Urban horror

What's the best system for running modern urban horror with supernatural elements? I have a lot of experience with nWoD, but I know there's some other good shit out there so I'd like Veeky Forums's opinion.

Call of Cthullhu

Could anyone pitch me on it or give me recommendations for which edition, etc? I'm a huge fan of Lovecraftian shit in general but I've never had the chance to play CoC.

I adore Unknown Armies for this, it has a unique take on the themes I really enjoy.

Don't Rest Your Head is also good, although it's a very frenetic, fast paced horror game. Player characters in it are oddly powerful, but it uses the powers they have as the seeds of their own inevitable self destruction.

Depend on how you plan the campaign.
Basic monster killing in lairs and rural spots = refluffed D&D or Pathfinder
Corporate investigation and Internet horrors = Shadowrun
This is just a one time small campaign and I don't like too much rules = Savage Worlds.

Yeah, as cool as DRYH sounds I think the setting and the powers wouldn't work for the game I've got in mind for my group.

Could you tell me some more about Unknown Armies, though, if you've got some experience playing it? It looks dope.

Investigation and internet horrors is actually a big part of how I was planning to run it. Do you have much experience with running Shadowrun for modern games without too many science fiction and fantasy elements?

If you're heavy on the investigation, maybe one of the horror-flavours of GUMSHOE?

Not so heavy as I think GUMSHOE is geared towards.

Shadowrun is an awful idea. The system is too complex for this kind of game and magic etc are very deeply rooted to the basic mechanics.

Gumshoe is a good choice if you really want to focus on the investigation side.
Then there is also Nemesis. It's ORE based system and focuses on the classic Call of Chtulhu era (1920s), but that doesn't really matter. It's easy to invent new skills on the fly and players can just suggest skills that they would like to have for their characters. Recommended if you want to have deeper madness mechanics.

And nwod is also solid choice, you could stick to the system you know.

Forgot about Delta Green. There is a new edition and it's BRP based. I don't have experience with this but it could be a good choice.

Unknown Armies 3rd edition could work also, still unpublished but shouldn't be too hard to search for the released PDF-versions for the kickstarters. Haven't read it but everyone seems to praise it like the sun.

Over the Edge is an excellent game with simple rules.

Kult has a pretty dark and edgy tone. The system is kind of a mess though.

Demon City Shinjuku is perfect for horror anime inspired games (Demon City Shinjuku, Wicked City, Urotsukidoji, Tokyo Babylon...). It's based on TriStat/dX System, so it's fairly simple.

The new Delta Green edition is probably one of the best games currently available. Sadly, the DM guide hasn't been published, yet. The Agent's Handbook doesn't have any rules for magic and stats for monsters (could be taken from the old edition and be converted).

I'm not that user, but I've played Unknown Armies, GMed UA 2nd edition and played 3rd, and it's pretty great.

The world of Unknown Armies is that basically every single person out there has magical potential, and subconsciously each of us has power that's also creating things we aren't even aware of. Magical potential can be harnessed through belief, philosophy, paradoxes, and sometimes just falling in line with the collective subconscious.

Unknown Armies style of horror is somewhat of a mixture of Call of Cthulhu, and World of Darkness. The big thing that sets Unknown Armies apart from those two, though, is that unlike Call of Cthulhu there's really no big thing out to get us, and unlike World of Darkness there is no darker nature to pull us towards acting on our vices.

Unknown Armies essentially states that humanity itself can be terrifying, when it feels like it, but only because the human condition is terrifying. Everything that makes us who we are, confusion, despair, love, hatred, fear, etc, is what drives those of us with the obsession to change the world to commit both unspeakable acts and heroic sacrifices, and the personal horror in this is that there is no big moral compass allowing us to see if our actions will lead to one or the other. If World of Darkness states that the world is immoral, there is a definite moral code and it is actively broken, Unknown Armies instead throws out the moral code entirely and states that our world is whatever you make of it, good or bad.

As for the system itself Unknown Armies has five sanity meters. It's so dedicated to personal horror the tagline is even "You Did It."

The tagline holds true throughout the whole setting too.

No matter how horrible or strange, how twisted or unnatural, it's not the fault of some external factor. It's me and you. It's us. Humanity creates our own nightmares, our own hell.

Well, aside from some very weird things only mentioned once or twice in the fluff as I can recall, like the 'Cold Ones', which we know almost nothing about except Demons fear them. People speculate they might be Angels.

Alright, I need in on this shit. I assume it's in the PDF share thread.

...

Noice. I was wondering, though, how integral is the magic stuff? Is every character by definition a street wizzerd or can it be run without?

UA has three broad levels of play. At the Street level, magic use is rare or nonexistent amongst starting characters. It's only at the Global and Cosmic levels where it becomes more common, and even then non-magic PCs can get by just fine. 'A man with a gun' is still a credible threat, even to a Cosmic level magician.

Non magic users are balanced with magic users fine so you don't have to be a wizard if you don't want to, but I wouldn't recommend running Unknown Armies outside of its own setting if that's what you're thinking.

Street level Adepts/Avatars still work fine in my experience.

>Basic monster killing in lairs and rural spots = refluffed D&D or Pathfinder

Only a complete idiot would recommend D20 for anything modern, so fuck off.

Yeah I'm reading the books and it seems like it would be better to do justice with its own campaign. As it stands I'm just trying to figure out which sort of system would be best for running some horror ideas I already have.

5.5
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