Hooked on Gnostic Horror

The art generously donated by Christopher Smith-Wong is perfect for the new Occult Hack RPG - of which more below and over on drivethrurpg

Last month saw a new session of my retro Kult campaign. If you haven't read blogs passim (shame on you!), this is part of my project to dust off the unplayed RPGs of my youth. We've been assembling for some longer-than-usual sessions to play through The Taroticum, the epic scenario for the 1993 RPG Kult, created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén, using my 'Taroticum Unbound' campaign expansion (see this blog for more about that).

How is Taroticum Coming Along? - Christmas 1994

Very nicely. The third big session took a different turn. Up to this point, we had been following the (linear) narrative prescribed by the Taroticum scenario, with the PCs as gaolers in 19th century London, then reincarnated in 1990s London and facing the return of their old nemesis Barkley and his evil plan to kidnap the Child of Magick (still a foetus, kept in a jar) to prevent it undoing the magical tarot deck that will make him omnipotent.

This session started with the PCs waking up, naked and tattooed, in the Isle of Dogs, on Christmas morning, with the knowledge that a new soul can be created in Achlys the Void and an instruction to seek out the Forgotten Man.

At this point, the work I had put into the sandbox setting started paying off. The PCs went off in different directions. Mike goes into shock, but recovers at home, facing a strange woman, apparently his real psychiatrist, who claims he is and always has been a patient at Sandburn Asylum, being cared for in the community, but now being sectioned again. Mike goes on the run in his dressing gown.

Samson likewise faces shock, realising he is still being treated for his injuries in the Iraq theatre of war; he too goes on the run in his dreams, pursued by the Dream Witch Caren Birchlime, but manages to wake himself up. He sets about constructing dream defences to protect his mind against intrusion - but Birchlime is far too powerful.

The team do a squalid assignment for vampire Rupert Faraday, to coerce a debutante into going to his bed, and discover the location of the magical foetus - it's in Inferno, stored in a crypt.

Things take a stranger turn when Mike uses magic to make contact with Demlik Draal, an Awakened Human living in Metropolis. Draal wants his wastrel son rescued from the clutches of an entity known as the Temptress. The PCs secure magical treasures from breaking into Draal's old art gallery, but Sir Phillip is nearly killed by an Azghoul. While recovering in hospital, Sir Phillip makes contact with the Temptress, and becomes sexually enthralled to her.

Phillip's sexual obsession with the Temptress does allow his friends to lure Bela away from her. There's a showdown back at the Gallerija. Samson and Mike escape into Metropolis with Bela; Phillip remains with the Temptress, but uses a magic artifact to make her fall in love with him; but the curse will backfire horribly if he loves her in return. 

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Great and all, but I was thinking ....

The session was huge fun: part reality-bending high concept weirdness, part urban fantasy action-adventure, part contemporary horror. Which is just how Kult​ needs to be played.

But very little of this fun owed anything to the Kult rules. In fact, insofar as we rolled dice for combat, chases, shock, or magic, the rules got in the way. They are blunt, unbalanced, so complicated for some things (like fighting) but not complex enough for other things (like negotiations, dream journeys, or flirting with goddesses).

In a way, this isn't surprising. Kult 1e was adapted from a set of spies/mercs rules the designers had been developing, hence its strange obsession with high powered rifles and martial arts. I considered switching to Kult 2e, which dials back the gunplay and introduces a 'Dark Art' mechanic for demons and magical NPCs, but the changes are cosmetic.

There's the new Kult; Divinity Lost rules set, which is based on the Powered By The Apocalypse rules set, which I admire for its fiction-first aesthetic. I could switch over to that. After all, Taroticum is very much a fiction-first sort of scenario.

There's a lot of game to be enjoyed in Kult: Divinity Lost. Plus, I already have the tarot set they produced.

And yet, there's another way. I already know the sort of rules set I like using for these sort of mini-campaigns: 6 stats, go up levels, roll usage dice, lose hit points.

Yes, the Black Hack meets Kult.

Welcome to the Occult Hack

The task is, to create a streamlined indie RPG inspired by Kult's cosmology, and folding in some other tropes from popular '90s horror/urban fantasy RPGs and literature:

• The cool postmodern magic system from Unknown Armies,  by John Scott Tynes and Greg Stolze
• The Templars as adversary cultists pursuing magical PCs, lifted from Nephilim, English edition by Greg Stafford
•  The Church as a pan-dimensional antagonist, adopted from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy
• World of Darkness style vampires and werewolves
• A more sympathetic (albeit still scary) Lucifer, courtesy of Neil Gaiman
• Angels who are manipulative jerks, just like In Nomine, by Derek Pearcy

Kult's delightful kabbalistic terminology has to go; instead, let's have straightforward Judeo-Christian demonology: God is God, the Devil is Lucifer, say hello to Metatron and Abaddon. You could be watching Dogma.

I considered calling the game 'The Dogma Hack.'

One inspiration from Kult that has to stay is the idea of a vast, trans-dimensional, and supernaturally hostile cityscape lying above and behind and below all earthly cities; sticking with my Biblical conventions, I'm calling it Babylon and its sister realm of dangerously sentient vegetation is The Garden. 

Kult doesn't give much thought to Paradise - understandably, all the cool kids are in Hell. But Occult Hack does try to make Paradise both seedy and creepy and dangerous to explore. This led to creating rules for what these worlds do to ordinary humans who visit them, even if you're lucky enough to avoid running into angels or demons.

Kult offers rules for skewing your Mental Balance to extremes where you stop being human, although the rules seem to be designed more for creating gonzo NPCs than managing PC progression; I gather Divinity Lost leans into this a bit harder. Occult Hack is set up for PCs to acquire then grow the size of their Gnosis Dice, picking up transhuman powers and detriments as the do, and growing more resistant to Shock and demonic powers as they change. You don't have to go this way: the rules allow you to level up and toughen up without acquiring mystical Gnosis, but it's the main form of character progression.

And you need to progress in a RPG where the ultimate BBEG is God himself.

Along the way, I've continued to refine the Hack-based mechanics I developed in Ghost Hack, then Magus Hack, then Vampyre Hack. The Occult Hack ends with some contrivances - I won't say crossover rules, because all Hack RPGs crossover pretty easily - for occultist PCs to travel to worlds where they can meet their PCs from other games.

Now let me see; way back in 1995 I wrote a well-received scenario for Kult that was published in Valkyrie, a UK RPG magazine from the '90s I used to contribute to a lot. It was called 'The Damnation Chain.' I must dust that off and adapt it for the Occult Hack.

You can find the PDF of the Occult Hack on drivethrurpg. Physical copies will appear on Amazon in pricey-but-pretty colour interior and dull-but-pocket-friendly B&W.