Modern vs. Magic

I'm looking at running game similar in style to F.E.A.R. in which the PC's will be members of a government organization tasked with hunting magical creatures. The way I see I have two options on how to do this:
>The world at large knows about magical creatures and daily life has changed to reflect the world being home to violent and powerful monsters
>The world doesn't know and keeping their missions a secret will be part of the game.
Have you ever run a game like this? How strong should the horror element be? What system works best for this kind of game? Is it GURPS?

Here's a crazy idea.

People know about things like New Yorkian sewer Minotaurs, but no one knows that the mayor of New York isn't in a hospital for a malignant tumour but is in fact in a special facility for detoxifying and deprogramming vampiric slaves.

>New Yorkian sewer Minotaurs
Love it.
So would certain supernatural beings be incorporated into society or should I go with the old school versions of them where they are almost all bloodthirsty killers?

>New Yorkian sewer Minotaurs
As if the city wasn't bad enough.

Sounds Like Ultraviolet, the TV series not the film. Which had a crack team of specilaists hunt down modern day vampires across the UK, although it was very much a secular organisation it was led by the Vatican.

At least that's how I remember it, I'm sure someone will correct me.

Some supernatural beings might be incorporated into society, and others might just be the setting's equivalent of (small scale) disasters.

You might up with a situation where special SWAT goblins, gnomes and gremlins help cops flushing out a man-killer sewer Minotaur because goblins, gnomes and gremlins are fucking small and can easily move about the sewers.

Gives the setting some nice grey-and-grey, no clear borders... makes it feel more realistic.

Sounds pretty sick, it was something I wanted to try to. The way I was gonna go about it was a mix of XCOM and Men in Black. The population knows they exist but the majority of operations against them are done in total secret.

I like the sound of the former. It will take a lot more work in terms of worldbuilding, but the payoff will be a wider variety of scenarios in a setting which could be very interesting and fun.

I like the sound of that. Certain beings could be useful for hunting/tracking more dangerous ones.
I'm trying to keep it from feeling like a copy of shadowrun. Should I include other intelligent races for the PCs like dwarves and elves?

Anyone know how lethal is too lethal? I don't think there should be any problem with them taking down something like a vampire thrall but fighting a Minotaur should be a pretty dangerous operation.

GURPS has a book series about this, Monster Hunter. It's got more than a few things. Character templates, a magic system, some monsters, some encounters, etc.

...

The only thing I know about GURPS is from Veeky Forums so I've taken that with a grain of salt. Is it a good system?
I know that flexibility is the big idea.

>Frence
But yeah, it's a pretty good system. Especially for modern stuff. And if you're willing to accept your game won't need the rules for irradiation or heat strokes meaning you don't need to read them.

Both. I once read a short story where a higher vampire was a former soviet Commisar living in a hidden floor of a commieblock

I think Delta Green could work well.

Interesting. Are the GURPS classic books compatible with the 4th edition version of the game or does it not really matter?

Well everything was rebalanced and rewritten for 4e, so some things aren't quite right, but even if you just lazily re-use everything, it should about work. There's a booklet on converting stuff from 3e to 4e, but I don't know how good/helpful it is.
Most books are largely fluff anyway, that's always useful. Books of nothing but rules like Powers or the Compendia have been rewritten entirely for 4e already.
With the rebalance, some things were dropped, some things were added, and the Basic Set layout was much improved. Just better to get 4e rules(/templates/weapons/armors/items) and re-use 3e fluff.

bump

If you're willing to use the World/Chronicles of Darkness system there's a lot of options for you to potentially use. The rules are mainly for things like vampires, werewolves, ghosts and Gothic style monsters if that's what you're looking for.

Specifically in the Hunter: The Vigil rule book (which is all about normal humans killing these things) there's a hunter organization called Taskforce Valkyrie which has access to stuff like UV flash bang grenades, silver bullets and Goggles that highlight ghosts in darkness. All of which sounds very much up your alley.

I like the sound of the equipment, I'll check it out.
Do I need the standard book on top of the Hunter or can I just use it by itself?

>The world doesn't know and keeping their missions a secret will be part of the game.
If this is the case then the game universe will end up looking somewhat like the SCP Foundation.

>The world at large knows about magical creatures and daily life has changed to reflect the world being home to violent and powerful monsters
You'll have to justify humanity surviving for all these years without guns and current technology, yet also the monsters still being a major threat even with current technology.

You will need a World or Darkness core rulebook (Hunter: The Vigil is a supplement) or one of the supplements that has a players handbook built in (I think Demon does if that's the only one you can find).
If you pick one of the newer books there might be slight discrepancies as Vigil is an old edition but they're small changes.

For the second one I was thinking more of it in the style of the Pantheon series or that old game Legendary. Basically one day magical creatures appear and wreak havoc on the modern world because we aren't equipped to deal with things like Griffins snatching people from convertibles or Basilisks let loose on the highway.

Came here to say this.

That would work fine. Another option is if there are gods/God in the setting, they could be the ones to give humanity technology. Like Prometheus giving fire to mankind, humanity could be hiding from all the magical creatures until one day a god or the God came down and gave us the knowledge and weaponry to fight these creatures. This could even lead to humans viewing things like assault rifles as holy weapons, in a way.

I'm just throwing ideas out there, though. Your idea was good.

>You'll have to justify humanity surviving for all these years without guns and current technology, yet also the monsters still being a major threat even with current technology.

Or you don't. Because who says a sewer minotaur doesn't pack an AR? Hell, have it pack two AR's.

Guns aren't hard to use, you know.

But then what's the point? You're just fighting Minotaur shaped gunmen. If anything their size makes the fight easier.

>Behold Children, I bring you a weapon from on high. You will call it a boomstick and you will pop bitch ass motherfuckers with this blessed weapon.

>You'll have to justify humanity surviving for all these years without guns and current technology, yet also the monsters still being a major threat even with current technology.

I don't think humanity would be in a constant state of war with magical beings for millennia. There would be cooperation between groups.

You could have it so that only recently did we start muscling on in their turf. Like, say, bears and shit; there were always bears, but they are only becoming a problem now that their habitat is shrinking and they are growing accustomed to civilization enough to come and loot garbage.

Generic:
GURPS
BRP

Not-Generic:
Ops & Tactics
WH40K RPG (refluff psykers as magic)
Call of The Void
WoD Hunter or Mortals
Shadowrun

Plenty of systems can do it.

Yes. Just stick to Basic at the beginning. It's just 3d6 roll under TN.

That's not the fucking point, you retard.

The point is that there is nothing stopping supernatural beings from using technology.

Technology isn't some mystical force that only a few can use.

Technology is technology. It's for everyone.

I started a Trail of Cthulhu campaign with a similar premise. The party began as a crack commando under FBI (in 1937), looking into Ahnenerbe activities in Mexico while fighting off NKVD agents that were doing the same. It has evolved more into weird war territory and less mythos, but the system has held up so far. It's certainly not meant for such a campaign, but with investigative segments between the spy thriller parts, the system works great and people seem to have fun.

>mfw the party defected to Nazi Germany and are now fighting NKVD psychic units and jewish cultists.