Which systems for these specific concepts?

[Partysan]

Greetings altogether my dear and respected fellow playgrounders.
Today I inquire about systems I might use for very specific campaign concepts that I will present here. I am aware and a fan of GURPS, but would like to know of there might be systems gathering to the specific style of those ideas.

1. Genestealer Mutant Campaign

This concept, basically a mixture of Alien and Tyranids is based on the assumption that players can extract DNA from other lifeforms, possibly by consuming a part of them, and incorporate it into their own, thereby mutating. This would allow them to reconstruct the bodies of their characters, adding limbs and manipulators, specific organs, new ways of perception etc.
Besides GURPS, this could probably be resolved by a generic class system, or I could try out Synapse which I (legally, it's free) downloaded not too long ago. Suggestions anyone?

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign

Following the traditional style of fighting series and old martial arts movies, for this concept I need a system that makes both the fighting style and the techniques a character knows actually matter beyond +1 on this and -1 on this for using that style. Styles should be different in both flavour and techniques, some techniques should be effective at countering others etc. Chekov's Gun should be applicable. I also want it non-supernatural, cinematic is ok.
I seriously don't know what apart from GURPS could simulate this. Weapons of the Gods is more about Chi magic, but maybe L5R? I never played it, can it be used for that? Anything else?

3. Adventure Academy Campaign

A kind of Hogwarts in Fantasy setting, for this I need a system that has a good way of letting characters learn new skills and applications. I was thinking Burning Wheel for this, but as far as I know it only has raw skills. Is there a system that works similar to BW but has something like D&D's Feats?
I also will probably let the players actually do some of the tests in that campaign... Bwahaha

4. Just a short one: Mouse Guard should be easily adapted to a Watership Down campaign, wouldn't you agree?

As I await your answers (and questions) let me already express my gratitude for giving me your time. *bows*

[dsmiles]

1. Genestealer Mutant Campaign

One of the Palladium systems (TMNT & Other Strangeness or Heroes Unlimited have rules for mutants) would be my choice.

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign

Either Feng Shui or WuShu.

3. Adventure Academy Campaign

I got nothing.

4. Just a short one: Mouse Guard should be easily adapted to a Watership Down campaign, wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, it could also run Secret of NIMH, which I'm doing for my kids this summer.

[LibraryOgre]

Palladium is my abusive spouse. No matter how much it beats me, I keep going back.

1. Genestealer Mutant Campaign

As mentioned by DSmiles, Palladium's After the Bomb, Heroes Unlimited, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games could do this. They already include mutations limited by Bio-E, so a game where Bio-E was a fungible and transferable resource might be a neat twist. I'd also look at Splicers... I think they had something with Bio-E and mutations in there, specifically in designing supersuits.

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign

Again, look to Palladium, specifically Ninjas and Superspies and it's supplement, Mystic China. Lots of different martial arts forms, and a few different character types with multiple styles. If you ignore most of the Superspy stuff (unless you've got someone who insists on using Triad Assassin style, which is more or less "shooting people and occasionally beating them up with guns"), it would work as a Iron Monkey type game.

Outside of Palladium, you might see about getting your hands on the original Oriental Adventures or the 2e Complete Ninjas Handbook. They have a flexible Martial Art creation system but I don't know if it will have enough steps to make a decent campaign out of it.

3. Adventure Academy Campaign

Not Palladium. Palladium is pretty lousy for this. You might look into d6 (you can get those books free from RPGnow), which has some increased abilities possible, but you could also do Savage Worlds. Ars Magica might make an interesting framework, especially since it has a built in "quarters" system (seasons), and does a lot with study, teaching, and slow acquisition of abilities. I'd take a look at the 4th edition, which you can get for free from Atlas Games, since you're mostly going to grab the mechanics of study and likely strip away most of the setting.

[Jay R]

3. Adventure Academy Campaign

A kind of Hogwarts in Fantasy setting, for this I need a system that has a good way of letting characters learn new skills and applications. I was thinking Burning Wheel for this, but as far as I know it only has raw skills. Is there a system that works similar to BW but has something like D&D's Feats?
I also will probably let the players actually do some of the tests in that campaign... Bwahaha

With a few house rules on when they can use what powers, talents and advantages, it would be very easy to use Fantasy Hero (Hero Systems) for this.

There is one potential problem. It requires sixth grade arithmetic. If your players aren't comfortable with that, the game system will be called "too hard".

[dsmiles]

Mystic China.

I love Mystic China. I've adapted much of it to the Asian-influenced areas of my DnD campaign setting, specifically the Court of the Jade Emporer, reformed demons, martial arts styles, and many of the weapons (everybody gets a laugh when they see an Ogre Magi wielding a Brass Man, then...they get hit with it ).

[Tengu_temp]

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign

I really thing Weapons of the Gods work well here. If you don't like the Taoist magic aspect of the game, just make everyone play a warrior. Most of the kung-fu styles can work without being supernatural.

[Terraoblivion]

And even the secret arts tend to be quite low key, so except for Daoist Magic they should fit too. Just remove the flashiest kung-fu styles. No Hell's Disaster or Holy Fire for example. Most styles are really just ordinary kung-fu movie stuff, when you get right down to it. Tone down the size of the weapons and the general visual style, remove the elemental kung-fu styles and Daoist Magic and it should fit. You'll need to make your own loresheets, though.

[Popertop]

1. Genestealer Mutant Campaign

You could actually use d20 modern for this.
You could come up with your own mechanic for stealing mutations (there might be one in that book somewhere) and just graft that mutation onto the character that steals it.
I think there's even a campaign seed in the book for mutant hunters.

Other than that, I think Mutants & Masterminds would have something related to it, although that's geared more towards superpower mutants whereas this seems to be more along the lines of general not -higher-life-form mutation.

Great idea, one that I've been tinkering with in the back of my mind. D&D seems like a perfect backdrop for mutant superheroes, and if you think about it, it already is.

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign

A favorite concept of mine, although I can't comment on it since I don't have much experience with systems that have different fighting styles.
What I've heard tho, L5R or Weapons of the Gods would work.
I still have the weapons of the gods pdf I haven't looked through it yet

3. Adventure Academy Campaign

Another great idea. The closest I can think of doing something like this is just taking the D&D wizard/sorcerer/other casting class and having a very restricted spell list. Since the campaign will focus on slowly acquiring the skills and spells, you can go really in depth to the applications of each spell with quizzes based on the properties of each spell, application of the spell (like the lab portion of the class), and even spell creation (create a spell of this level that does this) or some other such challenge, similar to skill challenges in Unearthed Arcana. You could even draw up some of your own rules of how magic works, or anything of the sort to fit your setting since the entire idea is a controlled environment.

If you wanted something already made, the Ars Magica system someone else mentioned sounded like it would be perfect.

Hope some of my suggestions can help you!

[Fayd]

For number 2, I'd suggest the system my DM made. It's called Umzamo, and a link to the (old and horribly out of date) system wiki is here.

It's based around the idea that characters hit epic at 6th level (distinct, however, from E6) and it was designed with a new magic and new martial arts system in mind. The martial arts system focuses around combat maneuvers (bull rush, grapple, overrun, etc) while not being mechanically clunky. It is really fantastic, especially in its current state.

HOWEVER. The wiki is old and horribly out of date. Wikia, the host, forced a change on us that makes it nearly unnavigable, so we abandoned it in favor of something else. However, none of us are computer experts (I'm the closest we have) and I'm slowly... slowly... figuring out how to work with it. I'll eventually get a new version up on our new host. But until then, I'd be willing to answer specific questions in a PM if you have them.

[The Big Dice]

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign

L5R wouldn't be too great for this, unless you wanted it to be more about armed than unarmed fighting. And didn't mind lethal combat. Qin: The Warring States is a wuxia-inspired game that would be perfect for this.

Tru20 could be adapted to fit any of your campaign concepts.

[Partysan]

Thanks for all those replies, lets see what we've got there...

1. Genestealer Mutant Campaign
An absolute majority suggested Palladium. Now I have to confess I never played or even read a Palladium game, only thing I know is that the Munchkin's Guide to Powergaming mentions their extensive crit tables.
What is that system based on and how does it work?

2. My Kung Fu is better than yours! Campaign
Ok, a lot of different suggestions here. Wushu doesn't have any crunch, so it's out, but Feng Shui is something I wanted to try out for some time, I just can't find it anywhere. So we have Palladium again, which I guess I need to have a look at. This Qin: The Warring States might also be worth a try, I havent heard of it. And I'll reread WotG, but I don't really think it's what I'm looking for.
That thing about a martial arts creation system in old books is interesting, I'll see if I can get my hands on that.

3. Adventure Academy Campaign
Not that much input here. Hero is nice, but it's a generic system so I could as well use GURPS which I actually know. Only other suggestion is Ars Magica. Now that sounds like a good idea I didn't think of, and I even got that free 4th edition book lying around. But again, I don't know the system, so can anyone go into the basics? Also, I want the Academy to be for all sorts of Adventurers not only mages, so how well does it handle mundane skills?

What I'm not going to do is adapt D&D or a similar system. There's so much fundamentally wrong with it. I like building characters in D&D, but playing it is something I only do because of accessability.

Keep it coming, I know there's a lot more obscure knowledge on these boards!

EDIT: @Popertop: If you like my ideas, I might take one of them to the PbP section as soon as I'm satisfied with the mechanics.

[LibraryOgre]

3. Adventure Academy Campaign
Not that much input here. Hero is nice, but it's a generic system so I could as well use GURPS which I actually know. Only other suggestion is Ars Magica. Now that sounds like a good idea I didn't think of, and I even got that free 4th edition book lying around. But again, I don't know the system, so can anyone go into the basics? Also, I want the Academy to be for all sorts of Adventurers not only mages, so how well does it handle mundane skills?

Basically, there are a few different sources of XP. You can adventure, you can study, you can be trained or you can have "exposure."

For example, if I have a Blacksmith skill of 4, I'm probably one of the best blacksmiths around. There's not too many people who can teach me more than I already know. But if I spend a season working as a blacksmith, I get "exposure" XP. Now, if I were working as a blacksmith in a foreign country, I could likewise claim exposure XP for local language, or for Local Lore (i.e. "Where to go and what to see in this place").

[j4bberw0ck]

1. Genestealer Mutant Campaign

For this i would recommend using the rules for Kroot from rogue trader. for those of you who do not know what the kroot are, they are evolution at its finest, ingesting the genetic material of their prey and retaining the most useful bits and compiling it with their own allowing them to evolve and adapt over time as they see fit. The rules are not to expansive and the system is a percentile die system but its fun easy and has an advancement track that does not stick you in one role but allows you to shape your class. Mutants and Masterminds could also work for this as well as Shadowrun.

2.My Kung-Fu is Better Than Yours

Please no one shoot me, Exalted. Exalted is all about intense martial arts over the top fighting. Techniques range from crouching tiger hidden dragon style wire fighting moves at the lowest tiers to martial arts moves that can involve manipulating the strands of fate and controlling the elements (think Avatar: the last air-bender). This system is a bit difficult. It uses a dice pool of d10's and can often involve you using upwards of 15 dice at a time. But its very rewarding and stresses over the top moves and especially role playing descriptions. It is mostly supernatural ridiculous stunts but there are some "Mortal" styles that humans can do that have some nice flavor. Another option is shadowrun 4e. Of course change the setting and use only the martial arts rules, which are nifty. Again this is a dice pool system using d6's.

3.Adventure Academy
So I was looking for my thread but it is gone. There is a book out there, which im tearing my mind and the internet apart trying to remember the title of that uses the d20 system but allows you to build your character by purchasing things like bab hit dice spells and saves with your earned experience. This allows you to have freedom of class, you could play a wizard with hit dice and high bab for fewer spells and so on.