Hellboy-inspired Apocalypse Keys asks who will hold you as the world ends

“Hell is other people,” reads the oft-quoted line from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, a minimalist stage play about three souls trapped inside the partitions of a single-room purgatory. The characters confess, bicker, search absolution, seduce one another, and wax on about the existential terror of bearing one other’s judgment. In 2013, cartoonist and author Tim Kreider typed a line that will come to outline a era of on-line interplay: “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

New tabletop role-playing sport Apocalypse Keys shares a lot in frequent with these two disparate items of media, even when creator Rae Nedjadi and writer Evil Hat Productions don’t point out both in the credit. Heavily steeped in Hellboy vibes and mustering a formidable 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 in the full-throated heel flip towards oblivion.

Image: Evil Hat Productions

Players embody monsters working for DIVISION, a clandestine authorities wetworks company with a foolish acronym however severe mission: Seek out Doors of Power and cease the Harbingers who would kick them extensive open. Sessions include mysteries that the group, together with the steering of a Keeper (the sport’s moniker for a sport 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 worry and disgust as an alternative of respect from humanity at massive, and lots of would argue that response is effectively based. Each DIVISION asset is a number of unhealthy days away from turning into a Harbinger in their very own proper, and solely the relational ties to their fellows on the absolute fringes of society would possibly stave off a damned future. You want darkness to cease the apocalypse, however you want buddies to hold again the darkness.

“I like to joke that Apocalypse Keys is built on the concept of ‘We’re not so different, you and I’ between the players and the Harbingers that they fight against,” Nedjadi informed Polygon in an interview. “But it’s also a very emotional game — aside from the stakes about the world ending, which is a very huge possibility. It isn’t about whether you’ll get physically hurt, but whether your emotions are going to get the better of you, if you’re going to create havoc and cause problems for the people 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 identified as strikes, and an emphasis on gamers injecting their very own concepts into the lore of the world itself. Nedjadi lovingly referred to their sport engine as a “Frankenstein’s monster,” borrowing interpersonal gameplay mechanics like bonds from emotional wuxia RPG Hearts of Wulin; anxiety-inducing in-game timers identified as clocks from Blades in the Dark; and lifting the pleasant thriller fixing mechanics from grannies-meet-Cthulhu title Brindlewood Bay.

Photo: Evil Hat Productions

Newcomers studying via the 300-page core rulebook received’t really feel misplaced amongst the 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 as soon as you begin. The playbooks, which slot into an growing spectrum of emotional and narrative complexity, include a primer and finest practices notes, and the Keepers part outlines useful ideas for sticking every kind of character in the most fascinating (learn: tragic) conditions.

One of the smartest little methods 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. Traditionally, something beneath a six is a miss, outcomes past a ten rely as unmitigated success, and all the things else ends up blended — that’s, leaving room for the Keeper to permit success, however add a complication or a worth. When enjoying as fallen gods, eldritch scions, manifestations of countless 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 power characters into early retirement, giving up the sport and ushering in the apocalypse as the latest harbinger. Luckily, 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 at the coronary heart of their talents. As the rulebook reads: “You have so much power, but what you truly have is this: magic and fear. Healing and hope. It will have to be enough.” 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 in the horrific picture of no matter lurks past the door.

Nedjadi stated designing Apocalypse Keys saved them throughout the top of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and their very own mounting well being disaster, as it was a venture they may all the time prod ahead inch by inch when nothing else made sense. As the pandemic continued, their despondency relented right into a cautious hope mirrored in 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 two currencies — darkness tokens and bonds — symbolize this tug between our worst impulses and higher natures.

Perhaps most significantly, Apocalypse Keys doesn’t decide these who wrestle to take care of steadiness however as an alternative gives 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 potential, 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 in the e book titled “I Almost Called This Game Apocalypse Kisses.”

Hell isn’t different folks on this RPG, however they is likely to be the solely factor standing between you and a quickly opening door to cosmic annihilation.

Apocalypse Keys is accessible now by way of the Evil Hat Productions on-line retailer, by way of Amazon, and out of your pleasant native sport retailer.