I'm looking forward to talking more with your friend as well as you :D. Plus, damn. Twenty years of experience sound positively dwarfing and exciting since I'm alive for less than that; my 18th birthday is in roughly two weeks :P.

D20 Modern

What's so bad about this game? I never did more than just cursory reading in my LFGS but never met anyone who actually tried it.

Part of the fun of games like D&D is being creative and creative problem solving is a huge appeal. Some of the coolest scenes in comics and movies are when heroes solve problems with ingenuity. If you can punch your way out of any dilemma, that's no fun.

You'll get no counter-arguments from me on that, it's pretty much my own mindset as well, but put in your words.

I'd say forget about modules for a bit, no matter what rule set you're working with

Oh, I think you misunderstood me a bit: I love world building and do exercise it, as I wrote in this comment (I link it because in my experience Hubski notifications fuck up when discussion goes past 4-5 responses). The reason I have used modules steamed from the fact that I had to yet go through the DMG and generally learn D&D back then. As I have said, most people in Poland discover D&D after some other system. Usually Warhammer or something like Cyberpunk 2020 or one of many Polish RPGs. The two or three I have used back then were the only ones I own and played with.

I'll try to do some translation in my spare time and share it, the setting mentioned in the comment linked above is my most developed one.