Thanks very much! Indie games are incredible but have so much difficulty getting noticed, so I hope my work helps bring light to our incredible designers in the space!
I love the discussion so far. I personally believe that if there is a singular true religion, you should be ready to say no to a million other ones especially the one you are born into. That's why "Obedience to God be obedience to oneself" will be added to my index of quotes.
F***ing brilliant, my dude, quite well-done - I particularly appreciate the careful attribution of this particular vision of hell to a particular strain of theology, and not Christian faith at-large. Many people will quickly throw around "the hell of Christianity" or "the hell from The Bible," when it is absolutely no such thing. As someone who is a part of fairly mainstream faith communities that have basically abandoned or outright denounced that particular vision of infernalism, it's interesting to me how many people (secular people, even) who've re-popularized and re-explored this imagery, particularly in gaming (Cult of the Lamb, Blades in the Dark, etc). Medieval Catholic Hell is all over everything these days, and your ending strikes me as a particularly poignant expression of what many of these properties seem to express: a loving God is incompatible with Hell, and so it must be the loving God part that is the made up story, and the Hell part that is real. Meanwhile, actually-existing Christianity is more and more comfortable with abandoning the specters of historical infernalism. In other words, it seems like the people who are most excited to believe in hell these days is the secular world, not the religious one! I think there's a corollary essay to be done here about Hell and gaming about why Hell is so fun to believe in, and the various reasons people have felt so compelled to invent it. Great f***ing work!
Thanks very much for watching! I think you’re right that secular people are more interested in depictions of a certain type of hell (in the vein of Alighieri) than many Christian communities
This essay gave me goosebumps. Those endings are super chilling especially the very final one. It is really awesome creators are able to blend rpgs with christian imagery and themes. How'd you even find the game, I am curious?
Glad you liked it Blerdy! I did a beta read for one of the writers' (Bogus Cheesecake) 5e supplements about 2 years ago, which gave me that connection. I'm also in the Plus One EXP discord server, which is the group that's releasing physical editions. The indie scene is so small that it's a lot of word of mouth, though I also HIGHLY recommend the Indie RPG Newsletter if you wanna learn about new, small games.
it's so cool seeing people's reactions to what we've made and being SO on the money!! great essay
Congrats on your launch, and well done on your contributions!
Your essays are so niche but so damn good, I appreciate your work greatly in my relationship to TTRPGs as a hobby
Thanks very much! Indie games are incredible but have so much difficulty getting noticed, so I hope my work helps bring light to our incredible designers in the space!
Awesome review, thank you! Looking forward to diving into this 😃
I love the discussion so far.
I personally believe that if there is a singular true religion, you should be ready to say no to a million other ones especially the one you are born into.
That's why "Obedience to God be obedience to oneself" will be added to my index of quotes.
F***ing brilliant, my dude, quite well-done - I particularly appreciate the careful attribution of this particular vision of hell to a particular strain of theology, and not Christian faith at-large. Many people will quickly throw around "the hell of Christianity" or "the hell from The Bible," when it is absolutely no such thing.
As someone who is a part of fairly mainstream faith communities that have basically abandoned or outright denounced that particular vision of infernalism, it's interesting to me how many people (secular people, even) who've re-popularized and re-explored this imagery, particularly in gaming (Cult of the Lamb, Blades in the Dark, etc). Medieval Catholic Hell is all over everything these days, and your ending strikes me as a particularly poignant expression of what many of these properties seem to express: a loving God is incompatible with Hell, and so it must be the loving God part that is the made up story, and the Hell part that is real. Meanwhile, actually-existing Christianity is more and more comfortable with abandoning the specters of historical infernalism.
In other words, it seems like the people who are most excited to believe in hell these days is the secular world, not the religious one! I think there's a corollary essay to be done here about Hell and gaming about why Hell is so fun to believe in, and the various reasons people have felt so compelled to invent it.
Great f***ing work!
Thanks very much for watching! I think you’re right that secular people are more interested in depictions of a certain type of hell (in the vein of Alighieri) than many Christian communities
This essay gave me goosebumps. Those endings are super chilling especially the very final one. It is really awesome creators are able to blend rpgs with christian imagery and themes. How'd you even find the game, I am curious?
Glad you liked it Blerdy! I did a beta read for one of the writers' (Bogus Cheesecake) 5e supplements about 2 years ago, which gave me that connection. I'm also in the Plus One EXP discord server, which is the group that's releasing physical editions. The indie scene is so small that it's a lot of word of mouth, though I also HIGHLY recommend the Indie RPG Newsletter if you wanna learn about new, small games.