Just watched Stranger Things and realized that "young kids investigating mysterious stuff in a small town in the mid to...

Just watched Stranger Things and realized that "young kids investigating mysterious stuff in a small town in the mid to late 20th century" is a genre I didn't know I love.
(i.e. Goonies, Sandlot, Super 8, kind of The Iron Giant, etc).
Like Scooby Doo almost but with kids and bikes instead of teens and a van.
By now, you get the point.
What are some games I could play to experience this kind of thing?
Boardgames, pen and paper, you name it.

When I think specifically featuring kids I think Monsters and other Childish things or WoD innocents, but pretty much any horror style game would work.

I can only help you if you speak german, don't mind 50 year olds trying to write like kids and don't want a game focused on the supernatural.

I've heard of Monsters and Other Childish Things I think. I'll look into Innocents. How easy is WoD to pick up and learn?
Well I do not speak German, but that sounds alright otherwise. Thanks though.

Bubblegumshoe is basically this.

>How easy is WoD to pick up and learn?

Very, especially the newer editions. Just do yourself a favor and skip the short stories that head each chapter.

It's not particularly difficult to understand as a system or anything. There's other details, but the system is basically just add two numbers, add a couple other oddball situational things, then roll a bunch of dice. I'm not a huge fan of WoD (for reasons that aren't really related to that book), and I've only played a single game of it. I only mentioned it because it was particularly in that niche

actually the game has every rule you would need for supernatural stuff, just nothing prepared in advance so you'll have to make your own aliens ghosts and demons.
I think i can give you the full rules in a few sentences:
Every player has 4 stats cleverness, strength, courage and charisma. you can assign 9 points (min 1 each). Also every character gets a "effort card", a short sentence that describes what you can do good (example "I can't see you, you can't see me" could give you a boon for hiding). Everytime your effort card is relevant you get a bonus of +2 on your roll. A roll works like this:
You roll 1d6 and add your fitting stat and all positive or negative modifiers your gm gives you, as well as your effort card if it fits. If you roll 6 or higher you succeed, if you get a negative result the gm should get creative.

that's basically it. If you want to I can upload the rulebook

That'd be very nice of you, thanks.
I'll probably at least look into it if anything. Despite playing Veeky Forums stuff a good amount, I've never ran anything myself other than very easy stuff you can set up in 5 minutes.

Well the great thing about horror/investigation games is you don't really want anything complicated anyway. You could have a character sheet that's a torn piece of paper with 10 words on it and it would probably do the job. So long as players don't try to immediately fight a monster to death you're probably good. Setting the mood is really the important thing

Looks similar. And based on the website's description, it seems like it could be modified to better suit my needs.
Good to know. Pretty sure I got the writing and atmosphere part down.

You got that rulebook, user?

As mentioned earlier: german stuff and written kinda cringy but simple and working rules

1W6 Freunde or 1D6 Friends

Thanks, mate.

Monster Squad - 1987

The Mother series, or Earthbound as it was renamed, is basically this.

You could modify some of the characters in betrayal in the house on the hill and get this vibe.

I was thinking that when I made this thread, yeah.
That's vidya though. And singleplayer. I want something I can do with my friends.

That fucking movie. That fucking werewolf explosion.

You know, I've never realized it myself but I'm a fan of the genre too.

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Yeeeessss

Well OP, I'm actually working on a game right now made specifically for that kind of game.

It's called A Town Called Nowhere, and I made it after watching Stranger Things and realizing there needs to be a game with the same premise.

Here's the latest build, if you want to try it out.

My email is in the PDF so you can email any thoughts on the game.

Thanks for checking it out!

That actually sound hella fun. Didn't think about it before, but running a TKKG or Drei ??? sounds like a blast

Hey, that's awesome!

But have you tried reading a few games before making one?

You're using Friendship as CoC1 Sanity. There are too many attributes for children PCs. And some things have a poor dynamic, like that age to child's eye view table?

Keep at it. But get into mechanism design.

Looks like shit, but that title is so good, I have to read it now.

Hey man, thanks a lot! I've read and played CoC, LotFP, and have been looking into 40K RPGs. Those three have been my primary inspiration when writing this game.

When you say that there's too many attributes for the kid PCs, what would you scale down?

Also, can you elaborate on what you mean by poor dynamic?

I appreciate the feedback! Will definitely keep these things in mind for future builds.

This is how I imagine a kid PC to work.

Ok, I see where you're coming from. Having skills based around what kids actually do makes sense. A lot of sense.

On the flip side, there's something about that sheet that I don't like, but I can't pin my finger on it. I'm not sure if it's the design or the mechanics.

See, my game started as a dumbed-down LotFP clone, but I then realized that it was too dumbed-down and I wanted to add more crunch. I'm much more of a crunch-centered guy than a fluff one, and I also wanted to add some mechanics to the game which haven't been done before.

All in all, what I'm trying to say is that there's something about that character sheet which I feel doesn't sit well with me, but I'm not sure what.

I'll still keep revising my game though, so if I end up having a gestalt moment and realize what it is that you're trying to say (still groggy from a nap I took), I'll seriously take it into consideration.

Thanks again!

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Can confirm that Monsters and Other Childish Things work for this.

I ran a campaign of it set in a creepy small town in England. Only problem is that all the kids are super powerful so its a bit more difficult to do mundane normal kids investigating things since their monsters can usually beat the shit out of things they're up against. As a result of that difficulty my game went from paranormal investigations and slice of life to the party killing a 50ft tall subterranean angel wielding excalibur whilst alien angels fell from the sky in meteors.

The way to fix this (if it's something you see as a problem) is to make the monsters weirder and more dangerous. Sure it's great having something on your side that can eat a tank but a hammer isn't necessarily the best tool to solve every problem, especially when the kids potentially have their relationships on the line.

While it shouldn't be punishing, making the monsters an occasional liability pushes the mundane kid investigation angle a little harder (and provides the opportunity for the GM to make the players distract their monsters with some busywork while they go off and take care of it).