So I finally finished this series (I know slowpoke). But what system would you run a game like this with...

So I finally finished this series (I know slowpoke). But what system would you run a game like this with? I was thinking Monsters and Childish Things (minus the monsters) or Nemesis (both ORE games).

nWoD Innocents

Does that mean just core that is mortals or is there a different book of Innocents? If the later, what differentiates Innocents vs mortals?

GURPS Lite.

It is a WoD book geared around child characters.

It is a standalone product that is compatible with the other books.

Cool, thanks for the info.

What is it? Reminds me of Eerie Indiana.

From what I've gathered it is more like the Mist than Erie Indiana.

It's a bit like Eerie, Indiana. It also takes a lot from Stephen King, Spielberg, and John Carpenter (and similar) movies, like ET, Poltergeist, It, The Goonies, Stand By Me, etc.

It's pretty fucking top notch.

ORE definitely seems appropriate. MaOCT has that awesome Permanent Record. I'd totally use that. Nemesis has the Madness Meter and for adult characters there is no better sanity mechanism. But for children...? I'm not sure. I think the only character struggling with reality in their plot arc is Winona Ryder's. The kids and teenagers involved seem pretty fine with all the supernatural events. It's just like the world of grown ups: hard to understand and dangerous to get involved with. The Sheriff passes his san checks. No one else has to roll any.

On an off topic note. I really like how D&D wasn't just a one off reference they used but actually served as a secondary theme to the story, right down to the kids being a sort of party (with 11 as the wizard of course, dustin as the bard, etc.)

The entire show is structured around that DnD game. It defines the cold open. It frames the mystery as well as the heroism. It explains tensions to the audience. And it serves as a permanent reference of happier times without the main characters lamenting their fate. I can't think of a more suited way of using roleplaying as narrative device in a show.

And it is the first occurrence of roleplaying being taken seriously. I mean Freaks and Geeks had a nice DnD episode, but it was reduced to its social component. Usually roleplaying is trotted out to make fun of roleplayers in the hope of catering to an audience unfamiliar with the hobby, see The Big Stink Theory. But the geeks have grown up, and their expendable income has exploded. We are the mainstream now. And among the countless movies and shows trying to capitalize on that, Stranger Things is definitely the one that got it right.

Look at this equipment bag! Flashlight, slingshot +1, binoculars, notebook, ...

GURPS, with a few details from Horror and Monster Hunters.

But it doesn't matter much what system you use, as long as it can handle children, adults and limited (probably GMPC) supernatural spookery in a pretty realistic fashion.

Nothing *too* cinematic - it played things straight with regards to injury and lethality.

With the rest of the cast, i'd go with nWOD Hunters Virgil or Mortal.

Conspiracy X 2.0

The whole conspiracy was basically Telepathics working with high levels of seepage anyway

Delta Green or UA i guess. I don't remember if it's Countdown or Eye's Olny, but one of them have ool rules for psi powers

I don't know that one. What is Conspiracy X 2.0?

Unisystem X-Files

stick to the Adventure Zone, Griffin

basically and by 2.0 I meant 2nd edition

It's either Eyes Only, or Countdown. But yeah, Stranger Things is basically a Delta Green game from the perspective of people who would normally be in a regular Call of Cthulhu Modern.

Which is funny because Call of Cthulhu Modern's default setting is in the 80s.

>Stranger Things is basically a Delta Green game from the perspective of people who would normally be in a regular Call of Cthulhu Modern.
Ok, this is ignorance asking, but what makes it a DG game with CoC characters instead of just a CoC game then?

DG usually has the character be people who have a reason to be involved in a government conspiracy. It's hard to be consistently working with alphabet soup agencies if you are a homeless guy in some rural flyover state.

I think the best thing is does is to show that the game is so constantly on the minds of the players, by the way they reflect their reality onto it.

Definitely if you;re just playing the cops

If you're the teenagers

Monsters And Other Childish Things would probably work best for the kids.

Not sure about the mother.

>It's hard to be consistently working with alphabet soup agencies if you are a homeless guy in some rural flyover state.
Is that how you do CoC? I haven't played much but usually it's investigators, reporters, one time I was a bored rich kid. Never did a homeless man.

My last one, yeah. I played a guy who rolled super low on everything except intelligence and dexterity (my lowest score was POW, so my sanity was somewhat low to begin with). The setting was a rural town in Louisiana, so I decided he'd be a hobo who saw too much. His name was Fiesta.

I've also played a sleazy law student in the 1920s (Louis Reberba Duvall) who's character portrait looked like Gihren Zabi dressed up like KFC's Colonel. That guy was pretty fun.

DG is a conspiracy. Agents are structured in independent cells that are sent to deal with problems. There is no backup, no jurisdiction, not even a decent briefing. It usually takes agents a few missions to figure this out, but by then they are so complicit, they can't get out. And the job needs to be done somehow.

The new DG softens this up a little. Parallel to cells still out in the cold there's an official organization back under government control and probably deeply compromised by remains of MJ-12.

In CoC, characters are investigators. In DG they are government agents secretly hunting down government secrets. In UA they are the cultists that agents hunt down. In Laundry it's also a huge pile of bureaucracy, but field agents get support and supervision. Nemesis doesn't have a setting.

Maybe it's because I read into it incorrectly and the one time I was part of a game it was run poorly but DG doesn't do much for me . It always seems like tacticool monster hunt of the week and jerk off about how we totally killed that bitch.

Listening to a UA campaign about a trio of people who were (possibly accidentally?) raised from the dead but have to stay within 20' of each other or their hearts start going crazy. It's pretty cool and, from the sounds of it, I think I would like games where players are in situations like that more than actually being cultists, but that's me.

>tacticool monster hunt of the week
That is only one layer.

Underneath it is the self destructive nature of the work. Characters have to murder innocents who stumbled upon the wrong thing. This is directly reflected in the rules where you can ignore sanity damage by deflecting it onto one of your bonds. This creates a tragic story between missions and gives the missions themselves a bitter tinge that a good GM will know how to turn into a main theme. Paired with unanswered questions about the handler and the organization itself players really can't be sure if they're still the good guys. And this is where the game gets its flavor. The missions themselves are just a way to apply pressure.

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