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Introduction

So, six months or so ago, I saw a review for a game called "Empire of Satanis". The first review was quite positive, so I went and downloaded the bugger, but I didn't have time to read it for a few weeks, and by the time I did, it had been reviewed by more than enough people. EoS is, to put it mildly, a pile or wretched, horrible dreck.

Now, the author of EoS is back, with a supplement, called "Satanis Unbound". This time, I'm on the ball.

According to the author, the basic idea of EoS is to give players the opportunity to play the role of the monsters in Lovecraftian horror. This is something which could be interesting if done well. Or it could be a juvenile, pathetic exercise in munchkin masturbation. Guess which path this author took?

The original EoS left me with the impression that the author didn't have a damned clue of what made Lovecraftian horror work. SU makes me realize that the author had even less of a clue about Lovecraft that I thought.

The Cthulhu mythos is frightening not because there are a bunch of big old demons who want come and destroy humanity because it's a mean thing to do, and evil guys like to do mean things. It's frightening for the opposite reason: because we don't matter. Cthulhu and the great old ones don't want to destroy us, or torture us. They don't even notice us. That's the real point of it: that what's really going on in the universe is totally beyond our comprehension, and not only are we not the focus of it, but on the grand scale of things, we're less important to them than the tiniest insect is to us.

Mr Satanis thinks that inhabitants of the Mythos are a bunch of trivial nasties who get off on torturing people. Humanity is very much the focus of their attention; and their goals are no deeper, no more profound, than being mean.

The Book

Satanis Unbound reads mostly like a rant. A choice quote or two to give you the flavor of it:

"I hold the following beliefs despite the masses and their popular opinion. This roleplaying designer is a Satanist and a Cthulhu Cultist. What the majority chooses to believe is irrelevant. I created this game to reflect my own views and fantasies. Many would like to see Satanis disappear and for my writing to be swallowed by the very void I write about. Because I have struggled, I know the value of endurance. I was born on the Day of Sustained Effort, November 25th. You cannot stop me. You cannot stop Satanis. A true darkness will rise like a wave of oblivion; and it will crash upon those who stand in our way. So it is done!"

Or from later on in the document:

One day the Cult of Cthulhu, or at least the successors of its current, will rule the many. Devoid of human squabbling, human problems, and human affairs these evil wizards will gladly cast the world into night. Tentacles will erupt from below, a loud droning will fill the air, blood will flow, and loathsome things will rip through our dimension. Most will go mad, but the few who follow the old ways will complete their evolution. They will change into gods like their masters. Great basalt towers will be erected to watch over the earth, the destined place for a new creation. Man’s soul will be burned away to energize a new universe where the Anti-God shall rule.

The ranting continues for roughly the first 20 pages. Then it gets to the purported "game" part. This opens with a perfect demonstration of just how little the guy gets "evil":

Seduce a nun, lick the blood from an evil blade, strangle a man with your slimy green tentacles, burn down a church, tear off your flesh and throw it at people, possess a priest with your demonic will, corrupt reality with black magic! Yes, this is the game that all moral and decent people should stay away from. This is god damned Satanis Unbound, bitch!

Yep, that's what your supposed to do in this game. Be a cthulhu-esque evil being who goes around seducing nuns.

Once we're in the game section of SU, there are three parts. First is "The Template", a guide to how to incorporate "EoS"-like "horror" into other games, like D&D. Then there's a "travel guide" of places in the Empire of Satanis. Finally, there's a section of advice for players and GMs about how to run a "dark" game.

The Template

One page of appalling badly written game fiction. Then a page of "The Commandments of Satanis", which includes rule 3: "Everything will eventually be covered in slime, ichor, blood, gore, guts, bones, venom, fungi, vomit, puss, saliva, cum, or other secretions." And then? More ranting. He babbles on and on and on about how pathetic other GM writers and other GMs are, and how glorious wonderful and powerful he is, and how EoS is going to take over the world of RPGs.

Then a very sketchy bit of rules advice for how to mechanically handle EoS-ish play in D20 and similar games. Verdict on this part? Beyond pathetic.

Travel Guide

The "travel guide" is fifty or so pages describing various places in the universe of EoS. Basically, it's an incredibly long-winded list of poorly written, unimaginative, juvenile crap. Take the average 13 year old munchkin playing an evil paladin for the first time, and have them come up with a list of the "evil" places for their characters to play in, and you'll probably wind up with something more creative and engaging. I can't even begin to tell you how utterly awful this section is. This is the kind of stuff that makes you want to poke your own eyes out with a skewer just so you don't have to ever read anything like it again.

Players Advice

Come on, do I really need to write this? What do you think the advice section is going to be like? More ranting, more puss, ichor; make sure you run around and act nasty all the time. A couple of rotten adventure seeds to help you get started on the pointless dull mayhem.

Style

A brief word about how I judge style. The most important thing to me is writing style. Even if a game is ugly as sin, if the writing is engaging, if it has a style that fits the mood of the game, and if it's clear, then I'll give the game high style marks; likewise, if the writing isn't outstanding, even if the game has magnificant artwork, perfect typesetting, etc., I'll give it crap for style.

So, least important first: in general, I don't care much about whether a game has artwork in it or not. (I think one of the biggest mistakes made by many independent game authors is to believe that art is absolutely necessary, and to include lousy art, because they can't draw/afford anything better.) But when I'm judging style, if the game includes art, it's definitely a factor. This game has really bad art. Most of it is dreadful amateurish pencil sketches of tentacled things, or images of tentacled females masturbating. Really, really bad art.

The typesetting/formatting is awful. Huge amounts of whitespace, random font changes for no good reason, inconsistent headers, poorly organized.

And for the most important part: as I hope I've made clear, the writing of this is awful. It's mostly self-centered ranting by a moron with delusion of grandeur; when it departs from the rants, it's juvenile, unimaginative, repetitive. The writing doesn't set any mood other than "My god, why am I wasting my time reading this?". It doesn't make you want to play it; it doesn't give you any interesting ideas; it doesn't do anything except give you a rotten headache.

Conclusion

This thing is worse than the original EoS. In fact, this is the single worst RPG-related thing I've ever read; and one of the worst things I've ever read, period. This makes Synnibar look mature and well-structured; it makes Spawn of Fashan look inspiring; it makes the writings of Brian Lumley look like masterful evocations of evil.

Can I give it negative marks? Please?