Re-reading Palladium Nightbane, I've thought about a campaign of paranormal investigators set in the kind of 80's horror/slasher films. But Palladium... eh.
What system would you use for such a campaign? Bonus points for the more "stuff" it has already done and ready. (Creatures, setting appropriate rules, etc)

In order of preference:

Eden Studios (AFMBE, Buffy/Angel) - does 80s/90s horror well

Chaosium (CoC, BRP) - lots of horror stuff, very adapatable to era

Pinnacle Entertainment (East Texas University, Savage Worlds) - love the setting, system is ok

Free League (Vaesen, The Walking Dead) - love the system, but would need to adapt era/genre

For 1980s horror involving vampires, monsters, and psychic powers, along with the Cold War atmosphere of the time, I would go with The World of Necroscope by West End Games.

another option is the Night Life RPG from Stellar Games

Call of Cthulhu always works, but would have to be adapted (I do this for my Cold War Cthulhu settings, such as "Reactor 4")

I have not played Palladium's Nightbane, but it looks really cool. Does anyone here have experience with it?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 09, 2025, 01:43:08 PMRe-reading Palladium Nightbane, I've thought about a campaign of paranormal investigators set in the kind of 80's horror/slasher films. But Palladium... eh.
What system would you use for such a campaign? Bonus points for the more "stuff" it has already done and ready. (Creatures, setting appropriate rules, etc)

I ran a short and sweet X-Files style campaign using Call of Cthulhu and the article series "Cthulhu Now!" from White Dwarf magazine. It wouldn't be a bad place to start.

Quote from: Vanadium Angel on February 09, 2025, 02:04:00 PMEden Studios (AFMBE, Buffy/Angel) - does 80s/90s horror well

If you're going for horror over action (and comedy), then a Classic Unisystem game -- such as Conspiracy X -- might be a better fit.

GURPS and I'll tell them it's a campaign about highschool hijinks.  I really like GURPS for horror because it doesn't telegraph what the horror will be.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 09, 2025, 01:43:08 PMRe-reading Palladium Nightbane, I've thought about a campaign of paranormal investigators set in the kind of 80's horror/slasher films. But Palladium... eh.
What system would you use for such a campaign? Bonus points for the more "stuff" it has already done and ready. (Creatures, setting appropriate rules, etc)

The designated mortal paranormal investigators setting for Palladium was called Beyond the Supernatural. It was the first setting to use PPE (Potential Psychic Energy); which had the primary use of being permanently burned to purchase psychic powers and was only secondarily used for magic spells... which is why it has its unusual name instead of something like Mana.

Also of note, children and especially teens have the highest PPE which is normally consumed as you enter adulthood and focus it onto learning skills and building up your attributes (one of the psychic classes is exclusively this, using their PPE to buy attribute and skill bonuses). This is why paranormal stuff is so interested in children and teenagers.

Also of note, they included rules for running mundane people, teens, and kids as PCs for horror campaigns.

The original Beyond the Supernatural can handle it if you curb the PCs to mere mortals and dont allow them near any of the superscience

Alternity and 3e's Dark*Matter setting can as well.

The old Cthulhu Now could. Theres even two module collections out about effectively playing monster and slasher movies.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 09, 2025, 01:43:08 PMRe-reading Palladium Nightbane, I've thought about a campaign of paranormal investigators set in the kind of 80's horror/slasher films. But Palladium... eh.
What system would you use for such a campaign? Bonus points for the more "stuff" it has already done and ready. (Creatures, setting appropriate rules, etc)

What are you looking for in "horror/slasher"? What I think of as 1980s slasher movies tend to not have investigators - they mostly have victims and a final girl.


The best-supported RPG I can think of that comes close to this is the Chill RPG, originally from Pacesetter games in 1984. I have the original PaceSetter edition, plus some sourcebooks for the 1991 2nd edition from Mayfair Games. It is centered more on classic monster movies - so vampires, werewolves, mummies, zombies, and such - as opposed to 1980s slasher villains which are more often maniacs or unique supernatural baddies like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees.

If classic monsters are OK, Pacesetter published about a dozen adventures for 1E, plus a sourcebook and GM screen. Mayfair published a few dozen scenarios, but they are less distinctly 1980s.

More recently, there have been a bunch of slasher one-off RPGs, but as far as I know, they are one-and-done without any support or adventures. Of these, I've only looked into Dead of Night - which was interesting to read but I don't recommend it. These try to do slasher movies in that the PCs are the victims and the PCs are expected to regularly die off.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/81572/dead-of-night

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/60714/slasher-flick

https://slashrpg.com/

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/182628/the-final-girl

Do you want unique slasher monsters like Freddy or Jason, but the PCs are paranormal investigators who are expected to (mostly) survive?  Do you have any models for what you want the results to look like? Maybe the short-lived Friday the 13th TV series?

Quote from: jhkim on February 09, 2025, 07:19:16 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 09, 2025, 01:43:08 PMRe-reading Palladium Nightbane, I've thought about a campaign of paranormal investigators set in the kind of 80's horror/slasher films. But Palladium... eh.
What system would you use for such a campaign? Bonus points for the more "stuff" it has already done and ready. (Creatures, setting appropriate rules, etc)

What are you looking for in "horror/slasher"? What I think of as 1980s slasher movies tend to not have investigators - they mostly have victims and a final girl.

Yeah. I usually think in campaign terms, where the usual slasher flick is very self-contained. (And the sequels usualy re-set the scenario and run it over again with new victims and situations.) So the idea I have is a paranormal investigation team (preferably amateurs) who go from horror "movie" to horror "movie", with maybe an underlying meta running under all the horror stuff going on. I'd mostly want to make it a "greatest hits" of 80's horror, with scenarios that hearken to stuff like Hellraiser and Puppet Master and all that good stuff.

QuoteDo you want unique slasher monsters like Freddy or Jason, but the PCs are paranormal investigators who are expected to (mostly) survive?  Do you have any models for what you want the results to look like? Maybe the short-lived Friday the 13th TV series?

The Friday the 13th series immediatley sprang to mind. I'd really have to re-watch it again. My memory is very hazy.

If you don't like Palladium rules, then I'm going to suggest Mini-Six Bare Bones. 

Mini-six includes a paranormal extermination agency setting, but it's set in Victorian England rather than 1980's USA.

It shouldn't be hard to change the setting. 

I've long wanted to brainstorm using Beyond The Mountains of Madness for a The Thing sequel. Really, not all horror applies to just one system.

Paranormal investigations would make me want to suggest either Call of Cthulhu as many have above as well as Free League's Vaesen as they both specialize in that the niche genre.  I've never actually played either though so I don't know how well they'd handle the horror/slasher part of the request though.

What tone are you going for?  What things from '80s horror movies do you want to emulate?  How do you want the horror elements to be mechanically expressed?  I think those things are important to think about when selecting a system.

In '80s horror movies, the protagonists are usually pretty resilient.  Whether dealing with demon-ghosts who invade their dreams, a coven of boardwalk-haunting vampires, or an unkillable mask-wearing revenant, even mundane suburban teenagers rarely lose their sanity.  They mostly don't go researching dusty tomes at the University library.  A lot of '80s horror movies end with some kind of head-on physical confrontation with the monster, usually employing some kind of guerrilla tactics.  That's almost the complete opposite of the kind of horror that Call of Cthulhu tries to emulate.

I have the 1984 version of Pacesetter's Chill.  It has a lot of material set in the '80s, but it doesn't really have an '80s horror movie feel.  It's more about classic monsters likes ghosts, vampires, and werewolves.  The default setting involves a secret society dedicated to hunting down monsters, with some agents having psychic or magical powers.  You could ignore the setting or the special powers, but the system is also kind of clunky, so I'm not sure it would be worth it.

I would recommend taking a look at Free League's Year Zero Engine and tailoring it to your needs.  It's a pretty easy system to learn and teach, and it plays quickly.  You would have to come up with your own monsters and gear, but I don't think that would be that difficult since you probably wouldn't need a big monster manual to start.

The reason I'm recommending Year Zero is that the Stress Dice mechanic is a really good fit for horror (They use that mechanic for their Walking Dead and Alien games). 

In order to understand the mechanic, I need to explain how the system works.  It's built around a dice pool mechanic.  Anything that helps you adds a die to the pool, anything that makes a task more difficult removes a die.  You roll your dice.  Any 6 is a success, with a higher degree of success the more of them you get.  If you fail your initial roll, or if you want more successes, you can push the roll, meaning you can reroll any die that's not a 1.

However, if you push the roll, you get a Stress Die added to your pool, which you would use a different color die for.  Stress Dice build up until you alleviate stress in some way.  Whenever you make a check, you also roll your accumulated Stress Dice. Rolling more dice means you have more chances to succeed (your stress might make you sharper or more focused), but if you roll a 1 on one or more Stress Dice, then something bad happens (and if you roll a 1 on a Stress Die on your initial roll, you can't push).  This makes it possible to both succeed on a roll and also have something bad happen, which is thematically appropriate for a horror game.

The pdf I linked above contains a sample Panic Table for a horror game, but you could make your own table or choose something appropriate to the situation.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend buying an existing Free League game for your purposes, though.  They build their games up from the same core mechanic, but they tailor each game to the material.  For example, The Walking Dead is a horror game, but most of the material in the book deals with topics specific to the setting, like mechanics for dealing with groups of zombies, how communities work, and so on.  You'd end up paying for things that wouldn't be useful when they give away what you need to get started for free.

This turned out a little longer than intended, but I hope it's useful.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 09, 2025, 09:02:11 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 09, 2025, 07:19:16 PMWhat are you looking for in "horror/slasher"? What I think of as 1980s slasher movies tend to not have investigators - they mostly have victims and a final girl.

Yeah. I usually think in campaign terms, where the usual slasher flick is very self-contained. (And the sequels usualy re-set the scenario and run it over again with new victims and situations.) So the idea I have is a paranormal investigation team (preferably amateurs) who go from horror "movie" to horror "movie", with maybe an underlying meta running under all the horror stuff going on. I'd mostly want to make it a "greatest hits" of 80's horror, with scenarios that hearken to stuff like Hellraiser and Puppet Master and all that good stuff.

Quote from: jhkim on February 09, 2025, 07:19:16 PMDo you want unique slasher monsters like Freddy or Jason, but the PCs are paranormal investigators who are expected to (mostly) survive?  Do you have any models for what you want the results to look like? Maybe the short-lived Friday the 13th TV series?

The Friday the 13th series immediatley sprang to mind. I'd really have to re-watch it again. My memory is very hazy.

If you want to adapt actual 80s movies like Hellraiser and Puppet Master, I'm pretty sure you're on your own as far as prewritten source material. There are some RPGs that draw from those - The Whispering Vault (1993) draws inspiration from Hellraiser, and John Tynes' Puppetland (1995) takes some inspiration from Puppet Master, but they're unique RPGs not suited to investigators.

Personally, I play a lot of Call of Cthulhu - but I would lean towards Unisystem for an 80s movie vibe. I only know All Flesh Must Be Eaten by reputation, but I know the standard Unisystem Witchcraft RPG and the Cinematic Unisystem Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. I suspect AFMBE would be the best core book for your idea.

But you might have your own preferred system for horror - you might want just a universal system that you're familiar with. Unisystem is good, but there are lots of systems out there.