So, what are your experiences and impressions of the game? Weirdly, there's a bazillion YouTube vids with people playing it but almost none forums discussions. Got the PDF sometime ago and found it really neat and now I'm itching to play.

I never got a chance to play it, although it DID interest way back in the 90s. But I was playing other stuff then and never got around to exploring Kult.

Seemed like an interesting them, what with Occult, demonic/angelic horror type RPG.

Apart from that, I don't much much about the mechanics or detailed background.
If there was a reprint, I'd probably buy it.
If I saw it 2nd hand at a decent price in a shop, I'd probably buy it just for a good read.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1112921I never got a chance to play it, although it DID interest way back in the 90s. But I was playing other stuff then and never got around to exploring Kult.

Seemed like an interesting them, what with Occult, demonic/angelic horror type RPG.

Apart from that, I don't much much about the mechanics or detailed background.
If there was a reprint, I'd probably buy it.
If I saw it 2nd hand at a decent price in a shop, I'd probably buy it just for a good read.

You know there's a new edition that came out last year, right?

I've run the Kult: Divinity Lost a handful of times for one player. It was pretty damn great in spite of the PBTA ruleset (personally not a fan, YMMV, etc). The disadvantages / advantages made things really cool and feel a lot like the earlier editions. I have not used the ruleset to its full extent (we just wanted to get a feel for it).

All in all, I was able to build a cool story with it. I love Kult 1e (I've played it extensively in high school and ended up collecting the 1st edition in college), but I would probably use the rules in K : D L to run the game and use 1e material as inspiration. The reason is that 1e gets into minutiae I don't really care for, I just want to disturb and scare players while slowly exposing the cosmology of the game and I think the new ruleset does a good job with it.

I like this distro of the PbtA. I also like PbtA, so I may not be a good measuring stick. I've yet to run it, but someday I imagine I will.

Quote from: Itachi;1112928You know there's a new edition that came out last year, right?

Ah ok. No didn't know that.
I'm not very keen on that system it uses though, so I'll probably give this new edition a miss.
But still. One day I might find an old edition 2nd hand.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1113002

Quote from: Itachi;1112928You know there's a new edition that came out last year, right?

Ah ok. No didn't know that.
I'm not very keen on that system it uses though, so I'll probably give this new edition a miss.
But still. One day I might find an old edition 2nd hand.

This is not a standard PbtA game, it makes it more of a classic RPG IMHO.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1112944I've run the Kult: Divinity Lost a handful of times for one player. It was pretty damn great in spite of the PBTA ruleset (personally not a fan, YMMV, etc). The disadvantages / advantages made things really cool and feel a lot like the earlier editions. I have not used the ruleset to its full extent (we just wanted to get a feel for it).

All in all, I was able to build a cool story with it. I love Kult 1e (I've played it extensively in high school and ended up collecting the 1st edition in college), but I would probably use the rules in K:DL to run the game and use 1e material as inspiration. The reason is that 1e gets into minutiae I don't really care for, I just want to disturb and scare players while slowly exposing the cosmology of the game and I think the new ruleset does a good job with it.

Great summary, informative and to the point. Thanks!

I'm still wrapping my head around this implementation of PbtA. It feels... generic? The moves (called Dis/Advantages here) have bland descriptions instead of the usual stylish ones evocative of themes and stories being told. On the other hand they seem to work well as mundane abilities - something I never thought possible with PbtA - so if that was the goal behind it, kudos to the authors.

Anyway, I ended up ordering a deadtree version for my shelf.I cant wait to play it.

I had the "Beyond the Veil" edition, but never thought it was very well written, and I never found an appropriate group. So I sold it without ever playing. I have to give some kudos to the people who came up with the Kult setting, as it was a very original grim/dark/spooky setting, at least for its for its time. But I'm not sure how much fun it is once your players have been through it once or twice.

Quote from: Trond;1113050But I'm not sure how much fun it is once your players have been through it once or twice.

Good question. Anyone with actual play could answer it? (Nihilistic Mind?) But then isn't it the same with the likes of Call of Cthulhu?

Quote from: Itachi;1113052Good question. Anyone with actual play could answer it? (Nihilistic Mind?) But then isn't it the same with the likes of Call of Cthulhu?

In my experience, the cosmology is so vast that even players that know it well and are familiar with it can still be surprised by it. Experiencing your 100th dungeon doesn't mean the GM can't surprise you, even if you generally know what to expect. That's probably a bad analogy, so let's say even if you know horror movie or spooky story formulas and tropes still means you can have an enjoyable time with a new movie or story (or in this case, horror campaign). But yeah, much like Call of Cthulhu, with a vast setting there are a lot of tales to explore, a lot of characters to build in that universe, even if you know the basics of what might be happening behind the scenes.

I played the game and was clueless about the whole cosmology (which is honestly what makes the game really interesting as a GM) until the GM revealed a bunch to us all at once (as a bit of a finale). He could have held out a lot longer and we still would have had a great time. When I bought the 1st edition books and read them through I was honestly surprised at how much more there was to it than what it seemed at first.

Speaking of CoC, something I noticed is that Kult basic modus operandi is pretty similar to CoC. But Kult has a richer, much more playable universe. It's a modern urban fantasy with almost World of Darkness-level of potential intrigue, politics and conflicts, with various power players vying for control across reality(ies). A group could spend hundreds of hours dabbling in that web in their way to enlightenment.

And I don't say that to piss on CoC, as I'm a big fan of it's mythos too. But CoC seems much more.. shallow in contrast.

Quote from: Itachi;1113120Speaking of CoC, something I noticed is that Kult basic modus operandi is pretty similar to CoC. But Kult has a richer, much more playable universe. It's a modern urban fantasy with almost World of Darkness-level of potential intrigue, politics and conflicts, with various power players vying for control across reality(ies). A group could spend hundreds of hours dabbling in that web in their way to enlightenment.

And I don't say that to piss on CoC, as I'm a big fan of it's mythos too. But CoC seems much more.. shallow in contrast.

I agree. The flaw of Kult's great cosmology (its mythos, really) as it is presented in the 1st edition is that while it should interact with the PCs' world in very direct ways, the gaming material that should connect the various nefarious entities to regular "adventures" in the PCs' lives is practically non-existent. Even the 1st Edition campaign material, while inspiring, would be really weird to play through. I always felt that a lot of the work rested on the GM because of that.

The new edition, on the other hand, does a good job actually showing a set-up for a Kult scenario from the ground up and basing it on the characters.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;1113132The new edition, on the other hand, does a good job actually showing a set-up for a Kult scenario from the ground up and basing it on the characters.

You mean how it creates an intrigue map around the PCs' Dark Secrets, converging elements of the cosmology to them on a personal level? If so, yeah that's neat. And again, an improvement over CoC's "let's investigate just because".

Even if I find it's specific implementation of PbtA weird, this structuring of play was really well done.

On another note: are supplements of older editions useful somehow for someone just arriving at this universe with DL? If so, which ones are better for mining ideas/stuff?

Quote from: Itachi;1113311If so, yeah that's neat. And again, an improvement over CoC's "let's investigate just because".

Except I don't recall CoC doing that... Most pre-fab adventures made some attempt to explain why investigators might get involved... and any GM worth his salt would know the PCs well enough to add more threads to the net.
It's like claiming all D&D sessions star with random strangers meeting in a bar.