Given the mysterious, dangerous, and unknown qualities of outer space, it’s not too surprising that elements of horror creep into even the most hopeful of science fiction novels and movies. It’s rather logical that we humans have an innate anxiety over dark places, and the cosmos seems to be predominantly filled with darkness. It’s the ultimate “little points of light” setting.
Hollywood had certainly picked up on that theme long before the first Alien burst its way out of John Hurt’s chest. Anyone remember the oldie but goodie Forbidden Planet? And more recent films like Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodlines, and Jason X demonstrate that supernatural horror has a place in deep space. Sorry, Stanley Kubrick, slash-and-spatter films in outer space are elbowing space odysseys aside these days.
Game publisher Storyweaver has certainly tapped into the supernatural-horror-meets-space-opera genre with its roleplaying game release of Rapture: End of Days. If chest-bursting aliens are bad news, imagine how bad it would be if the End Times came to pass Earth, and the remnants of humanity, out on far-flung colonies among the stars, were slowly being hunted down by the Legions of Hell?!
Rapture: End of Days Core Rules & Essentials Bundle
Rapture: End of Days is a science-fiction/supernatural horror role-playing game and setting, set in the colonies of humanity after the Earth has been consumed by the long prophesied End of Days. The Rature: End of Days Bundle comes with a Core Rulebook for Game Masters and an Essentials guide for players. All rules for creating and playing characters is available in the Essentials book, while the Core Rulebook has even more detailed information on running the game mechanics, as well as setting and adventure information.
Production Quality
The production quality of Rapture: End of Days is very good, with some brilliant graphical design and layout, and a strong, evocative writing style by the author. The game is targeted for gamers comfortable with role-playing, and the author uses a style which is both factual and engaging to the reader. The material is presented to the players and Gamemaster in a logical fashion, and both books have well developed tables of contents and PDF bookmarks. The books even include indices for fast reference by topic. I should note that there were a few typos here and there in my copies of the books, but overall the writing was clean and sharp.
The Essentials (players guide) is designed in mainly black-and-white and light grayscale graphics, presumably for printing and use at the table during sessions. The Core Rules uses a style of white lettering on black, with boxes and tables appearing with red borders. The overall effect is both stunning and eye-catching, and is surprising easy to read because of strong font choices.
The artwork and illustrations in Rapture: End of Days is quite good, with a gritty style and splashy color schemes. There appears to be a mix of drawn images and photos enhanced by graphical effects, but the overall tone is dark and a bit disturbing, which seems perfect for the subject matter in the game. There are a couple of graphics of note, one depicting a star chart of known space and another showing the intersection of heaven, hell, and the universe, which use a clean, sharp, graphical style to amazing effect. Really, my only complaint about the art was that the “monster manual” section in the Core Rules had so little in it.
A Theological Space-Opera
As mentioned previously, Rapture: End of Days is a role-playing game set in the dark universe of 2645, a year after the End Times prophesied in the Bible have destroyed the Earth. Hell has released its Legions upon creation, and are seeking out the remnants of humanity scattered across the stars. Players must figure out how their characters survive the social collapse of the colonies, spirit possession, demons, undead, and of course, hostile aliens. Characters seek redemption in the hopes of being taken to heaven before the powers of darkness drag them to Hell.
Clearly, the author is unapologetic in utilizing the Bible and Christian beliefs in order to create a dark supernatural theme in a science fiction space opera setting, so gamers who consider using such topics as disturbing or blasphemous might want to sit this one out. Other religions are not really factored into the game very heavily. As Judeo-Christian theology is a large part of adventure design and the characters’ survivability, players and GMs need to be comfortable with role-playing within those parameters.
The game mechanic uses dice pools (d10s) to resolve all actions, from skill use to combat. Other game mechanics are played down in order to focus on the characters, their story, and the plot. The rules light system has mechanics that can resolve both small and large scale combats “holistically” so as not to get bogged down in combat mechanics.
Character generation is actually very straight-forward and fast, as there are only three stats to worry about. Eight points are divided between the attributes of Mens (Mind), Corpus (Body), and Potentia (Soul), with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 assigned to each. These create the dice pools for the character which are used to resolve challenges during play. There are a dozen Heroic Skills, of which, three are selected for a character with a dice pool of 1 – although once per session a character can select a time to add 3 rather than 1 dice to their skills. The skills are nicely designed to represent almost all of the tasks one could imagine in a space opera setting. Examples include Grease Monkey (mechanics, engineering), Quack (medical), Flyboy (piloting), and Gumshoe (research, investigation).
The rest of character creation is definitely more story-based than mechanical. Beyond naming the character and deciding gender, players get to assign a Personal Goal (a selfish desire which opens them to temptation), and a Redemption Task (some act which will redeem a past sin or misdeed). In addition, players select a Faction (an ideological group) and a Faction Goal to accomplish for their characters, as well as a Political Alliance to which the character belongs.
Based upon that last choice, the GM gets to assign a secret Political Instruction which is tasked to each character. Whenever the opportunity comes along to fulfill a goal, task, or instruction, the GM grants a bonus to the characters’ dice pools.
The challenge system resolves conflicts and combats with simple opposed and unopposed rolls from dice pools, plus occasional additional dice from goals, tasks, and instruction. The system not only is able to deal with skills and small combats, but can be used for large scale encounters between the heroes and extras (notable NPCs). During an adventure, there are many scenes which the heroes find themselves, and each one will have a moment of challenge when the action calls for it. The dice pool system is fairly robust, and even includes a mechanic for determining the degree of success or failure, if needed.
It’s important to note the use of film terms by the author to define game mechanics. Narration is a big part of play, including combats, which are not managed tactically on a map, but described and defined by players and the GM. In fact, the author recommends passing the narration around the table, allowing players to both play the game and to narrate a scene, adding elements like story hooks and plotpoints of their own to enhance the story.
Damage is inflicted to ability scores, reducing a characters’ effectiveness by diminishing pools. Reducing a single score to 0 has drastic effects such as physical incapacitation (Corpus), mental incapacitation due to shock (Mens), or the complete loss of will and defenseless against spiritual possession (Potentia). Again, these are elements which are highly narrative, as well as having a direct effect on the storyline.
The author also managed to include Fear as a major factor in the game, which has both good and bad effects on heroes. While points of Fear reduce the Mens and Potentia pools, it increases the Corpus pool – the good ole fight-or-flight reaction. So while Fear messes with your ability to program a door to shut to keep out an alien horror, it comes in handy when you need to run hard and fast to get away from said horror.
Weapons and equipment are handled easily enough, providing bonuses to damage against Corpus or Mens, or adding bonus dice to pools to complete certain actions and skills. The list of gear is kept fairly short and simple, and GMs are encouraged to make up other devices as needed to add something special to the plotline.
Experience is handled very differently in Rapture: End of Days than in other role-playing games: You get it only when your character dies a memorable and story-advancing death! The author asserts that life expectancy is short for characters, and characters who die for redemption, heroism, or in other narrative important ways should be rewarded in their next incarnation. A vote is taken around the table, and if a majority agree to grant experience, the player gets one additional attribute point (9 instead of eight) to make their new character. These bonus points are cumulative as the story progresses, so dying can be a good thing after all.
There is, however, a caveat to bringing in a new character – the new character must come about by elevating an NPC extra to PC status. While the NPC’s name and gender are already determined, the player gets to fill in the rest of the information and attributes, and then commences play. If there are no extras alive, then the player is out for the rest of the session and loses all experience bonuses – a definite incentive to save those civilians and keep them out of harm’s way!
The various ideological Factions and Political Alliances are also available to players, with the GM having access to additional information about them in the Core Rules. Factions represent belief systems such as Militant Atheism, Paganism, Biblical Fundamentalism, and seven other ideologies. After Judgment Day on Earth, many colonials seek ways to explain the phenomena in the universe of Rapture: End of Days in many different ways. Political Alliances are made to one of the five major geopolitical blocks from Earth (ex. Sino Block, Democratic Russian Union, North American Alliance), one of the smaller political groups (ex. United Colonial Marines), or one of the colonial corporations who founded colonies. These add additional elements to role-playing, and the Political Alliance Instruction which each character gets secretly from the GM.
All the rules above are covered in reasonable detail in the Essentials book, and in even greater detail in the Core Rules book. But the players do not have access to the information on the various threats to humanity – daemons, aliens, cannibals, undead, and unclean spirits. The GM’s Core Rules contains a chapter entitled Foes of Man which list more than a dozen supernatural, alien, and technological terrors which prey upon humanity. In addition, the author includes a list of Dark Powers which the forces of Hell can call upon, such as disease, madness, or summoning other creatures. There is also a list of more than thirty Creature Powers, which can be added to existing monsters or for creating one’s own supernatural or alien beast. The creature powers fit a wide range of tropes from horror movies, including acute senses, the ability to fly, or move in a stealthy way. But the author also includes horrifying effects such as Bullet Proof, Slimy, Panic Inducing, and (in homage to Ridley Scott) Acid Blood.
The author concludes the Core Rules with GM tips for running Rapture: End of Days, and six well-detailed story seeds to get the game launched.
I want to also mention that the author has created four Soundscapes for use during play session, which are really quite good at creating suspense and creepiness. Each Soundscape includes four tracks, and would be useful not only for Rapture: End of Days but for any modern or futuristic RPG when a GM wanted to enhance the play experience. The Soundscape sets are listed below and are available for $1.99 from RPGNow.com:
Overall Score: 4.1 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
I found myself really blown-away by Rapture: End of Days, both in the setting and in the game mechanics. As a GM, I am not typically a fan of “dice-pool” mechanics, I think this game does it in such a way that it feels very logical and meshes well with the narrative RPG style of the game. The setting presents myriad opportunities for a very dark and very deep role-playing experience, and the author has created a universe setting which promotes that style of role-playing.
The price for the Bundle pack is quite good, considering the amount of material for both players and GMs, and having both a Players Book (Essentials) and a GM Book (Core Rules) is always a big plus in my opinion. It’s a very complete package, and I can see many gaming groups enjoying many a creepy night role-playing in the time after the End of Days!
So until next Review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received complimentary copies of the products discussed, which were used in the writing of this review.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
Hollywood had certainly picked up on that theme long before the first Alien burst its way out of John Hurt’s chest. Anyone remember the oldie but goodie Forbidden Planet? And more recent films like Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodlines, and Jason X demonstrate that supernatural horror has a place in deep space. Sorry, Stanley Kubrick, slash-and-spatter films in outer space are elbowing space odysseys aside these days.
Game publisher Storyweaver has certainly tapped into the supernatural-horror-meets-space-opera genre with its roleplaying game release of Rapture: End of Days. If chest-bursting aliens are bad news, imagine how bad it would be if the End Times came to pass Earth, and the remnants of humanity, out on far-flung colonies among the stars, were slowly being hunted down by the Legions of Hell?!
Rapture: End of Days Core Rules & Essentials Bundle
- Author: Joe Sweeney
- Illustrations: Kascha Sweeney; Mark Person
- Publisher: Storyweaver
- Year: 2011
- Media: PDFs (133 pages; 33 pages)
- Price: $16.50 (available from RPGNow.com)
Rapture: End of Days is a science-fiction/supernatural horror role-playing game and setting, set in the colonies of humanity after the Earth has been consumed by the long prophesied End of Days. The Rature: End of Days Bundle comes with a Core Rulebook for Game Masters and an Essentials guide for players. All rules for creating and playing characters is available in the Essentials book, while the Core Rulebook has even more detailed information on running the game mechanics, as well as setting and adventure information.
Production Quality
The production quality of Rapture: End of Days is very good, with some brilliant graphical design and layout, and a strong, evocative writing style by the author. The game is targeted for gamers comfortable with role-playing, and the author uses a style which is both factual and engaging to the reader. The material is presented to the players and Gamemaster in a logical fashion, and both books have well developed tables of contents and PDF bookmarks. The books even include indices for fast reference by topic. I should note that there were a few typos here and there in my copies of the books, but overall the writing was clean and sharp.
The Essentials (players guide) is designed in mainly black-and-white and light grayscale graphics, presumably for printing and use at the table during sessions. The Core Rules uses a style of white lettering on black, with boxes and tables appearing with red borders. The overall effect is both stunning and eye-catching, and is surprising easy to read because of strong font choices.
The artwork and illustrations in Rapture: End of Days is quite good, with a gritty style and splashy color schemes. There appears to be a mix of drawn images and photos enhanced by graphical effects, but the overall tone is dark and a bit disturbing, which seems perfect for the subject matter in the game. There are a couple of graphics of note, one depicting a star chart of known space and another showing the intersection of heaven, hell, and the universe, which use a clean, sharp, graphical style to amazing effect. Really, my only complaint about the art was that the “monster manual” section in the Core Rules had so little in it.
A Theological Space-Opera
As mentioned previously, Rapture: End of Days is a role-playing game set in the dark universe of 2645, a year after the End Times prophesied in the Bible have destroyed the Earth. Hell has released its Legions upon creation, and are seeking out the remnants of humanity scattered across the stars. Players must figure out how their characters survive the social collapse of the colonies, spirit possession, demons, undead, and of course, hostile aliens. Characters seek redemption in the hopes of being taken to heaven before the powers of darkness drag them to Hell.
Clearly, the author is unapologetic in utilizing the Bible and Christian beliefs in order to create a dark supernatural theme in a science fiction space opera setting, so gamers who consider using such topics as disturbing or blasphemous might want to sit this one out. Other religions are not really factored into the game very heavily. As Judeo-Christian theology is a large part of adventure design and the characters’ survivability, players and GMs need to be comfortable with role-playing within those parameters.
The game mechanic uses dice pools (d10s) to resolve all actions, from skill use to combat. Other game mechanics are played down in order to focus on the characters, their story, and the plot. The rules light system has mechanics that can resolve both small and large scale combats “holistically” so as not to get bogged down in combat mechanics.
Character generation is actually very straight-forward and fast, as there are only three stats to worry about. Eight points are divided between the attributes of Mens (Mind), Corpus (Body), and Potentia (Soul), with a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 assigned to each. These create the dice pools for the character which are used to resolve challenges during play. There are a dozen Heroic Skills, of which, three are selected for a character with a dice pool of 1 – although once per session a character can select a time to add 3 rather than 1 dice to their skills. The skills are nicely designed to represent almost all of the tasks one could imagine in a space opera setting. Examples include Grease Monkey (mechanics, engineering), Quack (medical), Flyboy (piloting), and Gumshoe (research, investigation).
The rest of character creation is definitely more story-based than mechanical. Beyond naming the character and deciding gender, players get to assign a Personal Goal (a selfish desire which opens them to temptation), and a Redemption Task (some act which will redeem a past sin or misdeed). In addition, players select a Faction (an ideological group) and a Faction Goal to accomplish for their characters, as well as a Political Alliance to which the character belongs.
Based upon that last choice, the GM gets to assign a secret Political Instruction which is tasked to each character. Whenever the opportunity comes along to fulfill a goal, task, or instruction, the GM grants a bonus to the characters’ dice pools.
The challenge system resolves conflicts and combats with simple opposed and unopposed rolls from dice pools, plus occasional additional dice from goals, tasks, and instruction. The system not only is able to deal with skills and small combats, but can be used for large scale encounters between the heroes and extras (notable NPCs). During an adventure, there are many scenes which the heroes find themselves, and each one will have a moment of challenge when the action calls for it. The dice pool system is fairly robust, and even includes a mechanic for determining the degree of success or failure, if needed.
It’s important to note the use of film terms by the author to define game mechanics. Narration is a big part of play, including combats, which are not managed tactically on a map, but described and defined by players and the GM. In fact, the author recommends passing the narration around the table, allowing players to both play the game and to narrate a scene, adding elements like story hooks and plotpoints of their own to enhance the story.
Damage is inflicted to ability scores, reducing a characters’ effectiveness by diminishing pools. Reducing a single score to 0 has drastic effects such as physical incapacitation (Corpus), mental incapacitation due to shock (Mens), or the complete loss of will and defenseless against spiritual possession (Potentia). Again, these are elements which are highly narrative, as well as having a direct effect on the storyline.
The author also managed to include Fear as a major factor in the game, which has both good and bad effects on heroes. While points of Fear reduce the Mens and Potentia pools, it increases the Corpus pool – the good ole fight-or-flight reaction. So while Fear messes with your ability to program a door to shut to keep out an alien horror, it comes in handy when you need to run hard and fast to get away from said horror.
Weapons and equipment are handled easily enough, providing bonuses to damage against Corpus or Mens, or adding bonus dice to pools to complete certain actions and skills. The list of gear is kept fairly short and simple, and GMs are encouraged to make up other devices as needed to add something special to the plotline.
Experience is handled very differently in Rapture: End of Days than in other role-playing games: You get it only when your character dies a memorable and story-advancing death! The author asserts that life expectancy is short for characters, and characters who die for redemption, heroism, or in other narrative important ways should be rewarded in their next incarnation. A vote is taken around the table, and if a majority agree to grant experience, the player gets one additional attribute point (9 instead of eight) to make their new character. These bonus points are cumulative as the story progresses, so dying can be a good thing after all.
There is, however, a caveat to bringing in a new character – the new character must come about by elevating an NPC extra to PC status. While the NPC’s name and gender are already determined, the player gets to fill in the rest of the information and attributes, and then commences play. If there are no extras alive, then the player is out for the rest of the session and loses all experience bonuses – a definite incentive to save those civilians and keep them out of harm’s way!
The various ideological Factions and Political Alliances are also available to players, with the GM having access to additional information about them in the Core Rules. Factions represent belief systems such as Militant Atheism, Paganism, Biblical Fundamentalism, and seven other ideologies. After Judgment Day on Earth, many colonials seek ways to explain the phenomena in the universe of Rapture: End of Days in many different ways. Political Alliances are made to one of the five major geopolitical blocks from Earth (ex. Sino Block, Democratic Russian Union, North American Alliance), one of the smaller political groups (ex. United Colonial Marines), or one of the colonial corporations who founded colonies. These add additional elements to role-playing, and the Political Alliance Instruction which each character gets secretly from the GM.
All the rules above are covered in reasonable detail in the Essentials book, and in even greater detail in the Core Rules book. But the players do not have access to the information on the various threats to humanity – daemons, aliens, cannibals, undead, and unclean spirits. The GM’s Core Rules contains a chapter entitled Foes of Man which list more than a dozen supernatural, alien, and technological terrors which prey upon humanity. In addition, the author includes a list of Dark Powers which the forces of Hell can call upon, such as disease, madness, or summoning other creatures. There is also a list of more than thirty Creature Powers, which can be added to existing monsters or for creating one’s own supernatural or alien beast. The creature powers fit a wide range of tropes from horror movies, including acute senses, the ability to fly, or move in a stealthy way. But the author also includes horrifying effects such as Bullet Proof, Slimy, Panic Inducing, and (in homage to Ridley Scott) Acid Blood.
The author concludes the Core Rules with GM tips for running Rapture: End of Days, and six well-detailed story seeds to get the game launched.
I want to also mention that the author has created four Soundscapes for use during play session, which are really quite good at creating suspense and creepiness. Each Soundscape includes four tracks, and would be useful not only for Rapture: End of Days but for any modern or futuristic RPG when a GM wanted to enhance the play experience. The Soundscape sets are listed below and are available for $1.99 from RPGNow.com:
- Soundscape 1: Void Souls
- Soundscape 2: Save our Souls
- Soundscape 3: Demanding Demands
- Soundscape 4: Satanic Verses
Overall Score: 4.1 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
I found myself really blown-away by Rapture: End of Days, both in the setting and in the game mechanics. As a GM, I am not typically a fan of “dice-pool” mechanics, I think this game does it in such a way that it feels very logical and meshes well with the narrative RPG style of the game. The setting presents myriad opportunities for a very dark and very deep role-playing experience, and the author has created a universe setting which promotes that style of role-playing.
The price for the Bundle pack is quite good, considering the amount of material for both players and GMs, and having both a Players Book (Essentials) and a GM Book (Core Rules) is always a big plus in my opinion. It’s a very complete package, and I can see many gaming groups enjoying many a creepy night role-playing in the time after the End of Days!
So until next Review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received complimentary copies of the products discussed, which were used in the writing of this review.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 3.75
- - Design: 4.0 (Impressive layout; excellent writing; good font use)
- - Illustrations: 3.5 (Cool cover art; even better gritty interior illustrations; needed more illustrations of monsters)
- Content: 4.0
- - Crunch: 4.0 (Very good set of rules; solid, simple skill system; interesting use of dice pool mechanics)
- - Fluff: 4.0 (Rich, dark scifi-horror setting; tons of material to create creepy, horrifying game experience!)
- Value: 4.5 (Excellent price for all the content; Awesome to have separate GM and Players PDFs!)
