What's the ideal RPG system for a "Shadow Of The Colossus" style campaign?

[Courtney Cullen]

So, I've had this idea bubbling around in my head for a while to run a roleplaying campaign with a slightly unusual setting. The premise is that there are enormous beasts roaming the lands who are roughly the size of your average skyscraper. The player characters are essentially titan hunters, who must climb around upon said beasts to kill or distract these beasts from trampling over settlements and towns. It's an idea obviously inspired by Shadow Of The Collossus, but I'd end up going a bit deeper into the implications of these beasts on the natural world. Who are these beasts? Where did they come from? Is it right to kill them? What damage do they do to the ecosystem? What is the environmental impact of destroying them? Are humans harvesting them for resources, and doing greater harm than good? etc etc.

The problem I have is I'm not sure what system would be best to tell this story.
I feel like 5e or the more traditional roleplaying systems would not be appropriate for the scale and power level of the game.
I was thinking of abstracting the actual scrambling upon the beasts by drawing large "maps" of different parts of their body, and having miniatures crawling over the landscape of the thing. Obviously, the beasts would be far too large to use a single miniature to represent them.
I thought FATE might be a good fit, but it seems to have an implied power level that the PCs possibly should not possess in comparison to an enormous monster. Or perhaps I am wrong about that? I have read about FATE, but I have never actually run a game yet.
I also thought of Savage Worlds, but the hesitation I have there is that the system seems very tied to accurate measurements of scale, which could pose problems for me if I am trying to accurately represent the size of these things. My "maps" of the creatures could well end up bigger than the size of my gaming table!

What do you think?

 

[Bawylie]

I don’t think the system matters at all. I think it’s a question of scale.

Having played Colossus, having watched more than one Godzilla film, what informs the challenge is the limited toolset of the little human beings.

If I were to run a game like you propose:
1.) I’d use D&D 5E just for ease and familiarity but really anything works.
2.) I’d set a maximum power level just above the starter tier. For 5E, level 5 would be the cap. For pathfinder, level 6. For 4E, level 10. For dungeon world probably also level 5. If the whole party can fly and/or teleport or make a million attacks, the scale is probably wrong.
3.) I’d look really hard at environmental designs for encounters. Altitude is going to matter a lot.
4.) I’d divide modes of play into research, hunting, and conquering.
5.) I’d design the Colossi as dungeons and creatures, including region effects, lair effects, legendary actions, etc.

Some thoughts on colossi
-I suppose each body part is like a room, so it’s terrain and composition matter along with its Defenses, capabilities and HP
-Each colossi should be deadly in direct confrontation, but capable of being made vulnerable by disabling certain body parts
-each body part takes its own turn in combat unless disabled
-there is a specific weak spot somewhere on each colossus that requires specific positioning to attack and damage - damage to this vulnerable spot is the only way to truly defeat the colossus. The limbs probably regenerate or reinvigorate after a round or two or three.
-I’d set patterns of behavior for each colossus (like a bull or rhino would circle and charge, while a scorpion might rotate in place and strike)
-I’d take a hard look at monster hunter for a while to see how groups go up against big bad monsters and keep a lot of that in mind.

 

[DQDesign]

https://www.rpgnow.com/m/product/128281

this supplement for Dungeon World contains rules dedicated to fight against uber-giant monsters. Moreover, the intrinsic rules of DW avoid PCs' "supercoolness" problem, so setting a power cap should not be necessary.

 

[Bawylie]

https://www.rpgnow.com/m/product/128281

this supplement for Dungeon World contains rules dedicated to fight against uber-giant monsters. Moreover, the intrinsic rules of DW avoid PCs' "supercoolness" problem, so setting a power cap should not be necessary.

I like that supplement a lot. But I still run into the supercoolness problem with DW, myself.

 

[DQDesign]

I like that supplement a lot. But I still run into the supercoolness problem with DW, myself.

well, it can happen, especially when modifiers approach +3. I see 2 possible solutions:
- when a '+3' roll gets a 2-6 result, use a GM REALLY hard move. in other words, raise the stakes: scatter PCs body parts across the multiverse when a teleport goes wrong, have them crash into the giant monster mouth when they fail flying and so on;
- use d20 instead of 2d6 to increase granularity, with 1-8=2-6, 9-16=7-9 and 17+=10+. In this way you should have room also for modifiers up to +6, and very few characters can achieve that.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

FATE came to mind as well. My experience is that powerful enemies were hard to difficult unless you worked together and started piling on the Aspects. That sounds like it would pair well with Shadow of the Colossus.

But I also agree with [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] that D&D could work. I dig the idea of making each Colossus its own dungeon, rather than a single monster that needs to be fought HP-to-HP.

I thought FATE might be a good fit, but it seems to have an implied power level that the PCs possibly should not possess in comparison to an enormous monster. Or perhaps I am wrong about that? I have read about FATE, but I have never actually run a game yet.

 

[Aldarc]

Fate could work. One of the things that Fate permits is basically segmenting the giant into their own "characters." In Fate this is called "The Bronze Rule":

Before going any further, here’s something important:

In Fate, you can treat anything in the game world like it’s a character. Anything can have aspects, skills, stunts, stress tracks, and consequences if you need it to.

This is called this the Bronze Rule, but you may also have heard of it as the Fate Fractal if you pay attention to the Internet. You’ve already seen some examples of this in other places on the site; you give your game its own aspects during creation, you place situation aspects on the environment as well as on characters, and the GM can let environmental hazards attack as if they had skills.

Extras extend the Bronze rule even further.

Give the arms stress boxes, consequences, and aspects. Make it into a dungeon that you can explore, traverse, and enter. And then do the same for legs, head, etc. as you see fit. And then you can basically make encounters and puzzles out of discovering weak points in these different parts of the whole.

Also there are several Fate games that involve fighting giants, such as Iron Edda and Mecha vs. Kaiju. You may want to check them out as well.

 

[Courtney Cullen]

Some great tips in here guys. Thanks for the help!
I think I am going to stick with 5e after all, purely for the sake of familiarity.