I should mention that, while I have GMed Kult several times, I’ve always been ambivalent about the system. Generally, I love games that are Powered by the Apocalypse and run them quite often. I think I’m pretty good at separating good hacks from bad ones, and, well, Kult isn’t pretty, mechanically. Among other issues, it suffers from a flaw that is common to PbtA knockoffs—the designers don’t seem to have given much thought to really exploiting what a PbtA setup can do for the kinds of stories that they want to tell. You won’t find anything as interesting or well-suited as the mechanics for Influence in Masks or for Momentum in World Wide Wrestling, and there are no Moves here that are as clever as those found in Pasión de las Pasiones or The Warren. Kult stays safe, with only the most basic rules for combat, diplomacy, psychological stress, etc. The only basic Move that really feels like Kult is nothing new—See through the Illusion—and in practice, it often seems redundant, considering the fact that after a few sessions from most Kult campaigns, the GM may be cutting through whole swaths of the Illusion. (Obviously, you’re mileage may vary, depending on the story and the style of GMing involved. On a related note, I think that I should have made the PCs start with Aware archetypes, rather than Sleepers, but I’m not sure how much of a difference it would have made to the pacing.)
I suppose there’s one other place where the game does do something with PBtA rules that is sort of individuated: Advantages and Disadvantages. Akin to what other PbtA games might designate as Playbook Moves, Advantages vary wildly in scale and usefulness. They’re OK. Disadvantages mostly amount to inducements to extra GM Moves. (The worst one might be the nadir of the entire game—the consent-breaking “Sexual Neurosis.” I can’t imagine ever allowing it in a game that I would run.) I have no idea who wants dice rolls to prescribe this stuff—but it makes a pretty good case for all those people who say that PbtA places too much control on what a GM can do and when. Under normal circumstances, I’d say that they just don’t get it, but when I look at Kult’s Disadvantages, I’m really not sure.
In truth, the real problem with Disadvantages that I discovered was that they push you to do too much. If you followed them strictly, I think it would lead the game to feel like a never-ending river of melodrama, with one PC’s stalker showing up, just as another’s demonic curse spikes. If you GM it by the rules, you may find that you have little room for the story ideas that you do like, because you’re always hurrying to spend Hold on ideas that you don’t like.
I would almost go so far as to say that Kult shouldn’t be PbtA at all. The only open acknowledgement of the game engine is buried on the bottom of p. 369 of the rulebook. (Predictably, it makes no mention whatsoever of Meguey Baker, though I have to acknowledge that, however egregious that omission may be, it is not unique to Kult.) What’s more, Kult’s designers have shifted the dice involved from d6s to d10s, skewing stats and bonuses into atypical arrangements. In Kult, rolling dice is like playing power ballads on a ukulele: you can do it, but the results don’t feel appropriate.
Regardless, gameplay is generally so straightforwardly task-oriented that you might do just as well with a solid d20 or d100 system. I know: Kult doesn’t want to be D&D or (especially?) Call of Cthulhu. It doesn’t even want to be Vampire: The Masquerade, however familiar the goth-BDSM trappings may seem. It wants to share its own vision. Unfortunately, this vision is muddled, at best.
At worst, it’s just unpleasant—and maybe it says something about my taste in horror that I’m not really into reflexive cynicism and bad Beat-influenced flavor text—for example, the way in which the first person plural musings of Kult—wherein “we/us/our” seem to refer to humanity in general. The trouble is: “we/etc.” also seems to refer to a bunch of rich assholes, who are hustling past some creepy, possibly unhoused guy ignoring the prophecies he calls out while we stare at pornography on our cell phones. I’m uncertain of demographics, but, in terms of point-of-view, I think something may be askew here.
I would look up more examples to quote from the core rulebook, but the truth is that I had to psyche myself up to look at the book every single week when I was running the campaign, and I’m not sure I’m ready to face it again. I might trigger some horrible break within myself. To be clear, any reheated trauma would have very little to do with the art found in the rulebook. It features sexual images that are suggestive enough that you have to verify your age to view it on Drivethru RPG. Still, if you have an iota of imagination, you probably won’t be too shocked by Kult’s visuals, especially if you’ve seen Hellraiser recently. It’s strictly BDSM for prudes and cosplayers.
Anyway, I did my time with the rulebook. Every week, when it came time to prep my game, there I would be: wincing as I walked over to pick up this bloated, battered “rulebook,” with a bland-out image of a chained angel on its cover (dark, “urban fantasy” skyscrapers in the background, naturally). Once more, beyond the Illusion…The game was good, the players were better.
Closing thoughts: a warning about Gnosticism…by virtue of its preoccupation with the idea of the illusory nature of our world, and given its terminology, (archons, demiurge, etc.,) Kult is, evidently, a little bit Gnostic. When I was in college, I took a course called “Medieval Sources of Modern Culture.” In it, we read excerpts from early Christian and Christian-adjacent stuff that included bits of Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, etc. The teacher’s written evaluation of me mentioned how my comments were “rare, but germane” and how I was often asleep during class. (What do you want? I had a 40 credit hour course load, as well as a part time job.) So maybe it’s understandable that I remember next to nothing about Gnosticism, but the good news is that about 75% of my players are Gnostic scholars, apparently. I have learned from them that it’s sort of like “if Christianity were cool.” Apparently Kult is “Gnostic,” so if you’re looking to GM your own campaign, may I recommend appropriate glossings of wikipedia. Don’t admit to knowing nothing about Gnosticism, or you’ll never hear the end of it from your players!
And if you’re running a Kult one-shot, just don’t worry about it at all. Nobody seems to notice.
Good luck, and may the Demiurge help us all!