Three figures face the viewer, under the words Everyday Heroes. One figure is a woman with long hair and a headband, carrying a spiked baseball bat, another is a burly man in a tank top, and the last is a slimmer man in a vest and hat. Behind them, there is an explosion.
In the time since this article was originally published, more information about Evil Genius Games and the business practices associated with the owner have come to light. While we still greatly respect the work done by all of the designers and other people that helped to realize this game and supplements, we did want to share this article from ENWorld to provide context in addition to the information in this article.

The Rise And Fall Of Evil Genius Games | EN World Tabletop RPG News & Reviews

The following First Impression is going to cover a lot of ground, because the RPG we’re looking at hit the ground running. The Kickstarter for Everyday Heroes ended in June of 2022, funding a core rulebook and what was called in the Kickstarter the 2023 season of cinematic adventures. These were all adventures based in various movie franchises, ranging from The Crow, Escape from New York, Highlander, Kong: Skull Island, Pacific Rim, Rambo, Total Recall, and Universal Soldier. If there was any question that the game was designed to emulate the narrative of action movies, the licensed adventures definitely worked hard to communicate that goal.

The impetus for Everyday Heroes was to create a new version of d20 Modern, the modern roleplaying game derived from the same game engine as the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. While the game never quite hit the same heights as D&D 3e, it did go on to produce several supplements, including Urban Arcana, d20 Menace Manual, d20 Weapons Locker, d20 Future, d20 Past, d20 Apocalypse, d20 Cyberspace, d20 Future Tech, d20 Critical Locations, and the d20 adaptation of the Dark*Matter setting, originally created for the Alternity game system. 

With all of that out of the way, let’s smash cut to how Everyday Heroes attempts to follow d20 Modern’s path, while carving its own way.

Disclaimer

Evil Genius Games did provide me with review copies of the core rulebook, as well as the Rambo and Universal Soldier cinematic adventures. To do a broader First Impression article, I purchased The Vault, as well as PDFs of the line of products as it currently stands, with the exception of some of the short PDF only expansions Evil Genius has been recently producing. I haven’t had the opportunity to play the game, but as it’s based on the 5e SRD, I’m familiar with many of the resolution mechanics. I did create multiple characters using multiple sources, and ran a few scenarios by myself to look at how the gears interacted. 

 Everyday Heroes

Publisher: D. Todd Scott
Editor-In-Chief: Owen K.C. Stephens
Producer: Stan!
Game Designers: Sigfried Trent, Chris “Goober” Ramsley
Additional Game Design: D. Todd Scott Design
Consultant: Jeff Grubb
Lead Editor: Michele Carter
Editors: Michele Carter, Matt Click, Scott Fitzgerald Gray
Proofreader: Russell Schneider
Art Director: D. Todd Scott, Bora Haxhirai
Layout: Bora Haxhirai, Charlotte Irrgang
Cover Art: Ned Chaushev, Wilson Andres Carreño Guevara
Project Manager: Jennifer Barnette
Community Manager: The Noir Enigma
Interior Artists: Ines Muñoz Diaz, Lorenzo de Sanctis, Abdelmounim Bouazzaoui, Jozsef Vajko

If you look at the credits above, and you played d20 Modern, you may recognize some of the names. While the team created their own game, they did have some consultants to explain the context in which d20 Modern was created, and why they made the design choices they made.

I’m going to be looking at a whole lot of books, but I will say this about the Core book and The Vault. These are massive, solid tomes. The artwork is solid for every volume that I looked at, but it does vary in style. That’s not a surprise. Even though the core competency that the system is trying to attain is to emulate action movies, there are a range of genres that can be expressed in action movie form. The Crow, for example, has different artwork than Highlander. There aren’t a lot of photographic references taken from the movies in the cinematic adventures. The artwork that does appear in the cinematic adventures, however, does make its way into the Vault, in instances where those images don’t expressly model the IP in the adventure.

The Core Rulebook

The Core rulebook is 460 pages long. At first blush, that may not be surprising for a game based on the 5e SRD, but Everyday Heroes doesn’t have the extensive selection of spells found in D&D 5e. What it does have are lots of customized rules bits that are connected to specific classes, equipment, and adversaries from different genres. It’s worth noting that while the book does talk about adventures, pacing, and improvisational moments at the table, it doesn’t spend much time talking about how to emulate the genres it includes. To some extent, it leaves that to the Cinematic Adventures.

The Core Rulebook has science fiction and supernatural creatures, but, at least in this volume, you are assumed to be, well, Everyday Heroes. This means, you may be hyper-competent, but you aren’t an alien yourself, genetically engineered, cybernetically enhanced, or able to cast spells. Those options are out there, but they are in the cinematic adventures and the Vault rules compendium. You also only have a ten level range for your character, to rein in the need for escalating abilities in the 11th-20th level range.

Archetypes

Like d20 Modern, one of the big building blocks of the system is framing characters by their attributes. There are Strong, Agile, Tough, Smart, Wise, and Charming heroes. Instead of framing these as classes, these are instead character archetypes. Each archetype in the book has three classes. So while the terminology changes, there are similarities to D&D 5e’s class/subclass setup.

Your archetype determines what classes you can take, and it provides two core gameplay mechanics for the archetype at 1st and 2nd level. After that, your archetype level is just showing you the progression of your defense bonus and some other element that is part of the gameplay of the archetype. 

As an example, Tough Heroes get a bonus to attack someone that has damaged you, and you have damage reduction that ramps up with your level. Strong Heroes get reckless attack at first level, and power attack at 2nd level. Most of the classes follow this pattern, except the Smart Hero and the Charming Hero.

Smart Heroes have a number of plans that they know, and genius points that they can spend. Charming Heroes have a number of tricks that they know. Plans and tricks are the closest we get to spellcasting. While you don’t do anything supernatural as a baseline Smart hero, you can spend your genius points to enact a plan. Some of these plans allow you to use a reaction based on the concept that you planned for the event that triggered the reaction, while others introduce something into the scene that you set up all along. Charming Heroes have tricks, which are usually more compact than plans, but unlike the Smart Hero, all of the tricks are unique to the class the character takes. For example, the duelist gets combat moves similar to a Battlemaster fighter in D&D, while the Icon gets tricks that intimidate others, make it more difficult to attack them, or draw attention to them.

I’ve seen a lot of 5e SRD games that adapt the system for other genres beyond heroic fantasy. There are a lot of mechanics, including spells, that are largely reskinned. Some of these work well, and others feel a little strained. In this case, I like that both plans and tricks are something you can wrap your head around if you understand spells in D&D 5e, but they aren’t 1:1 conversions of spells to an “action hero” flavor.

Classes

The archetypes are there to establish a playstyle, but what modifies and flavors those playstyles are the classes. Classes have a mix of new traits, and traits that modify that core archetype play style. For example, the Heavy Gunner gets an ability that lets them recklessly attack and power attack with ranged weapons, but the MMA Fighter gets the ability to attack and apply grapples and do more damage with unarmed attacks. The classes, as you might be able to glean from “Heavy Gunner” and “MMA Fighter,” can be very specialized. This is even more evident in the cinematic adventures.

There is no multi-classing in the game, and feats aren’t an optional subsystem. Feats are split between Major Feats and Minor Feats, and several of the Archetype advancements involve providing more feats. The only way to pick up abilities from other Archetypes and classes is to use the multiclassing feats. There are Archetype multiclassing feats that characters can take from 4th level on, which gives a minor version of the core gameplay mechanic of that archetype. There are also two class feats for each class, one that you can take at 4th level that grants a lesser version of the low level abilities, and an 8th level advanced class feat that gives access to some of the higher level class abilities.

A titanic gorilla, with the sun behind him, towering over the mountains, with two helicopters flying towards him. The lettering says Kong: Skull Island, A Cinematic Adventure at the bottom.I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed

Armor and Defense are different concepts in this game, and both of those interact with other rules regarding damage mitigation. Each Archetype provides a Defense bonus that goes up with level, and lets you add your Archetype’s primary ability bonus to your defense. That flattens out the expected defense at different levels, because it’s designed to scale for all PCs equally. Armor, on the other hand . . . isn’t damage reduction. When you would drop to zero, if the damage done doesn’t have a penetration value higher than your armor value, you get to roll an Armor Save to avoid the damage. So armor really only comes into the equation when you are in danger of taking damage that would reduce you to 0 hit points.

Damage Reduction does exist in the game. On the PCs’ side of things, this primarily comes in the form of a class feature for the Tough hero. Armor doesn’t usually have Damage Reduction, but some gear does, but specifies the type of damage the item reduces, such as cold weather gear providing damage reduction against cold. I’m a little surprised that the Penetration Value of weapons doesn’t seem to interact with Damage Reduction, because that would widen its usefulness outside of just when someone is about to drop to zero hit points.

Other Mechanized Tropes

Chases are one area where these rules deviate from the core rules. The chase rules don’t follow the pattern for chases outlined in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but follow their own structure. Chases are always abstract, and when a chase starts, the GM determines the limit to how many rounds the chase will last. Various actions cause characters to gain chase points, and various hazards can cause characters to add chase points to their opponents. The rules can also be used to model races, in case you live your life a quarter mile at a time. Speaking of genre specific rules, there are some specialized classes that have abilities that interact with chase points.

There are vehicle rules that work a little different than the vehicle rules we see in D&D 5e as well. In addition to having a few special rules for chases that specifically interact with vehicle rules. Additionally, vehicles have multiple condition tracks that works a little like Exhaustion in the D&D 5e rules. Vehicles have tracks for body damage, loss of control, and loss of power.

Dangerous Opposition

While the core classes are geared towards portraying modern action heroes, the threats detailed in the book pull from multiple genres. Some of the categories of NPCs and threats include:

  • Criminals
  • Cultists
  • Spies
  • Law Enforcement
  • Military
  • Security 
  • Robots
  • Animals
  • Historic
  • Science Fiction

Some of these NPCs serve as more proof of concept characters for different media properties. For example, there are unstoppable slashers, licker zombies, alien bug queens, and alien hunters.

Adventure Time

That was a very truncated look at a lot of material that exists in the core rulebook, but I really wanted to look at the line as a whole, so I’m going to stop myself from touring the core book, and start to look at the cinematic adventures.

As of the time of this writing, these are the available cinematic adventures:

  • Escape from New York
  • Highlander
  • Kong: Skull Island
  • Pacific Rim
  • Rambo
  • The Crow
  • Total Recall
  • Universal Soldier

About half of the book is a sourcebook for the setting, and the second half is an adventure set in the same world as the movie (but not running you through the events of the movie). Some of the genre GMing advice that wasn’t present in the core books is found in these books. All of the adventures have at least one new class, but the number of new classes vary from one (Pacific Rim) to six (Total Recall). These classes usually play with the themes of the movie from which they are derived. Pacific Rim introduces a class for playing bonded twins (important for being drift compatible for Jaegers), while Total Recall provides specific classes for different mutant abilities. 

As you may expect, each of these cinematic adventures introduces new rules modifications. Kong: Skull Island and Pacific Rim provide rules for dealing with Kaiju sized characters, The Crow introduces ritual magic, Total Recall introduces rules for mutations, and Universal Soldier introduces cybernetics.

In some cases, the license is very specifically for the movie in the title. Highlander doesn’t reference any of the other movies that don’t exist or the syndicated series. The Crow mentions the James O’Barr comic, but is only based on the movies, mainly focusing on the first movie and the first sequel. Others have a little more leeway in what information they can present. Pacific Rim has backstory information from both movies, and even references the Netflix The Black series, but doesn’t detail any aspects of that show. I was a little surprised that Kong: Skull Island references events from Godzilla Versus Kong, and details elements of the Monsterverse IP, including Monarch and the Hollow Earth, however, while Godzilla is actually mentioned when some of the events of the Monsterverse are recounted, none of the Toho monsters have stats in the book. 

All of the adventures assume that you can use the Archetypes and classes from the core rulebook, although some may be more or less appropriate in different adventures. An Icon might have a hard time using their celebrity based abilities in the Escape from New York adventure. Bringing a Heavy Gunner to Highlander or The Crow feels a little off tone, even though the military and heavy machine guns exist in those settings.

Three giant robots, one green, one blue, and one orange, standing in the wreckage of some skyscrapers. The title reads Pacific Rim: A Cinematic Adventure.Back Together Again

I wanted to make sure I circled back around to one of the most recent products in the Everyday Heroes like, The Vault. The Vault collects most of the special rules that were presented in “season one” of the cinematic adventures, and collects them in one place, not attached to specific IP. These options are organized into standard options and Extraordinary options. Extraordinary assumes some degree of magic or science fiction surrounding those options.

Unlike the core book, not everyone has to be standard human, as the cinematic adventures provided rules for cyborgs, mutants, immortals, and synthetics that can be brought back into this volume. There are fifteen new classes, not counting the ten Extraordinary classes that have been reverse engineered from the cinematic adventures. There is a new chapter on mutations, as well a new section in the equipment chapter providing rules for cybernetics.

Not all of the rules included in The Vault came from the cinematic adventures, at least as far as I can tell. There are rules for playing kids, running a 0 level session, and exceeding the 10th level cap, although the rules acknowledge that they didn’t really design the game to break this cap. The levels beyond 10th function in a similar manner to the levels beyond 20th in the DMG for D&D 5e, where you are mainly picking up new feats to customize your character more as you level up. Absolute Armor makes it impossible to harm an NPC without a weapon with a greater Penetration Value than the armor. Cannon Fodder allows you to make “minions” out of NPCs, dispatching them in one hit. Cinematic Actions introduce a mechanic similar to Legendary Actions in D&D 5e, except they just allow the NPC to take an action out of turn when they spend one of their Cinematic Action points.

The broad concept of mechs is brought into this book, but not the Jaegers from Pacific Rim. Along with kaiju fighting robots, there are also kaiju. In general, I like that the Titan rules let you scale up a standard threat stat block. A Titan scale character fighting a titan scale character uses the same stat blocks as regular characters, but a regular scale character trying to harm a titan scale creature needs to do 100 points of damage to even start damaging the creature. Because of the scale rules, it’s much easier to have a regular character step into a mech where they can retain aspects of their regular stat block, and everything just runs like a normal encounter, as long as it’s between the mech and the titan.

One of my favorite parts of the book are the Titanic creatures they detail. While it probably would have been pushing it to have included some of the conceptually based Titanic creatures in Kong: Skull Island, a few of these ring some bells, and others are pretty interesting on their own. One of my favorites is the Meltdown Incarnate, not because it reminds me of any Monsterverse or Pacific Rim creature, but because it reminds me of the Apokalips-spawned giant Brimstone from the DC Universe. Just a giant walking embodiment of nuclear power, waiting to irradiate people with its atomic blast. 

Using the Toolbox

I am a simple person that is set in my ways. If you give me a modern action RPG, I’m probably going to test it by making G.I. Joe characters. This time around I decided to try one simple concept and one complicated concept. I made two characters, Roadblock and Snake Eyes. My goal was to see how many levels it took for me to feel like the character was a good representation of their most commonly portrayed abilities.

Roadblock was pretty simple. I knew I was going to do Roadblock as soon as I saw there was a Heavy Gunner class, because you might as well say “this is the Roadblock class.” Except that Hasbro would sue you. Anyway, there isn’t much to say about Roadblock’s build, except for two things. The first was a pleasant surprise–there is a minor feat called Great Cook. This really was built to handle Roadblock.

Unfortunately, even though the Heavy Gunner can ignore the mounted property of a weapon, meaning that you could carry around that machine gun that’s usually mounted, the bulk rules of the game make it a lot harder to handle this. Heavy Gunners don’t get a “discount” on bulk for the weapons they are carrying, so Roadblock couldn’t comfortably tout his trusty weapon until 4th level. That’s not terrible, but if he tries to carry around that big gun before you can pump up that Strength score, he’s going to be encumbered, meaning he moves at half speed and has disadvantage on Dexterity saves.

Snake Eyes was a bit more of a journey. In the Larry Hama series, Snake Eyes starts off in the military, is discharged, loses his family, is invited to join a ninja clan, and then eventually joins G.I. Joe. Given that we first see him in the military, I’m not expecting to model him at low level. Snake Eyes is an 80s ninja, so it’s going to be tricky to fit all of that into one package. I knew I wanted Snake Eyes to be able to catch things thrown at him, mainly because of one scene in the best G.I. Joe story ever where he catches a katana lobbed at Scarlett by Storm Shadow.

My thought was to start Snake Eyes as a Tough Hero, with Commando as his class, then multiclass into Agile Hero, and then into Martial Artist. That proved to be difficult, because if I wanted Snake Eyes to especially good with his sword, able to catch things thrown at him, and still have some room for ability score improvements, he was still coming up short by 10th level. So I widened my scope a bit and looked in The Vault. The Vault includes some military themed classes reverse engineered from the Rambo cinematic adventure.

That’s where I found the Combat Scout, which has a lot of ninja friendly features already built into it. It’s also an Agile Hero, meaning that I wouldn’t need to multiclass into Agile Hero to qualify for the Martial Artist multiclassing feats. I couldn’t take the second one until 8th level, but that’s okay. Because of how complicated Snake Eyes’ backstory is, and how many career changes he’s had, my main goal was to build him without going straight to 10th level. This version is sneaky, can assassinate targets, use martial arts, catch swords, and fight in the dark. He also gets to treat any non-heavy weapon as a finesse weapon, which I really needed for Snake Eyes’ trusty Arashikage sword. 

Two titanic creatures fighting in the background, one mechanical and the other a skeleton with a nuclear glow. In the foreground are three figures, one a man in a ripped up suit, carrying a halberd, another a woman in combat fatigues with a prosthetic arm and an eye patch, carrying an assault rifle, and a third, a person in red and black futuristic clothes, with elongated limbs. The title is The Vault Rules Compendium Volume One. Problems Along The Way

You may or may not have heard that one of the cinematic adventures was going to be tied to the Netflix movie Rebel Moon, and that the company provided a lot of backstory for the setting. Netflix tried to back out of their deal, and while the Rebel Moon cinematic adventure isn’t going to be published, the lawsuit was settled out of court.

The Roll20 implementation for the game has been rocky. Reportedly, Roll20 was going to provide Evil Genius with the full “charactermancer” treatment, where you would have a guided experience creating your character, similar to the D&D 5e character creation process. Not only has this not emerged, but the game’s rules compendium is disappointing. When I was creating characters using Roll20, various feats and talents had important game text missing from them. I would have been better off cutting and pasting everything from the game book into blank feat containers on the character sheet than trying to drag and drop anything.

The implementation has been contentious enough that future VTT releases are moving to Foundry. Evil Genius is still working on how this will affect Kickstarter backers that were all in on cinematic adventures that they were to receive in VTT form, especially if those backers aren’t interested in moving their VTT games to Foundry.

On a tangential note, this isn’t the first “near” d20 game that has had complaints about Roll20’s implementation. After the initial Power Rangers releases on Roll20, Renegade Game Studios wasn’t happy with the roll out, and pulled preorders for the G.I. Joe and Transformers books from the site. It seems like Roll20 has a harder time implementing “near” d20 games than it does fully compatible supplements, or games that share no DNA with d20 SRD games. 

Final Thoughts
This is covering so many genres that there are a lot more options than you’re going to need to build your character, even if your concept is “retired military recluse that became a ninja.”

If you look at either the core rulebook or The Vault, there is an intimidating amount of information staring back at you. Even if you are comfortable with D&D 5e, some of the new terminology can be overwhelming. You can do things the way a poor, forlorn reviewer does, and read them front to back. That’s probably not the best way to engage if you aren’t planning on writing an article on the topic. I think the best way to break the ice is to look at one of the cinematic adventures, figure out what you need to know to get that up and running, and read the sections that pertain to that adventure. 

The reality is, it’s no harder to utilize than D&D 5e, as long as you don’t read too far ahead and scare yourself. This is covering so many genres that there are a lot more options than you’re going to need to build your character, even if your concept is “retired military recluse that became a ninja.” I’m not sure if there is a better way to layer the information so it doesn’t look as intimidating, but the shock and awe wears off pretty quickly once you engage with the rules.

I like that they gathered all of the new rules into a volume to act as the “capstone” for their season one cinematic adventures. I have to admit, while some of them look like a lot of fun, there are a few that I’m just not as excited about running or playing at the table. Knowing that the rules content is going to be available eventually in a consolidated format is good.

Future Wishes

Since they had Rebel Moon lined up, and all signs point to them continuing the cinematic adventure season model, I’m interested to see the next set of movies that are going to be appearing. This also has me wondering about cinematic adventures for shows rather than movies, or what it would look like for them to just straight up create a sourcebook for an IP that wasn’t dependent on a movie tie-in.

I’m sad about the state of the Roll20 implementation. I’ve got a lot invested in Roll20, and I’m not quite ready to start learning Foundry. I’m still hope that Roll20 will at least polish the Compendium implementation for the core rules and the character sheet. I also wish I had known that future Roll20 development is on hold, because I may not have picked up the Roll20 version of the core rulebook had I known.

My hope is to see The Vault volumes continue, as well as additional sourcebooks that may not be tied to external IP. From some of the places I stumbled upon while writing this, it looks like there is a military sourcebook in the works, and it looks like there are two cinematic adventure paths, longer for adventures, on the way for Kong: Skull Island and Pacific Rim. 

This one looked intimidating up front, but it was actually pretty easy going once you get to know it. Kind of like Roadblock.