I want my game to feel like an action movie. Please tell me how, Veeky Forums

I want my game to feel like an action movie. Please tell me how, Veeky Forums.

Watch lots of action movies. Learn the logic by which they function, and make it clear to your players that the game is functioning on that logic rather than realism.

Finding a system that supports that kind of cinematic logic is good, but getting the understanding of it down and ensuring your players are on board is the most important thing. Action movies don't work if you've got a guy quoting magazine capacities or complaining that people are alive after being five feet from an explosion, watching them with that kind of person just takes all the fun out of it, and playing with them would be even worse.

Depends on what kind of action movie, but I’m assuming eighties.

>WH40k
>Catachan Only

Be a bit more specific. Do you want it to be a Swords and Sorcery story with Conan-esque barbarians and beautiful women clad in silk and jewels? Are you looking for an action movie with lots of explosions, big guns and action heroes who deflect bullets with the power of plot armour? Maybe trying to save the girl from the big bad guy?

The devil is in the details. Also make the crunch simpler/faster, because action in action movies don't take long.

You assume correctly. Eighties action.

Find the 2nd ed Aberrant pdf.

Let your players do sweet things. This probably involves saying yes to a broader range of cool and silly ideas. Also, give your players cool things. Holy swords, big fuck-you guns, etc. Make sure your players are the heroes, and are pitted as the primary adversary to a serious threat. NPC allies doing cool things does not make your PCs feel like action stars.

Consider invoking tropes of the genre and modeling some NPCs after them to set the tone. Very often disgruntled but permissive superiors, wise mentors, cops that are getting too old for this and are one day from retirement, so on and so on.

play Savage Worlds
last session I ran was a battle for a gas station, with people literalyl bursting in through planked windows, with finale being a dislodged gas pump near a guy with a torch, exploding the entire joint

Save for the mid and final boss, all enemies die in one hit

Savage Worlds does that, basically. Outside of designated 'main characters', regular 'extras' succumb to one wound. Main Characters can take three and the fourth incapacitates them.

I often find that Apocalypse World does a good job of capturing this sort of feeling, though with an appropriately apocalyptic bent, obviously.

...

Check out Feng Shui.

This: Alternatively GURPS Action and Tactical Shooting. Action was written to allow playing Commando, Tactical Shooting is unbashingly dedicated to be as cool as Dutch and his squad in Predator.

This here. Feng Shui 2 is probably the best out there for this sort of thing.

> tfw I want to kitbash the archetypes to create Arnold, Stallone, Van Damme, etc.

Supporting this

Stallone as per Rambo is the main inspiration for the Ex-Special Forces archetype. As is Schwarzenegger in Predator and Van Damme in half his films. The only difference is which Schticks you use from the start. Van Damme character having a couple extra martial arts schticks, Stallone having a few extra stealth or gun stats (depending on First Blood vs other Rambo films).

Make the PCs more powerful, mooks go down easy, lots of flashy explosives, lots of action scenes, XP bonuses for one-liners and flashy stuff that's pulled off.
Also, cool stuff always succeeds.