Kult
Encyclopedia
Kult is a contemporary fantasy horror role-playing game
originally designed by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén, first published in Sweden by Target Games
in 1991. The first English edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd., a now defunct American publisher. The game is no longer published in either language, though copies can be purchased through secondary and specialized markets. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature content.
. This Illusion was created by the Demiurge
to hold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed from gnosticism
. In the game's cosmology humans can regain their lost divine status through a game concept called Awakening in which characters with an extremely high or low mental balance are no longer restrained by the rules of the Illusion. See more about mental balance below.
from kabbalistic
lore and the Sephirot. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astaroth
and his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represent a value, group or an action (aid organisations, child abuse
, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. The Archons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do their bidding and promote their values. Many of these are our jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many of the adventures
revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world around them.
regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as the earlier mentioned divinity of mankind.
where humans are held captive and tortured after death, and Gaia which connects to nature and nature's destructive forces.
published by Wizards of the Coast
), with point based characters. In the game, a natural 1
usually is great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usually have skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player need to roll equal or below his character's skill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary characters and inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.
Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kult authors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles
universe (created by Nils Gulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides which appear in the game.
, mystic curse or similar.
Both an unusually high or unusually low (+25/-25) Mental Balance will affect how normal people and animals react to the character in question. The further the character strays away from the zero point, the more sociopathic, strange or eccentric he becomes, as he sheds his human quirks and viewpoints and becomes more inhuman. Characters with a very high or very low Mental Balance will start to involuntarily manifest outward physical signs of their ascent or descent, they become either detached saints or Children of the Night. If Mental Balance ever reaches +500/-500, the character Awakens and either becomes a divine creature or transforms into a demon.
belief systems as some modern magick societies. Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream, Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to several days), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast inside the sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals.
in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, and has later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English, Italian, Polish, Spanish and French.
and is being published in English and French by 7ème Cercle and in Italian by Raven Distribution. The third English edition of Kult, subtitled Beyond The Veil is currently out of print, and indications seem to point towards the English line being moved to a strictly electronic format, PDF.
The current state of the French production line is also vague at the moment, due to poor sales of supplements.
in the Parliament of Sweden
. The motion was to remove funding towards subsidized youth groups that were active with role playing. It refers to a murder in a small town in southern Sweden called Bjuv
, where a 15-year-old was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legal motion) were influenced by Kult.
Critics of role playing games have also have tied Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicide
by shotgun
in November 1996.
The local newspaper Tønsbergs Blad
in Tønsberg
, Norway
similarly used Kult in relation to the disappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult the week prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
originally designed by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén, first published in Sweden by Target Games
Target Games
Target Games was a Swedish publisher of role-playing games active from 1980 until the year 1999 when they went into bankruptcy proceedings.-Publications:...
in 1991. The first English edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd., a now defunct American publisher. The game is no longer published in either language, though copies can be purchased through secondary and specialized markets. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature content.
Setting
Kult is set in contemporary times, usually in large, real-life cities and metropols. In the game, the world we see is an Illusion which is unravelling to reveal an even darker backdrop which in the game is called RealityReality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
. This Illusion was created by the Demiurge
Demiurge
The demiurge is a concept from the Platonic, Neopythagorean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy for an artisan-like figure responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe. The term was subsequently adopted by the Gnostics...
to hold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed from gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
. In the game's cosmology humans can regain their lost divine status through a game concept called Awakening in which characters with an extremely high or low mental balance are no longer restrained by the rules of the Illusion. See more about mental balance below.
Entities
The cosmological backdrop of Kult is largely based on the Tree of LifeTree of life (Kabbalah)
The Tree of Life, or Etz haChayim in Hebrew, is a mystical symbol used in the Kabbalah of esoteric Judaism to describe the path to God and the manner in which he created the world ex nihilo...
from kabbalistic
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
lore and the Sephirot. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astaroth
Astaroth
Astaroth , in demonology, is a Crowned Prince of Hell. He is a male figure named after the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth.-Background:...
and his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represent a value, group or an action (aid organisations, child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. The Archons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do their bidding and promote their values. Many of these are our jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many of the adventures
Adventure (role-playing games)
An adventure is either a published or otherwise written collection of plot, character, and location details used by a gamemaster to manage the plot or story in a role-playing game. Each adventure is based upon a particular gaming genre and is normally designed for use with a specific game or gaming...
revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world around them.
Disappearance of the Demiurge
One of the more central elements of the game is that the Demiurge has disappeared since just before the 20th century, and since then Astaroth, the Archons and the Death Angels have been struggling for power. Many entities have vanished since, and the Illusion has been weakened. The game leaves a lot to the imagination of interpretive game mastersGamemaster
A gamemaster is a person who acts as an organizer, officiant for questions regarding rules, arbitrator, and moderator for a multiplayer game...
regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as the earlier mentioned divinity of mankind.
Realities
The game concept relies on there being several realities that may appear when the Illusion shatters: Metropolis is the original city which interconnects with all great cities, Inferno and its purgatoriesPurgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
where humans are held captive and tortured after death, and Gaia which connects to nature and nature's destructive forces.
Rules
The system is a skill based system utilizing 20-sided dice (it is however not the d20 systemD20 System
The d20 System is a role-playing game system published in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast originally developed for the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons...
published by Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games...
), with point based characters. In the game, a natural 1
Role-playing game terms
Role-playing game terms are words used in a specific sense in the context of role-playing games. This includes both terms used within RPGs to describe in-game concepts and terms used to describe RPGs.- Terms used within games :...
usually is great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usually have skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player need to roll equal or below his character's skill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary characters and inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.
Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kult authors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles
Mutant Chronicles
Mutant Chronicles is a pen-and-paper role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic world, originally published in 1993. It has spawned a franchise of collectible card games, miniature wargames, video games, novels, comic books, and a film of the same title based on the game world.Mutant Chronicles...
universe (created by Nils Gulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides which appear in the game.
Mental Balance
Central to the game is the aspect of Mental Balance, which is a sanity-gauge of sorts. The closer to equilibrium the character is, the more he is anchored in everyday human reality and the harder it is for the character to see through the veil of The Illusion to the true reality beneath. The lower the character's Mental Balance gets, the more easily he or she will become emotionally and mentally unbalanced by shocking events. A Kult character can have positive or negative mental balance affected by traumata, influence from creatures or places, or by advantages and disadvantages. The advantages and disadvantages are typically talents and traits that work for or against the character, such as (on the positive side) having animal friendship, artistic talent, body awareness, a code of honor, or (from the negative spectrum) being socially inept, suffering from a drug addiction, sex addiction, paranoiaParanoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
, mystic curse or similar.
Both an unusually high or unusually low (+25/-25) Mental Balance will affect how normal people and animals react to the character in question. The further the character strays away from the zero point, the more sociopathic, strange or eccentric he becomes, as he sheds his human quirks and viewpoints and becomes more inhuman. Characters with a very high or very low Mental Balance will start to involuntarily manifest outward physical signs of their ascent or descent, they become either detached saints or Children of the Night. If Mental Balance ever reaches +500/-500, the character Awakens and either becomes a divine creature or transforms into a demon.
Combat
There are two different official rulesets for combat. The second and third English rules use a system based on Damage Effect Factors (DEF).Magic
Kult's magic system is largely drawn on the same real-world occultOccult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
belief systems as some modern magick societies. Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream, Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to several days), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast inside the sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals.
History
Kult was originally published by the company Target GamesTarget Games
Target Games was a Swedish publisher of role-playing games active from 1980 until the year 1999 when they went into bankruptcy proceedings.-Publications:...
in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, and has later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English, Italian, Polish, Spanish and French.
Current publishers
Currently, Kult is owned by Paradox EntertainmentParadox Entertainment
Paradox Entertainment owns rights to many intellectual properties, the most famous of which is Conan the Barbarian as created by pulp author Robert E. Howard and expanded upon by many other authors over the years. Other properties include Bran Mak Morn, Kull, Solomon Kane, Mutant, Mutant...
and is being published in English and French by 7ème Cercle and in Italian by Raven Distribution. The third English edition of Kult, subtitled Beyond The Veil is currently out of print, and indications seem to point towards the English line being moved to a strictly electronic format, PDF.
The current state of the French production line is also vague at the moment, due to poor sales of supplements.
Controversy
In Sweden, Kult has been noted by the general press several times, and in 1997 the Kult core rules was quoted in a motionMotion (legal)
In law, a motion is a procedural device to bring a limited, contested issue before a court for decision. A motion may be thought of as a request to the judge to make a decision about the case. Motions may be made at any point in administrative, criminal or civil proceedings, although that right is...
in the Parliament of Sweden
Parliament of Sweden
The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...
. The motion was to remove funding towards subsidized youth groups that were active with role playing. It refers to a murder in a small town in southern Sweden called Bjuv
Bjuv
Bjuv is a locality and the seat of Bjuv Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 6,348 inhabitants in 2005.- References :...
, where a 15-year-old was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legal motion) were influenced by Kult.
Critics of role playing games have also have tied Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by shotgun
Shotgun
A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
in November 1996.
The local newspaper Tønsbergs Blad
Tønsbergs Blad
Tønsbergs Blad is a local newspaper published in Tønsberg, Norway. The newspaper was founded by printer Hans Jørgen Magnus Hansen on 3 August 1870, with an initial circulation of 210 copies. By the turn of the century the circulation had grown to 2,600. In 1881 the newspaper was purchased by...
in Tønsberg
Tønsberg
is a city and municipality in Vestfold county, southern Norway, located around north-east of Sandefjord. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tønsberg....
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
similarly used Kult in relation to the disappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult the week prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.
Spin-offs
- Kult Collectible Card GameCollectible card gamethumb|Players and their decksA collectible card game , also called a trading card game or customizable card game, is a game played using specially designed sets of playing cards...
by Bryan Winter. - In August, Dark Horse ComicsDark Horse ComicsDark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
plans on releasing a 4 issue mini series based on the RPG.