Non Fantasy Game Ideas

Well, the obvious first choice as an alternative to fantasy is sci-fi, or at the very least something about technology. Maybe Cyberpunk or Shadowrun or whatever. Though you may want to read your friends more to be sure. Are they just against fantasy, or anything that could be perceived as nerdy or weird?

>>54950844
twilight struggle
everyone is john
gurps "sanitized"

Just have a modern day campaign
maybe something to do with ISIS
or the whole antifa nazi thing going on.

use New World of Darkness Rules and have everyone create mortal characters.

Wild west campaign mite b kewl. You could basically run it like a low magic fantasy game and reskin all the orcs and goblins to outlaws and injuns

A good idea is often to do something that is rooted in the place you live in.
One of my friends threw a party where each of us played himself, in the house we were in, and where there was suddenly a zombie invasion outside.

The "in actuality" thing seems great to me too. I'd run a campaign about surviving in Islamic State controlled territory.

>>54950844
You could do a game taking place at some point in earth's history: ancient Greece, the Crusades, U.S. Civil War, World War II.

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>>54950844
Sci-fi
Wild West
Modern/Yesteryear/Victorian
-Crime
-Horror
-Explorers
-Pulp
-Espionage
-Super Heroes
Gritty Medieval, no magic
Pirates
Colonial
Alien Invasion
Kaiju

>>54950844
Why don't you ask them?

Anyways, knowing nothing about what kinds of things your new players think is cool, here are some non-fantasy settings:

-Present day paranormal. You can do a couple of interesting things here- maybe all these confederate monuments are constructed on leylines and the KKK's literal wizards are using them to fuel magic, with the end goal being to resurrect Hitler. Or something. You obviously shouldn't tell them all that at once, but fighting neo-nazi sorcerers is always fun. If you want to stay away from current events, modern ghostbusters can be fun. There's always your standard world of darkness "modern world but with vampires and werewolves hiding in the corners," people are into that.

-Zombie apocalypse? Maybe zombies are played out, so you can make it a temporary thing- a terrorist bio-weapon based on rabies destabilizes an entire region, and various groups try to take advantage of the chaos to accomplish something. Who knows?

-Science fiction, maybe based on Star Wars. Wandering monk-mystics group up with smugglers and gunslinging robots to right some local wrong, which then spirals into larger and larger events. Or maybe you all play colonists of some sort, trying to establish a foothold in a remote planet. Or maybe they'd enjoy something out of Dune, where Great Houses vie for something, with assassins in the shadows and outright warfare highly discouraged.

-Heist games? The players can be goons in a bigger picture or maybe some sort of quasi-governmental agency trying to break into somewhere and steal something (or somebody?)

-Wild West- you can make it weird west too, if you want, but people like toting six-shooters. I recommend Dogs in the Vinyard.

-Post apocalypse- The world turned to shit and now semi-tribal bands of humans fight over the remnants of modern technology, with limited ways to repair or replenish what's been lost. Machine guns and spiky shoulderpads and scavenging through wrecked cities...

>>54950844

Fortunately for you there's like dozens of other games which don't have jack to do with fantasy.

>>54950867
how does one sanitize gurps

>>54950844

Get Vampire: The Masquerade, Second Edition. Then run that. NO other books, just that one.

It's a setting that pretty much everyone understands from 40 years old movies and TV. I recommend Being Human and Forever Knight as being particularly good. Highlander and Lost Boys are good movies. Interview With a Vampire, just that first book.

It's a very simple and forgiving system, clearly laid out and so clunky that there's a strong incentive NOT to optimize. The book has a great focus on role-playing and storytelling, so it's a good way to instill good gaming habits from day one.

Then ignore everything else that White Wolf ever made. Don't even get V20 or any of the simple rules updates. Just the core VtM book.

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There's this idea I've been mulling around, that in large large it a contrivance to get more settings to crawl dungeons.

The idea is fairly simple, there is only a few hours in a day/whatever for people to safely travel the surface, maybe it's some aliens, disease, rad exposure, or space phenomena it doesn't matter. The party is group of people who have set out to find a cave/ruin/etc to clear out and make it their new home. It's flexible enough to allow the party to be outcasts, tribe leaders, lottery winners (or lottery losers depending how tough it is to make places safe for living).

>>54950858
nah most of them seem pretty okay with nerd stuff. two of these guys appear to be uber weebs, one just says he thinks knights and shit are lame, the rest just expressed they dont want to play knights/magic/medieval

last bumpp