Against the Darkness

Against the Darkness is a horror-based RPG from Tabletop Adventures.

I was lucky enough to play in a game run by Vicki Potter, one of the co-founders of the company. I left with a copy of it that evening.

Mechanics

We played pre-gen characters, so I’m not sure what character creation is like. As for the characters themselves, you each play an archetype. You do not have to play a pious person but you do work for the Vatican. My character was the Anointed Assassin, so I did the church’s dirty work. Each character has four attributes; Corpus (the Body), Mentus (the Mind), Spiritus (the Spirit), and Fidelis (Mental Abilities). Each attribute is rolled using a certain die; either a d4, a d6, or a d8. You roll a d4 for your weakest ability, a d6 for each of the two middle attributes, and a d8 for your strongest. Each attribute also has a number assigned to it; anywhere from 2 to 5.

Each attribute is made up of skills and miracles, except for Fidelis which is made up of only miracles. When creating characters, you would allocate points into certain skills and miracles. When you need to make a check, you roll the die associated with an attribute and add the number of points you assigned to it and the number associated with your attribute. The higher the roll, the better you perform the skill.

For example, my character had a 5 in Corpus and a 4 next to the Combat skill under Corpus. I rolled a d6 and added all the numbers together. So my max for that skill was 15 (5+4+6).

Of course, some skills can be opposed by the same skill, like Combat. If I roll and get a total of 13 and the enemy rolls and gets a total of 14, I miss.

As for miracles, you can only perform them if you assign points to it. So, for example, I had 1 rank in Telekenisis, so I could use. I had no ranks next to Divination, so I could never use it. Also, the number of ranks is the total number of times I can use that miracle per day. So I could only use Telekenisis once per day.

If you take damage from a skill or miracle that the enemy rolls, you take numbers away from attributes. For example, I was fighting a ghost and her combat roll was higher than mine. So my Corpus number went from 5 to 4. Over time, it would come back. For mental damage, you take numbers away from Fidelis.

Strengths

I had a lot of fun playing this game. The mechanics were very easy to grasp and it wasn’t long before we were all deep into the mystery. I’ve always enjoyed mysteries and this game definitely had a mysterious atmosphere to it.

Weaknesses

As with all horror games, atmosphere is a weakness for the game. We played in a open hall, so the “horror” aspect wasn’t really there for me. Also, since this game deals with the Vatican, some players may take issue with it, but that’s really the nature of the beast.

Conclusion

As I said before, I really enjoyed this game. If you are the type of person who enjoys movies like the Exorcist or Poltergeist or likes TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Dark Shadows, you’ll enjoy this game. I can see it being very easy to make a “tv show-esque” game to run week to week.