You awaken in the dark, naked and cold. The sound of aberrant cries ride along the chilling winds. The scent of decay rises as you notice a pinpoint of light in the distance. Your body, stiff and weak, struggles for the energy to crawl along the thorny underbrush of the frozen ground. Through the pain you try to remember how you got here. In the back of your mind you could hear a soft voice pleading with you, "Please don't leave me!", but the voice loses volume as your memory fades. As you drag yourself towards the light you realize you are not alone. Adrenaline pumps through your veins and a breath of energy charged by fear empowers you to rise. As your head rises above the mist you see the silhouettes of human shapes stumbling in the dark overgrown wood. They are the source of the solemn cries you hear; the cries of the lost, abandoned, and condemned. The wind burns your face with its icy touch as your heart pounds in your chest; it's beat trying to keep up with your legs. The terrified cries of those who have come before begin to reach your ears as you near the source of the light. All of a sudden darkness creeps back around you and everything goes silent. The voices of the others disappear as quickly as they came and you realize the silhouettes are nothing more than shadows in the gloom. You stop running and turn in circles looking for something to focus on when you begin to feel something wrap itself around your chest. You are lifted into the air by a giant tentacle that begins to squeeze the life from you. The light returns and you could see that indeed there were human shapes in the distance trying not to be seen. As you feel the last breath enter your lungs...you realize you don't even remember your name.
Hël is a survival horror pen and paper RPG under development. In it you play as one of the forsaken, a human character who wakes up in Hël with no memory of their previous life. This game is a little bit different than other RPGs. Hel has a fast unique character creation system. Players start with a human character with all stats at 0. The only decisions to make when creating your character are if they will be male or female and 1 memory they have which is the equivalent of a skill. Naming the character, equipping them, and filling out their stats all takes place during game play.
The goal of the game is to recover your memories and to do that you need to survive. It's necessary to find shelter, food, clothes, and weapons on your own. There will be an extensive but simple to use crafting system to build your own weapons, shelters, clothes, and other necessities. You could join with other forsaken to accomplish your goals or stab them in the back to take what you need.
There will be different factions in the world of Hël the players could interact with, join, or fight. In order to join any of the factions you need to have a certain alignment type. There is no set alignment in this game, no lawful good paladins or neutral evil assassins. Instead the characters all start with a 0 in their alignment. Depending on the actions they make they will change their alignment by up to 10 points towards good or evil. The decisions they make will affect them in a number of ways. If they are too good they might be noticed more by the dark and evil things of the land. But if they are not good enough then they may be denied entrance into one of the cities or factions that could help them to survive. On the other end of the spectrum being too evil could not only bring unwanted attention from the evil beings, but also from the other forsaken who may hunt the PCs down to punish them, seek out revenge for their evil deeds or try to gain favor with their gods. The use of alignment in this game is not so players know how to roleplay their character. It is there so players think before making a decision and could change at any time do to the decisions made.
There will be different factions in the world of Hël the players could interact with, join, or fight. In order to join any of the factions you need to have a certain alignment type. There is no set alignment in this game, no lawful good paladins or neutral evil assassins. Instead the characters all start with a 0 in their alignment. Depending on the actions they make they will change their alignment by up to 10 points towards good or evil. The decisions they make will affect them in a number of ways. If they are too good they might be noticed more by the dark and evil things of the land. But if they are not good enough then they may be denied entrance into one of the cities or factions that could help them to survive. On the other end of the spectrum being too evil could not only bring unwanted attention from the evil beings, but also from the other forsaken who may hunt the PCs down to punish them, seek out revenge for their evil deeds or try to gain favor with their gods. The use of alignment in this game is not so players know how to roleplay their character. It is there so players think before making a decision and could change at any time do to the decisions made.
There are no experience points or levels. Instead, as you accomplish goals and succeed at missions, you will regain memories of your past life. There is a somewhat random system for what your memories will be. There are no power builds in this game. No optimized skill sets. As you progress in the game your character will remember who they used to be up to the point they remember exactly how they arrived in Hël. This makes a randomized system of character progression. For example a player may remember they were a farmer or worked on a farm. This would be found out using a die roll against a table, then it would be the players decision to decide what type of skill they would know based on that memory. So if they remembered they were a farmer they might get a skill of growing produce, handling animals, or riding a horse. Another character may have the memory of sailing a ship. They could learn from this a skill for tying knots, navigation, swimming, or any other number of skills as long as it reasonably pertains to the memory they have.
There is a mechanic for creating new and unusual monsters. There could be giant bird-like creatures with razors at the end of their wings and hypnotic eyes, polymorphous blobs that secrete acid, tentacled horrors who feed off of your nightmares, and thousands of other possibilities limited only by imagination and dice.
The game will take time to complete but I am hoping to have a set of quick start rules to be able to begin play testing in the next month or so. Updates on mechanics, ideas, and progress will be posted here regularly.
