“Hell is different folks,” reads the oft-quoted line from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, a minimalist stage play about three souls trapped throughout the partitions of a single-room purgatory. The characters confess, bicker, search absolution, seduce one another, and wax on in regards to the existential terror of bearing one other’s judgment. In 2013, cartoonist and author Tim Kreider typed a line that may come to outline a technology of on-line interplay: “If we would like the rewards of being liked we have now to undergo the mortifying ordeal of being identified.”
New tabletop role-playing recreation Apocalypse Keys shares a lot in widespread with these two disparate items of media, even when creator Rae Nedjadi and writer Evil Hat Productions don’t point out both within the credit. Closely steeped in Hellboy vibes and mustering a powerful mechanical pedigree, Apocalypse Keys places the important want for connection — even love — entrance and middle alongside the literal finish of the world. It asks if relationships can save us from our worst impulses whereas relishing within the full-throated heel flip towards oblivion.
Gamers embody monsters working for DIVISION, a clandestine authorities wetworks company with a foolish acronym however critical mission: Hunt down Doorways of Energy and cease the Harbingers who would kick them extensive open. Classes include mysteries that the group, together with the steering of a Keeper (the sport’s moniker for a recreation grasp), flesh out collaboratively as they gather the eponymous keys of the apocalypse — proof that may be as mundane as a waterlogged Walkman or as apparent as a bleeding crown of blackened roses.
Like Hellboy and its BPRD spinoff, the player-characters’ monsters have bucked their apocalyptic birthright in favor of saving humanity from unseen threats. Devastating energy earns these monsters concern and disgust as an alternative of respect from humanity at giant, and lots of would argue that response is effectively based. Every DIVISION asset is a number of dangerous days away from changing into a Harbinger in their very own proper, and solely the relational ties to their fellows on absolutely the fringes of society would possibly stave off a damned future. You want darkness to cease the apocalypse, however you want buddies to carry again the darkness.
“I prefer to joke that Apocalypse Keys is constructed on the idea of ‘We’re not so different, you and I’ between the gamers and the Harbingers that they battle towards,” Nedjadi informed Polygon in an interview. “But it surely’s additionally a really emotional recreation — apart from the stakes in regards to the world ending, which is a really large chance. It isn’t about whether or not you’ll get bodily harm, however whether or not your feelings are going to get the higher of you, in case you’re going to create havoc and trigger issues for the folks you care about.”
Veteran tabletop gamers will instantly discover the chassis lifted from the tried-and-true Powered by the Apocalypse college of design: lessons as worksheet-like preconstructed playbooks, fiction-forward feats often called strikes, and an emphasis on gamers injecting their very own concepts into the lore of the world itself. Nedjadi lovingly referred to their recreation engine as a “Frankenstein’s monster,” borrowing interpersonal gameplay mechanics like bonds from emotional wuxia RPG Hearts of Wulin; anxiety-inducing in-game timers often called clocks from Blades within the Darkish; and lifting the pleasant thriller fixing mechanics from grannies-meet-Cthulhu title Brindlewood Bay.
Newcomers studying by the 300-page core rulebook received’t really feel misplaced among the many chapters, which handle to dissect and current Apocalypse Keys’ agenda like a step-by-step information to coronary heart surgical procedure — staggering to think about in full however surprisingly easy when you begin. The playbooks, which slot into an rising spectrum of emotional and narrative complexity, include a primer and greatest practices notes, and the Keepers part outlines useful ideas for sticking every kind of character in essentially the most fascinating (learn: tragic) conditions.
One of many smartest little tips in Apocalypse Keys’ bag is the devastating success. Like different RPGs of this ilk, the success of each playbook transfer is set by rolling two six-sided cube and including the related modifiers. Historically, something beneath a six is a miss, outcomes past a ten depend as unmitigated success, and all the things else finally ends up combined — that’s, leaving room for the Keeper to permit success, however add a complication or a worth. When taking part in as fallen gods, eldritch scions, manifestations of limitless starvation, or undead soul fragments, these characters wish to preserve their darkish impulses in verify by rolling in that candy center spot. Going greater than 9 means slipping towards the baleful destiny promised (or threatened) by no matter lurks of their hearts’ hidden shadows.
Progress towards this corruption is tracked as destroy, and accruing an excessive amount of can pressure characters into early retirement, giving up the sport and ushering within the apocalypse as the latest harbinger. Fortunately, gamers can modify their outcomes each up and down by drawing on their bonds to one another, key non-player characters, and the demanding Darkness on the coronary heart of their skills. Because the rulebook reads: “You might have a lot energy, however what you actually have is that this: magic and concern. Therapeutic and hope. It must be sufficient.” Staged as flashbacks or small interpersonal moments, leaning on these connections would possibly show the distinction between thwarting a Harbinger or watching the world be remade within the horrific picture of no matter lurks past the door.
Nedjadi mentioned designing Apocalypse Keys saved them through the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and their very own mounting well being disaster, because it was a mission they might at all times prod ahead inch by inch when nothing else made sense. Because the pandemic continued, their despondency relented right into a cautious hope mirrored within the last model of the sport. The significance of bonds deepened, as did the hopeful bent to the RPG’s mysteries and playbook descriptions. The 2 currencies — darkness tokens and bonds — signify this tug between our worst impulses and higher natures.
Maybe most significantly, Apocalypse Keys doesn’t choose those that battle to take care of stability however as an alternative supplies moments of connection, vulnerability, and intimacy as valves for the strain of a judgmental, callous world urgent down in your characters’ shoulders.
Apocalypse Keys champions participant expression wherever doable, offering fixed on-ramps for interplay between the group, revealing a horrible secret or complication, or melting into the arms and lips of your fellow monster — heck, there’s a complete part within the e book titled “I Nearly Known as This Recreation Apocalypse Kisses.”
Hell isn’t different folks on this RPG, however they is perhaps the one factor standing between you and a quickly opening door to cosmic annihilation.
Apocalypse Keys is out there now by way of the Evil Hat Productions online store, by way of Amazon, and out of your pleasant native recreation retailer.