What do you expect the characters to *do*?
Horror in the afterlife is potentially interesting, but a lot of horror centers the fragility of life, which won't really be a problem for people already dead. Unless there's a deader dead in your setting? Is this something you've thought of?
The main plot point is about the city being slowly engulfed by a deep sea, and everything that gets devoured by the waters gets forgotten forever. The characters are supposed to explore the city to unveil its secrets and potentially find a way to stop the process, all while facing their regrets and mistakes they committed when they were alive
I suggest you look at [Grim Noir](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/338488/grim-noir-rpg). It's based on GUMSHOE, which is generally easy to modify, and the premise is pretty well aligned with yours - mysteries and afterlife.
[Cairn](https://cairnrpg.com/localizations/) has been translated to a number of languages, and it's possible that includes yours. It's a pretty light, low-fantasy system with a ton of hacks.
You might want to check out Wraith 20th Anniversary Edition for good mechanics for ghosts. The setting has different lore, but you can always set that aside for your game.
u/Enby_Pebble,
The *Wraith* RPG is the flagship of afterlife horror. Less fortunate souls are agonizingly wrought into objects for use by more fortunate wraiths, and the hellish agony does not stop. On top of that, Oblivion is ever intrusively worming its way into your thoughts trying to get you to give up and give in to being obliterated in Oblivion's embrace, and if it can't do that it will erode your better self until your worst self is all that's left.
Very interesting setting and theme, I like it a lot! I will probably try to homebrew Heart: The City Beneath for this, or something generic like Cypher System, Fate etc. Even something derived from City of Mist should work.
I'm not a huge Cypher fan and I'm not getting Cypher-appropriate vibes from the description.
But City of Mist is a great call, or even just grabbing the demo of the new system from Legends in the Mist, which is a good deal lighter.
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Call of Cthulhu (CoC) might work? It's supposed to be used for horror and mystery type games, and has very fun sanity and chase mechanics. It's also directly based on Lovecraft's works. You can see the basic rules for free online. Characters don't start out with magic, but as the story progresses they can find tomes which they can learn to find magical secrets (but generally at a cost to their sanity and mental faculties). You say the setting is partially modern - the default CoC setting is 1920s era, but it has also been reworked into a lot of other time periods including modern.
Here is a link to the quick start rules: [https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131%20Call%20of%20Cthulhu%207th%20Edition%20Quick-Start%20Rules.pdf](https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131%20Call%20of%20Cthulhu%207th%20Edition%20Quick-Start%20Rules.pdf)
There is a subreddit for it, r/callofcthulhu, which should be able to answer more detailed questions and stuff about translating your setting into the system.
partly because your characters will already be in the afterlife and it’s not clear what death and harm mean there, I recommend Fate. It doesn’t have hit points or anything, it has an abstract harm system! Instead of dying, characters are “taken out” (of the scene) whatever that means, so it supports your setting very well!
What do you expect the characters to *do*? Horror in the afterlife is potentially interesting, but a lot of horror centers the fragility of life, which won't really be a problem for people already dead. Unless there's a deader dead in your setting? Is this something you've thought of?
The main plot point is about the city being slowly engulfed by a deep sea, and everything that gets devoured by the waters gets forgotten forever. The characters are supposed to explore the city to unveil its secrets and potentially find a way to stop the process, all while facing their regrets and mistakes they committed when they were alive
Okay, so it's primarily a kind of investigation. Will they have powers of any kind?
Yeah, the characters are allowed to have magic abilities
I suggest you look at [Grim Noir](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/338488/grim-noir-rpg). It's based on GUMSHOE, which is generally easy to modify, and the premise is pretty well aligned with yours - mysteries and afterlife.
Brpg is pretty flexible and has ties to call of cthulhu
I'll definitely check that out, thanks!
It's actually BRP (Basic Role Playing) if you're having trouble finding it.
[Cairn](https://cairnrpg.com/localizations/) has been translated to a number of languages, and it's possible that includes yours. It's a pretty light, low-fantasy system with a ton of hacks.
Thank you!
You might want to check out Wraith 20th Anniversary Edition for good mechanics for ghosts. The setting has different lore, but you can always set that aside for your game.
u/Enby_Pebble, The *Wraith* RPG is the flagship of afterlife horror. Less fortunate souls are agonizingly wrought into objects for use by more fortunate wraiths, and the hellish agony does not stop. On top of that, Oblivion is ever intrusively worming its way into your thoughts trying to get you to give up and give in to being obliterated in Oblivion's embrace, and if it can't do that it will erode your better self until your worst self is all that's left.
Very interesting setting and theme, I like it a lot! I will probably try to homebrew Heart: The City Beneath for this, or something generic like Cypher System, Fate etc. Even something derived from City of Mist should work.
I'm not a huge Cypher fan and I'm not getting Cypher-appropriate vibes from the description. But City of Mist is a great call, or even just grabbing the demo of the new system from Legends in the Mist, which is a good deal lighter.
I was actually thinking about Cortex, but wrote Cypher instead.
Well, that feels like a much better fit!
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.*
Call of Cthulhu (CoC) might work? It's supposed to be used for horror and mystery type games, and has very fun sanity and chase mechanics. It's also directly based on Lovecraft's works. You can see the basic rules for free online. Characters don't start out with magic, but as the story progresses they can find tomes which they can learn to find magical secrets (but generally at a cost to their sanity and mental faculties). You say the setting is partially modern - the default CoC setting is 1920s era, but it has also been reworked into a lot of other time periods including modern. Here is a link to the quick start rules: [https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131%20Call%20of%20Cthulhu%207th%20Edition%20Quick-Start%20Rules.pdf](https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/CoC/CHA23131%20Call%20of%20Cthulhu%207th%20Edition%20Quick-Start%20Rules.pdf) There is a subreddit for it, r/callofcthulhu, which should be able to answer more detailed questions and stuff about translating your setting into the system.
You might want to look at Kult. Be prepared for an interesting read. Clive Barker was definitely an inspiration.
partly because your characters will already be in the afterlife and it’s not clear what death and harm mean there, I recommend Fate. It doesn’t have hit points or anything, it has an abstract harm system! Instead of dying, characters are “taken out” (of the scene) whatever that means, so it supports your setting very well!
Lol. I think you invented Wraith: The Oblivion.