Best System for a Silent Hill-like Horror Game?

[gribble]

If it's more of an investigation / conspiracy type game, look at Night's Black Agents.

NBA is more suited for superspies vs a conspiracy type gaming, but you could always look at Fear Itself (as suggested previously) for a more personal take on horror using the same system (Gumshoe) or Esoterrorists (more X-files than Silent Hill), which has a great section about building a creepy small town (a la Twin Peaks or Silent Hill) that would be very relevant and again it uses the Gumshoe system.

 

[Jabborwacky]

To all those who suggested it, thank you for suggesting the Gumshoe system. After looking at Fear Itself and Esoterrorists, it is probably the most appropriate RPG system out there for games in the venue of Alone in the Dark, Clock Tower, and Silent Hill. For those who don't know, Gumshoe is an easy to pick up RPG that has a laser focus on investigative gameplay. After eyeballing the rules for a bit, I would suggest some minor additions/alterations:

1. Stability Loss Resistance: Repeated exposure to grisly scenes and supernatural abominations should result in players taking less stability loss than what is written. The sort of situations that trigger stability checks tend to be more common in the above horror games than the kind of settings the book has in mind. Fantasy Flight Game's "End of the World" series has a similar mechanic for its zombie survival game.

2. Keeping track of resources: Because survival horror requires careful use of resources, keeping track of supplies, especially precious ammunition, is a bit more important. Both books generally don't bother with keeping track of ammunition for weapons, instead suggesting that a check be made to reload a gun if it serves dramatic effect and little else. Given a shotgun is an awfully effective deterrent to a lot of critters, giving players virtually limitless ammunition is probably not conducive to the horror vibe.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

The OP kind of deflected the idea of Call of Cthulhu in his opening post, because Silent Hill is not about going mad (according to him).

Here is why he is wrong:

The Silent Hill games have always been about trying to drive the player mad. It is all about madness. You may not have noticed it while you were playing the games, but there are many fine details and deliberate design choices in Silent Hill that are meant to put the player in a certain state of madness.

So if you aim to bring that same experience to your table, then you are not going to achieve that goal unless you include that element of madness. Bringing a game like Silent Hill to life as a role playing game, is all about first understanding the subject matter.

Actually, being a big Silent Hill fan myself I would argue that the default state of every protagonist (and trapped member of the town) is madness. It's not about the journey, it's about what happens after you've arrived, so to speak*....especially in Silent Hill 2 and some of the others where the ultimate goal for a "best ending" might involve a modest amount of redemption and possibly an out to return to sanity.

On the OP, the only system I've ever really felt worked well for Silent Hill was Kult: Beyond the Veil (or its prior editions) but that amazingly cool and obscure system is OOP and hard to find for cheap, so my follow-ups would be to use any system with robust range of support for madness, body horror, mortality, blurring of dream and reality, and a big plus if it delves into very strange gnosticism. I'd be able to pull off a Silent Hill game using Call of Cthulhu, Chill 3rd, GURPS Horror or BRP but they'd all require some work. I also love Unknown Armies but the core principles of that setting really don't mesh well at all with the Silent Hill cosmology.

Kult, ironically, would give you all you need....sigh. I miss that game.


EDIT: Oh I'd also think Fear Itself is a good choice.


*For the player of a Silent Hill game it's about slowly figuring out just what horrible thing your protagonist did to get himself into his own purgatory, while also piecing together how all the other "inmates" relate to your guy's scenario, or what they did to get stuck in Silent Hill as well.