Which system for a special forces game?

[Doug Justice]

I'm gonna be starting a special forces campaign ala "Rainbow Six" and was wondering which system you would recommend. I haven't picked up Spycraft yet, would it work well?


Thanks,

Doug

 

[drquestion]

Spycraft would definitely work well for a Special Forces type game. The standard setting is biased towards espionage and super-spy, but it's flexible enough that you shouldn't have any problems. You should probably check out the modern arms and equipment guide, too, which has a lot of modern guns and such statted for spycraft. There's also a class guide for soldiers that you might want to check out. I haven't had a chance to look at it, but it would probably have material of interest to you.

drquestion

 

[Crothian]

Spycraft is what you are looking for. It's a great modern version of d20 and is one of the best d20 products I have.

 

[ajanders]

Blast from the Past

Get the old Top Secrets game, if you can find it. Best combat system I've ever seen, as long as you're fighting only humanoids.

 

[Rhael]

Rolemaster. I'd love to be able to leave it at that, but I can't. You can't really go past it for realism and the necessary skill-use rules that you're going to need.

Alternatively, if I was about to run a game like that I'd take ShadowRun and remove the magic, monsters and cyber - it works perfectly well with those bits missing.

But RM would be my first choice - if you're a competent GM with time on his hands.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

If you want gritty and realistic, look for either 'Recon' or 'Aftermath'. 'Recon' was deadly -- the first night we played, each player lost *multiple* characters before we figured out that 'this isn't D&D anymore'!

I've not seen anything in any d20 product that would make me want to use it in a modern, 'realistic' campaign. I really don't feel like a lot of the mechanics in d20 work well for that.

 

[JohnClark]

Spycraft works great if you want your guys to be super heroes or if you want them to be regular joes who get killed by a bullet just as easily as the bad guy. That's how we played it (no VP, only con score in WP), and it was a ton of fun.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Get GURPS Special Ops. It's the book on special forces, at least as far as RPGs are concerned.

And GURPS handles this stuff very well anyway...

 

[Fenes 2]

I second Shadowrun, we use that system for any modern or futuristic setting.

 

[Darkness]

Get GURPS Special Ops. It's the book on special forces, at least as far as RPGs are concerned.

And GURPS handles this stuff very well anyway...

Couldn't agree more.
And I hear that the newly-released third edition of GURPS Special Ops is even better than the old one.