What's the best system to run a urban fantasy game focused on mystery and hunting? I mean...

WoD
CofD
CoC
Delta Green
Kult
Shadowrun if you really wanted
Dark Heresy

The thing about urban fantasy is that there has to be a lot of space for the monsters to roam, a lot of people to hunt without raising suspicion, and multiple places for PCs to explore. This is why cities make an ideal place as there is always abandoned or derelict space as well as a lot of prey that can disappear unnoticed. If you want to make a small town into a setting for urban fantasy then you have to make it a pretty specific town so it will fulfill the three things I outlined above.

For a small town to support predators I would make the town a former manufacturing town that, a few decades ago, lost most of its manufacturing and has shrunk considerably in population, leaving whole warehouses, manufacturing plants, and neighborhoods abandoned. Then, I would give the town a decently large tourist attraction to have a steady stream of people or a large amount of seasonable people, think popular beach or world-class skiing. From here, I would decide if the city council/town elders are in on the spoopy happenings and further hammer out the details.

I know you said that you don't want to use Hunter: The Vigil, but consider what suggested. That is an incredibly versatile game that is not restricted to vampires and werewolves. In fact, if you get the new 2nd edition core rulebook (now titled Chronicles Of Darkness), you will find a new system for creating monsters (called Horrors) which does not depend on buying other books and is super versatile as well. Take a look at all these weird and novel creatures that this guy made with the Horror system if you don't believe me. I think it might change your mind.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/793173-the-horror-show

The new core rule book also has rules for solving mysteries! You need to adjust the number and nature of the Clues, of course, but it stills helps to guide the mystery solving.

Maybe also check out Dark Eras to get inspiration for alternate history/world settings that suit you better?

d20 modern with unearthed arcana supplement

or d20 Call of Cthulu

Yeah. Urban Shadows as well, tough it's more politcal, I think

So you need to think of what the monsters are/how they hunt.
Vampires pray on people who are lonely/urban nightlife.
Werewolves usually run inna woods

Once you decide what you need for the monsters you will need to think about what characters need
If they are Christian you need a church, maybe even a cathedral if they are Catholic
A Wiccan occultist needs a grove
A professor needs a university
Etc.

Then do landmarks/interesting places
Springfield's tire fire
A lover's lane/make out point
The Devil's Toenail (a rock near the shoreline of a lake or something)
Be creative, or steal from creative people
Detail at least one hospital because you are GOING to have at least a few scenes there
Decide on the movers & shakers in town
That should give you an idea

>if you get the new 2nd edition core rulebook

What? When that happened?

mostly just stuff like general layout, you know stuff like mall goes here, houses over there. that sort of thing.
the basic idea I had for the town was it's the pretty much the monster version of the United nations and that it's specially made to be so boring that any sort of unusual activity get's noticed and dealt with for the safety of the visiting monster ambassadors.

Don't obsess over where that stuff is or Google a random modern town/city & make it a grander scale
After nWoD they made some new vampire rules, then decided to make new updates to every book based on the new God machine stuff they were making, then they decided that some people hate God machine enough that they should just call it a new edition, then they got bought by another company, which wanted to reboot the oWoD, so they rebranded 2nd edition into Chronicles of Darkness

GURPS and your flavor of magic system. Ritual Path Magic is popular. Pick up GURPS Mysteries, too, for advice on how to run mystery games in general and in GURPS.

>I am triggered by diversity.

>hamfisted political pandering is the same as diversity that feels natural

I don't care if a game setting has diversity, but can it be done in a way that isn't even less subtle than tumblr going on a rant? At least put some effort into making them real and fleshed out things rather than "SEE I PUT IN A FAT GAY TRANSEXUAL MIDGET SEE HOW DIVERSE AND TOLERANT WE ARE? THAT TOTALLY MAKES UP A FULLY THOUGHT OUT CHARACTER!"

If they put a little effort into their characters it wouldn't feel so hamfisted and would be interesting. Rather, it feels like tumblr shit on a page and what you see is the result.

>urban
>fantasy game
>focused on mystery and hunting

Call of Cthulhu.

Shadowrun could work. You'd have to be pretty restrictive with the magic though.

Call of Cthulu sounds like it'd be a good choice too. But I've never played it so I can't speak to how much access players have to magic.

Not much in the way of magic in CoC, at least not the players. There are cultists and eldritch beasts, but you generally play people trying to stop said cults and beasts, not aid them. If for no other reason than that doing that magic all but foreits your soul.

Does anyone know the rpg Scott being a dreamer that fights Eldritch horrors while everyone else is asleep? Could that work here? I remember something about you manifest your powers during the dream sequences.

"Don't Rest Your Head"?

Also, if it's a small town, chances are that it's going to be near, if not a part of agricultural areas.

There may not be a large permanent population (and, in fact, it has likely shrunken considerably since WWII), but there will be a large migrant farmworker population, both on and off the books.

Really Onyx Path didn't go to shit until after 2e. If OP just sticks to nWoD and not CofD they'll dodge all the cringe stuff.

>Brining up GURPS
>Not brining up GURPS: Monster Hunters

It's literally WoD: Hunters but better as it actually gives support and guidelines for running investigations, doesn't tie everything to a supernatural shtick, and gives a broader variety of niches for party members to fill.

Are you me from the distant past of 2006?

call me crazy... but what about this?

Street level Unknown Armies, before it gets into cosmic bumfights it is pure low/no magic meets mystic/supernatural fuckery.

You are crazy.
It works if you want to play Buffyverse stuff

Just define why the town exists in first place, why people settled down to live there. That usually defines the general configuration of the main roads, and from there it develops naturally.

>There's a mine nearby. The entire town is surrounded by mountains, with only a big road that comes in and out from there.
>A great lake and prosperous fishing and commerce. There's a big road that goes nearby, connecting some bigger cities, however there are some small detour that goes into the town. Most people however, use the lake and river to move around.

Usually, the important buildings (market, church/temple, hall, or banks) are located over the main road, at the centre of the town, and small houses are located around.

Making specific rules for mpreg werewolves & vampires is NOT diversity, it's pandering

I'm always wary of recommending Unknown Armies for anything that isn't *explicitly* Unknown Armies, on account of how singularly tied together the lore and mechanics are. That being said, it does sound like an excellent system for what OP wants--provided he sticks to street-level PCs and steers clear of the cosmic stuff.

OP, Unknown Armies is a game that bills itself as "horror", and of which unraveling mysteries, unrolling conspiracies, battling things-that-should-not-be and tangling with The People Who Would Use Them are major parts. Even if you ditch all of the cosmic stuff (which I HIGHLY recommend you do if you don't intend your game world to very rapidly merge with the Unknown Armies setting), there's still support for some low-level magic mojo that regular joes can get their hands on.

Consider allowing characters to practice what the system calls "Gutter Magic" and "Thaumaturgy"--things that we in the real world might generally recognize as magic--while disallowing "Adepts" and "Avatars" as player characters, on account of just how fucking crazy (and uniquely UA) they are. There's nothing saying you can't refluff them and use them as bad guys, but if you give your players the toolbox it might become apparent how clearly outside of your game world those ideas are.

It's also worth mentioning that the system prominently features a sanity system. This may be just the sweet-bitchin' add-on your game always needed, or it might get in the way of your players shooting demons and looting musems. That's your call.

Those things all said, UA is a fucking excellent system for doing what it does, and what it does sounds like it might apply to what you're trying to do. I'd hunt it down in one of the troves and give it a read, at least.

>mpreg werewolves

nigga wat

Oh yeah, there's a Gift in the aptly named WtF 2e that lets male Werewolves get knocked up "Because denying a player this option just because they're male is bigotry"

Unknown Armies has probably the best Sanity System I've seen. Most RPGs just do the "u see a squid, loose 1d10 sanity" crap. UA actually makes it interesting.

Oh it's excellent, absolutely. Just not every game necessarily needs one, and considering how central to the system it is I figured OP might as well get a heads-up about it.

Bizarrely in my group we've done the opposite. Over the last five years we've very heavily modified the lore and now run the whole thing in GURPS with works pretty well.

What cringe stuff? I don't get what's so terrible about the books.

I feel profound disgust toward those that produced such material that is gushing with severe mental illness and those they pander to.

Have you read Beast, any of the supplements for that abomination of a game, Promethean 2e, Hurt Locker? The cringe is readily apparent in any of those.

I wish I had the devs response to it saved. This is the sidebar in the book but their reaction to people going "Dude what the hell?" was golden.

bump

I have been reading some reviews and this one sounds pretty good.

Does anyone else have some experience with it? I'm cautious of being shilled just because it was made by the same guys who are behind fate.

How about their world's version of gamer gate was a demon harnessing the power of neckbeards & trolls to get people to kill themselves
Also Just pick up any of the lore made recently & give it a read. The horror of Chronicles isn't monsters it's the fucking tumblrshit

No one on tumblr liked Beast either, though.

Urban Shadows is definitely built around the players being major players in the area, using humans, monsters and each other to get to their own end goals. Not a good fit if you want to just be guys running around shooting wendigos.

True. But I see any SJW, Otherkin, gender fluid, etc. as tumblrshit. If it had an all encompassing name for all the mental disorder/offendedicated culture/kill whitey I'd use it. Until then I just call it Tumblrshit

Why the fuck are they pandering to fucking idiots?

I swear to Doomguy, shit like this makes me want to RIP AND TEAR

I've only run one session and chargen, but it's been pretty fun. youtube.com/watch?v=7Cb0AslHsNc First session's recorded here, if you're interested in seeing how it plays.

baizuo is the all-encompassing phrase in Mandarin. The metaphor is complex but the literal translation is "white leftist."

I really hope Deviant sticks to its promise of Kamen Rider #1 style adventures instead of "I'm so oppressed!".

But thats being really hopeful.

I've noticed a theme with most of the RPGs suggested here

Broken people, people with issues, etc. Any chance theres a game where you don't have to be fucked up? I'm not saying it's gotta be tulips & rainbows, just not always rain soaked alleys full of piss & a guy stumbling trying to figure out if the monster he sees is real, or his own madness from PTSD, or a hallucination from the drugs he just took?

Something that can be nice, if you fight hard

Ty so much! I've been racking my brain for weeks!

wat

GURPS with GURPS Monster Hunters. You play what you want to play. It doesn't force you to all be alcoholic vietnam veterans gutting weres and vamps with a broken beer bottle because killing's all you know.

Yeah but GURPS is a mess of things. I don't like it

Well, that's unfortunate that you feel that way, but there are other options. Fate can do the whole monster hunting thing pretty well if you focus on the characters and narrative over a tactical takedown of the enemy. Savage Worlds is a decent lightweight version of GURPS if you want tactics. Be sure to look up the errata for it if you use it, and think about implementing a rule for max number of explosions for PCs (SW has a dice explosion mechanic). Limiting it to their Rank is good, i.e. one explosion at Novice, two at Seasoned, etc.

Night's Black Agents. Runs off GUMSHOE system, is made to run your preferred JB fighting a vampire conspiracy, with a huge toolbox for making your own breed of bloodsucker from classic to sapient mutagenic virus to space leeches.

Has a sanity system, but there's sliders to change how gritty and cinematic the experience is.

The thing is that most people who aren't fucked up wouldn't get into this kind of stuff. Nobody just quits their nice 9 to 5 job to delve into the occult underground and hunt monsters.

I'd say that depends on the specific setting.

2e is cancer though, 90% of the tumblr mpreg shit being complained about here is from 2e. Plus the combat rules are diarrhoea.

Use 1e and the create-your-own-monster shit from Hunter like says

what about the combat rules changed in 2e to make it that bad?

They made stuff less lethal by a pretty big margin (And stuff was already too tanky from oWoD to nWoD) And then they added in this cancer system called Conditions and Tilts. Both are status aliments that certain attacks and moves give that were meant to make combat more 'narrative'. In reality it's just clunky AF and does nothing over the core books "You get + or - up to three dice depending on story or environmental conditions."

How about Bubblegumshoe with G-G-GHOSTS! !!

I'm the user that brought that shit up. I'm not defending Chronicles/2nd at all. I'm was just explaining to otheranon how they got from nWoD to Chronicles/2nd

I have nothing personal against GURPS I just don't feel any interest, plus it has so many source books & I never know which ones are good. Also games like FATE are bad for me too because I don't like the fiat on everything. I'm super picky about systems, it's my own fault.

>I never know which ones are good.
All of them are at least good besides Magic, Supers, and Ultra-Tech. Those ones are middling quality. Many are great. Can't help not having interest then. Afraid I don't have much more system experience beyond those three where relevant to monster hunters. Good luck on finding something to play!

Yeah but you could have families of mage's, or universities with secret classes, government agents, people who just happened to see something spooky & went to their towns creepy library to learn how to make stuff more dealer, bigfoot hunters that find a wendigo, etc

GURPS with supplements

Maybe ill give it another try. Where could I find some pdfs of these? I looked in the archive but didn't see monster hunters

They're in the /GURPSGEN/ archive. GURPS -> GURPS 4th Edition -> Monster Hunters. /GURPSGEN/ is over here

I mean I've been following the gator community since it first showed up and if someone were to tell me it was a suicide-demon cult I'd be relieved.

If you don't mind homebrewing magic, NEMESIS is free. It's more horror than fantasy, but would work well for a monster-hunter game.

Don't forget the classic 'missing white woman syndrome.' Sadly, it's possible for basically any number of homeless people to just vanish and it's unlikely that the public would take notice.

I know that here in Australia, any news of a major disaster overseas is reported as 'an Australian dies in plane crash' regardless of how many dozens or hundreds of people are killed. A tourist getting vampired would possibly get international attention.

I was about to complain and say that I would do it in a second given the chance, but it just helps your theory

One or two house rules and pathfinder can do basically whatever you need it to

There are two possibilities here: either this is bait or this man's beyond saving. Neither warrants a reply. I'm a casualty, just let me rot here with his (You). Stay strong for me Veeky Forums.

We will honour your sacrifice.

Dresden Files RPG is really great too.

how is DFA? I haven't gotten to try it yet.

Yeah but I have no experience dealing with FATE I tried to use it a year or more ago, I made a knight errant that traveled the ways to fight monsters & protect humans, trouble was no one in my group could understand how to run it properly or come up with decent aspects except for me. Any tips would be appreciated.