(d20 Modern) Critical Locations

 I'm always just a little bit awestruck when I read a book, like Critical Locations (Eric Cagle, Owen K.C. Stephens, Christopher West) that actively aspires to be generic. It takes a special kind of audacity, one that disarms me before I've even begun to write. I could say, "This book is aimed at Gamemasters who need maps of generic locations where scenes of action and intrigue can play out" and that's not a catty piece of my internal monologue, it's a direct quote from the Introduction.

So, if you, you know, need a perfectly ordinary bowling alley or convention center or grocery store, you can flip to the appropriate section and there's a lovely full-page, full color map of the location and then on the opposite page, there's a description (in case you ever needed to explain to your players what a bank or a library was) and a sample NPC and either a new rule or a couple of adventure hooks (or sometimes both). It's not just a collection of generic maps, it's also a lucky dip rules expansion, where we can learn the rules for snow blindness (alongside the Arctic Research Station) or waking the neighbors with gunplay (with the Large Family House).

In it's own way, it's a beautiful thing. So functional. Such utility. You're GMing a d20 Modern game and you're confronted with the empty infinity of the imagination. The modern world? That's everything! Where to start? Not to worry, though, because Critical Locations will take you by the hand and say, "why not just start by describing a high school?"

Ukss Contribution: Given its premise and its pedigree, this book could have gotten away with being a lot more boring than it actually was. There was precious little surprise and delight, but it covered the basics admirably. Use the luxury yacht map to run a story about a gangster who sticks to international waters, the mansion map to tell a story of a rich guy trapped in his panic room by would-be kidnappers, the high school map in a game featuring a spooky librarian who just so happens to stock the occult books needed to solve the monster of the week mystery. It's generic, but it's not dull.

But it puts me in a bind because the stuff I love is a lot more whimsical and specific. What am I going to do, add canonical bowling or fast food to the world of Ukss? 

Yeah. Okay. Let's go with bowling. 

Some group of people, somewhere in this fantasy world, are going to have bowling alleys.