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Kult (role-playing game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kult (role-playing game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kult is a contemporary horror role-playing game

originally designed by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael
Petersn, first published in Sweden by ventyrsspel in

Kult

1991 that became Target Games.[1] The first English

edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd.. The
game is no longer published in either language, though
copies can be purchased through secondary and
specialized markets. Kult is notable for its philosophical
and religious depth as well as for its mature and
controversial content.

Contents
1 Setting
1.1 Entities
1.2 Disappearance of the Demiurge
1.3 Realities
2 Rules
2.1 Mental Balance
2.2 Combat
2.3 Magic
3 History
3.1 Current publishers
4 Controversy
5 Spin-offs
6 Notes
7 External links

Cover for Kult: Death is Only the Beginning

Designer(s)

Gunilla Jonsson, Michael Petersn

Publisher(s)

Paradox Entertainment, 7me

Cercle

Publication
date

Third Edition, 2001 / 2004

Genre(s)

Horror

System(s)

Custom

Setting
The default backdrop of Kult is modern-day real-life larger cities; players taking the roles of contemporary
multi-genre protagonists, such as private investigators and femme fatales, vigilantes and drug dealers, artists
and journalists, or secret agents and mad scientists. [2] In the game, however, all this and the entire world we
see, is an "illusion" held together by monotheistic belief which is unravelling to reveal a darker backdrop
where nightmarish monsters lurk, called "reality" in the game. This illusion was created by the Demiurge to
hold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. In the absence of
this Demiurge, sinister forces plot to keep us from realizing the truth, or even to plunge the world into an
apocalyptic war to restore humanity's ignorance and blind faith in the divine order. [3]

Entities

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The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed from
gnosticism. The cosmological backdrop of Kult is largely based on the Tree of Life from kabbalistic lore,
the Sephirot and the Qliphoth. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astaroth
and his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represent a value, group or an action (aid
organisations, child abuse, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. The
Archons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do their
bidding and promote their values. Many of these are our jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many of
the adventures revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world around
them.

Disappearance of the Demiurge

One of the more central elements of the game is that the Demiurge has disappeared since just before the
20th century, and since then Astaroth, the Archons and the Death Angels have been struggling for power.
Many entities have vanished since, and the Illusion has been weakened. The game leaves a lot to the
imagination of interpretive game masters regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as the
earlier mentioned divinity of mankind.

Realities
The game concept relies on there being several realities that may appear when the Illusion shatters:
Metropolis, the original city which interconnects with all great cities; Inferno and its purgatories, where
humans are held captive and tortured after death; and Gaia, which connects to nature and nature's
destructive forces.

Rules
The system is a skill based system utilizing 20-sided dice (unrelated to the d20 system used by Wizards of
the Coast for their Dungeons & Dragons rpgs), with point based characters. In the game, a natural 1 usually
is great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usually
have skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player need to roll equal or below his character's
skill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary characters
and inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.
Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kult
authors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles universe (created by Nils
Gulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides which
appear in the game.

Mental Balance
Central to the game is the aspect of Mental Balance, which is a sanity-gauge of sorts. In the game's
cosmology humans can - at least in theory - regain their lost divine status through a game concept called
Awakening in which characters with an extremely high (or low, the game never values positive or moral
traits higher than negative or immoral ones) mental balance are no longer restrained by the rules of the
Illusion. Effectively, they escape the prison and become gods. Continued play at this point is outside the
focus of the game, however.
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The closer to equilibrium the character is, the more he is anchored in everyday human reality and the harder
it is for the character to see through the veil of The Illusion to the true reality beneath. On the other hand,
this protects him from becoming traumatized or insane. The further from this balance point (zero) the
character's Mental Balance gets, the more easily he or she will become emotionally and mentally
unbalanced by shocking events. A Kult character can have positive or negative mental balance affected by
traumata, influence from creatures or places, or by advantages and disadvantages. The advantages and
disadvantages are typically talents and traits that work for or against the character, such as (on the positive
side) having animal friendship, artistic talent, body awareness, a code of honor, or (from the negative
spectrum) being socially inept, suffering from a drug addiction, sex addiction, paranoia, mystic curse or
similar.
Both an unusually high or unusually low (+25/-25) Mental Balance will affect how normal people and
animals react to the character in question. The further the character strays away from the zero point, the
more sociopathic, strange or eccentric he becomes, as he sheds his human quirks and viewpoints and
becomes more inhuman. Characters with a very high or very low Mental Balance will start to involuntarily
manifest outward physical signs of their ascent or descent; they become either detached saints or Children of
the Night. If Mental Balance ever reaches +500/-500, the character Awakens and regains their true potential.

Combat
There are two different official rulesets for combat. The second and third English edition rules use a system
based on Damage Effect Factors (DEF).

Magic
Kult's magic system is largely drawn on the same real-world occult belief systems as some modern magick
societies. Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream,
Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to several
days), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast inside
the sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals.

History
Kult was originally published by the company Target Games in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, and
has later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English,
Italian, Polish, Spanish and French.
Metropolis Ltd. published the English-language game through three editions and new supplements, with
new US background and a revised page design and editing led by Terry K. Amthor
The third English edition of Kult had two English books released in print form: a player's handbook named
"Kult Rumours" in 2001 and the core rulebook, subtitled Beyond The Veil, printed in 2004. Both currently
out of print.

Current publishers
Currently, Kult is owned by Paradox Entertainment with no known licensor.
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The last active publishers was 7me Cercle (English and French) and Raven Distribution (Italian).

Controversy
In Sweden, Kult has been noted by the general press several times, and in 1997 the Kult core rules was
quoted in a motion in the Parliament of Sweden.[4][5] The motion was to stop taxpayer funding of youth
groups that were active with role playing. It refers to a murder in a small town in southern Sweden called
Bjuv, where a 15-year-old was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legal
motion) were influenced by Kult.
Critics of role playing games have also have tied Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicide
by shotgun in November 1996.[6]
The local newspaper Tnsbergs Blad in Tnsberg, Norway similarly used Kult in relation to the
disappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult the
week prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.[7]

Spin-offs
Kult Collectible Card Game by Bryan Winter.
In August-November 2011, Dark Horse Comics released a 4 issue mini series based on the RPG.[8]

Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.

Speltidningen.se (http://speltidningen.se/artiklar/pdf/kult.pdf) (Swedish)

Kult, 1st edition, Book one (The Lie), pp 22
Kult, 1st edition, Book three (The Truth), pages 3-5
From the parliament archives (http://www.riksdagen.se/webbnav/index.aspx?
nid=410&typ=mot&rm=1997/98&bet=Kr501) (Swedish)
5. Bjorn.foxtail.nu (http://bjorn.foxtail.nu/rollspel/krit_motion.htm) (unofficial source). (Swedish)
6. Aftonbladet.se (http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,246481,00.html), (Swedish)
7. Pub.tv2.no (http://pub.tv2.no/dyn-nettavisen/arkiv/?archiveSection=765&archiveItem=140520), Nettavisen.
(Norwegian)

8. Darkhorse.com (http://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/18-460/Kult-1)

External links
Kult (role-playing game) (https://www.dmoz.org/Games/Roleplaying/Genres/Horror/Kult) at DMOZ
Paradox Entertainment (http://www.paradox-entertainment.com/)
The Last Cycle - Active KULT Forum (2011) (http://www.kult-rpg.com/)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kult_(role-playing_game)&oldid=646894326"
Categories: Contemporary role-playing games Horror role-playing games Swedish role-playing games
Role-playing games introduced in 1991
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