Quote from: Simlasa;1105672Nephilim has been popping up in my windscreen a lot lately, and that's one I never really gave as much attention as I should have.

I picked up a copy of "Nephilim" in a gaming store quite recently.  It came with the main book is very good condition and even the GM screen.
I got it for AUD $25. Quite a bargain.
I remember running this RPG years ago in the 90s and is was a decent game.
Fun to run with the right players.

Quote from: Simlasa;1105672I actually like the setting of World of Darkness... generally speaking... the whole 'gothic noir' of it... but less the 'cool' vampires. Hunter, Geist, and Changeling were much more interesting from the Player perspective.

Nephilim has been popping up in my windscreen a lot lately, and that's one I never really gave as much attention as I should have.

I don't like the "cool vampires" trope either, and WOD is not the only (or worst) offender. I remember I was buying/reading some Urban fantasy series and the vampires weren't the bad guys, then out of nowhere it became porn, not erotica, not sof core but hard core porn with very explicit descriptions of what where, how and who. That was the last book I ever bought of that author.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105637Some key points to remember  

Nice analysis. I can tell you've thought about this in some detail.

Quote from: Bren;1105684Nice analysis. I can tell you've thought about this in some detail.

Long time Dresden Files fan, and got through the first nine books of Anita Blake before the character's fundamental unlikeability defeated me.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105637Some key points to remember about most urban fantasy series:

- They're tremendously dependent for atmosphere and plot elements on the specifics of their primary setting city; the city has to be, itself, almost a character.

- As a series, that setting usually only changes gradually over the course of the stories. Therefore the stories tend to focus on small- to medium-scope plots, and are seldom high-destruction or high-consequence tales of city-wide violence or war; most of them are mysteries of one stripe or another focusing on wainscot intrigue, usually with a decent side-helping of romance.

- In keeping with the focus on mysteries, if any of the protagonists have supernatural powers of their own, those powers usually have to be very well-defined so that the protagonists don't become plot-breakers. To quote Brandon Sanderson: "It's always more interesting and important what your magicians can't do than what they can."

- Protagonists are almost always extremely limited in the social resources they can draw upon; even if they have friends among the police or are police, or have rich family members or patrons, there will always be reasons why they can't simply flash their badges or buy or telephone their way out of trouble. (This isn't a given: the show Castle often played with the fact that mystery-writer-turned-detective Rick Castle was rich and connected enough to solve a number of problems his police friends would have been stymied by, but this was often done for comic effect, and never used as the primary way to resolve a plot.)

- They're not always outright noir, but they are likely to employ a number of noir tropes, ranging from the prevalence of dirty secrets and corruption among official authorities (whether mortal or supernatural) to the ease with which one can be betrayed by an apparent friend or ally. Even trustworthy colleagues may possess startlingly dark hidden pasts, and are seldom 100% up front about their reasons for any given choice. The flip side of this is that when loyalty and trust do exist, they can be very powerful character motivations.

- Almost every plot is driven by somebody not knowing, or guessing wrongly, about something else that is going on or about what somebody else is doing, or why they are doing it. On large scales, this can produce effects like magicians being shut out of gainful employment for distrust and working to form a union behind the scenes; on small scales, the local thug who's suddenly stepped up his protection racket may be risking the local boss's boot because his mother needs money for a healing.

- At least one major character has to be a Deadpan Snarker or other form of wiseass.

Actually rereading this I notice how my game is more a deconstruction, or full out rebellion against these things.  Not that I oppose noir, but man I hate Onyx Path with a passion.  Though that is with all the shit the devs, owner, and the audience that they want had done.  No I love the Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness for the setting.  It is the outside factors that drive me to make my fork.

EDIT: Actually I should explain how Weird is so different.

The first point I completely agree with, but that might not be a thing for me as the majority of my testing had been road trips.  In fact most of the time had been on the road.  Which I will say that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a great influence.  Now I have plans on doing supplement that focus on cities, but that is book number two as I need to get the core book done.

I agree with number two mostly.  I, however, don't think you really need romance.  That said I had ran Chronicles of Darkness chat sites as a GM for most of a decade and seen way too many horrible romances that even Twilight is better.  So perhaps my biases is showing here.

Yes yes yes with point number three.  You want that mystery and even more mystery even when you reach the end of the entire campaign.  This is what Weird certainly has in spades.

Does Castle even count as Urban Fantasy, or is it just a romance comedy that is disguised as a detective show?  I lean on the later.  Though I do agree with your real point that key information should be hard to find.

Funny thing about Urban Fantasy is that it stems from Gothicpunk which is what made Vampire the Masquerade.  Gothicpunk stems from Cyberpunk.  Finally Cyberpunk stems from Noir itself.  Razorfist makes a valid argument on the subject in this video.

[video=youtube;E_JxmCZKF-w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_JxmCZKF-w[/youtube]

Which yes I agree with that point as well.

The second last point I also agree with.  The information you got should be questionable at best even if it is truth.  NPCs should have wrong information even if they are telling the truth.  The truth should be sought, but not always dependable.

Finally your last point...  ehh.

Dresden Files is a fantastic setting, but like the others I think Fate isn't the greatest system. The last time I ran it, I used Mutants and Masterminds and that worked really well. I could see Cinematic Unisystem being a good fit, too.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1105652I actually been trying to make a fork to Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness with my own game.  I can give you guys a link to my discord if your interested.

Count me in.

I was considering something similar, but there is already a plethora of rules systems so that's not a pressing concern. Urban Shadows, Feed, Liminal, etc.

Hence why my topic is about settings and not rules.

I'll post a more detailed response later.

EDIT: In response to the various responses in this thread:

I'm open to discussing a variety of settings. Cosmic horror a la Call of Cthulhu, monster hunting a la Chill, public knowledge a la True Blood, public knowledge in a cyberpunk future a la Shadowrun...

I think the first question you have to ask is 'who are the PCs', because a lot of your fundamental assumptions are going to stem from that.  You get a very different game if your players are normal people investigating supernatural crimes (a la X Files) versus if they are supernatural creatures COMMITTING supernatural crimes.  

Once you've established who PCs are (or determined that you're supporting the full spectrum) you should decide if there is character advancement.  A big problem with Vampire was that PCs didn't necessarily have the suite of powers that was part of the player's concept of a vampire, and they couldn't really get power.  In D&D people tend to accept that you go from 1st level to 15th level in like 3 months, tops, but Vampires are often supposed to be ancient creatures so accruing power feels like it should take decades; but that doesn't really work well in a game.  

At that point, I think it's worth talking about how accepted the supernatural elements are.  You can have people know that things are weird but keep that generally secret (that's the X-Files Approach) and works in a number of games, or you can try to make it completely a secret.  If it is supposed to be a secret, you have to have clearly worked out ways that it STAYS a secret.  

That's going to drive what the play space is.  If you're a supernatural creature and your existence is a secret, you're mostly going to interact with other supernatural creatures.  If everyone knows about supernaturals, well, there's no reason not to rule over a piece of the world in a fallen world.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1105696The first point I completely agree with, but that might not be a thing for me as the majority of my testing had been road trips.  In fact most of the time had been on the road.  Which I will say that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a great influence.

So like Hunter S. Thompson only even bleaker?

QuoteDoes Castle even count as Urban Fantasy, or is it just a romance comedy that is disguised as a detective show?  I lean on the latter.

You'd be correct; I cited it mostly as one counterexample that you can still have wealthy, well-connected PCs without removing the mystery. This does, however, change the stakes, so it has to be accounted for if included.

QuoteFinally your last point...  ehh.

That's more an observation of practical inevitability than anything else. I don't think urban fantasy needs a deadpan snarker, but as you note, the noir ancestry means that where humour's present, it tends to the black and gallows variety for the most part. I don't remember ever reading a single urban fantasy story (I mean that quite literally, not one) that didn't have at least one major character with that kind of snarky wit.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1105622Anyone interested in brainstorming different urban fantasy settings?

Beyond the Supernatural

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1105738Beyond the Supernatural

That raises another good question, which is: how powerful can PCs become, in theory?  Part of what makes horror settings horrifying is that even the most competent protagonists/PCs are vastly outmatched in any direct confrontation by their foes. If the setting wants to tend towards horror over fantasy, protagonist/PC power has to be fairly strictly limited.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1105738Beyond the Supernatural

No need to go beyond, there's also the Supernatural game from MWP. See if your game can last as long as the show...

And another point which occurs to me: To make the world an interesting place for sustained games, there has to be a lot of different places to explore and plot hooks to follow.

One starting hook might be something as simple as: When a major international sex trafficking ring is taken down, the social workers working on repatriating the surviving victims are constantly told that there were more girls and children than the takedown rescued. The forensic accountants can find odd lacunae in the traffickers' records, but no hint of what might be in them. However, the higher-ups are out of time, money and patience and want to move on to other operations. Where did these disappearing victims go? What took them? And if the FBI doesn't want to stick with it, does the local police precinct know a helpful psychic they sometimes call in on the down low?

Or another hook: Why is the suicide rate in a small obscure college town three times the national average? More worryingly, why hasn't anybody noticed or tried to do anything about it?

Or to throw out a hook idea for a setting where the supernatural is publicly known: A well-known candidate for Congress, or other significant political office, is a lycanthrope who hasn't yet "come out of the doghouse". You work for this candidate's campaign. What are you willing to do to protect his (or her) secret? How do you try to convince the candidate to 'fess up, if that's what you think is best?