Honestly, GUMSHOE and the new Delta Green are vying for my favorite monster-hunter system of all time. Fear Itself is a beautiful system for the 'ordinary people stumble into the supernatural' story, while Esoterrorists is 'organization fighting horrors from beyond', and Night's Black Agents is 'superspy action thriller fighting monsters.' What I have read is much deeper into the occult mysteries than any other game I've seen.ДЄnd I'll echo the above recommendations of any GUMSHOE horror titles. I backed Unknown Armies on Kickstarter, but I've not had a chance to read the books yet. While still built for combat games, it plays a lot more closely to the occult & the terrors in the night. The new Chronicles of Darkness is a different beast. A Demon gone Loud is pretty damn close, though.) (Of note, I still want a Nexus Crawler equivalent for CofD, just for the sheer pants-wettingness of the thing. I loved Werewolf, but it was more about combining (questionable) praise of native peoples, humanity-versus-nature-versus-technology, and kicking ass. What really impressed me was the sheer variety of it all. PTU 2.0 Playtest Materials Not a release, sorry But weвЂ™ve been testing PTU 2.0 for a few weeks now, and we want to share with everyone who isnвЂ™t part of our Discord server (but you should join us here because weвЂ™re cool). Mage was probably the closest of the main splats, and it was still a bit more interested in flashy combat. Whether you took to the stars, fought against ancient liches, or just some schoolyard bullies who have a bone to pick with you, RPGs took us to some wonderful places this year. Stepping away from the classics, I'm also a huge fan of GUMSHOE - both Fear Itself and Trail of Cthulhu - for its integration of investigation and mystery into the basic rules and really capturing the feel of the sources of inspiration - namely the Cthulhu Mythos and the works of horror writers like Clive Barker.Д¬lassic World of Darkness was a ton of fun. Chill, on the other hand, still focuses on those outside forces, but the way in which SAVE envoys - normal people drawn into an abnormal situation - stand up to fight for the people who can't stand against those forces is actually really inspiring and does a great job of merging horror and heroism into a very coherent story.Д«ack in the early 2000s, I played a lot of CJ Carella's Witchcraft when Eden Studios published it and I still regret that they haven't been able to publish more sourcebooks for that excellent game. In Unknown Armies' case, it applies the principles of magic and philosophy that were a big part of Mage: the Ascension more comprehensively and ends up with a setting where the occult weirdness and horror elements all point to just how weird and dark the human psyche can get all by itself without any help from outside forces.

Click to expand.I am a huge fan of Unknown Armies and Chill (especially Chill 3e) for their very humanist approach to the occult and monsters.

Best tabletop rpgs 2017