Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;785928Is Kult in print? Is a new edition planned? What edition would fans recommend?

KULT today is sorta what Empire of the Petal Throne was back in the 80's... this legendary game that I occasionally hear older gamers much cooler than me mention in hushed whispers, yet I have never seen a copy of it anywhere myself nor ever meet anyone who actually played it.

I have played it as a player, without personally owning or actually looking into the books beyond the character creation stuff.
We have essentially played it as a more bloody version of Cthulhu, with cop, PI and merc characters manhandling the evil of the week, then eating a bag of donuts at the scene of the splattering. Some eventually became insane enough to become half-vampires and other lesser fiends that could still function in human society, but had very unhinging "qualities" like literal bloodthirst (with very minor kewl powers).

It was only later that I found an used copy of the 3rd edition - and boy, was I blown away by the possibilities we didn't tap into. (Or maybe hadn't available - the game was based on the German translation of Kult, which only covered the 1st edition and then died the inglorious death of a translation that was kult[sic] to many, but bought by few.)

In hindsight, the basic system has aged badly. The combat resolution is clunky, and especially the complex wound track is something that only the early 90s could have embraced. The advantage/disadvantage system also reeks much of the 90s where everyone picked up fluffy crap like Heavy Phobia of Sauerkraut to pay for Combat Reflexes and other battle badassery.
But the way sanity and insanity are handled, the fluidity between sane men, insane children of the night, too-sane-to-be-human saints, and the setting that is essentially a buffet of every splatterpunk and horror b-movie thingie you want to sample are still something I think very fondly of.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;785926NIGHTLIFE was great unpretentious goofball fun. Even though it's not D&D-related it has a certain je ne sais quoi in it's art and attitude that IMHO puts it in the OSR ballpark.

UNKNOWN ARMIES was a fucking brilliant masterpiece. It had great, simple percentile-based rules, genuinely adult grit, and a voice all it's own.

Somebody pull the stakes out of the hearts of these two undeservedly dead games.

UA3 is being written, and iirc headed to Kickstarter next year.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;785855As far as setting goes, I take issue with the supernatural underworld being ruled by a global conspiracy. The logistics involved make it impossible to maintain. Secondly, the different monster classes aren't integrated socially. If there were several different types of supernatural monster living in secret, I would expect that a supernatural underworld where they all interact would form. Thirdly, the monster classes have very specific backgrounds out of the box that prevent many character concepts. For example, out of the box werewolves always run in families and you can't perform a ritual to become one or pass on the condition.

As far as rules go, the system in World of Darkness is very clunky and the character classes each use completely different rules for adjudicating supernatural powers and the powers themselves are fairly restricted. Vampires out of the box are generally unable to levitate, crawl up walls, or teleport through doors like they can in plenty of movies. Powers are structured into linear paths that require you to buy filler powers before you can get the ones you actually want. There are pages and pages of laundry lists of powers because of the clunky rules.

I'm loosely familiar with Everlasting, Nephilim, Nightbane, Nightlife, Witchcraft, Immortal: The Invisible War, and Other Court Game's Factions RPG, but most don't seem to be supported anymore and use clunky 90s rules (in some cases ripped-off from World of Darkness). A lot of them have clear improvements (Everlasting has an integrated magical underworld and universal powers, Witchcraft has more flexible monster classes, etc), but the downside is that they aren't as popular or supported as World of Darkness despite these improvements.

Fair enough.
I am not familiar with NWoD but with the OWoD and there the differences between supernatureal forces are becuase each is part of a separate game so its kind of inevitable.
I don't find the Vampire disciplines model difficult or the mage spell system but I can see if you are looking for a game that can run any supernatural then the different systems won't mesh well.
the setting stuff is easily handwaveable. Want a lone urban Werewolf ...okay done.
Does popularity matter if you are playing with your mates? I mean agree a thing and you are good right.
I hope you find what you are looking for with so many games out there to choose from there is bound to be somethign you like or can kluge yourself out of all the ideas floating about.

The problem with just playing those OOP games is that they're either hard to acquire or the books are incomplete because it was cancelled. Nephilim, for example, is available on RPGNow, but the game was cancelled early in its run and the newest books were essentially a 2nd edition update of the rules and the Selenim book promised in Major Arcana was never published. Everlasting has every book except for the Magician's Companion available on RPGNow, but the existing books reference the Companion. The Witchcraft PDFs are awful quality with extra blank pages or missing fonts.

Is there any interest in new editions or kickstarters for Everlasting, Nephilim, Nightbane, Nightlife, Witchcraft, or Immortal: The Invisible War? Because I'm all up for urban fantasy games that aren't World of Darkness or Dresden Files. Heck, is it legal to open a kickstarter with the stated intent to raise funds to simply bribe the copyright holders into transferring the rights to someone who would actually do something with it? Does that constitute lobbying?

EDIT: As far as I know, The Everlasting is owned by Chip Dobbs, WitchCraft is owned by Eden Studios, Immortal Invisible War is owned by Ran Valerhon, Nightbane is owned by Palladium, Nephilim is owned by Chaosium, and I don't know who owns Nightlife.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;785855...but the downside is that they aren't as popular or supported as World of Darkness despite these improvements.

TBH you aren't really going to find an urban fantasy RPG that is as well supported as WoD, even after its downsize to Onyx Path.

One reason I KSed Urban Shadows is that the Apocalypse World movement is popular where I am in recent years and a lot of WoD fans won't play the WoD RPGs any more. Its much like I managed to get more D&D play from Dungeon World than I have from any D&D edition or clone in recent years. It helps that Urban Shadows also covers all the supernatural types and more, has easy to run modern rules that support the themes of World of Darkness and is all in a single book.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;785959Nephilim is owned by Chaosium

I thought Nephilim was just licensed to them to print an English translation? There's a whole bunch more for it in French.

Quote from: Skyrock;785933I have played it as a player, without personally owning or actually looking into the books beyond the character creation stuff.
We have essentially played it as a more bloody version of Cthulhu, with cop, PI and merc characters manhandling the evil of the week, then eating a bag of donuts at the scene of the splattering. Some eventually became insane enough to become half-vampires and other lesser fiends that could still function in human society, but had very unhinging "qualities" like literal bloodthirst (with very minor kewl powers).

It was only later that I found an used copy of the 3rd edition - and boy, was I blown away by the possibilities we didn't tap into. (Or maybe hadn't available - the game was based on the German translation of Kult, which only covered the 1st edition and then died the inglorious death of a translation that was kult[sic] to many, but bought by few.)

In hindsight, the basic system has aged badly. The combat resolution is clunky, and especially the complex wound track is something that only the early 90s could have embraced. The advantage/disadvantage system also reeks much of the 90s where everyone picked up fluffy crap like Heavy Phobia of Sauerkraut to pay for Combat Reflexes and other battle badassery.
But the way sanity and insanity are handled, the fluidity between sane men, insane children of the night, too-sane-to-be-human saints, and the setting that is essentially a buffet of every splatterpunk and horror b-movie thingie you want to sample are still something I think very fondly of.

Something to consider: Could you port Kult to the Fuzion or Interlock systems? The Friday Night Firefight from Cyberpunk is nice and brutal. All you would need to do is mash up the mental balance from the original Kult.

I tried Kult with the Storytelling system. It didn't work too tell.

Quote from: Ladybird;785947UA3 is being written, and iirc headed to Kickstarter next year.

Whoa!

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785976I tried Kult with the Storytelling system. It didn't work too tell.

White Wolf really briefly put out a shitty magazine called Inphobia, which was a bizarre Frankenstein concoction... I don't know what the Hell they were attempting, I guess a SPIN magazine for gamers. It was "Hipster" in all the stereotypical worst ways, 15 years before hipsters.

Anyway, the one good article they published was one for merging Kult with the WW World of Darkness. All of my friends were obsessed with WoD at the time (They wouldn't play anything else). I read that article and just from the brief window it gave into the world of Kult I was like "Screw the vampire crap, I wanna play this game!!!". But it was Pre-Internet and RPG options were limited to whatever the one local comics store got in and I could never find it and I probably soon gave up due to no player interest.  

The one detail I can remember is that in this setting vampires were the exiled aristocracy of Heaven, the proudest and fairest of the rebel angels.

I only read Kult once, and it was a mind-blowing experience.

It's gnostic on speed. The idea of Cities as the natural state of existence, and all this nature as something other?

Man.

Quote from: The Ent;785910Agreed & seconded.

The rules were intended to blend into the background afaik.

It is indeed good at "common/everyday everymen + proper action heroes and/or wizards + possibly a superhero in the same team", functioning pretty much like the source material. The everymen types Are pretty much how you expect Horror protagonists to be, the main thing separating them from Victims Of The Week is that they catch a bunch more breaks.

And yeah it'd work very well for something Mythos-esque. Both monsters vise and Magic vise (the Magic is actually very S&S, and divides "smart guy who can do a ritual given time" and "horrifying sorcerer" very well).

The camp/comedy thing is easily removed if desired (I do love the comedy bits mind, like calling the (armed) Melee skill "Going Medieval" ).

Of course, this system was also used to adapt Army of Darkness, in which in order to create Ash, they developed the special Advantage "Really Big Chin."
Also, instead of White Hats, regular-level characters were called "Primitive Screwheads."

JG

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785976Something to consider: Could you port Kult to the Fuzion or Interlock systems? The Friday Night Firefight from Cyberpunk is nice and brutal. All you would need to do is mash up the mental balance from the original Kult.

I tried Kult with the Storytelling system. It didn't work too tell.

The Good/Evil balance supernatural "sanity" system was weird AND important to the setting. I think you could just port it over wholesale. Having the supernatural settings for Cyberpunk 2020 would help.

I think it would be easier to port the whole thing to GURPS with the various Horror advice and "GURPS-ify" the Good/Evil balance thing or even better just ditch it and focus on the personal horror...

Kult's setting is deliciously dark however, I think you need a special brand of player who enjoys a little nihilism sprinkled on top of their game. :-)

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;785979White Wolf really briefly put out a shitty magazine called Inphobia, which was a bizarre Frankenstein concoction... I don't know what the Hell they were attempting, I guess a SPIN magazine for gamers. It was "Hipster" in all the stereotypical worst ways, 15 years before hipsters.

Anyway, the one good article they published was one for merging Kult with the WW World of Darkness. All of my friends were obsessed with WoD at the time (They wouldn't play anything else). I read that article and just from the brief window it gave into the world of Kult I was like "Screw the vampire crap, I wanna play this game!!!". But it was Pre-Internet and RPG options were limited to whatever the one local comics store got in and I could never find it and I probably soon gave up due to no player interest.  

The one detail I can remember is that in this setting vampires were the exiled aristocracy of Heaven, the proudest and fairest of the rebel angels.

I remember at least reading a few of those articles, mainly the one of adapting Kult for either Mage or Vampire, based on the "magic attunements" Time, Space, Madness, Death and Passion, .. or something like that.
Like WoD, they were divided into power levels of 0-5.

An interesting part is that it seems that several of those aspects carried over into the KULT cardgame.

Quote from: Ladybird;785868Note that because he is a quality author not a ranting maniac, he tells you how much he hates "good" vampires, then gives you rules for them anyway.

(In practice, doing a WoD-esque vamp hack for Gumshoe wouldn't be too difficult.)

It is a shame that he doesn't explain why he feels the way he does on the subject, though. I mean, it obviously is an odd fit for the concept of Night's Black Agents, but less so for V:tM, so is he just objecting to playing the good vampire in games where that doesn't fit or is he disowning his V:tM/V:tDA work?

Quote from: Simlasa;785968I thought Nephilim was just licensed to them to print an English translation? There's a whole bunch more for it in French.

You may be thinking of In Nomine