Collection of Trigger Warnings for KULT Scenarios

 

In this post, we gather the trigger warnings that apply to many (eventually perhaps all) of the KULT scenarios that are available out there. 

It is intended predominantly as a resource for GMs when contemplating which game of KULT to run next for their group - but could also be consulted by players. Though if you desire to remain spoiler free, do not mark over the blue boxes.

I'll start with a list that user Japicx made over on discord. Slight edits and additions by me.

Let's expand this more!

La Cena
alcoholism, adultery, familial abuse (the entire scenario is about toxic family dynamics) 

Oakwood Heights
mental illness, mass murder, suicide, child endangerment, abusive therapist (one of the pre-made PCs), parental abuse, alcoholism 

The Laraine Estate
masochism, mutilation, sex cult
(this one is rather tame by Kult standards) 

The Island of the Dead
torture, sexual assault (including a sexual assault attempt towards a PC), gore, "cannibal native" tropes, unrelenting violence and death

The Atrocity Exhibition
gore, death and rot
(one of the more surreal scenarios, so the GM has a lot of leeway in what they include or exclude) 

Gallery of Souls
extortion, gore, body horror
(this one is also relatively tame)

It Started And Ended With Screams
bullying, physical and emotional abuse, claustrophobic environments, mental illness, gaslighting, sexual harassment, addiction & substance abuse, corrupt and malicious authority figures, all with regard to underage characters 
(this one is not to be taken lightly. Make sure to have solid safety techniques implemented.)

 

 

 

 

 

Homebrew Move: A More Cinematic Helping & Hindering Variant

 

Freshly ripped from the Vortex, and viciously channeled through the nightmare realms of Togarini and Malkuth, I bring to you:

Helping

When you support or assist another player character’s Move, explain how you do it and roll +Attribute, where the Attribute may or may not be the same that the helped player is using.

15+    Your assistance allows the other PC to increase the result of their roll by one tier (fail → partial → success). If they already rolled a full success, the GM may at her discretion allow them to pick one more question, edge, or option than normal. 

10-14    You face a hard choice of how deeply to invest yourself in helping your fellow PC. Choose 1:

- Increase their result by one tier, but suffer a cost or complication for it.

- Your help remains inefficient and adds nothing to their result.

-9    This went wrong badly. Choose 1:

- Reduce the other character’s result by one tier.

- Hurt yourself or get in trouble in the course of your supporting actions. The GM makes a Move against you.

Hindering

When you try to hamper or prevent another player character’s Move, explain how you do it and roll +Attribute, where the Attribute may or may not be the same that the hindered player is using.

 

15+    Your interference forces the other PC to reduce the result of their roll by one tier (success → partial → fail). If they already rolled a fail result, the GM may at her discretion make a harder Move on the character than she normally would have. 

10-14    You face a hard choice of how deeply to invest yourself in sabotaging your fellow PC. Choose 1:

- Reduce their result by one tier, but suffer a cost or complication for it.

- Your hindering remains inefficient and removes nothing from their result.

-9    This went wrong badly. Choose 1:

- Accidentally improve the other character’s result by one tier.

- Hurt yourself or get in trouble in the course of your interference. The GM makes a Move against you.

Commentary:

Possible Costs and Complications

You can use any of the standard repertoire that seems to fit the particular situation and characters involved. You hurt yourself or someone else, draw unwelcome attention, lose something important, get yourself (or someone else) in a bad spot, destroy something valuable, use up resources, leave traces, etc. 

Reasons for Using This

If you're unhappy with the Corebook move only offering some simple numeric modifiers, and would like more interesting things to happen when the spotlight shines on characters trying to assist (or sabotage) one another - use this. 

It has a greater chance of affecting the outcome of the helped/hindered PC's roll than the Corebook version, so you get a bit more bang for your willingness to use up your spotlight "merely" in support of a fellow PC.

Reasons Not To Use This

If you want to keep things fast-flowing, and not detract attention from elsewhere in a tension-ladden scene - probably don't use this. 

There is a clear caveat to this variant move: It can tend to derail things a bit, as the helping/hindering character is prompted to make choices, weigh consequences against each other, and so on. Additionally, as soon as costs and complications are to be chosen, the GM must take care to maintain a tight reign on the scene's direction and pacing - keep in mind that the most important thing to focus on should still be the acting (not the helping/hindering) PC's move, and that should resolve dominantly in the narration. 

Whatever cost, hurt, unwelcome attention, bad spots, or loss of resources the other person has to deal with as a result of their interference, should probably be handled later - or alternatively very briefly - in order not to muddy the waters of your fiction too much. 

This variant houserule is being playtested in a game I'm in right now, so there may be additional insights to share about it some time down the line. In the meanwhile, comments and opinions are welcome, especially (but not exclusively) if you should feel inclined to playtest it yourselves, definitely let me know your thoughts!

This Paradise Prison: Keep the Wrong Ones Out

this page is unfortunately 

under construction 

blame the lictors!

  

Historical Weapons and Combat Rules for K:DL

Inspired by a new game I'm playing in - GMed by Mr. Kultist, using the rules for K:DL but taking place in a fantasy setting - and sort of as a continuation of this post of mine, I have developed a few guidelines for adapting the tools of violence to different (i.e. earlier) time periods.

In many historical settings, the ratio of melee combat vs. ranged combat is likely to be inversely proportional to how it is in modern times. That is to say, the vast majority of violent conflict will probably be sorted out at close range. Melee aggression (and defense) therefore warrants a little bit of extra attention

To this end I've come up with a few new rules:


A New Range Increment

The reach of weapons is measured by their Distance attribute in K:DL, providing a rule of thumb for how close or far a given weapon or attack could feasibly hit its target. These are not overly granular, and they don't have to be. But for historical combat, one thing seemed to miss for me. 

We're adding a new range increment, called Grapple. It joins the existing ones at the top of the list, i.e. above Arm, Room, etc, and is defined as: 

    ◊ Grapple: When you are close enough to hug, strangle, or bite someone.

The Broken has had it with The Careerist's constant bullshit

Unarmed attacks are by default at Grapple range, while Edged Weapons may variously be judged as attacking at Grapple (e.g. knives, daggers, garrote, claws, teeth, stake) or Arm range (e.g. rapier, florett, javelin)

Closing or Increasing the Distance

In melee combat, the distance between opponents combined with the reach of their weapons may produce an delicate dance of death. Longer weapons are usually at an advantage against shorter ones - unless the enemy manages to maneuver themselves inside of your longer weapon's ideal range, whereupon the advantage goes to them instead.

When you wield a weapon with longer reach than your opponent, the GM may give you +1 on your attacks until the opponent manages to close the distance.

When your opponent wields a weapon with considerably longer reach than your own, the GM may require you to close the distance before you can attack.

If your opponent manages to decrease the distance lower than your weapons ideal reach, the GM may demand that you need to increase the distance before you are able to Engage in Combat again (otherwise you are limited to Avoid Harm).

The Avenger has returned from the other side to reckon with The Veteran for his crimes

To close or increase the distance is an Act under Pressure, with the opponent's weapon as the pressure. Advantages that let you spend Edges or choose Options to evade blows, block attacks, or move past enemies (e.g, Body Awareness, Daredevil, Death Drive, Genius, Ice Cold, Lightning Fast, Martial Arts Expert, Parkour or Streetfighter) can be used to close in or increase the distance in combat instead of having to Act under Pressure.

Using the Existing Weapon Types

The basic weapon types offered in K:DL are solid, and should be used as much as you possibly can.

Edged Weapons include knives, daggers, stilettos, rondel, zai (all Distance: Grapple) as well as rapiers, floretts, spatha, gladius, scimitars, javelins etc. (all Distance: Arm)

Chopping Weapons include meat cleavers, hatchets, axes, falchions, scimitars, kukri, wakizashi/katana, etc. (usually all Distance: Arm)

Crushing Weapons include clubs, maces, hammers, staffs etc. (usually Distance: Arm, though staff or longhammer could be judged Room perhaps?)

Notably, swords are one of the most successful weapon designs across many eras of history, since they are very versatile in their use. From a shortsword to a bastard sword, scimitar to katana, perhaps the most elegant way to represent this is to allow these arms to be used as either edged or chopping weapons.
The sword's wielder can freely decide to use the attack moves provided by either category. 

This would seem to make sense for weapons such as the gladius, spatha, saber, scimitar, falchion, katana, etc.

in case negotiations should turn aggressive...

Adding a Few New Weapon Types

There are certain kinds of armaments that cannot adequately be represented by the existing categories.
Let's add:

Great Weapons

Examples: battle axe, greatsword, warhammer.

Distance: Arm

Attacks:

    ◊ Mighty Swing [3] [Reduce Armor (-1)]

    ◊ Lunging Strike [3] [Distance: Room]

Drawback: Slow [when going against someone with a smaller, more agile weapon, you are at risk of losing the initiative. Upon first engaging such an opponent, you must Act Under Pressure before you can Engage in Combat. On a (-9), you may only Avoid Harm.]

Polearms

Examples: spear, halberd, poleaxe, trident, scythe.

Distance: room

Attacks:

    ◊ Stab / Slash [2]

    ◊ Keep at Bay [-] [Keep an opponent at Distance: Room, if they come closer than that you take +1 to your next move against that target.]

Drawback: Long and Unwieldy [Close confines (narrow corridors, low ceilings, dense vegetation) or opponents inside the weapon’s effective range may require you to Act under Pressure before you can use it efficiently.]



Ranged Weapons

Bow

Distance: room/field

Attacks:

    ◊ Combat shooting [2] [-1 Ammo]

    ◊ Volley of shots [1/3] [hit either a handful of targets standing in a close group for 1 Harm each, or hit one target for 3 Harm] [-3 Ammo]

Ammo: O O O O

Crossbow

Distance: room/field

Attacks:

    ◊ Combat shooting [3]

Ammo: special (see below)

Drawback: Reload [You need to wind up the weapon anew for every new shot. Doing this under time pressure or adverse circumstances (nasty weather, slippery ground underfoot, a fight going on around you) is an Act under Pressure. However, there’s no need to track Ammo for this weapon - as long as you have a fistful of bolts with you, you’re extremely unlikely to run out during any given combat scene.]



Rare and Exotic Weapons

Some Weapons are so rarely found that mastering them requires the user to buy this ability as a separate Advantage. These involve artful and fancy techniques, and are often less useful in actual combat and more utility tools that can do certain things, such as tormenting or capturing an opponent, or knocking them out at a distance.

Examples of such weapons include the whip, lasso, net, bola, boomerang, and discus. In order to be truly proficient with any of these, the Exotic Weapon Skill Advantage needs to be acquired.

Exotic Weapon Skill

You are trained in using one or more rare, exotic, and/or weird weapons. This proficiency allows you special maneuvers or attacks in combat when wielding that particular type of weapon(s).

When acquiring this Advantage, choose two of the moves below, and declare which weapon you can do them with. You can buy this Advantage more than once, every time adding two new moves (and possibly a new weapon) to your repertoire.

◊ Searing pain [2*] [Distance: Room, victim is struck in a very painful spot and is momentarily crippled by agonizing pain. PC victims must Keep it Together or double their wound penalty from this injury.]

◊ Entangle [-] [Distance: Room/Field, victim is immobilized until given some time to free themselves. PC victims may Act under Pressure to get free.]

◊ Disarm [-] [Distance: Room/Field, the victim loses a handheld object. PC victims must Avoid Harm to keep it in hand.]

◊ Knock down [1] [Distance: Room, Field. Victim is knocked to the ground, PC victims must Endure Injury and on anything less than (15+) are struck prone in addition to any other result.]

◊ Knock out [1] [Distance: Room, Field. Victim is knocked unconscious, PC victims must Endure Injury and on a (-9) are struck unconscious.]

◊ Returning projectile [-] [When it doesn’t hit its target, the weapon flies in a wide circle and returns (close to) where it was thrown from.]

◊ … []

◊ … []

(Note: In some cases, it can make sense to make the player choose one of the given Distance values. For example, someone using a whip might Disarm or Entangle an opponent at Distance: Room only, while someone with a bola could conceivably do the same things at Distance: Field.)


DEFENSIVE GEAR

PCs who wear armor receive a positive modifier to their Endure Injury roll. NPCs who wear armor subtract their armor rating from the amount of Harm they take each time it applies.

Armor    Rating      Examples

Light           +1       padded vest, gambeson, leather, hide, a choice few metal bits 
                               (e.g. pauldrons / knee caps / bracers / helmet…)

Medium      +2       chainmail, chestplate + bracers, reinforced leather + metal bits, 
                               boiled leather cuirass, scale mail…

Heavy         +3       plate armor, heavy chain + metal bits

pictured: medium armor, light armor, large shields, helmets

Shields 

Hybrid objects that act partly like defensive weapons and partly like passive armor, shields are a mainstay of warfare throughout virtually all epochs and cultures. 
All of them convey a certain bonus to attempts to Avoid Harm, and allow at least one (in some cases several) maneuvers to be executed with them.

Buckler             +1 Avoid Harm                      shield bash [1]

Small shield     +2 Avoid Harm                      shield bash [2], tackle [1], block open & strike [*]

Large shield     +2 Avoid Harm, +1 Armor     shield bash [2], tackle [1], block open & strike [*]

Tower shield     +3 Avoid Harm, +2 Armor     tackle [2]


Shield maneuvers

Shield bash [x] 

You can use your shield as a Crushing Weapon of the given [Harm] value, albeit at a -1 to Engage in Combat due to its comparatively bad ergonomics for that purpose.

Tackle [x] [Distance: Arm, victim is pushed up to Distance: Room and/or knocked over] 

is an attack that combines properties of the Shift and Knock Down attacks.

When successfully (10+) using your shield to shove and push an opponent in this way [Engage in Combat], you may choose to either move them up to Distance: Room, or to then knock them down. 

On a full success (15+) you may choose both of these options. 
PC victims can Avoid Harm to prevent being shoved and suffering the attack's Harm in the first place, or failing that, may Endure Injury against getting knocked down.

Block open & strike [*]
When you Avoid Harm with a (15+), you can use your shield to not only catch the blow but also sweep or push the opponent's weapon off to the side in the same movement, opening their defense for your next strike. Take +1 to your next attempt to Engage in Combat.

Note on Armor and Shields: With these rules mods, it is possible for well-protected NPCs to accrue up to 3, 4, or even 5 Armor. At the same time however, The greatest damage you can inflict with weapons is still around 3 Harm, mostly (not counting certain Advantages).

For example, even a greatsword or warhammer (with its -1 to armor) may be mathematically unable to hurt an especially heavily armored knight with a large shield. And regular melee weapons may seem ineffective even against someone in leather & shield, or an opponent simply wearing chainmail.

Keep in mind these rules are merely very rough abstractions, however. They work well enough where they give PCs the bonus to their Endure Injury rolls. Against NPCs on the other hand, feel free to use the same Armor values, but:

• Allow PCs to creatively use maneuvers, tactics, and stunts to circumvent (or reduce) the effectiveness of an opponent’s armor. The AuP, OaS, IO, and RaP Basic Moves can all conceivably be used to detect and create openings for injuring someone more efficiently than what the sheer numbers would have to say about it.

• Various Advantages, both of the kind that focus on acrobatics / mobility, and those dealing with manipulating / tricking someone, may also be allowed to reduce the efficiency of armor by a point or two.

• Allow PCs to always inflict at least 1 Harm on a (15+), regardless of the victim’s Armor rating. Or alternatively, modify the (15+) result of EiC to say:

“You inflict your weapon’s Harm +1 on your opponent, and avoid counterattacks”.

The above are three quick and easy to implement mods. 

Here are two more things you could hack in. They are a little more involved, but you and your players might appreciate the additional options they offer:

• Add new close combat Advantages, or modify existing ones, to offer Edges which grant +1 Harm, -1 Armor, ignore armor, ignore shield, or similar boons. The +/-armor game is not an aspect of the rules that K:DL focuses a whole lot upon, but attention to such options may be increased in a more historically-minded hack of its ruleset.

• Give each armor type a certain weakness, for smart and resourceful PCs to exploit. For example, soft armor (i.e. fabric-, hide-, or leather-based) is weak against cuts… chainmail and scale mail are weak against stabbing attacks… solid armor (i.e. plates, whether of metal, boiled leather, bone etc.) is weak against crushing weapons…

          Against attacks that exploit the armor’s weakness, its value is reduced to [1], except if it

          was already that, then it goes to [0].

GM Hyperfocus: The Investigate Basic Move

The Investigate Basic Move is a bit of a tricky beast. It's something of an odd one out amongst the other Basic Moves, and while it may not be immediately apparent from reading it on paper at first, I've seen several GMs stumble over its practical implementation in-game. Why is that?

The biggest reason I have determined is that it uses a slightly altered process for handling how the information that this move yields is given out, compared to other, more widely familiar, PbtA-based "information gain" moves.

I too was thrown off by it at first. In fact I even resolved to hack it to something different for my own personal games... much like I did with Observe a Situation, over here... but I have since figured out how (I believe) it is actually intended to be used. 

And as it turns out, I find it is quite good when played RAW like that. Trust me, it will all make sense once you follow me all the way down this rabbit hole! 

But let's start at the beginning. 

In the following I'll render some quotes from people I've seen wondering about this move that I came across on discord, reddit, facebook, or other places. These 'quotes' are not 100% faithful, in fact I'm gleefully twisting and butchering them to make them fit my purpose here. But they're all based on stuff I've really seen or heard asked.

The move does seem really narrow in scope - should a Basic Move even be dealing with something as specific as criminal investigations, or is that just bad design by the K:DL developers?

The name might be a tad misleading, but this move is not only for crime scene investigation and other police procedures. In fact there is a whole separate that Advantage focuses on this particular application of it:

unsurprisingly, it's called Crime Scene Investigator (check it out on p.110) 

However, Investigate can be used equally well for academic research, ear-to-the-streets information gathering, solving logical or mathematical riddles, figuring out how to open cursed puzzle cubes, jury-rigging ancient alien machines into functionality, finding the hidden visual code in an antique painting, or otherwise examining puzzles and mysteries of all sorts. Like all good Basic Moves in PbtA, it is broadly applicable and highly flexible in its uses.

The images I have added to the rest of this article are intended to show just some of the ways this move could come into play. You can scroll down to browse them real quick, to get an idea of its considerable spectrum.

My text however will discuss the move only in the most general terms, the naked mechanics as it were. I have indulged in lengthy example-giving in other posts of mine on here, but for this one I decided that would certainly exceed the frame of this piece. I trust you to fill in the detailed applications in various concrete situations, as needed. 

Let's move on to our next puzzlement:

The Clues

Okay, but so... what's the point in rolling for this move, in the first place? It says the player gets all the clues anyways. Doesn't this kinda beat the idea of "playing to find out"?

Understandable first impression - but read more closely: It doesn't actually say that! 

What it does in fact say: "On a success, the player gets all direct leads". Slight difference, you might think, but a meaningful one nonetheless.

"On a success" here means on 10+. So either a partial success or a full success will yield all relevant direct leads, and by "relevant leads" it means 'the sort of stuff needed to avoid plot-bottlenecks.'

(And by "plot-bottlenecks", I mean the kind of situation where the whole scenario stalls because if you fail to [pick this one lock / solve this one riddle / interrogate this one person], the PCs are stuck and have no way left to advance. It goes without saying you should almost never use these in your scenario designs - but that's perhaps more the stuff of another article altogether.)

So taking this into account, you can - and should - still play to find out!

A fail result (-9), on the other hand, may or may not yield the required leads to continue investigating (GM's discretion), and will additionally not allow you to ask any of the questions listed in the move. (We'll get to those in a moment.)

So here the GM is free to either let a plot bottleneck arise, i.e. let you hit a dead end to your research, inquiries, or puzzling...

...or the GM could gracefully let you find a single clue (or however many s/he deems appropriate / necessary / whatever). But if you do, it'll most likely happen at a cost or complication, as the move's fail result specifies.

The Questions

These seemed extremely weird to me at first glance. They're strongly unlike the list of questions you get for ostensibly similar moves like Read a Person or Read a Situation, and to be honest felt eminently useless to me in most cases I could actually imagine.

I mean, moves that follow the "Question Move" pattern are very well established throughout most - if not all - games that are based on PbtA rulesets - so it would seem only reasonable to assume that Investigate would follow a similar structure, right?  

Wrong.

It does its whole own thing with the questions instead. 

And it does tend to confuse people familiar with PbtA games especially, since it's such an unexpected deviation. See, the questions here aren't the main thing that the move is concerned with. They're not really what it consists of in the same ways as RaP and Oas do. That main thing is in fact the move's clue/lead management, as discussed above.

The questions, then, are just a bonus - very much in the sense of like a hidden bonus level in a video game, you could say. They unlock extra content, in this case in the form of additional info about the investigated mystery at hand. 

Importance-wise, they take the place of that +1 when acting upon the answers in the OaS move. A nice carry-on for the player to cherish, but not the main purpose of the move in question.

Absolutio in Veritas: The Divine Path to the Truth

So here's my take on what the GM should be doing when this move is invoked:

Unfortunately the corebook text is a bit, uhm... bad at communicating this. I understand that they went for brevity over detailed explication in their writing of the moves themselves. Yet without some explanatory text to elaborate on the underlying design ideas, I have to admit it took me a while to puzzle it out. 

I'll try to unravel (my take on) it for you. Here's a step-by-step of things happening chronologically in a game:

0.    [Fiction happens, fiction happens, fiction happens...]

1.    [a character does something that triggers the Investigate move]

2.    Have the player roll +Reason, and check the result.

3.    Do not ask the player what questions they want to ask!

       Instead,

on (10+) give them at least one direct lead (or maybe more than one) that is useful for their continued research / the plot to progress.

on (-9) perhaps do the above, but add a complication or cost. Or let them fail, and find nothing.
Additionally, in both cases, you can make a GM Move.

4.    After revealing any and all clues you're gonna reveal,
       now ask the player about which question(s) they want to ask.

The three questions neatly cater to three basic impulses a player might have at this time:

- Shit, I'm gonna need more intel than that!

- Uuh... what does my intuition say about all this?

- Uuh... what does my logic say about all this?

5.    If they ask it, tell them. Honestly and without too much obfuscation.

6.    ...then ask them "What Do You Do?"

7.    [resume fiction happening, leading to more fiction happening, moves being triggered, the conversation moving forward...]

You see, the questions only make sense when building on the revealed leads, so you have to move asking them to after the clues are already revealed. Otherwise, you'll find yourself tempted to answer the questions in ways that don't really fit their scope, and when you then try to hand out "additional" direct leads afterwards, they runs a high risk of feeling weird and oddly uncalled for.

Therefore, doing it the way I described above makes, in my experience, for a much smoother flow of narrating the move's results and leading the conversation back into the general fiction afterwards.

As a general guideline, I try to make the information flow conform roughly to this:

"Here's what you find. Here's what you think about it. Now what do you do with that?"

Here's a final thought: 

If you write your own scenarios, you can design investigative scenes (or, y'know, potentially investigative scenes) from the ground up with these processes and questions in mind!

Some guidelines, perhaps:

> What essential, necessary, important, direct leads are here to be found?

> What additional sources of knowledge or insight could help make a more complete picture than what is here alone? Where else could you look, who else could you ask, what other approach could you try?

> What emotional or intuitive vibe does it give off? What about it feels weird, disturbing, scary, or enticing?

> What problems or hiccups would a viewpoint of rational analysis run into when examining this? What about it doesn't add up, seems self-contradicting, irrational, or plain impossible?

If you do this, you will never be caught unprepared when your players start asking you for clues and leads and answers to those additional questions. 

You'll already have thought them up beforehand and can now simply dole them out as needed, without the system becoming awkwardly at odds with the organically unfolding fiction.

I think that's it. This is my wisdom on the Investigate move.

Now you've seen the Truth. Now you know what we must do! 

I told you it would all make sense once you followed me all the way down here! 

GM Reference Sheet

Greetings, fellow GMs.

In the tradition of the Disadvantages cheat sheet I made, today I bring you another handy gaming aid to reference during your sessions.

When in doubt, or even at a complete loss for what to say or do next - a quick glance on this summary of your GM Agenda, Principles, and Moves may be just the thing to snap you back into your groove, or give you that crucial bit of inspiration you're fishing for.

 

Credit for the idea and initial compilation of this info in this neatly concise way goes to my long-time friend and fellow Kultist Jrmariano, who came up with the concept of this GM Reference Sheet in the first place.
All I really had to do from there was to pretty it up a bit for that Kultish look, and some minor edits for brevity and format. 

I made a printer friendly version as well:

As with the Disadvantage sheet, you can grab them from this finely crafted google folder. 

Feel free to let me know if you find them useful, leave me a comment or buy me a coffee over at my patreon. Hail Malkuth, for through tormentuous tribulations she leads us to Divine Enlightenment!

 

Metropolis: The City's True Purpose

Metropolis is one of the most mysterious of the dimensions beyond the Illusion's Veil in Kult. In spite of being included in every edition of the game (unlike some other realms, such as Gaia or the Underworld for example), the place is still a riddle to many of the game's fans. 

In some cases perhaps it is a matter of only knowing the newest edition of the corebook, and not having access to older versions of the lore. In other cases, perhaps what's there in the books is perfectly understandable to them, but feels like it's just too little, or the wrong kind of information presented. 

People ask questions like:

Why is there a whole dimension of city-stuff, just for it to be desolate and empty? What's the point?

The book says it used to be our home, and that we can feel it calling to us - but then why is there nothing interesting to do there?

The book lists a few inspirations for possible scenes, but they almost invariably remain... oddly inconclusive. Why are things described so vaguely?

If we used to live there when we were gods, why is the place filled with nothing but ruins and monsters? What's so divine about that?

Okay, so there are Archons and acrotides and angels... azghouls and tekrons and gynachids... Lost Gods and distorted humans... But all of them are described as threatening, alien, and generally rather unapproachable. What's the gameplay value in these beings, except for murdering characters in various brutal fashions? 

Ah, and about that murdering of characters: Granted, it's great fun - but you can get that from any other critter in any other dimension. What makes Metropolis truly special? Why would I want to use that realm in my games, over any of the others the setting offers?

I think I have a take on Metropolis that can address at least some of these questions. Maybe most of them. Here it is:

 

 

The Lie

There is no such thing as "Metropolis". The very idea of an eternal city that is every city, from every time, and which all our cities are merely fragmented mirror images or pale imitations of, is of course utterly insane. Whatever patterns of clues to its actual existence "beyond the scope of our limited senses" you may believe to discern from the unhinged ramblings of paranoid schizophrenics, psychotic occultists, and drug-addled mystics, are just that: Random outbursts of sick and twisted minds, poor confused souls who should seek treatment, not write books and blog posts and chatroom tirades.

It is merely the confirmation bias of your own obsessed fixations that lets you see any patterns at all in such deranged "evidence" in the first place. You must realize that if you'd look hard enough at that sort of drivel, you might eventually find any pattern you want. Which in turn makes whatever you do think you discover in there, utterly worthless of course.

Cities are just bunches of brick, metal, plastic, and concrete. We build them because it makes sense for us as a species. Humans are social animals, and in our increasingly complex societal interactions, it is simply convenient to habitate close to each other in large numbers. 

There's really nothing more to it. 

Now take your medicaton and go back to work. Watch some TV later, that'll ease your mind.

The Madness

Normally, the above is true - for all (or most) practical purposes anyways. But in the darkest corners of the city, in the most derelict areas, the most dilapidated basements, and the most rundown backyards... Something more may at times shine through. 

Here we find the first purpose of Metropolis: 

To provide an all-comprehensive, setting-intrinsic underpinning for Urban Horror.

See, the game is wholly focussed on providing a horror experience, and its primary setting is by default urban. 

So the existence of Metropolis "in the background" of the Illusion we live in, firmly anchors these two aspects. It ties them together and provides a consistent backdrop for all kinds of horrifying things that might happen in the city. Think all sorts of creepypasta and urban myths - from Sewer Crocodiles to Slenderman... they all can be tied to, and explained via The Eternal City lying beyond the scope of our limited senses. 

Its borderlands are where the monsters come from, and where the missing children disappear to. It's where occultists build their temples, criminals hide their ill-gained spoils, and outcasts, madmen, and mutants make their lairs. 

It's where the laws of physics start to come undone, and where madness seeps into your perceptions with every breath you take, every step you walk further into the past-industrial, post-postmodern, post-civilisatory darkness of its forlorn and deserted, yet still relentlessly menacing streets.

At this level of exposure to The City, you can use Metropolis to create horror in the veins of anything and everything from Split Second to Predator II, from Candyman to Dark City.

Note that this type of using it doesn't in fact explain anything about the underlying cosmic truths of The City, but as a GM you can evoke a brooding sense of truths yet to be discovered about it. The whispered promise of a consistent explanation - if only you could venture far enough, and learn enough of its secrets to make sense of a more complete picture behind it all.

This level of gameplay involving Metropolis is where the Aware Archetypes work the best. 

Most often, games of this kind will revolve around excursions into the eerieness and terror of the unknown beyond, and a return to normality after (if) the PCs have successfully confronted their horrors on the other side.

Much like the classical hero's journey, characters can descend into the other, magical world (only in our context, "magical" means "horrifying" of course), become transformed by it, and then (perhaps) go back to their mundane lives - if they're lucky.

So, to return to our initial questions: This already provides possible answers for some of them.

(Note that I'm taking care not to speak in absolutes here. As you will see, Metropolis can be many things, and presented in many different ways. Which one is the right take for your group, at your table, playing your scenario or campaign - only you can decide. And I trust that you'll know the right approach when it comes time to settle on it.)

The place can be described as desolate and empty, because in our bustling, shiny, modern cities, that is scary to us. Endless mazes of deserted streets, no reception on your phones, all the buildings abandoned and/or in ruins... and stalked by unseen predators... It is the antithesis of what our cities are built for. We can no longer feel safe when other people, familiar routes to well-known places, and hell, even basic supplies such as food and drink are no longer easily within reach. 

 

 

With the trappings of civilisation stripped away, the city turns into a nightmare version of itself. A liminal space where the familiar is twisted into the uncanny. Metropolis is the enchanted forest of our postmodernist age. The forbidden reaches of the world we inhabit, in which we are violently pushed out of our comfort zone - and into the realms where both the horror and the magic happens.

Oh, and the monsters? Ideally they should remain half-revealed, and almost invariably threatening. You should not feel a need to explain them, nor make them any more communicative than they strictly need to be in order to scare the living bejesus out of your characters. 

You should however, take care to thematically or symbolically tie them to what's been going on in the game beforehand. 

• If the scenario revolves around a downtown church that keeps burning down every [Easter / Christmas / 6th of the month / time a baby is babtized there / ...] but always reappears completely unharmed the next day, consider making your Metropolis monster an insane angel perhaps. 
• If a lab accident at some high-tech, off-the-books government research facility is what set things in motion, having a tekron involved beyond the Illusion might be fitting. 
• A serial killer who inexplicably keeps evading capture by mundane means could turn out to be traceable only in Metropolis, and might be revealed as an azghoul who hunts people that have mistreated it in their past (and present?) lives.
• A series of apparent suicides at the city's most ancient graveyard or crypt might have a Lost God that is trapped in The City of the Dead behind it, and the twisted and deformed borderliners who serve it by feeding its depraved appetites in exchange for eternal unlife.
  

Doing this sort of thing allows your players to make some sense of what is happening, and get some semblance of a grip on how to handle your (incomplete, always remaining semi-obscure) terrifying reveals.

In this sense, the setting material and creatures and example scenes in the books make up a toolkit for you to freely use as you see fit. Pick and choose what is most useful to you, and never mind about the rest. Maybe you'll never bring a ferocco into your games, and if so, who cares? Or maybe your very next campaign might offer the perfect opportunity for using one. 

 

The Truth

Ultimately, there are even deeper Truths to be unveiled in Metropolis however. The above is still somewhat superficial windowdressing.

I have described the setting chapters that deal with it as a toolkit - yet you could say that it's a toolkit which oddly never explicitly states its purpose. Some feel that the descriptions thus remain vague, hard to grasp, and on the whole feel a bit... aimless?

My personal take on it is this: 

The City as described in the books (Note: I adore the depiction of Metropolis in 1st and 4th ed Kult, and abhor the so-called "Metropolis" sourcebook. Yes, the quotes are justified here. Come fight me on this.) is described the way it is, in order to enable you - at your table, for your games - to address the eternal elephant-in-the-room question of Kult:

"What's up with that whole Divinity thing, anyways?" 

I postulate that this is why it can feel like vague, undefined, oddly not-really-going-anywhere-fast in the book texts. It is by necessity our job as GMs to flesh out the details according to what answer to the above question we give for ourselves. 

 Is "The City" simply a powerful symbolism of humanity, somehow intrinsic to us as a species and thus metaphorical of our collective divinity? So does a Ruined City signify our fall from power? Did we rule it as physical, bodily gods, and have our "Palaces of Man" there? Like an urban version of Olympus or something? 

Or was it built more like a miniature terrain table, a craftsman's hobby project to show of our skills? Merely a meticulously decorated shelf to keep our (aggressively acquired and abusively loved) toys in? Did we "rule it" more by hovering over it as disembodied entities of raw power and glory? Was it a worldcrafting project, much like we build fantasy worlds for RPGs, then populate them with NPCs for our players (other gods who come to visit?) to enjoy (or abhor) interacting with? 

 

 

It is also said that we kept our treasures there, and many are still buried in the debris, if one knows (remembers!) where to look.

What were those treasures? 

That is defined by what you think was valuable to us, back then. Time machines? Teleporters? Arcane-powered warp drives? Clairvoyance orbs? The perpetuum mobile? Perfect cybernetics? The secret to preventing cancer and living forever? Poetry that reaches so deep into the human soul that it enables true telepathy between any who have read it? Music that lets you dance atop the Vortex' crashing waves of raw, creative chaos, and stimulate it into spitting out whatever you wish into existence? The secret to build quantum (or trinary) computers? Perfect invisibility spells? Telecommunication devices so advanced they're basically just neuro-linguistic imprints, embedded directly in your brain's synapses? Wands of Fireball? 

See, the books just tell you that this used to be your house, before an evil landlord got a hold of the whole block and had you kicked out of it, years ago. That it has fallen into disrepair ever since. There were several home invasions, and a bunch of creepy people have made ill-begotten use of the place. Some of your shit might still be hidden there, and you have to ask yourself: Do you want it urgently enough to go back and poke around for it? 

...because that's all it can tell you with any confidence, right? 

The rest must by necessity remain conjecture and suggestions. Possibilities for potential current affairs there. 

You see, there might be no one in there at all... or the neighbourhood kids might sneak in on weekends to have sex on your couch and piss on your carpet. Some junkies might be shooting up in the bedroom. Your cool mantelpiece may be wrecked by vandalism and have swastikas spraypainted on it. A ruthless genius may have set up a fucking meth lab in your cellar. Which one of these it will be in any given game... depends wholly on what your GM wants to tell you about the nature of your divinity.
(And those who usurped it, them and their ways of going about it are a big reflector on that same divinity as well!)

Hell, was it even a living-in-it  kind of "home"? 

Or was it your office? Your church? Your theatre stage?

 

Come pay it a visit to find out!

So that was a lot of theory on the subject. Next time, let's see if we can find some good practical implementations for all this.

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tbc
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