"Realistic modern RPG?" Topic

This may have been touched upon else where but I am looking for a more realistic RPG. one that deals with a very near future or modern setting, zombies or post apocalypse. I have Aftermath from FGU but that tends to be on the convoluted side where as Twilight 2000 has a very specific setting, so expanding it might take alot of work, (unless there is a website that does this).
I am looking for something in between. My problem with the D20 system is that Feats have a tendancy to be very unrealistic, in the middle of battle you pull of a 1 in a million shot, every 4th combat round.
Any ideas?

I generally use Savage Worlds for modern era gaming, but you may find it too cinematic for you if d20 feats are that much of an issue. GURPS might be a better toolbox if you want something where firearms are realistically lethal.

How about GURPS?

Not my favourite RPG by any means, but the rules cover a lot of ground and provide quite some room for tailoring to fit into a particular setting. And the basic rulebook should cover all the essential bits for gaming in a modern setting, plus you have a boatload of supplements to choose from.

I for got about GURPS, definetly something to consider.
Anything else? Any obscure RPG out there that will fit the bill.

I have used the White Wolf systems for Cuthulu type games were we played FBI agents in the present day and that seemed to work ok.

Sorry.
I really cannot think of one that is realistic.
My suggestion is (what you already mentioned) is First or Second edition of Twilight 2000 and re-world it to suit your needs.
Stay away from the new Twilight 2000… Its a train wreck between two covers.

Oh wait… Just thought of one that may suit you.

How about the OOP game of Millennium's End from Chameleon Eclectic Entertainment.
Long outta print, and there are no zombies, but with that neat combat layover, headshots will be important.
link
There is one on eBay right now fairly cheap (about $7 USD auction ) but ask the seller if it includes the clear overlays. THOSE are important!

If you can find a copy of "Friday Night Firefight", it's an old CyberPunk 2020 supplement ( that also stands alone), it had a really cool realistic lethality to it. We used to play it as a standalone game to just have fun blasting the crap out of each others quickly generated characters.

2 Hour WarGames Chain Reaction (which is free) might have enough there for what you are looking for.

Savage Worlds Modern Ops, Twilite 2000, Modern D20, Traveller, Fudge,GURPS, all of these can handle modern.

The Morrow Project also

And another thing…
Stay away from Phoenix Command. Looooooong and drawn out game.
You may be bored by the time the second shot is fired.

There was a military RPG called Delta Force in the 1980's which might suit – the firefight/combat side of it is quite a hard-core simulation despite the gung-ho blurb on the box cover. Obviously all the kit stats are slightly dated and there are no zombie rules but if you're after "realistic" action it might be worth a look – it crops up on eBay fairly regularly for pennies.

The Laundry Files, based on Charlie Stross's Laundryverse books might be worth a look. It's based on BRP and does include zombies, deep ones, magic and the end of the world, but I'm sure you could ignore all that.

Millennium's End was a great game, and the overlays were a lot of fun to use – until someone opened up with a machine gun. Tracking where every single shot from a 30 round burst goes takes a looooong time. Our players quickly specialised to become snipers and head shot masters. I still have all my books here and all the overlays and body maps – including shark bodymaps from a downloaded adventure.

I would toss out Cyberpunk 2020 and Friday Night Fire Fight too. It's a very realistic system that has a really good skills resolutions system. There are supplements out there that will help you stat out vehicles and weapons… with some work.

For right out of the box Twilight 2000 is probably the best. Back in the day they put out a Merc 2000 supplement that quite easily took the Twilight 2000 ruleset and ported them into a modern setting quite easily. I don't think the Twilight is as "shoe horned" into its setting as you're suggesting. Give it another look.

The hardest part for converting T2K is character creation – it and Merc-2000 were geared toward military characters only.

To work around that I would roll up stats as normal but tack on some kind of points based skill generation. (did any of the supplements, or second edition T2K take expand CC to cover non-military?)

Also the old game called Freedom Fighters could work…
link
I got a copy laying about…

You can also peel all the high tech stuff out of Traveller.

I think that GURPS is at its best in modern games. Savage Worlds as others have suggested is a fun game too, and I also think it is at its best in modern games.

You mentioned Twilight 2000. If you like it try Dark-Conspiracy which was the T2K 2nd edition rpg system with zombies and things. It's tagged as Near Future Horror Role Playing

I see copies at used bookstores and Far Future offers PDFs of all the different supplements plus it's totally usable with T2K.

DrivethroughRPG has pdfs of it also

I like Stros' Laundry series and the RPG based on it

Another vote for GURPS. It has a lot of optional systems that let you dial up the detail and 'realism' as high as any sane person would want… beyond that is Phoenix Command… and you really don't want that… probably.

Thanx all for the suggestion.
I am a big GDW fan except for the "universal" system they came out with that seemed overly complex.
I will look at GURPS again, haven't really thought about it for a long while.
What I want is the realism of what the world would be like with out having the calculate foot pounds per sqaure inch on human flesh covered by .5mm of leather.
Aftermath seems like it has alot of good ideas in dire need of a rewrite.

You like Aftermath but the GDW House System seems too complex? I'm confused.

Classic Traveller, with restrictions to Tech-8. Very lethal firefights…

I'll suggest BTRC CORPS as an option. It works really quickly and plays with enough "crunch" to make the hardcore players happy.

Phoenix Command is an excellent game, but it is more suited for detailed miniatures simulations – it is not really suited for role-playing. Although I have run it as a role-playing engine with both experienced and newbie players, and it has run very quickly – not sure what the nay-sayers are talking about above. In my hands it has run much faster than Millennium's End or even the Twilight: 2000 systems (any flavor).

Based on what you have said however, I would suggest looking at CORPS and then possibly GURPS.

Define Realistic.

For Simulationist goodness GURPs Hands down.

For fun and speed of Play Savage Worlds.

The strength of both is they are very mod-able and have huge fan-bases all working on their own mods and willing to has out ideas.

And for God's sake avoid Phoenix Command, the only other game I recall as being close to that slow was Iron Crowns' ChartMaster….. (mind you there are the rare freaks who make those systems work, but they are few and far between)

Didn't HERO system have a modern mercenary-oriented varient? Can't remember the name, but with hit locations and the deadly results one got from piercing weapons, that might work too.

Rob

tw2000 ver2 had non-military pcs. and the twilight encounters supplement had zombies too.

The RPG "The Company" which is sold by drive thru RPG is a d100 system (basic role play) which seems realistic and is very affordable.

Going left field, and you would have to create Zombie stats and specific rules etc., but how about Tactics, Weapons and Troops from TooFat Lardies?

Man-to-man small unit tactics would make a great base for any ultra realistic game you could imagine.

Twilight 2013 is much less crunchy than Twilight 2000, and the character generation system would work well for any post-apocalypse game. Basically you pick some 'career paths' for what you did before the apocalypse (such as cop, businessman, housewife, teacher, priest, farmer, infantry, etc) and then for what happened to you when the apocalypse hit (refugee, rural survival, urban survival, plus various military ones that fit with the T2013 background).

There are a squillion military options to all this, but it is quite easy to ignore them and make more traditional post-apocalypse character. I used T2013 to run a one-off Sarah Connor Chronicles game, with members of the resistance who used to be 'regular guys' before Judgement Day.

There is still a fair bit of crunch to the system, but the RPG has optional 'less crunch' and 'more crunch' versions of some of the rules, with 'middle crunch' being the default.

Revised RECON by Palladium games is simple yet fairly on point as far as deadliness in combat. We used to modify the rules in my old group to reflect whatever we wanted to mod out as far as setting since the game itself is a Vietnam genre game.

I believe you can pick up an updated version at you FLGS or direct from them and it is fairly cheap.

Percentile based attributes as well as skills. A 7.62MM round from a M60 inflicted 5D10 damage, the Pigman MOS enabled a character to fire 10 shots. That's fairly nasty considering the max strength (hit points) a PC could have is 100.

You want Alternity.

It has an elegant mechanics system that is modular in design, allowing you to run the spectrum from cinematic heroic to nitty gritty simulationist. It's excellent with modern and futuristic gunfire. Very skill-based chargen system that allows you to create pretty much anything, and an experience system that improves skills and abilities without creating invulnerable supermen.

Designed as a generic SF game by TSR, it was dumped by WotC when they got the Star Wars license, but it maintained a vibrant fanbase for many years afterward.

A wealth of support info and a TON of resources are still available at alternityrpg.net

It would be great for zombies or post-apocalyptic game. There are stats in core books for equipment and weapons at a variety of tech levels, but they also produced a standalone setting for Gamma World. The Dark Matter campaign setting is another good source for additional material for a modern horror type game. See also Dragon #258, which included a piece on additional horror adds to Alternity.

"Alternity"

Not unless the implementation of Dark Matter was far superior to the mauling TSR perpetrated on Star*Drive.

Delta Green if you want your horrors camoflagued as a 8 yr old beauty pagent contestant in deep Louisiana….where the temp is 100+ and the locals all have the same blue and green eye (note I said eye , not EYES)