Starting Kult


J.S. draike@total.net


Well speaking to you as a relatively new storyteller (been playing only 2 months), I find Kult to be one of the best horror rpg's out there so far. One thing I may suggest for your players is to hold off on the magic. I don't mean not to have any 'magic' take place during the game, but it might be a good idea to black list Magical Intuition and maybe even Intuition because it might cause an imbalance if your not very familiar with the Kult rules & also how to steer those players who just want power characters. MI isn't too bad and it is needed for learning magic later on but chances are high that the first group won't survive to many adventures - one, because they're still learning the system and attitude of the game, and -two, the combat system is deadly! (which is great because fighting soon becomes a last resort). As for how they might meet or know each other the book has a few examples on pg 147. I just made the players put Robert Bullis in their past as a contact (he's from the adventure in the back of book) cause we were in a rush to play. I suggest you have a game, possibly the one in the back of the book, with test characters so that the players get a feel for Kult. Let them learn about the world by playing. Then see what's next. There's also a one shot game from Shadis magazine that's also on the net that could be your first adventure. The reason I call it one shot is because at least one of the players is meant to die.

Frozen moments ended with the players somehow succeeding and recovering in the hospital - at different moments. After they're arrest they split up and one set had a car crash not because they were being chased but because both were compulsive gamblers and they crashed over a silly bet. The other two barely survived the fight at the bus station, in part because the security helped out. The beauty of the game is that Frozen moments may be over but the fact that they all end up in the hospital opened up an intro for a new adventure because it's so easy and so possible in the world of Kult.

The adventure they're on now is Fallen Angels, which on first read is a disappointment partly cause it's a first ed. game. But if you tailor it and make things more subtle things should be nice and eerie.

Mike Tilly tilly@algonet.se


Whenever I construct Kult adventures, I don't let the players go look for trouble like in most other RPGs. Instead trouble comes looking for them.

In one of the first adventures I played we played normal people. Another characters girlfriend asked us to find some kind of occult artifact for her (she had recently become obsessed with black magic), and we had to track with the help of some really strange and scary people (actually children of the night, but we didn't know that then). We found it and the girlfriend used it in a magic ritual where she accidently summoned a demon of some kind which imprisoned her. The demon then came after us, and we had to find out what the artifact really was, how to use it to bind the demon (which couldn't be killed by normal weapons) and how to rescue the girlfriend, while the demon and the owners of the statue were hunting us. Well, it's just a simple idea, but you can easily add to it.

About the adventure in the Kult book... It remember it as one of the best adventures I've ever played, mostly because the GM delivered the right feeling which hid the otherwise striking linear feel of the adventure.



Abyssinian M abyssinian@GEOCITIES.COM


I play the RPG - I have some of the cards, but since CCGs are inherently EVIL, I limit my KULT playing to the RPG. I've run one good campaign so far. I never stick to adventures (and this was run under the first edition rulebook). I started out with "Fallen Angels" but my players (and myself) quickly went into a skewed version of that adventure series, and never really returned to the plot line.

The Characters were (in no particular order):

-A wandering bartender who was a budding magician and was doomed to be the cause of death for those he loved. (And was the only character with a positive mental balance, even at start).

-A sexually neurotic Secret Agent who was sexually tantalizing, perpetually horny, and afraid of sex (the player picked 'em, folks!). He was also, unbeknownst to him, a werewolf (my choice *evil grin*).

-A white Crip gangsta from L.A. (played by a black player) who quickly developed a split personality: the gangsta, and an 8 year old alter-ego "who never did anything wrong." He also soon died from bloodloss and complications after being fed on by some nosferatu. So by the mid-game, he was a vampire.

-A fourth character who wasn't too colorful, and only played about two sessions.

I managed to "get" all of the players in some way (by which I mean literally scare/shock/etc. IRL). This was just before all of us were due to deploy to Bosnia back in 1995, and so we were in a very dark mood to begin with. Best "horror" campaign I've ever run.



Malcolm Edwards malcolm@FEDU.UEC.AC.JP


I'll probably just not include magic at the beginning, I don't have the magic supplements anyway at the moment. I'm actually thinking about pre-making the characters as letting the players read even that part of the book will give away a lot.

The players I know are used to combat-oriented games, it might take them a few deaths to figure out they can't take on the forces of darkness head to head. One of the things I like about this game is that the characters aren't very powerful.

Frozen Moments finishes with a lot of loose ends, which is good. I'm starting to get some ideas for other stories too, I really want to get my hands on some of the supplements.


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