I just came home from seeing The Conjuring 2. Are there good games out there that could emulate the genre of paranormal home hunts by mundane folk?
Chill comes to mind but I haven't played it since the 90s.

Call of Cthulhu? Doesn't have to involve the Mythos stuff.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;904379I just came home from seeing The Conjuring 2. Are there good games out there that could emulate the genre of paranormal home hunts by mundane folk?
Chill comes to mind but I haven't played it since the 90s.

But you don't need to seek any specific RPG for that. In addition to plethora of universal ones, any modern urban will do. See, if you think about it, it's not that the game must feature "something" by default, or that you must add "something" to it - instead, you must simply take a few things out of the picture, like PCs' powers, skills, or equipment. Even the "monster" itself doesn't have to be real, you might simply replace it with someone pretending to be "supernatural force" to mislead people, keep them out of his place.

So, All Flesh Must Be Eaten (or any other zombie-themed RPG like Dead Reign). Cryptworld, Evil Dead, Armageddon, Supernatural, Esoterrorists, Unknown Armies, KULT, Over the Edge, The Dresden Files, any Cthulhu-based (including Laundry and Delta Green). Heck, why not Leverage, De Profundis, Spookybeans, or WoD?

Take your pick - it all begins with PCs being simple "normies", who mind their own business, unaware about The Big Picture, untaught in the ways of magic & shit. They are (for various reasons, ranging from "our bro is missing" to "you all meet in a clubhouse and a mysterious chick approaches you and asks to...") tasked with visiting a third house to the left, the one that sends some bad vibe...

BTW: relevant picture.

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Call of Cthulhu:. Its pretty much made of this.

Beyond the Supernatural: Still one of my favorites. The group I GMed for were all mundanes with no psi or magic at all.

The trick is to keep things on the lower end and an eye on what the group can handle and cant with what they do have. Even if that ammounts to running away. Restricting professions, especially in BTS is another thing that is a must to do unless you know the players are all going to shy away from the magic and the high end psi.

Chill I have heard of often but never seen.

BESM and Gurps can do it. If course takes some tweaking.

Ghostbusters from West End Games. All you need.

I'll throw in Trail of Cthulhu and its GUMSHOE system as it's built for investigating things.

Besides the ones mentioned:

Bureau 13, though you work for the government. Rules system is terrible, but background and scenarios are top notch, if a bit campy
Dark Conspiracy (set in the near future though)
Conspiracy X
Pandemonium (play tabloid reporters)
Fright Night and Crime Scene Supernatural for d20 (from Hogshead)
Silent Legions (more Cthulhu-ish though)

And strangely, the new Gangbusters seems to have a supernatural bent.

There's also a couple of D6 implementations of it. Into the Shadows was a free one. There's Horrors in the Night (paid, though really, really cheap) and even Men in Black (though more aliens)

Still, I'd probably suggest using Call of Cthulhu and throwing out Cthulhu & Company. There are some sourcebooks for "real" parapsychology, though I don't think demons and such. There seems to be a strange lack of games dealing with real life demonology

Darkly Through The Labyrinth simulates 80s investigations into cults, albeit ones that are not supernatural. It reads well but I can't testify to how it plays, although I've something in the pipeline.

Ghostories (paranormal as myth, the fantastic, or reality) and the the upcoming Bloodshadows 3E (paranormal as magic and monsters).

Thanks, guys! Great suggestions all around. From what I can tell there isn't something that addresses specifically what I'm looking for.
I'm very familiar with Call of Cthulhu so that might be my first choice if I were to make an attempt at simulating a paranormal investigation game. My second choice might be a 1st edition Kult, taking out the cosmology, or twisting it so much it would be unrecognizable.

It seems like there isn't something that specifically addresses the haunted house investigation thing. To me, this sort of game would be best served with something fairly light on rules, for it is best if the atmosphere at the game table is taut and players are not distracted with endless rolls.

Players would essentially play a party of paranormal investigators, mild psychics, audio/visual techs who have a knack for this sort of thing, maybe even a Catholic (or other) priest, facing their fears, or debunking frauds, creating their own case files, essentially, with each session. That seems like it would be fun.

I might add the ideas running in my head into a little game design project. A hack of Call of Cthulhu might be a good start.

Maelstrom: Domesday is ordinary people investigating supernatural events in 1086 still-adjusting-to-Norman-Conquest England.

Quote from: Naburimannu;904416Maelstrom: Domesday is ordinary people investigating supernatural events in 1086 still-adjusting-to-Norman-Conquest England.

That sounds absolutely amazing!

I just use B/Ex and run everyone as 0-levels while keeping this article in mind but if you're wanting to keep things modern then you could just strip the D&Disms away even further.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;904415It seems like there isn't something that specifically addresses the haunted house investigation thing. To me, this sort of game would be best served with something fairly light on rules, for it is best if the atmosphere at the game table is taut and players are not distracted with endless rolls.

Personally, I go with InSpectres and play it serious. Probably using the UnSpeakable variant, even though that is specifically intended for Cthulhu Mythos investigation. But on the other hand, the unmodified InSpectres has rules centered around your paranormal investigation business. You investigate mysteries to build your franchise, and the risk players take is that their characters will take too much stress and will need a vacation or other recovery time paid out of the franchise budget.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;904415It seems like there isn't something that specifically addresses the haunted house investigation thing. To me, this sort of game would be best served with something fairly light on rules, for it is best if the atmosphere at the game table is taut and players are not distracted with endless rolls.

Players would essentially play a party of paranormal investigators, mild psychics, audio/visual techs who have a knack for this sort of thing, maybe even a Catholic (or other) priest, facing their fears, or debunking frauds, creating their own case files, essentially, with each session. That seems like it would be fun.

That's exactly what Ghostories is for. You can play psychics, occultists, clergy, etc.