New generic contemporary/urban fantasy?

[pedr]

Would Modern AGE work? With bits from the Threefold setting and perhaps bits from Fantasy AGE?

I don't know how generic Rivers of London would be. I think some elements of the novels are quite particular in how they'll be represented in the game.

For paranormal investigators, have you looked at Demon Hunters? It's a mix of Fate and Cortex (with the cute/punny name 'Faith Corps').

I'm not sure an urban fantasy game can be generic, though - the game mechanics will have to reflect certain setting choices even if that isn't directly tied to particular fiction.

 

[Aldarc]

Would Modern AGE work? With bits from the Threefold setting and perhaps bits from Fantasy AGE?

I thought about proposing this as well, but I'm not sure if there are rules for playing angels, demons, vampires, werewolves, leprechauns, and the like. However, I do think that Threefold would provide something of a template for how one could do it with its ancestries.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Is there any generic contemporary fantasy/urban fantasy games that are not horror or claim to be horror? I’m looking for a game where you can play angels in human guise, dragon shifters, leprechauns, werewolves infected by a bite, hereditary vampires, frankenstein monsters, mad scientists, etc. living secretly in modern society. I’ve checked out Fate and Savage Worlds, but they’re too generic. I’ve done research on the urban fantasy boom of the 90s and 2000s: Everlasting, Witchcraft, Fireborn, Nephilim, Nightlife, Nightbane, Urban Arcana, White Wolf, etc. So far I haven’t been able to find anything current or flexible. I’m thinking about making my own and releasing it under public domain or something.

I'd look at Fate's Dresden Files RPG. Unlike basic FATE, It has lots of flavour because it's based on the novels and built on the FATE chassis. The rule books are, I think, pretty cheap.

 

[rhythmsoundmotion]

Fate Blood on the Trail DriveThruRPG I believe has rules for player character vampires
Nitrate City DriveThruRPG I believe has rules for multiple supernatural Player Characters.
Both are PWYW on DriveThruRPG. Neither are in 21 century modern settings though.

 

[innerdude]

I would be surprised beyond belief if some combination of Savage Worlds Adventure Edition + East Texas University setting, or SWADE + Rippers setting, or SWADE + Deadlands Noir setting couldn't meet your requirements.

If it were me, I'd pull SWADE + ETU + Deadlands Noir off my shelf and go.

If that wasn't enough, I might reach for Trail of Cthulhu and the Horror Companion next.

Edit: Interface Zero also has a ton of fun gear, edges, and psionic stuff to go with urban paranomal style of play, even if you don't want to lean into the cyberpunk tropes.

I have no idea what any of those references are.

So you said you looked at Savage Worlds but stated it was too generic. If you're looking at just the straight core rules, then yes, I imagine you'd feel it was too sparse or not really "baked" to run the type of urban fantasy you've described.

The way Savage Worlds normally works is you take the core rules and apply an appropriate setting overlay that goes with it---and there are dozens of officially supported settings, and hundreds of unofficial fan mods out there.

Savage Worlds settings extend the core rules with additional character edges and skills to focus the action on the premise at hand.

The three settings I've described are all officially supported settings that contain elements of the kind of urban fantasy you described.

East Texas University (ETU for short) is an official setting created by the publisher of Savage Worlds' (Pinnacle Entertainment Games, or PEG). It's a mashup of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and I Know What You Did Last Summer," set in a fictional east Texas college town.

Rippers Resurrected is PEG's official setting that emulates "Jack the Ripper" / "Van Helsing" take on Victorian gothic horror.

Deadlands Noir is PEG's official setting that takes their "Weird West" setting of Deadlands and transposes it into semi-modern 1930s Depression-era. Think, "New Orleans voodoo cults and Cthulhu mythos packaged up with Godfather-style mobsters and private eyes."

A couple more I didn't even think of that are "unofficial" published settings ---

Agents of Oblivion is very much in line with a Night's Black Agents style of game for Savage Worlds---spy vs. spy, spy vs. supernatural, or both, in a clandestine world.

If you want to go into a more Agents of Shield / G.I. Joe direction, check out Freedom Squadron on DriveThruRPG.

And one more I mentioned is Interface Zero, which leans into cyberpunk more than urban fantasy, but it has a lot of paranormal/psionic type gameplay elements, and a ton of investigative / "criminal underground" elements that could be useful as well. If I were going to do Blade Runner style gaming with Savage Worlds, it's what I'd turn to.

 

[Theory of Games]

Is there any generic contemporary fantasy/urban fantasy games that are not horror or claim to be horror? I’m looking for a game where you can play angels in human guise, dragon shifters, leprechauns, werewolves infected by a bite, hereditary vampires, frankenstein monsters, mad scientists, etc. living secretly in modern society. I’ve checked out Fate and Savage Worlds, but they’re too generic. I’ve done research on the urban fantasy boom of the 90s and 2000s: Everlasting, Witchcraft, Fireborn, Nephilim, Nightlife, Nightbane, Urban Arcana, White Wolf, etc. So far I haven’t been able to find anything current or flexible. I’m thinking about making my own and releasing it under public domain or something.

Since my search hasn't come up the way I liked, I was thinking of writing my own settings instead.

All the ideas I've been able to come up with are basically variations on two ideas:

1. Contemporary Fantasy Kitchen Sink. In this setting, various magical races live hidden among human society. Witches run electronic stores, vampires prey on clubbers in alleys, shifters... shift? The part I find most interesting is the idea of secret societies that study the magical world, that pursue quests, or fight crime, or pursue immortal intrigues across history. (My favorite game in this vein is the French ttrpg Nephilim: Revelation, in which the PCs are immortals who were personally involved in various historical intrigues and continue to pursue occult quests in the present. The GM book includes rules for quests that PCs can pursue in order to "win" the game by ascending to a higher existence.)
2. Paranormal Investigators. In this setting, the PCs investigate paranormal phenomena and maybe hunt monsters. While PCs can go freelance, the part I find most interesting is the concept of organizations that study and maybe hunt the paranormal. Private think tanks that study to develop applications to advance human technology, secret societies of knights that fight evil, big pharma corporations that cut up unicorns, secret wings of the Vatican, etc. (My favorite games in this vein are Dark•Matter and Hunter: The Vigil, in which PCs deal with cryptids and conspiracies. The former is a great who's who of 20th century cryptozoology, parapsychology and conspiracy theories. The latter is useful as a model for designing organizations that specifically deal with the paranormal.)

There's a fair amount of overlap. In some books I've read, the monster hunter guild has a truce with the magical world and act like vice cops. In others, the monster hunters are the villains who are written as irrational racists who either arbitrarily hate magic or want to hoard its power for themselves. (A Monster of the Week supplement features a mini-setting where you play a shadowy quasi-governmental organization that arbitrarily seeks to destroy all magic.)

Looks like you're searching for something like Monster of the Week, a ttrpg about PC monster-hunters:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

There's also GURPS (4e) Monster-Hunters:

GURPS Monster Hunters

 

[VelvetViolet]

Monster of the Week, a ttrpg about PC monster-hunters:

I've looked at that and found it interesting, but it has all this class bloat and redundancy and stuff. I prefer skill-based systems over class-based ones because of the bloat problem I encountered with class-based games. It definitely looks interesting, I'll give it that, but I wish it had more detailed support for organizations like Hunter: The Vigil from 2008, or the various other monster hunting games from the 90s and so on like Chill, Bureau 13, Dark*Matter, Conspiracy X, Tabloid!, etc. Vigil had a ton of neat organizations to provide paychecks and plot hooks and stuff, some of which were even villainous. Unfortunately it was canceled and replaced with the inferior Hunter: The Reckoning that goes on really insulting tirades against the organizations from prior editions. The writing says all bureaucracy and civilization is evil and only the sanctimonious anarcho-primitivist freelancers can get any work done... despite having zero support infrastructure... look, Reckoning is just an effing mess and a giant middle finger at anyone who liked the various monster hunting organizations in the games of yesteryear and who likes having clean drinking water. Like, I get that organizations like the Watchers do not actually have Buffy's best interests at heart... but come on, the Lucifuge employing 666 antichrist candidates to fight monsters like something out of the Japanese cartoon Blue Exorcist is really cool!

Every time I find a game that I like then it ends up getting cancelled and tossed in the dustbin of history because the owner died or was bought by corpos or something stupid like that. I'm sick of that dumb crap. I'd rather write my own and release it for free into public domain so it never dies like everything else does.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I am just really sick of so much.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Looks like you're searching for something like Monster of the Week, a ttrpg about PC monster-hunters:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

There's also GURPS (4e) Monster-Hunters:

GURPS Monster Hunters

If you play Gurps, you have lost.

 

[TreChriron]

If you play Gurps, you have lost.

Boo. I believe it's cool to talk about why you did or didn't like a game. But general broad statements like this only serve to divide us. You may not like GURPS, but it's not cool to crap on all GURPS or GURPS players (IMHO). Maybe talk about what you love about your favorite game instead of dumping on a group of people.

 

[Umbran]

Is there any generic contemporary fantasy/urban fantasy games ...

I’ve checked out Fate and Savage Worlds, but they’re too generic.

You may have to lay out in more detail what you want in your generic-but-not-too-generic.

The Dresden Files is a Fate game for the Jim Butcher urban fantasy series of the same name.

Urban Shadows might do what you want.

With more details, we might find Cortex or Cypher System world that fits the bill...