I grew up on an island in the 80s and 90s, and all the games I played had to be special ordered. I was the "gaming scene" at the time, so there was no one to recommend games to me except at the rare conventions I went to with friends. That's how I got into Shadowrun and Earthdawn, and how I heard about Call of Cthulhu.

Anyway, I've been hearing bits and pieces about Kult recently. I think it was one of those games I'd seen ads for in Dragon, but never had a chance to look at.

I'm definitely planning to seek it out, so this isn't a "sell-me" thread. I just want to find out more from people who have played it.

My two main questions are:

What are the mechanics like?

What is the setting like? I understand it's some sort of gnostic horror, but in what sense?

I've been kind of curious about this myself too for a while, so I'll second the data request.

I'm a fan of the setting but I never ran the game straight up... instead I borrowed big chunks for use in CoC games.
The setting, at it's lowest level is a big mishmash of modern horror tropes... loads of Clive Barker and David Lynch and Silent Hill and various serial killer movies... with an urban/industrial flavor... all layered over a detailed cosmology of 'Matrix'-like shifting realities.
It's wide open to all sorts of modern horror plots but it has an underlying 'truth'.

The big background plot arc of Kult is that 'god' is dead/missing and humanity are the exiled/imprisoned nobility of creation... it's just that they've forgotten and there are a bunch of nasty forces trying to make sure they never remember. As it stands our 'reality' is a dream-prison and most everyone is asleep.
Realizing one's true nobility, becoming one of the 'Awakened', and leading mankind back to it's rightful seat of power is the implied goal of the story... but like with CoC it's not likely to have a happy ending and might never even come up during the game. The process of awakening requires a pretty extreme shift away from what we would normally recognize as 'human' and can be reached by going towards the darkness as well as towards the light.
All the cosmological/secret-reality stuff can stay off-stage though and there would still be plenty to see and do... loads of horrors to confront... and it's all tied together, whether or not the PCs ever get a look behind the curtain.
The lower level villains are cultists, serial killers, evil corporations, vengeful spirits, etc... the more powerful creatures are more along the lines of powerful demons and angels and constructs... the actual 'jailers' of mankind's prison.
Kult's 'Nepharites' are pretty much the Cenobites from 'Hellraiser'.
 
A lot of it seems open to interpretation... many bits of the background remain unexplained.
It's nearly the opposite of CoC in where it places the significance of mankind... so the two don't really mesh well without one 'ultimate truth' being swallowed by the other. When I used it the various para-realities like Metropolis and Inferno became alternate versions of the Dreamlands and pocket universes formed by the dreams of insane gods.

I don't remember much about the system because I read it once and decided not to use it... but it's pretty traditional skills-based.
The magic system is a bit more PC friendly than CoC's... but not by much. Most of the spells take hours or days to cast and are not the sort of things to be used casually. They've all got detailed lists of necessary components/rituals and usually require a dedicated 'temple' to insure their success. Some of the magic paths like Death and Madness are not recommended for PCs. Magic is generally more likely to show up in the repertoire of the villains.
IIRC the sanity rules were pretty interesting and had a unique flavor.

Anyway, it's very dark and oppressive... a good soundtrack for it would feature Skinny Puppy and NIN... maybe some Barney singalongs just to add to the weirdness.

Simlasa's pretty much nailed it. In a nutshell, it's the Clive Barker gnostic horror RPG (not sure about David Lynch or Silent Hill). God was an asshole, now he's dead, and all hell's breaking loose.

The sanity rules allow you to "gain" sanity as well as lose it, and both enlightenment and madness allow you to perceive the hidden supernatural stuff of the Universe.

It's a great game. I've played it only once or twice, but I draw plenty of inspiration form it (the Ordo Fratribus Mortis, a cult of necromancer-doctors, has showed up in several of my World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu games).

The rules are really bad IIRC, though the sanity mechanic was kind of cool. I'd steal the setting and run it with Unknown Armies or nWoD or BRP.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;383476What are the mechanics like?

What is the setting like? I understand it's some sort of gnostic horror, but in what sense?

I got the game back in France and played it once when I was in university. I don't remember a damn thing about the mechanics. What I vaguely remember is the setting, the feeling of Hellraiser meets Call of Cthulhu meets WoD , kinda. It's one depressing world, dude, and you're really screwed.

Uber-grim modern fantasy. Not for the teenager fragile of mind, if you ask me.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;383512I'd steal the setting and run it with Unknown Armies or nWoD or BRP.

It would be great for Unknown Armies.  Much better than the UA setting.

Kult was very Clive Barker, so if you like his writings, you may enjoy the setting.  The rules were crappy.  Way too much crunch for a horror game.

Distinctly fucked up setting.

It's ExXxtreme Catharism: The RPG.

Quote from: Simlasa;383492a good soundtrack for it would feature Skinny Puppy

Simlasa, you're all right.

The system is: roll under skill score +/- modifier with a D20. Skills are based on 8 Attributes. The Mental Balance system is what makes the game, IMO, since it is the only real thing that integrally ties the character's perception to the setting itself, no matter what you do.

Character creation is also very cool, since you choose Advantages and Disadvantages to give direction to your character. The Advantages/Disadvantages make your Mental Balance positive or negative.

Additionally, my favorite part of the game's Character Creation is choosing your character's Dark Secret.
The Dark Secret usually gives direction to the GM as to where the focus of the game should be.

There are also lots of detailed rules about lots of things, and I believe the intent was to make combat, vehicle chases, etc, more "realistic" (i.e. deadly).

It's gritty and it's cool, and the system itself is marginally useful, as far as combat goes (humans, unless awakened, seldom accomplish anything useful against uber monsters), though fighting the forces beyond reality is possible, even mechanically (all monsters are statted so that death is possible, however improbable, depending on what the PCs are encountering).

There are a lot of analogies already made about the setting by other posters, so I'll relay some experiences I've had playing and running the setting: Kult has given me some of the most intense feelings and emotions as a player of my gaming career, and yes one of those emotions was fear. As a GM, I have led players through some of the most intense moments in games as well.

The game, in my experience, is a great tool to break down the fourth wall, and get the character's raw emotion to affect a player's emotions as well. I don't know it to be the case for everyone out there, and I have not always been successful with it (have the right players, setting, mood, yada yada, does help tremendously).

I like Kult. I wouldn't play it all the time. It can be really INTENSE.

I remember very little of the system, beyond the fact that it was a bit too complicated for what it wanted to accomplish. The setting is pretty much as Simlasa describes it. I would add that the path to Awakening is very long, and involves exploring more and more outrageous extremes of behaviour - you can Awaken by becoming inhumanly saintly, or grotesquely corrupt, and in many respects the latter route is far easier than the other. (It's often hard to work out what is the right thing to do in a situation, but it's usually easier to come up with the wrong thing to do.)

In practice, if you run a campaign where the PCs are trying to Awaken, the characters become less pleasant to be around and less viable as PCs working together in a group as time goes by (even if you go the ascetic route). And once the PCs do Awaken, the cosmos outside of the occult prison mankind is confined to really doesn't have that much in the way of interesting places to visit or exciting things to do. There is a very real risk that players will feel that escape from the prison universe just wasn't worth the effort, and whilst that might be a good conclusion to a philosophical horror story, that doesn't go down so well in a game.

You can, of course, choose to run a game which isn't about the PCs going down that particular road and just have lots of horrifying weirdness happen, and use the cosmology as a means of providing an oblique backstory to proceedings which the PCs never quite get a clear sight of. That could be good for capturing the feel of the first two Silent Hill games, for example, which were both good at creating the impression that there was a hidden logic behind all the horrific shit that was happening but you never quite saw enough of it that you could really define it.

On the other hand, street-level Unknown Armies works equally well for that sort of thing and (for my money) has a better system.

Interesting background, but the system kinda blows for the most part.  But I haven't played it since 2nd edition and I think the last version to come out was 5th so I would hope things had improved since then.  

Truthfully I think I love reading through this game and imagining what I'd do with it more then I have ever actually enjoyed playing it.  It's one of those games that dangles the most amazing carrot ever imagined.  But you know full well you'll never, ever be able to get it.

I'll just quote a friend of mine

QuoteKult is a game that focuses on the player characters. The game puts a lot of emphasis on plots that revolve around PC backgrounds and psychology, through the use of archetypes, dark secrets, advantages and disadvantages, and mental balance (which is the sanity mechanic). The PCs generally discover some horrible stuff involving satanic magic, human sacrifice, sexual depravity, political conspiracies, military atrocities, and/or flat-out monsters. These revelations then drive the PCs insane, and their madness rips apart the fabric of reality and they see that the truth is even worse than the horrible revelations. They then wander through strange dimensions that seem like hell or a city that goes on forever, or even stranger things, and then they face the choice: become even more crazy, depraved and inhuman in the hopes of breaking free from the prison of reality, or regain their humanity and try to return to a normal, sane life but take the risk that it is a jail built by god and the angels to imprison us that leaves us unable to defend against all the devils of hell who desire only to torture us. The rules are a functional but not exceptional d20 roll-under system, and you will have to make judgment calls based on the roleplaying at points.

If you like Call of Cthulhu because of the lack of sexual violence inherent in the premise, you may find Kult somewhat disturbing.

If you are tired of the cosmic, mind-blasting evil for whom humanity is an insignificant speck of dust, then you might like Kult's personal touch.

If you want to play your character in hell after you get killed, you probably want to try playing Kult.

I'd like to point out that Kult is pretty open to many styles of Game Mastering and many types of adventures. How far down the rabbit-hole you go largely depends on the GM's will to show what lies beyond.

Quote from: kryyst;383759the system kinda blows for the most part.  But I haven't played it since 2nd edition and I think the last version to come out was 5th so I would hope things had improved since then.

3rd Edition was the last edition. It uses the same mechanics as the 2nd edition. A lot of the Kult fans are still using the 1st edition rules to avoid some silliness with regards to combat mechanics.

There are quite a few who use (n)WoD rules or UA rules with Kult, just using the Kult Mental Balance and Shock rules (these are key to Kult)

Here's the "Jail of Night" WoD/Kult Crossover if you're interested to see how the crossover works (requires log-in):

http://www.kult-rpg.com/forum/files.php?action=file&fid=167&name=The+Jail+of+Night

Thanks, Torb! And welcome aboard!

The setting sounds right up my alley. I'd definitely like to see what the problem with the rules is, though.

Super complicated combat rules. Pages and pages and pages and pages of guns, weird martial arts rules that have all sorts of fiddly effects, and such.