Tomorrow never comes, but that's okay

I think which game you choose for this is going to depend heavily on what “urban fantasy X-Files” means to you and what angle you want to approach it from.

I would not recommend Monster of the Week for either angle I’m anticipating, and I know relatively little about City of Mist. Maybe somebody who knows it better can chime in (I also encourage chiming in from fans of any of these four games).

Delta Green and Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy are both very good choices I think - you could even play both at the same time in a way that I will get to later.

Since you reference reading posts on this blog I assume you are already aware of the what type of TTRPG Delta Green and Eureka are compared to Monster of the Week but im going to at least briefly explain anyway for the sake of anyone else. I also assume that you are willing to read the Eureka rulebook which will tell you much better than a tumblr post could exactly how the rules work - much better than your average TTRPG rulebook if I do say so myself, since the Eureka rulebook goes out of its way to explain the purpose and effects of each rule and mechanic instead of just listing them. Getting really really in-depth about the exact mechanics of both games would be like, a multi-day project of an essay. If you scroll or search this blog though you will find plenty of posts talking more about Eureka's mechanics though.

Both Eureka and Delta Green are part of the lineage of D&D, though this doesn’t mean they use the same rules or are about dungeon crawling for EXP and loot. They’re very “trad” “challenge” games, meaning they are primarily about throwing PCs into adversity and stressful situations that will challenge their skills and wits, and the system mastery and attentiveness of their players.

Like basically all TTRPGs they will produce a story as a byproduct of gameplay but challenge games if played by their rules usually don’t produce any kind of story you’d expect or consider conventional. Their main design goal is to be a challenging game rather than generate a conventional novel-like narrative.

I would consider both games relatively ‘hardcore’ as far as challenge games go as well. Failure of the party to accomplish their goal, or sometimes even survive, is never off the table.

“Urban Fantasy”

Both games take place in the ‘real world’ but with dangerous paranormal phenomena the general public is not aware of. In Delta Green, some agencies of the government are aware of these paranormal phenomena and the PCs are government agents tasked with investigating and almost always eliminating them while keeping them a secret from the general public. In Eureka, the government is not any more aware of paranormal phenomena than anyone else, and the paranormal phenomena are usually not very aware of each other either.

In Delta Green, the paranormal phenomena are primarily drawn from the Cthulhu Mythos, and are pretty much university pure evil. In Eureka, many of the paranormal phenomena are drawn more from historical folklore and exist as part of mundane society rather than invaders or infiltrators of it. They are “regular guys,” and will not usually even be a part of a hidden paranormal subculture. There is no “masquerade” despite paranormal things like vampires being largely unknown to science.

“X-Files”

For this, it depends on how literal you mean “X-Files.”

If you mean the PCs are FBI agents who have their own paranormal case division, then Delta Green is much closer to that up front, but I would say the tone and “vibe” are much, much grimmer and bleaker, and also unlike in The X-Files, the people handing out the assignments actually know paranormal shit exists and proving it exists to the public is not the goal. The goal is to exterminate it and cover it up.

Eureka on the other hand assumes by default that the PCs are not police or government agents, but I think has more of the tone of an actual X-Files episode in a way that I think is a bit difficult to put into words. Scary, but less bleak, with a shot of humor every now and then.

As for choosing both, it involves using Eureka rules with Delta Green adventure modules. Eureka runs Delta Green adventure modules pretty well, and has instructions/support in the rulebook for how to do this, including how to adapt for playing federal agent PCs. This is good for if you want a smoother investigation gameplay experience generally, but still want to have the PCs be federal agents being tasked with investigating paranormal phenomena.

There is a lot else I could write about but it’s late so here is this.

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

>Better mystery investigation rules pretty objectively.

>Has a robust library of adventure modules Eureka modules themselves also support the better mystery investigation. Not all mysteries are paranormal in nature, and the mysteries that are paranormal are not Cthulhu Mythos.

>Better combat rules in my opinion.

>Paranormal characters are playable, even when investigating mysteries that are not paranormal.

>Models short-term stressors on characters better.

>Limited support for playing actual FBI agents because by default Eureka PCs are not meant to be cops or other law enforcement, but does have some PC Traits that reference/model X-Files characters.

>The adventure modules also do not really directly support playing as police or any sort of official investigative body, but can run Delta Green adventure modules and can also support playing as government agents with a bit of work.

>Built more for "episodic" campaigns where each adventure is not necessarily connected to the last. Each mystery may be investigated by different or the same PCs, but will not be connected to the last mystery.

>Does not assume that PCs are necessarily part of a "team" or "party."

>Less expensive, available for free even.

Delta Green

>PCs are government agents by default.

>Mysteries are always paranormal, usually Cthulhu Mythos.

>Pretty good combat still.

>Models long-term stressors on characters better.

>Supports both episodic and longer continuous campaign play.

>Has a very robust library of adventure modules that are already framed around PCs being government agents.

>More built for horror than investigation.

>Does assume PCs are part of a team.

>More expensive.

A lot of D&D5e defenders on here like to claim that asking someone to learn a new system is "gatekeeping" somehow, but I'd argue that acting like one game is emblematic of the entire medium to the exclusion of people who don't click with that one game is way more meaningfully a form of gatekeeping, even if it's fully unintentional.

This is an interesting question. I think the absence of any kind of VtM-esque “masquerade” is important to Eureka in several ways. I think it’s important to the themes as a game about solving “mysteries” with evidence-based conclusions in a realistic world where evidence is not always cut and dry. The fact that vampires and whatever else can have existed for at least a thousand years yet still be without consistent or widely accepted scientific documentation in the modern era, and how that can be the case even without a powerful systemic force actively suppressing this information - themes of confirmation bias, rigidity of worldview, academic arrogance, etc.. This is all very important to Eureka’s ideas of evidence-based discovery and particularly important in the context of crime investigation and the judicial system.

I also think it is important to the themes represented by most of the monsters, that there is no monster society or support network, there’s no one they know like them, no instruction manual for being what they are, officially they don’t even exist. Mundane normal people who don’t intrinsically understand their perspectives and yet still have the capacity to be there for them are all they have.

Going off that last point I think it’s important to the fact that their needs are not being met by conventional society. This makes it frequently necessary for them to meet their own needs by deception, force, aggression, and even sometimes outright violence with a real human cost in pain, suffering, and even death - and this in turn meaning they cannot often even (safely) talk about their situations to ask for help from anyone, it’s already too late to do so without confessing to a crime and facing the full sadistic force of the law. There is no community of people with similar situations and experiences. They are unknown, and if they were known they would be reviled.

I think the absence of a masquerade is important because despite all of this pain, suffering, and death, these monsters are inarguably not invaders/infiltrators, nor are they part of a shadowy secret flesh-eating cabal that antisemetic conspiracy theorists find comfort in blaming all their problems on and to whom mundane people are just ignorant livestock animals. They were born in this society or arrived to it in some way with no malicious intentions.

But all of the above is just me talking about why the “no masquerade” element is there in Eureka RAW; you’re asking if the game can still be played with this element altered, and I think ultimately the answer is yes, it would still be a functional mystery solving game and most of the Paranormal Traits themselves could still be used without a complete overhaul.

If I were to mod Eureka for a setting with a masquerade, here are a few things I think I would do or things I would at least consider.

Obviously that schema fell out of favour, but the recent return to challenge game/story game categorisation makes me wonder why a binary slider is a more useful tool of analysis than a trinary spectrum like RBG/HSL for colors.

Since you're the closest thing to my dash's resident RPG philosopher, would you mind weighing in? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Please & thank you :)

I don't think challenge/story game is necessarily a useful binary either because even most "story" games will end up engaging primarily with the language of challenge (due to the outsized influence of D&D, a game primarily concerned with challenge) even though they don't realize it. This is something I have touched upon multiple times in the past: most PbtA games tend to cast the player characters as a Group of Heroes whose aim is to Overcome Adversity even though that type of framing is nowhere in the text of Apocalypse World and in fact Apocalypse World is not a good game at all for adventure gaming. A lot of people who think they are making "story-focused" games, whatever that means, still end up making various iterations of D&D.

Like, I don't think we should think about games through a binary slider of story vs. challenge and if that's the impression you've gotten then that might be due to lack of clarity on my part. When I speak of challenge games I primarily speak of a mode of play that largely concerns itself with players putting their characters in adversity and seeking to overcome that adversity, often via knowing how to manipulate the rules and developing system mastery. It's not necessarily indicative of design philosophy.

Like, for example: Daggerheart is, at the end of the day, a challenge game. It might also be a "story" game. Whatever, but it's undoubtedly still very much a challenge or adventure game. The point isn't to create a false binary of story vs. challenge, but to illustrate a blind spot most TTRPG designers have: that TTRPGs tend to be largely about overcoming challenge even when designers think they are bucking the trend.

Broken Watch

Part of the polaroid series from team artist @qsycomplainsalot for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. We use this one in the Ticking Clock section.

The Eureka Ticking Clock rules (not to be confused with the Clocks from Blades in the Dark which work very differently) are a mechanic that helps track time passing in a way distinct from, like, real time.

“Ticks” are not equivalent to and specific real world unit of time, they pass each time investigators visit a location, travel, or do some action that is noted as taking a particularly long time, especially as a consequence for failure or partial successes on rolls. Notably, Ticks do not pass just because a particular scene or conversation or anything like that is taking a particularly long time in real-world time. Hours may pass in a session without a single Tick passing, and then several Ticks may pass in the game world within a few minutes of real-world time.

Rather than being there to keep a strict timeline of all investigator actions, Ticks are a resource, essentially consumed as 'time points.' These rules limit the amount of things investigators can do per day or night, which can be a big deal in some adventures.

>receive a bunch of anon hate

>answer about 1 in 5 messages, mostly just when there's something else to add

The implication of removing the space is that being trans isn't just one way a woman can be, like being tall or being brunette, but that women who are trans require a whole other noun.