Any 'Kultists' lurking about?

[Verderer]

So I am running a medieval Legend/MRQII campaign that uses Val du Loup, Deus Vult, Merry England, and Stupor Mundi sourcebooks for background. It revolves around the Crusades/Templar/Assassins, there is to be a lot of politicking & general skull-duggery (dare I say conspiracies) etc., and I thought I'd introduce a strong Gnostic element to the game. And so I finally get to my question:

I've read about Kult RPG, and how it's based on Gnostic ideas. It's set in modern era etc. but I thought I'd plunder some of the central themes & rules, and perhaps some of the magic system? Unfortunately the game seems to be out of print. So I was wondering if any Kult players here might tell me whether it's worth hunting for some of the books for this purpose, and which ones? I am mostly after ideas about magic and the mythos, for example how does the awakening work ruleswise. I am trying to find some sources in the Internets as well.

[soltakss]

I've not read the Kult games, so can't help on that.

However, introducing Gnostic elements to a medieval game is very fruitful.

The Cathars are said to have a strong Gnostic core, as have many of the other heresies of the time. Kabbalist Judaism appears in the medieval period and that has Gnosticism in spades. Some say that the Templars were moved towards heresy through Gnostic beliefs, although I am not sure if that was the case.

There are many Gnostic practices in the medieval period, especially among small sects in the middle east. Once the Crusaders meet with them and learn of their ways, they could easily bring back some of the beliefs. That is why the Middle Ages was such a melting pot of beliefs. On the one hand the Catholic Church became steadily more conservative and resistant to heresy, on the other hand beliefs were being brought back from Outremer and Moorish Spain, with Jews being expelled and moved between countries, ancient Christian sects being awoken or rediscovered and many marriages between people of different beliefs.

As I see it, Gnosticism has several core beliefs:

Belief by Inner Knowledge - the certainty of belief

Teaching of secrets to certain ranks of believers, so outsiders learn some secrets but the inner circles learn higher secrets

Absence of hierarchical structures - either everyone is a preacher or there is a preacher class, but no layers of priesthood

Some differences in how the Godhead is seen and honoured - this isn't strictly a Gnostic belief but many Gnostic sects do not believe in the Catholic Trinity

How should it work in play?

Gnostic sects might get their Blessings through different means to other sects. This is only important if you use Merrie England's ideas on how sects get their Blessings.

Members of the sect might get an awakening of knowledge or Gnosis, almost an illumination or revelation. This gives access to more secrets and maybe to extra Blessings.

Members of the sect might be able to recognise other members by using secret phrases, handshakes or other signs.

[Chorpa]

I don't own Kult but used to play it back in the day with one of my friends copy since he didn't wanna GM he asked me if I could run some. That was ages ago so don't know if I can help you much since if I do dig some old Kult stuff up it would be in swedish.

[Verderer]

Yes, as far as I understand, the premise of Kult is that the material world was created by the Demiurge, and it's really an evil illusion to entrap us humans, who are divine by nature. And the goal of gnostic practicers is to throw off the shackles of this material world to return back to divinity, be it pure energy or whatever. Apparently in the Kult world though, the players are not intended to be these 'awakened' beings, but they do get the occasional glimples of the reality behind the illusion (here my knowledge of the background gets hazy). I guess it's kinda metaphysical 'Matrix'?

What I am curious about is whether Kult has rules for the awakening (at least temporary if not permanent), ie. how do you reach this state and so on. What's the reality behind the illusion (horrible, apparently)? What is the magic system like? And so on. I also read that the Demiurge 'went away' (and demon named 'Astraroth' (?) is trying to assume his place) around the time humans started to reject religion as the sole truth (ie. 17th century or after). So what happened to the Demiurge? In the medieval campaign he'd still be around, I think?

Edited March 8, 2013 by Verderer

[Chorpa]

My memory is a bit hazy but I think death was the only way to break through the illusion. Hence the tagline "Death is only the beginning". If I remember correctly insane people also saw through the illusion more often than normal persons and was probably the reason why they became insane in the first place.

I am pretty sure if you poke around you could find some scans of the books and that no one would mind since they have been out of print for a while now.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Chorpa

[Verderer]

So is reincarnation part of Kult world, or do the dead go to heaven/purgatory/hell?

[trechriron]

I love the Kult setting. System was meh, but the setting is fun.

Think Silent Hill meets The Prophecy.

Start here --> Kult - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (very good summary).

The system supports a Mental Balance, similar to WoD's Humanity trait and CoC Sanity trait combined; except when you did certain things your balance slides from Darkness to Lightness. Being in the middle was ideal, the further you got towards an extreme, the more "effects" you suffered from. Read the Wiki article, it talks about Ascension to either godhood or demon-hood.

Google Kult RPG Reviews. There are a few good ones out there that give you an insight into the game.

For adapting it to BRP, you could probably steal the Mental Balance rules wholesale and plug them in. I think PDFs are available on OBS (One Book Shelf which is RPGnow or Drivethru RPG...).

I think the 1st edition stuff from Target Games was the best for setting info. There are a couple free net books out there of material for Kult.

This comes up enough that I feel like a solid conversion of Kult to a new system could be in order...

Also, check out Nephalim for a BRP game of modern supernatural conspiracy and horror. I haven't read through my hard copies yet (picked a lot up used at a convention), but I hear it's splendid. Enlightened magic is supposed to be a reworking of the Nephalim magic system, so could be worth keeping your eyes out as a magic system for Kult.

Good luck! Let us know how your game proceeds.

[1d8+DB]

Kult is a highly sought after collectible. I lucked onto a copy of the 2004 edition which I found in a Hastings store: but going onto Amazon I don't see any that you would be able to get ahold of a dead tree copy for less than $60 (used). Holy ****. There's a dealer in Texas who wants $1500 for a copy of the '93 edition!

Moving on. The magic is mainly ritual. Magic is grouped into five lores: Passion, Death, The Dream, Madness, and Time and Space. Casting spells costs Endurance.

Beyond our illusionary world is a vast, nightmarish city: the Metropolis. In a medieval setting I suppose this would be a composite of Rome-Alexandria-Babylon. There are places where the veil between the Metropolis and our world are thin, and the unwary can stumble through.

[1d8+DB]

A cheaper alternative might be GURPS Cabal: Kenneth Hite: 9781556344299: Amazon.com: Books. This gives a good overview of hermetic magick and kabbalisticism.

For the historical and philosophical background there's Amazon.com: Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism (9780060670184): Kurt Rudolph: Books. Gnosticism is a fascinating subject: and its influence in western thought is surprisingly wide-spread. Phillip K. Dick came to hold gnostic beliefs, and the Matrix films of the Wachowski brothers can be seen as a Gnostic allegory.

I can't believe that someone hasn't grabbed up the Kult license. Chaosium? Pelgrane Press? Hello?

[Mankcam]

Sounds like you're running a dark medieval BRP game with the LEGEND combat manuveres to me. That could work well, but not sure if the LEGEND magic would be the best fit, so I see why you're posting.

Soltakss's view on tweaking the Blessings rules from Merrie England is the best move. There was a part on Mysticism in that book, but I think it was just a paragraph or two (I am not at home to check), but it probably has some good guiding advice there for stuff like Catharism, Gnostic Practices etc. Love that book.

You may also want to check out Nephilim's 'Liber Ka' magic sourcebook. It could be easily ported over to provide hermetic sorcery flavour; I think the author was going to bring out a new edition for BRP but I haven't heard of any recent progress on that. I know Gnostic Practices is what you were after, however I thought Western Occult Sorcery might also be of interest to your setting in any case.

Edited March 10, 2013 by Mankcam

[Verderer]

Lots of good advice and ideas, thanks everybody. I need to think of this more to formulate better what I want to do with this idea. By the way, I found some Kult materials on Scribd, and I am reading these to get a better idea of the setting. The game doesn't appear to be available on RPGnow, which is a pity.

I would like to use a form of divine magic for religious characters, and I like the idea that you form an allegiance/pact, and give up a measure of your POW to this purpose, and thus get access to miracles/prayers. And at the same time you get more attached to the material world by actually giving up a portion of your divine self. Most religions being just a part of the problem, as far as gnostic englightment is concerned. And then I'd have a form of independent sorcery in the gnostic tradition, and quite possibly other forms of magic tradition.

Another idea I've been toying with is the mechanism of opposed traits, much like In Pendragon and the optional rule in BRP. So you'd have pairs like Pious/Worldly, Energetic/lazy, etc. Some of these traits in their extreme nature would work to either anchor you more firmly to the material world, and some would perhaps work towards setting you free from it in the way towards the gnostic awakening. So you wouldn't have to resort to magic alone in order to be enlightened. I am not sure yet exactly what trait pairs I would use, but quite possibly I could include sane/insane in this group? So if you approach a very sane or insane state of mind, you begin to see glimpses behind the illusionary 'real world'?

Edited March 11, 2013 by Verderer

[1d8+DB]

Some more grist for the mill.

I would have an 'Awakened' skill, that measures one's awareness of the 'True World.' When this reaches 100% the character has reached apotheosis, and leaves the world of 'illusion' forever. This skill would also function like the Cthulhu Mythos skill in COC, in that it would conversely reduce your SAN. Characters who are highly 'Awakened' would have a hard time dealing with those who are not, and would be deemed insane by the majority of folk.

Furthermore, I would use the sorcery rules for magic, with the 'Awakened' Skill being used in the place of the 'Manipulation' skill.

[trechriron]

Some more grist for the mill.

I would have an 'Awakened' skill, that measures one's awareness of the 'True World.' When this reaches 100% the character has reached apotheosis, and leaves the world of 'illusion' forever. This skill would also function like the Cthulhu Mythos skill in COC, in that it would conversely reduce your SAN. Characters who are highly 'Awakened' would have a hard time dealing with those who are not, and would be deemed insane by the majority of folk.

Furthermore, I would use the sorcery rules for magic, with the 'Awakened' Skill being used in the place of the 'Manipulation' skill.

Excellent ideas!!

[Verderer]

Yes, I want to do something like what 1d8+8 suggested, but I don't want to give the game away too soon. In other words, I don't want the players to know what's going on. Of course, you could open the skill only when the PC's become aware of the trouble with reality, so to speak. Still, I want a bit more complex system for this. And I want to keep the gnostic element hidden, covert and hinted at, rather than overt.

From what I've read, Kult uses the idea of Mental Balance, where normal people have MB around 0. This is modified by certain advantages/disadvantages to positive or negative value, and the bigger the value is towards either direction, the more you begin to 'see' beyond the veil, and the more your surrounding begin to react towards you. Awakening starts properly at the extreme end of +/- 400 to 500. And you'd be taken for an insane/exceptional person around MB +/- 50?

Since I dont' want to introduce a system of (dis)advantages to Legend, I thought about using the optional rule of personality traits in BRP (and familiar from Pendragon). So you have pairs of opposite traits like Pious/Wordly or Greedy/Generous etc. You could actually take the seven deadly sins, and make the pairs from them, that would be a nice medieval touch, wouldn't it? And I thought I'd include Sane/Insane in these traits too.

My thinking is the last mentioned pair would work as measure of Mental Balance, you'd have a scale of 100% divided between the two, so the value would be something like Sane 45 / 55 Insane, and the closer you get to the either extreme, the closer you get toward awakening? And some of those other traits might work in the similar manner, extremes would work either to set you free, or to anchor you more firmly to the illusion. The nice thing about this system is that it's completely hidden (and might stay that way for a considerable length of the campaign), and on the other hand it gives a good tool for the players to work with their motivations etc. They wouldn't be used to 'force' the players to act in any particular manner, but their actions might well change these traits in various directions etc.

There would be other ways to awaken, or at least get glimpses of what lies behid the veil. The hidden wisdom of Magic is an obvious one, as are various drugs, and moments of 'insane insights' from temporary insanity, much in the way of CoC.

[dawnrazor]

Hi. Old KULTist here

The game is originally Swedish, and came out in Sweden in 1990. 1993 the US 1st ed was published. The rules system are really a heavily modified version of BRP under the hood, and as such much compatible with BRP. The basic premise is that the Creator/God/über-being (the Demiurge) is gone, and now his underlings, the arch-devils and arch-angels and their servants, are lost and fight between themselves over power. Further, humanity is really divine immortal beings, but we are trapped in "reality" and this is the great Illusion. The game is about ordinary people gradually discovering these premises. A normal unknowing person has a mental balance of zero. Supernatural events, magic and horrific experiences changes the mental balance to either positive or negative, where negative mental balance is the "dark path" and positive is the "light path". When a PC reaches +/- 100 in mental balance the Illusion shatters and he has ascended to his True Form. Also, the game ends, because the game does NOT support playing a divine being in Heaven/Hell.

KULT is more about personal horror than the evil outer forces of Call of Cthulhu. So, ever if both are horror RPGs, they have a vastly different feel. If CoC is Lovecraft-style, then KULT is Clive Barker or Jacob's Ladder (the movie, that is). I've always ran it as dark detective/mystery stories with a supernatural backdrop, and that's how it works best I think. It's a game for mature players and experienced GM's, and nothing is too vile to be included. Cannibalism, weird sexuality, savage serial killers and mad sorcerers are all part of the game. Magic is dangerous and hard to learn and always comes with a price. There's also something called the "Dark Art", where some individuals, as they approach catharsis, can actually learn to control the Illusion (a little like Neo in matrix). Actually, the basic concepts of Matrix are valid: We are all prisoners in a fake reality, guarded by jailers angelic and devilish. Some things can make you see through the Illusion, and once you've done that you can't go back. Also, you will be hunted by the forces trying to keep up the Illusion.

I've been toying with the idea of making a BRP hack and run KULT with the BRP rules, but some of the game's feeling gets lost in translation. A big emphasis is on the character's background: there's no occupations per se; rather you choose an archetype (the disillusioned detective, the femme fatale are examples). Then you choose a dark secret - victim of medical experimentation or something like that. The dark secret then leads to certain disadvantages and advantages which in turn affects your mental balance. KULT characters are troubled ordinary people, not heroes.

That said, I think that you can mine KULT for ideas for your BRP medieval game. Sadly, the books are extremely expensive when you find them. In Sweden, you can find the Swedish originals more easily, but that won't help I assume...

[1d8+DB]

All characters begin with a Mental Balance of 50, this may be modified by past life events but it should not more than +/- 5. The vast majority of humanity has a Mental Balance of 40-60. A Mental Balance outside this range will certainly be marked upon: < 40 and characters will definitely meet the medical criteria for mental illness; > 60 and characters will be aloof and distant, with a marked lack of affect.

Remember that what is conventionally accepted as human history is a fiction; and what most human accept as reality is a lie.

At a Mental Balance of 101 the character will have Ascended; they have apotheosized and escaped the Illusion, becoming pure thought.

At a Mental Balance of 0 the character is Abased: they have accepted the Illusion, embraced it, and become a conduit for it.

At both sides of the continuum behaviors vary greatly. There are Machiavellian autocrats at the threshold of Ascending who can coldly order the murder of countless thousand 'human cattle', while there are also 'gibbering' saints who can barely form coherent sentences among the nearly Abased. Generally though a high Mental Balance means a high degree of general mental competence and functionality, and usually, though not always, a highly developed sense of empathy.

Characters at the far ends of the spectrum gain the ability to impose their own wills upon the Illusion.

For each point below 26, or above 74, the character gets a point of 'Warp'. They can add this to their POW to make changes in the very fabric of reality.

This is a contest of the character's POW vs Stability; where Stability is an arbitrary rating given to any aspect of reality, that is a measure of that aspect's plasticity and resistance to being warped. Changes 'warped' into reality are rated as either Minor, Moderate, or Major; a Minor warp could easily be explained as a 'trick' of perception, while a Major warp is obviously a inexplicable over-turning of natural laws, usually over a wide area, or lasting for a considerable duration . Moderate Warps are pretty much everything between. For Minor Warps, the Resisting Stability is halved (rounded up). For Major Warps the Resisting Stability is doubled.

Sentient beings can substitute their own POW, if greater than the 'ambient' Stability, for changes that directly, physically alter them.

Johnny Slick is a character tending towards Abasement, with a POW of 13 and a Mental Balance of 22. He has three three points he can add to his POW for the purpose of Warping the Illusion. He is trying to get past a security guard in a mental hospital. He wants to temporarily obscure the guard's vision with a dense swarm of buzzing flies. This a Moderate effect (obviously unusual, but not entirely outside all possibility). Stability within the grounds of St. James Infirmary is only 10 (the veil is weak here). Johnny Slick has an 80% of blinding the guard with a cloud of insects.

Optionally, characters with a Mental Balance >75 or < 25 may purchase powers as per the Powers rules in the BRP book (heroic level).

Edited May 22, 2014 by 1d8+DB

[TrippyHippy]

It's strange to see a Kult thread on a Legend forum, but there you go…

Kult is, along with HoL, probably THE cult game from the 90s - insofar the content was controversial, and that you can't (legally) get hold of a pdf these days. It has, in my view, the most coherently designed horror setting of any RPG.

The general system is a bit bland, although related to BRP (using a single d20 for everything) and as such an easy conversion. If you wanted to take the premise for a medieval period it would fit right in - noting that it's largely based upon a literal Judeo-Christian paradigm. The Gnostic elements are mainly held in the magic system, which essentially allows you to break free from reality in a variety of ways (Dreams, Passion, Time & Space, Death, Madness). In later editions, they laced these concepts into real world occult practices (Kabballah, Tarot, Astrology, Voudun, etc) which gave it a very authentic (believable?) feel, while introducing a freeform element into casting. The result is very evocative.

The only difficulty is that the negative impact of magic was to affect your 'mental balance' and give you various psychological flaws - all of which is written in very 20th century psychological terms. You'd probably be able to keep the light side/dark side dichotomy, but the traits would have to be changed to reflect the times.

Personally, I wonder how long it will be before a BRP based writer adapts something like Dante's Inferno as a RPG setting…it would work, brilliantly!