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THE BOOKS OF PANDEMONIUM
In 2002, I decided to design my own tabletop role-playing game. This is the result. I wrote and designed an RPG, divided up into three books (with a total of 800 pages), detailing a war between Heaven and Hell, fought here on Earth. June 30, 1908: An Ithuamish angel is killed by seven arch-demons above the Tunguska region of Siberia. The ensuing shockwave, as powerful as a 10-megaton warhead, is felt as far away as Great Britain. October 15, 1942: A group of Waffen-SS seize the angel's corpse from Russian scientists. November 6, 1952: Anthropologists in Guatemala make contact with Ixtab, Mayan goddess of suicide. February 2, 1959: Nine hikers in the Ural mountains catch a glimpse of something horrific beneath the ice. They mutilate themselves and each other, then die naked in the snow. August 3, 1972: Mercenaries discover a mummified corpse in the Atacama region of Chile; it is noteworthy because it has four arms and an enormous lower body. American efforts to seize the mummy are thwarted by the Chilean government. July 13, 1990: A platoon of Kuwaiti soldiers is ambushed and slaughtered by a trio of Da'Vaad demons. August 8, 2008: The Triad region of North Carolina is obliterated. 1.5 million people die instantly. Today: You are the last line of defense against a seething legion of carnivorous angels. And you're going to lose. 
The Books of Pandemonium.
A role-playing game of horror and war. Dread and Spite, the two core rulebooks, are stand-alone games, and compatible with each other. Pent contains five adventures and a host of GM resources. Crux is a magazine of fan-created source materials, including new monsters, spells, adventures, and settings. Available (for free) in PDF form at DriveThruRPG. Print versions available at Lulu.com. "I think the game is damn near perfect for a lot of folk who want to play horror games involving humans with supernatural gifts, especially if they're focusing more on the monster take down." (Christopher W. Richeson, RPG.net review, rating: 10/10) "This is an independent-publishing triumph. Highly coherent, clear, and extremely accessible, among my top choices for straightforward, rules-say-reality violent adventure." (Ron Edwards, Indie-RPGs.com review) "It's easy to pick up, easy to understand, yet designed well enough you don't feel cheated. Unlike other "Simple" systems it doesn't put a lot of work and resolution back on the DM's plate. This leads towards fast action, and a really nice pace overall." (Hayley Dawson, RPG.net review, rating: 9/10) "Dread is one of the best traditional RPGs I've seen. It's rock solid entertainment with rules that are easy to grasp, cool to play with, and make play fun." (Matthijs Holter, RPG.net review, rating: 8/10) "It's like Little Fears grown up, the dark mirror of Inspectres, Cthulhu without all the boring book-learnin' or Unknown Armies without the post-modern magic. It's tempting to say it is what Hunter: the Reckoning should have been... Replace Mr Blonde with a Cenobite and it would be the archetypal Dread game. Tarantino filming Barker is the core of this game." (Steve Darlington, RPG.net review, rating: 7/10) |