System Suggestions

[bigdaddygamebot]

Hi there. I'm looking to run a modern/near-future sort of game.

One of two ideas really.

i) X-Com related - PCs are part of a shadowy paramilitary complex that fights aliens, subversives and sympathizers

ii) Government sanctioned team of "specialists" that locate and apprehend unregistered "metas" (super heroes and super villains)

This will sound stupid considering the settings but I'm looking for realistic combat. If someone gets shot with a gun...yeah...it's not going to go well for that person generally. If someone gets hit by a hero/villain with super-strength...yeah...not good either.

We are a group that has been playing rpgs for three decades but the only exposure we have is as follows.

D&D...all iterations
Pathfinder
Heroes & Villians Unlimited
Rifts
Top Secret
A sprinkling of GURPS

I'm fully expecting the first group of characters made to roll in and get...devastated. I kindof want that to happen. I have a sharp group of players and they will come back with "Bravo Squad" with a much better idea of what to expect, what to do, and solutions to the problems encountered.

So!

What systems do you guys recommend?

I'm aware that GURPS can be very realistic if a bit opaque when it comes to rules. I'm aware that I can make pretty much anything in GURPS but I also realize that with that flexibility comes the need to make everything.

Would Mutants and Masterminds work? What about Champions?

Do those two systems allow for character depth for a group of PCs that are going to be relying on gear and wits to battle creatures and super beings?

Are there any systems out there that I DON'T know about?

Help!

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Really weird suggestion: a little game called Hollowpoint (http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint/). Here's the overview.

The premise is "hyper-competent agents using violence to achieve objectives"; the tagline is "bad people killing bad people for bad reasons". It's James Bond meets special forces meets The Expendables, with a possible side dash of Ocean's Eleven.
It's not intended to simulate realistic detail, but conflicts are definitely designed to hit characters in a devastating way. When you take a hit, that hit sticks with you during the entire mission, and that makes you much easier to drop out of the fight.
Character death is by player choice alone (when you get taken out of a fight, you can opt to hang on and survive, or you can move on and create a new character, potentially with extra perks), but letting your characters burn out and pass on is incentivized.
It's a tactical dice pool game; you roll a pool of dice and take turns spending sets of matching dice as your "ammo" against the other side, trying to knock away their sets of dice (or, if they don't have sets, hitting them where it hurts). You get more dice by burning away your character's traits. It's a cool dynamic of "to win, you need to lose yourself".


It's different, though. Worth a look, in my opinion, but it doesn't match all your criteria.

A second thought: it's actually not hard to rig up B/X D&D for this style of game. Everyone has guns, replace traps with hazards (and one-shot ambush resistance), and detail how special gear works. Heck, that might be a fun game to hack together. That style of D&D works well for mission-based gameplay (and gameplay where character death or failure is on the table).

[bigdaddygamebot]

Rad.

THIS is why I came here.

Thanks for the recco.

I'll check out Hollowpoint.

I was thinking about trying a D&D version. Even 4th edition as I love the push-pull-slide rules but I don't have the time to do a complete conversion.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Would Mutants and Masterminds work?
No. No, it would not. Much as I love the system, it's not good at gritty. You get hit by a gun, you'll probably say "ow!", shoot back, and be fine 5 minutes later unless the GM is arbitrarily throwing in complications. D&D also wouldn't be great, due to the size of health pools.

FATE's stress/consequence system could work pretty well for something like this, though. Add in equipment as aspects... it's different, but it could work.

Savage Worlds, maybe? Good pulp action?

Or STaRS (linked in my signature), if you don't mind homebrew. It's pretty rules-light, but you can easily dial the gritty lethality to taste.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I was thinking about trying a D&D version. Even 4th edition as I love the push-pull-slide rules but I don't have the time to do a complete conversion.
I don't know much about it, but I know that Amethyst (http://www.goodman-games.com/4370preview.html) is 4E with sci-fi and guns. Anyone else got feedback?

Also, Grod, not all D&D has ridiculously big health pools. :smallbiggrin: There's a reason I said "B/X". :smallwink:

[Black Jester]

Champions follow a very similar toolbox approach to GURPS; if you are unhappy with the GURPS level of preparation, Champion won't do you any favors, either.

Savage Worlds is a lot simpler and squad-based firefights with a pulpy, slightly over the top note and a relatively high level of tactical requirements is strictly speaking playing straight to SW's strengths. It is also a rather inexpensive system, so I can recommend this one.

If the language is not a problem, the German game CONTACT seems pretty much as close to an X-Com game as possible without violating copyright laws. I haven't played it yet tough, so i cannot tell you much about the quality of the rules.

An odd recommendation which would actually work considerably well is pretty much any version of BRP, Runequest or Call of Cthulhu set in a modern setting. Especially if you want to have a game about rather regular people fighting against superhumans, CoC does that better than most. Delta Green is basically your government agents conspiracy game with aliens, except that the aliens are Migo, Deep Ones and the like (and it usually focuses more on conspiracies and X-Files style conspiracies than raids against evil alien abduction labs... most of the time).

However, probably the best game for you would be...
Conspiracy X (the second edition, based on the Unisystem). The game mechanisms are accessible and reasonably flexible, and rather flexible (due to this flexibility, you can use most other Unisystem rules in combination with this, so if you want to create a crossover with Planet of the Apes or a Zombie Apocalypse (or both, because why not), you are wellcome.
Besides, Unisystem is just a really nice game.

[Kaun]

I was going to say savage worlds.

The War Hammer 40k RPG Only War might work well too if you abandon the fluff and steal the rules. It would probably take a bit much work sorting out the gear and stuff though.