Are there any good modern-day fantasy games out there?

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:15 am

meh, I tried

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 8:16 am

I still advocate GURPS, even if just because there's a BPRD book and you have players in favour of it.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 2:46 pm

+1 GURPS for the kitchen sink. They have books for everything, pretty cheap pdfs for the most part these days, or you can figure most of it out yourself by hunting through the gigantic core books. It's generally a "gritty cinematic" outcome to everything, does reasonable hard-scifi, you can lose a leg and survive it, usually, but you've still lost the leg and now have to work with a (impossibly good) prosthetic.

Their forums are also quite helpful if you have questions, last I looked, and open to real solutions (which are often: if it's hurting, don't do it).

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:32 pm

The GURPS modern day fantasy setting is Technomancer, which has a lot of pretty awesome stuff in it, from magic-resistant bacteria (caused by overuse of Cure Disease) to summoning demons being a capital violation of U.S. immigration law.

There's also a Buffy-inspired modern secret magic setting called Monster Hunters which has a very convenient set of templates for creating characters.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:03 pm

Fudge/Fate is better than story teller, and the whole interwoven background stories thing is actually quite fun.

The actual crunch? is basically, roll some dice, and then Mother May I.
Or, you spend a point activate one of your amusingly worded catch phrases.. and try to talk your GM into having things go your way.

Sometimes, your GM can activate one of your catchphrases in a bad way, and then you either spend a fate point to say, "no" or you gain a fate point by going, "well.. okay"

With the right GM? And a group of creative players.. it's fun.
If you have "that guy" or the GM of haha fuck you.. then it's totally sucks.
It's also better for 3-4 players and a gm. It really breaks down when there's a lot of players.

Just another user · Post by **Just another user** » Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:30 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Thanks. I will think that over. Looks like the options I have are pretty well laid out, it's just a matter of tracking copies down and checking them out.

You could check out Witchcraft. It sound very much what you want (near the end of the world and stuff), and you can mix and match with the other unisystem books if you need it.
It has the adantage that the witchcraft core rulebook is a free download.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:13 pm

Again, there is literally an actual sourcebook for what he wants to emulate, it's for GURPS.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:30 pm

@Prak

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:What I mean by "Kitchen Sink Modern Fantasy" is I want to be able to throw anything and everything that flits across my tiny little mind into the game if I can make it work, and I want the game to stand in my way as little as possible in that regard.

I want it to be flexible because I don't want to be constrained by established settings and metaplots or how anything works. I like how World of Darkness (At least the old one) will let you play a greek deathcultist, a mad scientist, a celtic blood-witch and a hippie who gets stoned until reality changes in the same group and the last thing you worry about in that group is how such disparate magic types appear in the same place. The difference is (As alluded to earlier) I don't want to run this in mage for a number of reasons.

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:I have never played Dresden, and I have no idea how much it ties to the setting. I hadn't even considered it because it's a license and license RPGS are usually shit. I might look into this if you guys say it's not bad.

You're probably going to have to sell this game on grounds beyond just 'it exists'

How attached is it to the setting? (IE, does it have the Feng Shui problem?)
Does it break if you take out some abilities and add others?
How easily do characters pass the bullet test?
etc.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:47 pm

GURPS is actually fairly famous for having sourcebooks that are great resources for the setting but terrible resources for playing GURPS. Many GURPS sourcebooks are written by people who are amazingly knowledgeable and did extreme amounts of research... about the sourcebook topic; while simultaneously being only passively familiar with the actual GURPS engine.

I'm not familiar with this book in particular, but there are a lot of GURPS books where the source material is good, but the translation into GURPS mechanics is so bad that the book is basically no more or less useful for running a game in the discussed setting using any other system.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 12, 2013 5:53 pm

@Avor- I literally don't know. It's a good source for the setting, but the one time I tried to run a BPRD game, the two veteren gamers were basically completely opposed to learning a new system, so we weren't even going to use GURPS (I literally brought every system I had which I thought would work well- GURPS, BESM, After Sundown, Mutants and Masterminds, and at least one other thing. They wouldn't consider anything but M&M). Then the game never fucking happened, because my gamer friends are fucking boring, no-taste cocks who can't even fucking pretend to have the barest interest in the shit I want to run.

But Desdan said he wants to run BPRD, and has players who endorsed GURPS, in my experience that would clinch it for GURPS. Book+what the players are willing to play.

Other than that, there are my suggestions for Urban Fantasy- GURPS, BESM, After Sundown, Mutants and Masterminds. Refluffed OWoD would work, even if the system sucks, and D&D 3.X could be crammed into the niche.

crasskris · Post by **crasskris** » Tue Mar 12, 2013 11:12 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:How attached is it to the setting? (IE, does it have the Feng Shui problem?)

Very. Dresden files is a book series about a heroic wizard (as in "wizard > you") in what comes down to a urban fantasy noir setting. Half of the content of the books would not exist if the baddies wouldn't use a trick or straight-up dogpiling tactics to bring the main character wizard down to their level for a while, and while the other characters enable Harry Dresden to reach the big bad, he usually takes the boss on his own.

In the game, this is perfectly mirrored.

For example: Given a little time, a wizard can use his strongest skill in many, many non-combat skill rolls, often ignoring natural constraints. As a mundane, you get a +1 bonus to finite number of skill rolls instead, +2 if the circumstances are right.

The non-wizard options range from varied to specific, and seldom balance against pure magic use, or each other (depending on style of play).

If you want to go FATE, I'd like to bring either Spirit of the Century or Legends of Anglerre into the discussion.

Spirit I haven't looked at or played, but it is a pulp RPG and, as such, has rules for driving, piloting, firearms as well as the arcane.

Legends is a pure fantasy RPG, and it copy/pasted some content from Spirit, I assume, since some skill descriptions have references to other skills that exist in Spirit (or FATE), but not Legends.
It offers a framework for magic (that needs work to configure or redo for your setting). The basic rules scale quite nicely, allowing you to use them for characters as well as monsters, organizations and buildings/crafts, but the rules of course differ in detail. I once used Legends to build a Star Wars FATE, which worked surprisingly well.
(On the downside, Legends has the sophisticated formatting of a used toilet paper. Get the ebook with it's bookmarks if your want to actually use the book in-game).

TL/DR: Dresden Files offers limited flexibility, being based on an inherently unbalanced book series. Within FATE, there are alternatives to consider, which might/might not be beneficial to your cause.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Mar 13, 2013 2:10 am

The Dresden Files book really isn't that reliant on the setting. I mean, sure, the pre-statted stuff is all from the books, but when my group played, we had a were-gorilla and an eastern dragon sealed in human form. I'm pretty sure DF has neither of those things.

crasskris · Post by **crasskris** » Wed Mar 13, 2013 11:02 am

Prak_Anima wrote:The Dresden Files book really isn't that reliant on the setting. I mean, sure, the pre-statted stuff is all from the books, but when my group played, we had a were-gorilla and an eastern dragon sealed in human form. I'm pretty sure DF has neither of those things.

Well, the books have were-wolves (with other were-somethings mentioned), and a western dragon in human form (and an authentic roman legion armor), so yeah, close enough.

I'm not saying that it can't be adapted to other stuff (and the city generation is quite sweet for urban fantasy, actually), you just have to work with or around the good old 'caster > non-caster' stuff. And having a parallel magic dimension like the NeverNever in the setting probably helps, too.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Mar 13, 2013 1:44 pm

The dragons from DF are on a vastly different scale. I know for a fact that we had to write up the template from scratch for my dragon character.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Mar 13, 2013 1:50 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: I'm not familiar with this book in particular, but there are a lot of GURPS books where the source material is good, but the translation into GURPS mechanics is so bad that the book is basically no more or less useful for running a game in the discussed setting using any other system.

-Username17

I own GURPS: Hellboy (including a copy of the limited leatherette red-foil stamped hardback edition!) Once you scrape off the paint, it's just GURPS Lite rules - which are okay, not spectacular. Doesn't quite have the comic book feel to it, and the old GURPS ritual magic rules are about as wonky as the old WoD Sorcerer hedge magic rules. Great artwork, though.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Mar 13, 2013 2:15 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:The dragons from DF are on a vastly different scale. I know for a fact that we had to write up the template from scratch for my dragon character.

That's just because the rules for lesser dragons (our world, page 38) are simply that the MC and players should write a template from scratch for the purpose. i don't know why they go to all the trouble of filling a whole page with dragon speculation and list a bunch of potential powers for them, and then end it all with "finish it your own damn self", but that's pretty endemic for the Dresden Files game. The book is much longer than it needs to be and much less explicit about things than it should be.

By the way: demon gorillas are in the same book on the previous page. The characters you described are poorly implemented in the Dresden Files game books, but they are explicitly supported.

-Username17

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Mar 13, 2013 2:42 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:The dragons from DF are on a vastly different scale. I know for a fact that we had to write up the template from scratch for my dragon character.
That's just because the rules for lesser dragons (our world, page 38) are simply that the MC and players should write a template from scratch for the purpose. i don't know why they go to all the trouble of filling a whole page with dragon speculation and list a bunch of potential powers for them, and then end it all with "finish it your own damn self", but that's pretty endemic for the Dresden Files game. The book is much longer than it needs to be and much less explicit about things than it should be.

It's probably because the series is still ongoing and they don't want to throw out an official lesser dragon template that will certainly be obsoleted when Jim has has a real lesser dragon show up. And a lot of stuff is specifically vague to avoid spoilers for novels that haven't been written yet. Jim Butcher has said that he explicitly asked them not to include some stuff for that reason.

Heck, after the last two Dresden Files books, the RPG is fairly outdated.
There are fundamental aspects of the setting that were only revealed in the most recent novel, such as the rule that immortals can only be killed on Halloween (and will regenerate if killed at any other time) or the fact that the entire plot of the series is the work of a sapient infectious disease from outside the universe or that the Winter Fae, who are generally considered to be murderous capricious assholes, actually exist to defend humanity from nasty Lovecraftian shit from outside of the universe.

This is the real peril of righting a licensed RPG for a series that isn't finished yet.