with… expanded rules for psionics. Not that psionics are a part of the default Urban Arcana setting (oops, I mean campaign model), mind you.
Finally, we get thirty-odd pages of a sample adventure—a mini-campaign, really—to get you started. I’m not going to include any spoilers here. Suffice it to say that there are kobolds, an old wizard, drow, various underground complexes, and, of course, Department-7. Kind of a snoozer, but a good GM should be able to make something out of it.
Anyway, as was mentioned earlier, all of this could be fairly useful if you’re looking for more of a toolkit approach to a setting, and simply need some elements stat-ed out for use in your home-brewed Urban Arcana campaign. Honestly, I may be disappointed simply because I was expecting (and feel that Wizards had led me to believe) something more along the lines of Dark*Matter with more fantasy bits. I mean, is it wrong to expect something titled a "campaign setting" to, you know, actually provide me with a setting? To flesh out the world and present interesting locations, NPCs, history, and adventure seeds? To present concrete explanations for at least some of the fantastical elements? I understand that I can do a lot of this, but after laying down my $40, should I have to do ALL of it?
On top of this, the few ideas presented in Urban Arcana are, in my opinion, less than inspiring. Yes, we’ve got very cool spells, items, and some fairly interesting advanced classes that mix modern elements with D&D archetypes. But the whole concept of Shadow is kept very nebulous, and its impact on society seems to get conveniently hand-waved when necessary. What about the impact of various creatures or forces that CAN’T be rationalized away by the mundane mind? How has the government been affected? The economy? Industry? Technology? How do shadowkind feel about being torn from their home universe, or that the majority of people can never see them for what they are? Happy? Sad? Angry? Are there parts of the world with higher concentrations of shadowkind than others? Do Halflings prefer Boston to Lisbon? Montana to Quebec? Is there a secret history lurking behind the history we learn in school? Inquiring minds want to know!
The best way I can think to exemplify this lack of creativity is to make a comparison. The introductory adventure presented in the book is, as I mentioned, pretty lackluster. Kobolds lead to old wizard, old wizard leads to Department-7, Department-7 leads to monsters in caverns, monsters in caverns lead to suffering. It’s D&D in the modern world, with very little accommodation made for the interesting possibilities of mixing the two. Compare this to an excellent campaign starting idea presented on the Second World Simulations site, in an article called Hitchhikers. If Urban Arcana had been even half as inspiring as this idea, it would have rocked.
The Style
Like most Wizards products, Urban Arcana is a pretty gorgeous book. The binding has an over all Titanium-PowerBook-somebody-stepped-on look and feel, with a very nice cover by Dave Johnson depicting three drow armed to the teeth and dressed in clothes that woulnd’t look out of place on MTV’s TRL. The interior maintains a similar look to the d20 Modern core book, though with a different (but still, alas, sans-serif) font. The page numbers are backed with what looks like a spot of spray-paint that slowly drips down the pages as you progress through the book; a nice touch. The interior art is generally well done, with some great pieces by Jake Parker, Christopher Shy, and all-too-few pieces by the immensely talented Kalman Andrasofsky. Most of the art, though, I found a little too splotchy and not quite up to par with what we saw in the d20 Modern core rulebook. Still, it’s all in living color and generally pleasing to the eye.
However, as far as overall presentation goes, the art does little to offset the fact that the book is rife with typos (even in the table of contents), mislabeled tables, and D&D elements that don’t apply, such as the Wildlord’s ability to "share spells" with their animal companion, even though they don’t get spells and the ability is never actually described in the book, or that the concept of a 6th-level spell gets mentioned, even though no such thing exists in Urban Arcana. There’s even a typo (arto?) on the back cover, where we see Franz Draco sitting in his office with a big sign that says "Arago Industries" on the wall behind him. Frankly, I’m quite amazed this book was released in such a state.
The Conclusion
The best that can be said about Urban Arcana is that it’s a mixed bag. I feel that it utterly fails in being a useable campaign setting; a collection of guidelines and monster stats simply does not constitute a setting. It does, nonetheless, contain a great deal of crunchy bits that almost any d20 Modern fan will find useful. The equipment chapter is excellent, the additional spells and magic items are generally fun, and the new classes will be de rigueur for anyone running a modern fantasy campaign. But even these useful sections of the book are, unfortunately, hampered by a certain lack of flair, as well as the aforementioned typos. Even more unfortunate is that these useful sections only comprise about half the book. In general, I feel that the designers were so engrossed with creating all of the crunchy bits ("Dood! It's a monstrous dumpster! Sweet!"), they forgot to look at the big picture. Why is Shadow encroaching? How has the world changed? What drives the PCs to seek encounters with shadowkind? What themes is Urban Arcana trying to explore? Unfonrtunately, the authors don't seem interested in exploring these questions.
Stan!, one of the designers of Urban Arcana, has said that the setting was the original inspiration for d20 Modern. I find it strange that something that could inspire such a great RPG would, when presented in final form, be so uninspiring. The book very much gives the impression of being rushed. Given the untapped possibilities in the setting’s concept, this is pretty disappointing. How Wizards managed to accomplish such mediocrity in a major release, while simultaneously producing consistently amazing d20 Modern-based mini-games for Polyhedron is really beyond me.
I also am not sure who Wizards thinks the setting’s target market is. The repetition of content from various D&D sources, in both this product and the core book, seems to imply an assumption that they’re targeting non-D&D players, yet I can’t really see the appeal a setting focused on "D&D in the modern world" would have to someone not interested in D&D enough to own any of the books.
In an ideal world, I would have loved to see all of the D&D inspired material removed from the d20 Modern core book and placed in Urban Arcana, and all of the setting-neutral material from Urban Arcana, like the equipment chapter and GM’ing advice, put in the d20 Modern core book where it belongs. Then, I’d like to see the resulting Urban Arcana book tossed into the dustbin and have the designers start from scratch. Forget about lifting pieces whole cloth from D&D, and give us an intriguing, idea-filled campaign setting with a healthy dose of tools for importing material from the D&D books virtually 100% of the target audience probably already owns.
So, overall, I feel Urban Arcana merits a 2 for substance, as it certainly needs work. For style, I’d rate it a 4, simply because, warts and all, it’s generally up to Wizards’ high standards for glossy hardcovers. If you’re a d20 Modern devotee looking to run games with fantasy elements, you’ll probably want to pick it up. If you’re a just looking for ideas to steal for any d20 Modern game, you might want to find a cheap copy on ebay. If you’re neither of these, save your money.
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