Looking for a system for a Burn Notice RPG

[Human Paragon 3]

Just as the title says. What system (preferably free) would you recommend to run a campaign based around the USA show Burn Notice?

Special attention to social roleplaying and creative solutions to problems in a modern setting is especially important.

[Raum]

Have you looked at FATE? Here's the SotC iteration of the rules.

[Human Paragon 3]

FATE looks like it could be a good choice. I am also looking at Burning Wheel, even though it is a fantasy setting. I think the core mechanic is very well suited to Burn Notice. Any ideas on adapting?

[valadil]

Have you considered Spycraft?

[Human Paragon 3]

I heard Spycraft encourages a team of specialists rather than encouraging the spy-as-all-competent badass.

[Person_Man]

Mage: The Ascension?

The premise of the game is that there is magic in the world and that anyone with enough willpower/training/enlightenment can do pretty much anything. But the Technocracy (evil government-ish cabal) has imposed Paradox on the world, so that whenever a Mage attempts to bend reality, very bad things happen to him if people don't believe what he's doing. For example, if I just shot fire out of my hands in front of a crowd of people, Paradox would kill me. But if I shot fire out of my hands while a camera crew followed me around, people would assume I was filming a movie, and Paradox would have no effect on me.

Micheal can pretty much do anything, as long as he gives a psuedo-realistic technobable voice over to explain it. Seems like this system would be perfect for him.

[Satyr]

The Gumshoe engine which appears in Trail of Cthulhu and a few other games is heavily specialised towards detective games which are based on collecting clues, and following trails of hints util you can solve a case. It needs a bit of acclimatisation because it is basically a ressource-based system and as such it departs a bit from the usual RPG paradigms, but once one is used to the game, it is very nice.
Unfortunately, there is no real espionage setting for it. The Esoterrorist might work for this, but I am not sure. That depends if you like to use an okkult conspiracy that wants to tear the fabric of reality apart as a fitting opposition.

Otherwise there is Conspiracy X, which is more in line with the X files series, with Aliens of all kinds and such, but it uses two very cool systems (Unisystem or Gurps) and it is fun.

[valadil]

I heard Spycraft encourages a team of specialists rather than encouraging the spy-as-all-competent badass.

Do you want the all competent badass though? Genre-wise it makes sense, but I don't know how well it would work to have 4 players who are all good at everything? Or is it a solo game?

[J.Gellert]

Mutants & Masterminds does do all-competent badasses but it's a waste, in the sense that you won't be using at least 60% of the system (powers).

[Hadrian_Emrys]

Meh, use Spycraft with gestalt rules. Toss in 40+ point buy, and you're good to go.

[Human Paragon 3]

I think you do want the all-competent bad ass in a Burn Notice game. It's good to be able to depend upon your allies for virtually anything, and be able to adapt your plan at a moment's notice when things go wrong.

EDIT: That way it's not about what the characters can or can't do, it's about how fast the players can think and how creative they are.

[J.Gellert]

Hmm... WoD where everyone is a normal human? I think I saw a post on that here recently.

[Kiero]

If you're thinking FATE, I'd recommend having a read of this thread. Some more specifics, Diaspora is a better base to use than Spirit of the Century, being more grounded and giving some interesting spins on social combat and even some squad-based combat too.

Also check out this.

[GreyMantle]

Shadowrun is essentially about a group of spies doing a bunch of cool stuff together. Every character should specialize in something, but most characters have enough build points left over after making their schtick to be awesome in a variety of ways. The tech level could be kind of annoying, but you could probably work around that.

Probably the main inspiration for the style of Shadowrun plots comes from "caper" stories like Ocean's Eleven and Burn Notice.

[LibraryOgre]

Though I don't suggest them for much, Palladium's "Ninjas and Superspies" wouldn't be a bad option (especially if you include some of some of my skill fixes, and maybe my option to reduce huge skill lists to categories).

It creates widely competent characters, where choice of OCC and martial arts style can help define a lot about a person. It's got the gadgeteering aspect, and there's a fair amount of material on the internet about alternate combat styles.

If that's too big of an edifice for you to tackle, you might also try Third Eye Games "Apocalypse Prevention, Inc." While more designed around a BPRD/MiB-style game, this one can definitely handle a lower-end espionage game.

And, of course, there's always Cinematic Unisystem, as seen in the Buffy and Angel RPGs.

[BobVosh]

Mage: The Ascension?

The premise of the game is that there is magic in the world and that anyone with enough willpower/training/enlightenment can do pretty much anything. But the Technocracy (evil government-ish cabal) has imposed Paradox on the world, so that whenever a Mage attempts to bend reality, very bad things happen to him if people don't believe what he's doing. For example, if I just shot fire out of my hands in front of a crowd of people, Paradox would kill me. But if I shot fire out of my hands while a camera crew followed me around, people would assume I was filming a movie, and Paradox would have no effect on me.

Micheal can pretty much do anything, as long as he gives a psuedo-realistic technobable voice over to explain it. Seems like this system would be perfect for him.

As always the things you suggest are hilarious, and could work very well. Although you may need to add a focus of a cell phone to most mage spells, to keep it to what Weston does.

That said high point-buy mere mortal WoD works very well as the characters are particularly resistant to being smacked. In fact it mentioned "It doesn't matter how much training you have; a broken rib is a broken rib."

Fairly simple mechanics as mortals, really easy to make npcs in it, reasonably large number of statted modern weapons, and common enough that if you need any help for it you can always just post here.

[Scipio]

I heard Spycraft encourages a team of specialists rather than encouraging the spy-as-all-competent badass.

Burn Notice seems like the model freelance Spycraft campaign IMO. There are a number of campaign qualities you can add to make the campaign more powerful. Michael is certainly a badass, but he relies on Fiona and Sam more often than not. The system has a lot of options that make it complicated, but it is modular, and you can drop things that are not needed.

[9mm]

d20 modern. end stop.

[GreyMantle]

If by, "end stop," you mean, "don't touch this with a 50-ft pole made of sooperdooper resistant to badness," then yes.

[Evard]

DnD 3.5 but only rogues/fighters/barbarians and there you go, a friend actually ran one like this.. down played some of the higher abilities but still it worked just fine since lots of the magic weapons were used as gadgets

[Thurbane]

Not that familiar with the system, but I would have to agree that Spycraft seems a natural fit. Possibly d20 Modern? Or GURPS?

[J.Gellert]

You can never really do it with any system that uses hit points.

[hamlet]

Alternity would do it very well. Just strip out the sci-fi elements (almost all optional anyway) and limit the PL and you're all set. Seriously. Very good for cinematic and skill system heavy type campaign. You can pick up some of the DarkMatter stuff, especially the equipment guide, for more current day type equipment than the core books have.

Yes, learning curve at first is slightly steep, but about 15 minutes after you start rolling dice, you'll understand entirely how things work.

[Delta]

As always the things you suggest are hilarious, and could work very well. Although you may need to add a focus of a cell phone to most mage spells, to keep it to what Weston does.

If you want to get REALLY metagamey you could use the off-screen narration as a focus for his technomagic

[DR.Fealing]

Free Fate.

Or, sense you mentioned Burning Wheel, Shadowguard is a Mouse Guard hack for Shadowrun (which in turn is similar to what your looking for). More inspiration here.

[Human Paragon 3]

Free Fate.

Or, sense you mentioned Burning Wheel, Shadowguard is a Mouse Guard hack for Shadowrun (which in turn is similar to what your looking for). More inspiration here.

Shadow Guard sounds cool, but that link seems to just have the character sheet. Are there rules somewhere on that site, too?

[DR.Fealing]

Shadow Guard sounds cool, but that link seems to just have the character sheet. Are there rules somewhere on that site, too?

Nope, the hack is below the char sheet. It's an unfinished hack mind you, but it's workable. Shadowguard is based off the Mouse Guard RPG, which in turn is a modified version of Burning wheel. If you haven't read the Mouse Guard rpg then I can decode his hack outline:

* Nature, which in mouse guard describes your animal instincts, is renamed Edge.
* Will, which represents how mentally resilient and adaptable you are, is renamed Mind.
*Health, your physical state, is renamed Body.
* The skill list is modified to 9 skills, each one representing one of the Shadowrun archetypes.
* Wises are called skill-softs. In Mouse Guard wises are areas of specialization, like weasel-wise would help you deal with weasels. I think that in Shadowrun skill-softs are skill programs you can download/install or something. In Shadowguard the player gets between 1 and 3 skill-softs depending on the game power level. Before a mission the player can fill in the skill-softs with whatever specialty they want, like Kung-Fu, Helicopters, or Security Systems
* How ever much you win a roll by allows you to add extra style to your actions. The character sheet says "spend degree of success on: quickly, without a trace, impressive, stylish" So if you beet the challenge by one you pick one thing.

It would take a bit of work to hammer out a good system, but I think it's easier then modifying strait Burning Wheel. I would probably start by changing the skill list a bit and renaming Skill-Softs to Resources.

Edit: or possibly name skill-softs Assets, because Resources is already a trait. I'm imagining it being used to access a building floor plan, bring along a grappling gun, cash in a favor to barrow a helicopter, having someone feed you information through a headset, etc.

[Human Paragon 3]

I am starting to think my best bet is to start with Mouse Guard and hack THAT into Burn Notice, or Spy Guard or whatever. Is the Mouse Guard SRD available for free anywhere?

[Salz]

Twilight: 2013

Just skip the Final Phase Twilight War part and you have a modern day character.

[DR.Fealing]

I am starting to think my best bet is to start with Mouse Guard and hack THAT into Burn Notice, or Spy Guard or whatever. Is the Mouse Guard SRD available for free anywhere?

No SRD. Burning wheel is not OGL, so Burning Wheel games do not have SRDs.
It you're looking for a free/OGL and non-d20 game then your best bet is Fate, PDQ or Barbarians of Lumaria. All three are very good free games. Fate and PDQ should do what you want with little tweaking. BoL is a sword and sorcery game, but the underlying rules engine is fine, so you would just have to reskin and reflavor some parts.