What game system would be best for this setting/campaign?

[Kalmageddon]

I'm about to start a campaign in a homebrewed setting and, even if at the moment we are set on d20 Modern, I was wondering what other system could be used to handle what I have in mind more gracefully.

The basic premise is that it's going to be an invetsigative campaign with a fair bit of horror and action set in a dieselpunk world reminescent of early 1900 in the real world, with some fantasy elements (think lovecraftian magic and alchemy).

Main sources of inspiration for the athmosphere in this campaign are works of fiction like the "Brotherhood of the Wolf" movie, Hellboy, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Sherlock Holmes, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hide, the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, Pan's Labyrinth, the "Last Exile" anime (the first one, not that Silver Wing crap), and the artwork of Keith Thompson (he's awesome).
So basically some horror and suspance but a fair bit of pulp action when things start to get intense.

I'm thinking that for this campaign the most important part is going to be the role play itself and immersion and I'd also like a system able to represent in detail all the cool dieselpunk tech and gear and the various alchemical creations.
Action should be intense and allow for a fair bit of hollywood logic, while at the same time being lethal enough to avoid the bullet sponge effect on both enemies (excluding huge monsters and other such things) and PCs.
Basically I'd like a system where pointing a gun at someone is a valid thread and not a "even if you hit me I've got 50 hp" kind of thing, while at the same time allowing for some cool stunts when appropriate.
I'd like the PCs feel like badass normal, still bound by human limitations but able to bend them a little bit for dramatic convenience.

The system should also be fairly simple and streamlined, because my group has always played only d20 stuff and if I'll have them pick up something else it should be easy to grasp at least for the PCs, I personally can deal with more complicated stuff as a DM.

Any ideas?

Also, should this be more appropriate in the homebrew section I'd kindly ask a mod to move the thread if it's not a problem. I just posted here because I'm more familiar with this board and I thought it could fit.

[Lorsa]

Well I suppose Call of Cuthulu could work for that, as could nWoD. Those are just the first ones that comes to mind for me, my suggestion would be to wait for Rhynn the system recommender to see this thread.

[Kalmageddon]

Call of Cthulhu seems a bit extreme on the horror side, its basically a system made to screw up the PCs and have them die or go insane in creative ways.
I want my players to feel tense and involved, but to also be able to overcome what I throw at them while feeling like badasses and pulling some memorable stunts and hollywood action.

[Actana]

Fate Core sounds right up your alley. Then again, Fate works for pretty much everything, so it's a bit of a copout answer. Regardless, Fate thrives on Badass Normal characters, various degrees of Hollywood logic depending on your tastes and narrative gameplay. It's also free (technically pay what you want) and quite easy to learn and use, though some finer points might take a while getting used to if you haven't played more narrative games before.

The game is easy to modify for your own tastes, and for a 1900s setting I'd recommend checking out how Spirit of the Century, a pulp variant of Fate (also available free in an SRD) does skills and stunts. The mechanics are a bit outdated compared to Fate Core, but they're easily adapted to the newer ruleset.

[Ravens_cry]

Savage Worlds sounds like it could work as well.

[Kalmageddon]

I had thought of FATE as well, but one thing that I wouldn't know how to deal with is gear. FATE pretty much simplifies gear to the point of making it completly cosmetic, if I understand the rules correctly there wouldn't be any real difference between say a rifle and a pistol.
And I really like to fill my homebrewed settings with cool gadgets and gear that have their unique advantages and functions. Being a dieselpunk setting, technology is important.

Is there a way to work around that limitation?

[Ravens_cry]

I had thought of FATE as well, but one thing that I wouldn't know how to deal with is gear. FATE pretty much simplifies gear to the point of making it completly cosmetic, if I understand the rules correctly there wouldn't be any real difference between say a rifle and a pistol.
And I really like to fill my homebrewed settings with cool gadgets and gear that have their unique advantages and functions. Being a dieselpunk setting, technology is important.

Is there a way to work around that limitation?

New World of Darkness then, with appropriate splashes of Genius the Transgression?

Actually, several of the game lines could provide creatures and things for your players to face.

[CombatOwl]

I had thought of FATE as well, but one thing that I wouldn't know how to deal with is gear. FATE pretty much simplifies gear to the point of making it completly cosmetic, if I understand the rules correctly there wouldn't be any real difference between say a rifle and a pistol.

As with most things Fate, equipment can be as detailed as you want. The core book doesn't really talk much about equipment, but the system toolkit points out some things that provide some structured options.

First; equipment can have its own stunts that the character can use. This is a major source for differences between various bits of gear. This is how you provide a mechanical benefit for things that aren't weapons.

Second; equipment can have its own aspects. These aspects can be tagged by a character like normal, or in some cases invoked for free when the equipment is used. This is how you individualize particular bits of gear--this gun is exceptionally accurate, even if the general model is not...

Third; there is a weapon/armor system in Fate. There's a lot of unanswered questions about how it works in particular cases, but it's pretty easy to rank weapons by the power of single shots (it gets a little strange when talking about area attacks).

Moreover, if you want to hack the system a bit more, you can give equipment its own skills. It's part of the "fractal" nature of Fate. You can describe anything in the game as a character, and that includes equipment... including giving it its own skills.

Example:

Mysterious Haunted Pistol (Weapon:2)
[Haunted]
[Well-Oiled]
Shoot 4, Athletics 3
Stunt: When held by a character, once per scene, the wielder may use the pistol's Shoot or Athletics skill in place of their own.

You can further detail equipment with individual stress tracks and such if you want. There are also Gadget rules in the System Toolkit, that are basically special powers stuffed into equipment aspects and stunts. If you want to include superhero gadgets and such, you may want to have a "Utility" stress track that gets damaged when characters use the gear.

Example:

Mysterious Haunted Pistol (Weapon:2)
[Haunted]
[Well-Oiled]
Shoot 4, Athletics 3
Spirit Stress: [] [] []
Stunt: When held by a character, the wielder may use the pistol's Shoot or Athletics skill in place of their own. Doing so inflicts one box of Spirit Stress.

And I really like to fill my homebrewed settings with cool gadgets and gear that have their unique advantages and functions. Being a dieselpunk setting, technology is important.

Fate is awesome for that sort of thing, because you can build unusual equipment on-the-fly from some pretty simple rules. It also helps for characters picking up "background" equipment and using it in combat--describing that equipment is a lot easier than looking for tables in a book somewhere.

Is there a way to work around that limitation?

With Fate, any question that begins with "Is there a way..." can generally be answered "yes!"

[Actana]

I had thought of FATE as well, but one thing that I wouldn't know how to deal with is gear. FATE pretty much simplifies gear to the point of making it completly cosmetic, if I understand the rules correctly there wouldn't be any real difference between say a rifle and a pistol.
And I really like to fill my homebrewed settings with cool gadgets and gear that have their unique advantages and functions. Being a dieselpunk setting, technology is important.

Is there a way to work around that limitation?

Fate can handle gear decently enough. It doesn't place much emphasis on it by default, but can be modified to do so. For example, Spirit of the Century has an entire chapter devoted to making gagdets and how they work. Other games I've noticed give weapons, armor, and other items aspects of their own, which can then be used like normal. Weapons and armor grant a bonus to attacks and defense respectively, but higher damage weapons have negative aspects that can be tagged by enemies. Lower damage weapons on the other hand have positive aspects like "concealable" or "light", which can be used to your situational advantage.

If possible and convenient, a good way to see how Fate can be done is to read on systems that use it as a base and adapt the rules from them. It takes a bit of mulling over to create the mechanics for gear that you want exactly, but the system can most definitely support it.

Edit: Along with everything CombatOwl just said.

[Kalmageddon]

You know, on a second thought, FATE wouldn't work at all.

I don't want players wishing away complications and events (including plot hooks) by using a fate point. Or invoking them to recive one thus forcing me to come up with a complication to a scene that wasn't at all relevant.
FATE as a system basically doesn't work if your group is not experienced in storytelling. It's like a game system made for a group composed only of GMs, and good ones at that.
A game where everyone has saying in what happens sounds like a nightmare to run, every single scene the action would stop in order to discuss what makes sense and what doesn't in order to recive the smallest advantage.
No, that wouldn't do at all.

[Delta]

Well I suppose Call of Cuthulu could work for that, as could nWoD. Those are just the first ones that comes to mind for me, my suggestion would be to wait for Rhynn the system recommender to see this thread.

I don't feel either CoC or nWoD really handle the "pulp action" element really well, I'd also recommend Savage Worlds, you might want to take a look at the "Rippers" campaign setting which already offers a lot of what you're looking for right out of the box.

[hamlet]

Call of Cthulhu seems a bit extreme on the horror side, its basically a system made to screw up the PCs and have them die or go insane in creative ways.
I want my players to feel tense and involved, but to also be able to overcome what I throw at them while feeling like badasses and pulling some memorable stunts and hollywood action.

What you want, then, is this: http://www.nobleknight.com/ProductDe...2_A_GenreID_E_

Literally, it's designed to do what you want to do. It's the same system as Call of Cthulhu, but with the ability to fine tune the amount of soul crushing horror you introduce at any given moment.

[Lorsa]

I don't feel either CoC or nWoD really handle the "pulp action" element really well, I'd also recommend Savage Worlds, you might want to take a look at the "Rippers" campaign setting which already offers a lot of what you're looking for right out of the box.

I haven't actually played much CoC myself, but investigative lovecraftian inspired campaign set in the early 1900's seem to be fairly close to what that game is about (if we take away the sanity part).

I'm not really sure what exactly pulp action is as opposed to normal action (it's kind of hard to find a definition for the word "pulp" as "pulp fiction" referred to fiction published on a certain kind of paper). I've found nWoD to be fairly easy to use though, good for investigative types of campaign with a possibility for all sorts of supernatural stuff put into it. Action is certainly possible to do; a gun is dangerous but yet you can survive one or two hits if you're lucky which seemed to be what the OP was aiming for.

My personal stance on action is that the real difference between good or bad is in how you describe it as a GM (and player). I've ran action-oriented games in nWoD with great success. Just yesterday I was GMing a solo campaign in a somewhat cyberpunk-inspired future setting where the player's character took out 7 members of a drug-dealing gang inside one of their base-of-operations (3 of them were clever and ran away) all by herself. Admittedly the character is an angel so a bit sturdier than normal. Still, it's definitely doable.

[Rhynn]

Call of Cthulhu is perfectly capable of pulp action. One of my favorite campaign styles/concepts is Indiana Jones -based: fighting Nazi sorcerers in the early 1930s, trying to stop them from getting their hands on ancient artifacts and releasing unspeakable horrors. Lots of shooting, punching, and other action.

The mechanics aren't inherently grueling or gruesome, it's all about how you run the game. If you don't throw a lot of the tougher monsters at the PCs, they can solve things with superior firepower: most of the stock monsters (ghouls, deep ones, mi-go, etc.) can be mowed down with Tommy Guns (indeed, perhaps the most important part of playing Lovecraft-style CoC is making sure the PCs don't have easy access to guns, which is kind of hard in early 1900s USA).

[Delwugor]

I would recommend either Savage World or Cortex+. If you and your players want to keep to d20 systems then take a look at True20, which IMO is a much better generic system them d20 Modern/Future/Garbage. You could use M&M but IMO it does not work well with low powers needed for the ordinary badass normal.

You know, on a second thought, FATE wouldn't work at all.

Fate is not to everyone's liking or style. Without unduly derailing your thread, I would like to point out a few misconcepts.

I don't want players wishing away complications and events (including plot hooks) by using a fate point.

Fate Points do not take away from the GM's ability to say no. And a GM should not allow large changes such as avoiding major plot with Fate Point, maybe minor plot avoidance (I've allowed that once).

Or invoking them to recive one thus forcing me to come up with a complication to a scene that wasn't at all relevant.

It is up to the player to come up with the details for a self-compel and then justify it with the proper aspect being compelled.

Fate Points are basically just a +2 to roll, a re-roll, or some minor narrative control. All still need the GMs approval before being invoked or compelled.
Now as a GM I have used a player's invokes to guide me for that session and ideas for the future. Yeah I'm cheap and lazy enough to steal from my player's ideas, that way they think my ideas are theirs...wait...

FATE as a system basically doesn't work if your group is not experienced in storytelling.

No. Instead it works for players comfortable with influencing some narrative portions of a game and GMs comfortable with giving players that influence.

It's like a game system made for a group composed only of GMs, and good ones at that.

Absolutely 100% NO. If this was true, then I (as an average/mediocre GM) would not love playing and GMing it.

A game where everyone has saying in what happens sounds like a nightmare to run, every single scene the action would stop in order to discuss what makes sense and what doesn't in order to recive the smallest advantage.

The only time I have seen a group stop and really discuss is with collaberative city/setting building sessions.
From my experience a Fate game ran by a mediocre GM (like me) tends to run twice as fast as a d20 game ran by a good GM.
I'm fairly slow GMing and even my games are a whirlwind of action and role-playing, it can be that intense.
Note no exception based rules (such as d20) means little or no rules-lawyering. You don't have to stop combat just to look up a minor detail for a minor spell that a player wants to use in a unusual or cool way.

[The Oni]

FATAL.

Alternately Racial Holy War, and yes I'm sorry to say that is a real game.

[Kalmageddon]

About FATE

Spoiler

Show

The only time I have seen a group stop and really discuss is with collaberative city/setting building sessions.
From my experience a Fate game ran by a mediocre GM (like me) tends to run twice as fast as a d20 game ran by a good GM.
I'm fairly slow GMing and even my games are a whirlwind of action and role-playing, it can be that intense.
Note no exception based rules (such as d20) means little or no rules-lawyering. You don't have to stop combat just to look up a minor detail for a minor spell that a player wants to use in a unusual or cool way.

Rules lawyering is NOT an intended feature of d20 systems and it's something that can be easily avoided by being firm and simply vetoing any discussions during the game session. It's a problem with the players, not with the system.
FATE is the first system I've seen where the manual tells you to stop and discuss with the group every time a rule should be applied.
"If you think a compel is not justified, discuss with the group" and similar quotes fill the notes of basically every single section of the core book.
This is not good game design, it's saying "yeah our rules are so vague that you're better off deciding on a case-by-case scenario". No other system I know gives the player an incentive to stop in the middle of the game to discuss what should and should not happen.
Democracy is a nice thing but it should stay as far away as possibile from roleplaying games.

Another thing that FATE seems to be fond of is ass-pulling things. There are the equivalent of feats that are just for that "of course I had a backup weapon" "of course I've met this guy before" "of course I knew this language".
No, no, no, no. A player should be responsable for what brings with him at all times, he should be responsable for his background up front and he should be responsable for what kind of skill his character have at every moment. A small amount of things can be left undetermined until they are needed, but nothing so major that could completly change the course of an adventure.
How am I supposed to run a game where I have no idea what a character can or can't do? They are like Schrödinger Characters, their equipment and skills existing in an undetermined state that you can't find out about until they are needed.

tl;dr: no FATE, not now, not ever. Unless I can be proven wrong with first hand experience, hey, if you want to set up a FATE pbp campaign here I'll gladly join just to see how this system work. But I won't be the guinea GM.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, keem 'em coming, I'll be checking out all the systems you mention here.

[Zavoniki]

A GUMSHOE system might do it, either Trail of Cthulu or Night's Black Agents.

[kyoryu]

Fate stuff:

Spoiler

Show

I don't want players wishing away complications and events (including plot hooks) by using a fate point.

That only works on Compels. Events and other complications just... are there. If there's an orc in the way of the door, you don't just *poof* him away with a FP.

Or invoking them to recive one thus forcing me to come up with a complication to a scene that wasn't at all relevant.

Well, first off, it *should* be relevant to the scene. Secondly, it's kind of the onus of the person proposing the Compel to come up with the complication/nasty effect. And that's not usually as OOC as it sounds.

FATE as a system basically doesn't work if your group is not experienced in storytelling. It's like a game system made for a group composed only of GMs, and good ones at that.

Not my experience actually running it. I've run it with GMs, and people who only sit on the player side. They all enjoyed it.

A game where everyone has saying in what happens sounds like a nightmare to run, every single scene the action would stop in order to discuss what makes sense and what doesn't in order to recive the smallest advantage.
No, that wouldn't do at all.

Wow. Totally not my experience. 99% of the time the game runs like a traditional game - GM sets the scene, players do actions, lather rinse repeat.

There's little arguing for advantage, since most of the times the game isn't about collecting static advantages, but rather actively doing things. Usually if anything's negotiated, it's passive opposition levels, whether a skill can be used, or the applicability of an aspect.

If you're using a Fate Point, or burning a free invoke, I tend to be pretty wide open with justifications for aspects. I mean, you're burning a finite resource, so I don't feel super-pressured to prevent abuse - the FP/free invoke economy takes care of that.

For skills, it's usually just a matter of 'okay, so what are you actually *doing* in the world?' rather than just saying 'I use Physique to open the lock!'

I've had a few discussions about passive opposition levels, and they've been resolved within about ten seconds each time.

About FATE

Rules lawyering is NOT an intended feature of d20 systems and it's something that can be easily avoided by being firm and simply vetoing any discussions during the game session. It's a problem with the players, not with the system.
FATE is the first system I've seen where the manual tells you to stop and discuss with the group every time a rule should be applied.

No, it tells you to get group consensus when there's a conflict. Most of the time, you just run the rules. For instance, there's no real arguing about what happens if you're rolling against someone's active opposition - you have your skill, they have theirs. End of story. Since you generally don't add any kind of static bonuses, a whole area of argument just gets removed.

"If you think a compel is not justified, discuss with the group" and similar quotes fill the notes of basically every single section of the core book.
This is not good game design, it's saying "yeah our rules are so vague that you're better off deciding on a case-by-case scenario". No other system I know gives the player an incentive to stop in the middle of the game to discuss what should and should not happen.

In my experience there's less rules bickering in Fate than in D&D of any edition. Since the game puts less emphasis on rules manipulation, it just doesn't happen as often.

No, no, no, no. A player should be responsable for what brings with him at all times, he should be responsable for his background up front and he should be responsable for what kind of skill his character have at every moment. A small amount of things can be left undetermined until they are needed, but nothing so major that could completly change the course of an adventure.
How am I supposed to run a game where I have no idea what a character can or can't do? They are like Schrödinger Characters, their equipment and skills existing in an undetermined state that you can't find out about until they are needed.

It's a specific type of game, and not one that places an emphasis on keeping lists of things you have.

But skills are set. Feats are set. Usually the only things not set are things like minor gear and the like. Nothing that's going to change the course of a campaign.

Also, generally Fate doesn't work best if you think of it as "GM sets a bunch of challenges in front of the players." In fact, it works best if you just presume the players will fail frequently, and don't plan too much in advance.

tl;dr: no FATE, not now, not ever. Unless I can be proven wrong with first hand experience, hey, if you want to set up a FATE pbp campaign here I'll gladly join just to see how this system work. But I won't be the guinea GM.

Won't do PbP, but if I ever set up a G+ you're welcome to join.

[sailor_grenoble]

GURPS or Unisystem (either Classic Unisystem, found in WitchCraft/Conspiracy X (2nd Ed)/Armageddon, or Cinematic Unisystem, found in Buffy/Angel/Ghosts of Albion/Army of Darkness/...) can work for this kind of campaign.

[Firest Kathon]

I recently came across a system called Finsterland (Dark Land), which seems to cover your requirements. Bonus: There is a free introduction adventure which covers the basic rules. Unfortunately, it's only available in German.

[Jlerpy]

GURPS Monster Hunters.