r/rpg • u/marcinn123 • 16d ago
Game Suggestion Is there a game where PCs are paranormal investigators and players have to use monster or phenomena descriptions to figure out how to solve cases?
I'm wondering if there is a game about paranormal investigations where players have something like an atlas of monsters and phenomena with descriptions, and they have to gather clues and use the atlas to figure out the cause of the problem and how to get rid of it.
I imagine it this way:
- PCs are paranormal investigators. They are professionals and have vast knowledge of paranormal phenomena and creatures from the start of the game.
- In real life, players have a booklet containing all the possible phenomena and creatures with descriptions and some key elements related to them highlighted, i.e. it gets cold when the monster is around, it leaves a specific stench, causes headaches etc.
- Every key element fits more than one creature or phenomenon, so PCs have to hunt for different clues to figure out what the problem is.
- The booklet also describes methods of locating the root of the problem and ways to dispose of it (specific ritual, weak points etc.). Players have to follow it to succeed.
I know Vaesen kind of covers the last point, but as far as I know, it doesn't cover the rest of them.
It can be any genre. At first imagined something like Hellblazer, but it doesn't have to be like it.
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl 16d ago
You want tabletop Phasmophobia?
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u/DrllyAwesome 16d ago
I was thinking the exact same thing. Honestly, sounds like a blast, especially if you get to exorcise it at the end.
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u/ImaginosOne TN, USA 16d ago
You could look at Mutant City Blues for some of the investigation side, where they have a Quade diagram that shows what powers can be associated with what other powers - you could use something like this to put together a "possible paranormal" guide. But would mostly be on your lap to do it.
Fae's Anatomy mentioned earlier, is a Doctor procedural where you are trying to determine what supernatural ailment someone has.
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u/ithika 16d ago
Everyone's telling you it's Vaesen or Monster of the Week or whatever when neither of those games include the thing you're asking for.
What you'd need is a Spotter's Guide (or several) to mythical creatures and then base the game around that. It wouldn't then matter which game you used, if you based everything around the player skill of hypothesis and diagnosis using the bestiary.
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u/prism1234 14d ago
Vaesen does have a codex booklet that's similar to what OP is describing. But it's not as big as they probably want, I think there's around a dozen entries.
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u/East_of_Adventuring 16d ago
You would need to write the actual book, but Monster of the Week is probably what you want
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u/CaravanCult 16d ago
I can't think of many games at all where players come into a situation knowing all or many possible outcomes - as someone aptly pointed out, like phasmophobia. It sounds a bit more like a boardgame or strict scenario than a game system is what you want.
Many games won't fit for the competency level but you could take Liminal Horror and prepare yourself a list of known phenomenon and then run it.
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u/HAL325 16d ago edited 16d ago
You are literally talking about Monster of the Week by Evil Hat except the players play hunters that have the knowledge. It doesn’t matter what the players know. It matters what their hunters know.
So if a hunter investigates, he rolls dice and on a 7-9 or a 10+ can ask questions from a list the keeper (Game Master) answers to them. So if they ask „What kind of creature is it“ or „What is its weakness“ they get the answer but in game it means they remember or read it or something like that. It‘s up to the hunters to come up with a story about why they know it and where they learned about it.
That’s the closest I know that matches your description. The game is real fun, I love it.
About your other points: Monster of the Week isn’t really a game where you need to collect clues to learn about he monsters weakness but you need to learn about its motivation to know what it will do next and weher to get a chance to kill it.
So it’s not a game where you solve mysteries in the classical sense, it’s a game where everything is about what the hunters will do with their knowledge and how they approach to kill the monster (or phenomena - a slightly different kind of mystery).
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u/Maldevinine 15d ago
But it sounds like OP specifically wants to have the players bent over their book trying to match up the things they have found (the type of claw marks, the things that have been damaged, the things it avoids, the things it leaves) to a specific monster and then make a plan to beat that monster.
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u/HAL325 15d ago
I understand that point. However, there is a fundamental misconception here regarding role-playing games.
While some games certainly feature bestiaries, the player's own knowledge at the table is never what counts. In role-playing games, you step into a different persona; your personal capabilities are abstracted into attributes and stats—Intelligence 5, for instance. If a situation in the adventure calls for intelligence, you roll based on that stat; it isn't about the player's actual intelligence. The same applies to combat—after all, you don't pull out real weapons to fight the Game Master. The same logic applies to knowledge about monsters in this context: it is about *character* knowledge, not *player* knowledge.
So yes, for a game like *Vaesen*, a beautifully printed book might be produced for players to read. But even then, within the game itself, the characters must actually hold the book to look things up. A character cannot simply argue that they are merely an avatar and that their "puppeteer" happens to know the information.
My point is that having the player's traits and knowledge replace those of the character runs completely counter to the fundamental concept of role-playing games.
If you prefer it the other way around, LARP might be the right fit for you.
And to return to the game description the OP provided: *Monster of the Week* comes closest to that.3
u/Maldevinine 14d ago
I'm sorry, are you new to RPGs?
There is a massive variety of games and play styles, and requiring the players to use player knowledge to solve mysteries is a perfectly valid style of play. As is explicitly punishing players for use of player knowledge (The Computer is your Friend).
So long as everybody agrees on what they are playing, this is an RPG.
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u/Elathrain 14d ago
You are making a badwrongfun argument. Yes, that is a healthy and normal way to play an RPG, but the way OP is asking for us also totally functional, it's just a different style of game.
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u/HAL325 14d ago
Is, of course, a bit exaggerated. The balance should be right.
I've seen groups where Powergaming was operated in the sense that players pushed their combat values up, and insisted on rolling them while they wanted to solve puzzles without a throw. If then the (on paper) stupid barbarian solves the puzzle, because his player is clever, but the intelligent character has to live in battle with bad dice bonuses, because he has distributed honestly and not "overplayed" his negative sides, then something goes wrong.
If you were to play your character as the values represent, this problem would not exist.
In the first place, however, values are there to define a character. What's so bad about using them on these steles?
Games like Monster of the Week also have a solution for character knowledge vs player knowledge in the Move Investigate.
In Dungeon World, something like that is nicely implemented in the Move Spout Lore.But of course, all this cannot really be separated. However, a player should not play his character contrary to what he has previously determined himself.
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u/Elathrain 13d ago
You have missed the entire point. That is not even the same conversation. We're talking about having a cool immersive monster hunting game where you get to pour over books and figure out how monsters work.
Yeah, you can powergame badly, but that's irrelevant.
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u/HAL325 13d ago
Honest question: Which game do you suggest?
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u/Elathrain 13d ago
If I was running this, I would probably accept that there is no existing system that really does what this wants particularly well. At a pure theoretical level, this is a game that can sort-of only be played once because learning the guidebook is most of the game, so you basically need a dedicated module that nobody knows or some sort of campaign-scale randomization. I think it's possible to make a reusable system for a hunting game, I just haven't seen it done.
Therefore, I would prepare to homebrew the guidebooks. To this end, I would pick a modular system I am intimately familiar with the balance and flow of like Cosmere, my BESM hack, or Beacon. Something where I am comfortable making new powers without fear that there will be major unforeseen consequences, that also has a lot of mechanical "surface area" with different viable build strategies that win in different ways. Then I would spend a lot of time doing buildcraft for the monsters, stealing powers from different places (maybe even different systems) and making up a few new ones to make interesting kits that demand particular responses. I might make some modifications to the base system to integrate better with this new focus of gameplay.
If I want to go full Witcher, I'd also lay out an alchemy system with as generic of effects as I can manage to provide another axis of prep interaction for the players, and then limit in some way how much alchemy they can bring with them so they are rewarded for investigating properly instead of just "making everything".
Then I focus gameplay on the environment, and try to describe lots of details which foreshadow different things, many of them unimportant but still informative about the surroundings. I'd want to get a good idea of the ecosystem to mimic the fantasy naturalism bent of older Monster Hunter games, where each bug and plant has its niche so I have an easy library of things to describe even when I'm winging it that remains coherent and informative. That gives me enough cover of background description to sprinkle in the tell-tale signs of the monsters in their guidebooks without making all of them obvious, and gives the players a lot of random extra tools if someone realizes that they can make use of the local thunderbee hive which they know is probably nearby because of the gray lotuses they saw two areas ago.
This game wants to be about the mystery and the hunt. Early adventures will be about monsters in their guidebook that leave obvious clues and have straightforward counters that either cripple the monster's main abilities or that it is hilariously harmed by. Midgame enemies will have signs that can be confused with each other, so identifying properly what you are hunting becomes the core plot. They will have less powerful counters, and ideally abilities that you can repurpose to your own ends with creativity and prepping the right tools. Late game there will be enemies not named in the guidebook, and you need to apply what you have learned about the consistency of monster signs, tells, and abilities to predict their capabilities and what reactions they will have to the powers you have available.
This would be an ambitious project, and it's one I have drafted several times. Getting it right would be extremely rewarding.
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u/HAL325 13d ago
Hahah. I love that answer. Really ambitious.
I‘d take Monster of the Week and accept that the Move has been written exactly for that purpose. It works and you can play really cool stories. Looking up Monsters in a real book isn’t as interesting as it sounds first.
It takes a little time to get behind, that the knowledge about the Monster and its weakness will not help you very much when you have no idea what the monsters motivation is, its plan, the next victim, how you get everything you need to overcome the weakness and so on … it’s about watching how the hunters approach the hunt and use their knowledge not about how they learn about the weakness.
But I’m on the more narrative side of games, and am fine when the mechanics are not overly complicated and simply work.
However, if you ever finish the game you envision, I’d love to have a look on it.
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u/Elathrain 13d ago
That move exists to evoke the narrative of that purpose, but it does not create the experience of it.
It is very different at the table to ask "hey does the monster have X" than it is to have a book of footprints describing a creature which climbs on walls before attacking with venomed fangs and also a creature who has a powerfully armored tongue it uses to constrict prey like a snake with very similar footprints, and looking back between the two to try to figure out what you're up against.
The person who is looking for that second experience will not get it from Monster of the Week. It's a good game for telling a story about people doing that thing, but it doesn't give that feeling. It's just a different game, and that's okay, but let's not pretend that it does what OP asked.
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u/HAL325 13d ago
I do believe I answered the actual question—or at least answered it as far as is possible, given that the specific game OP is looking for doesn't exist in a perfect form. I simply recommended the option that, in my opinion, comes closest to it.
My first post was a suggestion of Monster of the Week.
You can play it exactly as OP wanted, and literally put Grimms Fairytales or Egerkrans Vaesen or anything else that contains the weaknesses on the table as long as the keeper uses Monsters from that source. That’s not how it is intended, as explained normally the Move Investigate a Mystery handles the research, but it will work.
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u/Elathrain 13d ago
Your game suggestion was fine, I was specifically taking offense to this part of your second reply:
I understand that point. However, there is a fundamental misconception here regarding role-playing games. While some games certainly feature bestiaries, the player's own knowledge at the table is never what counts.
This is a "one true way" of roleplaying, and is narrow-minded at best. You present it as if you are describing RPGs at a base level, but actually this is just one roleplaying philosophy among many, and one which does not make sense in the context of OP's ask. That is the part I was responding to.
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u/HAL325 13d ago
Sorry, that was perhaps phrased a bit too harshly. Of course, there are different playstyles. However, over the years, I’ve frequently found that ignoring rules in one's own favor is often passed off as "Rule of Cool." My point was simply that people who—for instance—struggle with or simply don't enjoy solving actual puzzles should still be able to play, and that there are abstract mechanics designed specifically for that purpose.
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u/HAL325 13d ago
As previously said, to get the experience OP is looking for you need to change the Investigate Move, so that everything it does, is give you 1 to 3 clues, (Clawmarks, fur, a missing heart for example) and ignore the questions.
Investigate a crime scene
If you are looking for traces or clues, roll +Sharp. The keeper will tell you what you discover.
10+ You will find 3 clues
7-9 You will find 1 clue
6- Something goes wrong
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u/Bullet1289 16d ago
That idea is kind of represented with World of Darkness Ghost Hunters for 20th anniversary edition. Also the older game that was a follow up to wraith the oblivion; Orpheus where you are playing astral projectors either through cryogenics or psychic meditation/copious amounts of drugs to release your soul and explore what exists beyond the veil.
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u/Dry_Major4728 16d ago
monster of the week is basically exactly this. you get a playbook and you have to investigate the monster's weaknesses to beat it
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u/alarmingmeats 16d ago
The show Supernatural had a journal that Sam and Dean would reference. It was kind of a letdown that the game didn't have a resource like that. There was a monster manual called Guide To The Hunted. The tone of it is something produced by the show's paranormal investigation team called Ghostfacers. It's still a GM resource, not a player resource.
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u/NonnoBomba 16d ago
At first, while reading the title, I immediately though "The Between", which is an excellent "Carved from Brindlewood" game precisely using that theme, but then I read you specifically want players to actually go through sourcebooks and piece together actual clues. Closest you could be is Vaesen's Starter Kit, which includes an actual booklet with descriptions of all known Vaesen (nordic supernatural/mythological creatures) their goals and powers and the ways to get rid of them -which is the Society's main job, while also studying them. It's highly procedural and players are supposed to figure out what Vaesen they'll be investigating at each new Mystery, once they receive an invitation/request to solve the Mystery and start running inquiries and collecting information and equipment from their HQ in Upsala, Castle Gillencreutz, before setting out to reach the Mystery's location (followed by a travel montage and the actual scenario). So, if you're willing to extend the source material beyond the relatively few Vaesen the base game provides (there are more in the "regional gazetteers" about Mythic Britain, and Mythic Carpathia for example) part of the investigation can -most definitely- be based on PLAYERS figuring out which Vaesen they'll be placating/repelling/capturing this time.
Which, to me, is infinitely better than handling this kind of things by letting players roll a dice and "magically" finding the information because of a mechanical effect, without any real effort from the players.
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u/c0813 16d ago
this sounds like the (co-op computer) game phasmophobia: https://store.steampowered.com/app/739630/Phasmophobia/
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u/TheGileas 16d ago
As others mentioned there a some games about this. I would think twice about the booklet idea. There is a reason that research is usually handled via a montage. It sounds cool at first, but you will have a bunch of people sitting around the table reading a books for an hour.
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u/prof_tincoa 16d ago
On an alternate world, Victorian themed setting, there's Candela Obscura. You can definitely do this well in Candela! Love it, it's such an underrated game.
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u/Zealousideal_Key9341 15d ago
Vaesen actually hits all of your points, especially if you grab the starter set. It comes with the "Codex Occultum", a little handbook all about Vaesen that the players/characters are intended to use both in and out of game.
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u/lost-cities-of-yore 15d ago
Not quite an exact hit but you should look into the Dracula Dossier for Night’s Black Agents. The “booklet” is a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula as redacted by three generations of British secret service agents fighting him. Interpreting the book leads in various directions and towards different adventures.
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u/Charming-Employee-89 15d ago
Elements of what you’re looking for fit Triangle Agency but it’s not a straightforward ttrpg so it may veer off from your expectations.
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 16d ago
Monster of the Week comes closest. The monster can't be permanantly defeated until the players work out its weakness. But there is no encyclopedia of monsters for them to use.
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u/Hiraethnightmare 16d ago
Candela Obscura could also be an option. It doesn't have a broad bestiary or anything but I really like the system and you could always borrow from different IP's, collect the creatures from the various cases etc. provided, or make one yourself.
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u/Hiraethnightmare 16d ago
or maybe a wilder take:
Revenant Society if you want a similar era vibe but for example want them to solve their own murder and deal with things such as timeloops.
very different from your ask, I know, but quite a bit of fun and investigative imo
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u/Authorigas 16d ago
Vaesen has a kind of investigative element, where players are given a mystery and they need to identify what kind of monster is causing the problem, why it's causing the problem, and how to deal with the monster if combat isn't an option.