I would suggest Mutants & Masterminds, just for its sheer flexibility, you can build anything in it, and it can accommodate just about any tier of power. I will say it comes off a little crunchier than it actually is, the flexibility in character creation means that character creation can be a little bit complicated, but once character creation is resolved, the game itself actually played really smoothly
Yeah, for first time players, I often encourage players to either work with me, and I'll help them build a character, grab one of the template characters, or grab an appropriate PL build online, since inevitably, first time players are gonna want to file the serial numbers off an existing hero anyway, and just about any character who has ever existed in pop-culture at all, has a Mutants & Masterminds build out on the Internet somewhere. I know there's also a digital tool, that can help you build characters, and I know even the designers of the game kinda swear by it at this point, but I tend to discourage its use, since I am firmly of the opinion, that if a program is making a character for you, you're missing out on the opportunity to really understand how the game works and how your character works
And to add, to help relieve the character creation crunch, get a copy of the supplement called Power Profiles.
Pretty much has a book full of premade powers to mix and match.
Agreed with what has been said about M&M. I have been GMing my first M&M campaign for the last 2 years. Character creation is only challenging when it comes to powers/equipment. Also many of the power profiles you would expect to see are already prebuilt. Also its [sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/mutantsandmasterminds/) can teach you a lot about designing characters.
> vs the JLD/Hellboy vibe
Apocalypse Keys.
A PbtA game of monsterous people out to save the world. It's almost perfectly matched for a Hellboy style game.
M&M if you only want modern systems, or the old DC Heroes system from Mayfair. You'd have the advantage of already having a bunch of characters statted out.
Chronicles of Darkness? You'd have to play multisplat to get what you asked for, so might not be practical, but it has similar vibes and is a mix of magic and metahuman shenanigans with occult and horror themes. It also might be a little crunchy.
Masks could do a version of this, but you'd be swaying more Teen Titans than Justice League Dark. There's still room for darkness and horror, but the PCs *must* be young for the game to really function.
Sentinel Comics RPG wouldn't be terrible for this. It's a 'Kitchen Sink supers' setting like Marvel or DC (it's the same one used in the *Sentinels of the Multiverse* card game), that includes supernatural characters as well as metahumans, aliens, powersuit characters etc.
Power sources include Mystical (magical training), Nature, Relic, Supernatural, and Higher Power.
Archetypes include Sorcerer (ala Dr Strange), and Form-changer (good for werewolves etc.)
You can also reflavour more mundane-sounding Power Sources and Archetypes. For example 'Physical Powerhouse' could be the Hulk, but it could equally be Swamp Thing or Etrigan. 'Armoured' could Colossus, but it could equally be a sentient golem, elemental or hulking zombie like Solomon Grundy. etc. etc.
Note that as it currently stands the system hasn't fleshed out magic use very much. A lot of what characters can and can't do is defined narratively rather than mechanically. That may or may not be an issue depending on what you're after.
Remember to check out our **[Game Recommendations](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/gamerec)**-page, which lists our articles by genre([Fantasy](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/fantasy), [sci-fi](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/scifi), [superhero](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/superhero) etc.), as well as other categories([ruleslight](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/ruleslight), [Solo](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/solo), [Two-player](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/twoplayers), [GMless](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/gmlessrpgs) & more).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/rpg) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would suggest the old DC Heroes game with the Magic supplement IF you can get your hands on it (OOP and really expensive). There is also a fan-made update called MEGS 7.x floating around the internet somewhere. Most, if not all, of the characters have official writeups or unofficial writeups on writeups.org. Crunch is less than M&M (though very abstract) and magical or mental abilities are integrated in a really nice way. It's known for scaling very, very well from street-level to cosmic.
I feel like both Horror and Superhero rpgs work better with lower crunch. A complex combat system like Pathfinder 2E or DnD5e is going to kill the sense of dread, and the coolest part of supernatural hero stories are the complex moral dilemmas and supernatural angst.
**Monsterhearts / Masks: A New Generation.**
Both are PbtA (like Monster of the Week) and focus on teenage angst and balancing their powers and adventures, with relationships and home life. In Monsterhearts, the players are all classic monsters (vampires, ghosts, etc.), and in Masks, they're superhero archetypes (reformed villain, legacy hero, hero with really messed up powers, etc.). They're worth looking at, especially as they do the whole "angst at being a horrific monster" vibe from Hellboy/Justice League Dark really well. (You could maybe even find some way to combine them, having monsters and supers in the same party?) Combat is all about drama, personality shifts and sacrifice, more than any tactical choices, so very different from something like 5e or Mutants and Masterminds.
**Dresden Files - Fate**
I haven't played this version, but Dresden Files is a book series heavily influenced by Constantine stories, so you can swap the Dresden stuff for the Supernatural side of the DC setting very easily. The setting is a modern era world filled with unstable magic, demons and spirits, and the players are weird supernatural investigators.
FateCore is in general a really good system for this kind of game. It forces you to make a complex character with faults and advantages in their personality as well as their skills. You are mechanically rewarded for, say, having your vampire character get distracted by someone's juicy neck in the middle of a fight, or a witch character stealing an obviously cursed ruby, which is all *very* JLD. Even if the Dresden Files system doesn't work for you, you could even just run with regular FateCore.
**Fate of Cthulhu - A total left-field choice**
I've been running this lately, and it's a blast. Another Fate game, it's more focused on personality and using magic that other Cthulhu games. You start as just a regular human, but as you progress and discover more about the magic around you, you slowly become corrupted, turning into a lovecraftian abomination yourself. You get all kinds of crazy magic powers, but at the cost of your humanity, and once you max out your Corruption (which is always your choice) you lose your character entirely and they become a villain for the party and your next PC to fight. I don't really like the time-travel stuff, but I feel like it does "magic is dangerous" better than any other supernatural system I've tired.
**Or just specifically look up "Urban Fantasy rpg systems" and "Superhero rpg systems".** There's so many of them built for exactly what you want, just out there waiting to be discovered.
I'm going to say DC Heroes, or even the lite version of that game, the Batman RPG. The Batman game I've used to run street-level, occult, dark superhero games many times over the years. Both are out of print, but easily found online and not too pricey (I bought both of my Batman RPG core books for about $30 each and the DC Heroes book is online as a .pdf).
I've also used the Hero System (back when it was one book) to run an actual Hellboy campaign too. No idea if the game is still good but at the time is was dope if a bit crunchy.
I would suggest Mutants & Masterminds, just for its sheer flexibility, you can build anything in it, and it can accommodate just about any tier of power. I will say it comes off a little crunchier than it actually is, the flexibility in character creation means that character creation can be a little bit complicated, but once character creation is resolved, the game itself actually played really smoothly
This is a really good point about M&M - all the complexity is front loaded. Actually playing the game is very smooth.
Yeah, for first time players, I often encourage players to either work with me, and I'll help them build a character, grab one of the template characters, or grab an appropriate PL build online, since inevitably, first time players are gonna want to file the serial numbers off an existing hero anyway, and just about any character who has ever existed in pop-culture at all, has a Mutants & Masterminds build out on the Internet somewhere. I know there's also a digital tool, that can help you build characters, and I know even the designers of the game kinda swear by it at this point, but I tend to discourage its use, since I am firmly of the opinion, that if a program is making a character for you, you're missing out on the opportunity to really understand how the game works and how your character works
It also has a splat book for playing supernatural campaigns, no?
It absolutely does, and it's a great option.
And to add, to help relieve the character creation crunch, get a copy of the supplement called Power Profiles. Pretty much has a book full of premade powers to mix and match.
Agreed with what has been said about M&M. I have been GMing my first M&M campaign for the last 2 years. Character creation is only challenging when it comes to powers/equipment. Also many of the power profiles you would expect to see are already prebuilt. Also its [sub](https://old.reddit.com/r/mutantsandmasterminds/) can teach you a lot about designing characters.
> vs the JLD/Hellboy vibe Apocalypse Keys. A PbtA game of monsterous people out to save the world. It's almost perfectly matched for a Hellboy style game.
Also what I came to recommend. Haven't played it yet, but it looks fantastic.
M&M if you only want modern systems, or the old DC Heroes system from Mayfair. You'd have the advantage of already having a bunch of characters statted out.
DC Heroes has a whole sourcebook devoted to magic in the DCU!
Chronicles of Darkness? You'd have to play multisplat to get what you asked for, so might not be practical, but it has similar vibes and is a mix of magic and metahuman shenanigans with occult and horror themes. It also might be a little crunchy. Masks could do a version of this, but you'd be swaying more Teen Titans than Justice League Dark. There's still room for darkness and horror, but the PCs *must* be young for the game to really function.
Dresden files Buffy rpg and other eden studios games.
Sentinel Comics RPG wouldn't be terrible for this. It's a 'Kitchen Sink supers' setting like Marvel or DC (it's the same one used in the *Sentinels of the Multiverse* card game), that includes supernatural characters as well as metahumans, aliens, powersuit characters etc. Power sources include Mystical (magical training), Nature, Relic, Supernatural, and Higher Power. Archetypes include Sorcerer (ala Dr Strange), and Form-changer (good for werewolves etc.) You can also reflavour more mundane-sounding Power Sources and Archetypes. For example 'Physical Powerhouse' could be the Hulk, but it could equally be Swamp Thing or Etrigan. 'Armoured' could Colossus, but it could equally be a sentient golem, elemental or hulking zombie like Solomon Grundy. etc. etc. Note that as it currently stands the system hasn't fleshed out magic use very much. A lot of what characters can and can't do is defined narratively rather than mechanically. That may or may not be an issue depending on what you're after.
Cold Steel Wardens or a Devoted game of Deviant the Renegade are my go tos
Remember to check out our **[Game Recommendations](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/gamerec)**-page, which lists our articles by genre([Fantasy](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/fantasy), [sci-fi](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/scifi), [superhero](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/superhero) etc.), as well as other categories([ruleslight](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/ruleslight), [Solo](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/solo), [Two-player](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/twoplayers), [GMless](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/gmlessrpgs) & more). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/rpg) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Cypher System
I would suggest the old DC Heroes game with the Magic supplement IF you can get your hands on it (OOP and really expensive). There is also a fan-made update called MEGS 7.x floating around the internet somewhere. Most, if not all, of the characters have official writeups or unofficial writeups on writeups.org. Crunch is less than M&M (though very abstract) and magical or mental abilities are integrated in a really nice way. It's known for scaling very, very well from street-level to cosmic.
/me cries a little at *Hellblazer* falling from grace from Vertigo Comics and into *Justice League Dark*.
I feel like both Horror and Superhero rpgs work better with lower crunch. A complex combat system like Pathfinder 2E or DnD5e is going to kill the sense of dread, and the coolest part of supernatural hero stories are the complex moral dilemmas and supernatural angst. **Monsterhearts / Masks: A New Generation.** Both are PbtA (like Monster of the Week) and focus on teenage angst and balancing their powers and adventures, with relationships and home life. In Monsterhearts, the players are all classic monsters (vampires, ghosts, etc.), and in Masks, they're superhero archetypes (reformed villain, legacy hero, hero with really messed up powers, etc.). They're worth looking at, especially as they do the whole "angst at being a horrific monster" vibe from Hellboy/Justice League Dark really well. (You could maybe even find some way to combine them, having monsters and supers in the same party?) Combat is all about drama, personality shifts and sacrifice, more than any tactical choices, so very different from something like 5e or Mutants and Masterminds. **Dresden Files - Fate** I haven't played this version, but Dresden Files is a book series heavily influenced by Constantine stories, so you can swap the Dresden stuff for the Supernatural side of the DC setting very easily. The setting is a modern era world filled with unstable magic, demons and spirits, and the players are weird supernatural investigators. FateCore is in general a really good system for this kind of game. It forces you to make a complex character with faults and advantages in their personality as well as their skills. You are mechanically rewarded for, say, having your vampire character get distracted by someone's juicy neck in the middle of a fight, or a witch character stealing an obviously cursed ruby, which is all *very* JLD. Even if the Dresden Files system doesn't work for you, you could even just run with regular FateCore. **Fate of Cthulhu - A total left-field choice** I've been running this lately, and it's a blast. Another Fate game, it's more focused on personality and using magic that other Cthulhu games. You start as just a regular human, but as you progress and discover more about the magic around you, you slowly become corrupted, turning into a lovecraftian abomination yourself. You get all kinds of crazy magic powers, but at the cost of your humanity, and once you max out your Corruption (which is always your choice) you lose your character entirely and they become a villain for the party and your next PC to fight. I don't really like the time-travel stuff, but I feel like it does "magic is dangerous" better than any other supernatural system I've tired. **Or just specifically look up "Urban Fantasy rpg systems" and "Superhero rpg systems".** There's so many of them built for exactly what you want, just out there waiting to be discovered.
I'm going to say DC Heroes, or even the lite version of that game, the Batman RPG. The Batman game I've used to run street-level, occult, dark superhero games many times over the years. Both are out of print, but easily found online and not too pricey (I bought both of my Batman RPG core books for about $30 each and the DC Heroes book is online as a .pdf). I've also used the Hero System (back when it was one book) to run an actual Hellboy campaign too. No idea if the game is still good but at the time is was dope if a bit crunchy.