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The mechanical aspects of the game are solid. There is some shared narrative rights, which would have been revolutionary some years ago. Otherwise pretty standard. The setting of the game? It is bad. A mess of adolescent fantasy with arcane descriptions, evidently inspired by Lovecraft, with little in the way of unifying theme.
The presentation is inarguably the worst part of the product. Not having illustration or much text par page is not bad, in and of itself. When combined with bad grammar, bad layout, and random, barely related quotes, the style is just awful.
A comprehensive deconstruction follows. As said, the layout is terrible. The author recognises this ("The layout is minimalist and garage band; it’s all about the words on the page."), which doesn't excuse the utter awfulness of it. To be more precise: Most pages have a heading of some sort, usually in bold. They also have text (nothing special with it) and sometimes a quote at the bottom. The quotes are from Lovecraft, LaVey (founder of satanism, former high priest of the Church of Satan), Thomas Ligotti (horror author), himself and a few others. Some of the quotes are of philosophical nature while most of the others are descriptions with lots of long and obscure words. I guess that's the "Lovecraftian" part of the review.
Anyway. The actual content. After some design goals of the author (innovation, among others) there is a table of contents and a little introduction. Said little introduction has some history (demons were banished from Earth's dimension and want to get back and have their revenge), some conflicts between the fiends (not all of them really like each other), some threats ("Enemy starships slip through the fatigued walls between dimensions.") and a fiendish manifest (to kill and corrupt and so on everyone else). This section gives a broad overview of the kinds of stuff player characters will get to do in the game and provides some sources of conflict, which is good. There is also talk about Satanis, the Crimson God, and the Dark Way through which the fiends can achieve enlightenment and other such edifying concepts.
The next section explains the races to play. They are bizarre, more-or-less impossible to pronounce and some of them are even disturbing (all of this is on purpose). Most races give two free skill levels, mechanically, as well as whatever their form may be able to accomplish. Relations between the races are given a page, but the description is needlessly vague, as it gives basically no useful hooks.
Next is the section that covers actions. This is traditional task resolution. Roll number of d6, if you get a 6, reroll and add, continue till the result is no longer a six. Take the highest. This creates a very strange curve. At least for relatively small amounts of dice, rolling is very rare, 2 more likely, and 5 the most likely (6 is impossible). 7 is again somewhat likely and the chance increases slowly from there to 11. 13 is again much more unlikely and the probabilities increase slowly up to 17. This fits the whimsical nature of the game and also makes counting exact chances of success quite hard. Fumble happens when most of the rolled dice are 1s. The good part about these rolling mechanics is that they are not broken. Better abilities give better results, the chances of fumbling do not get (significantly) greater as the characters' abilities increase, and so on. They are not terribly slow, either. These mechanics are augmented by getting a +2 for suitable (related to the character's colour sphere, of which more later) description of actions. It also overrides the fumbling rule (this is not explained very clearly).
Combat gets an entire chapter. Turn-based, attack-roll-versus-defence-roll, if attacker wins the difference is damage. The attack and defence rolls are rolled with single d6 + relevant skill and attribute. The standard task resolution mechanic is not used because it is too unpredictable (too high variance). Initiative is fairly simple; highest agility gives the first action, but magic happens after everything else. Interrupting magic is impossible, which is specifically stated in the text.
Attributes are listed and briefly explained next. They are, in order, will, magical aptitude, theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, cunning, attraction (includes luck), brute force, agility and endurance. Nothing special here. Vitality (hit points) are derived from endurance.
Skills can be divided into two categories (this is not actually done in the game, unfortunately); normal skills just add to rolls, special skills do something different, such as give extra attacks or allow the character to animate "false idols" that are worshipped. There is also the aptly named "profane gesture"-skill, which cancels the last action of the target.
The next chapter is the part of the game that might have been innovative some years ago: story alteration, which "allows the players to influence the scenario!!!". This happens by using social standing or hideous paradise (both explained later) and rolling d6; if the result equals or exceeds 6-points sacrifices the player can alter the story. The effect is justified as in-setting; a manifestation of the inner magic the fiends possess.
A chapter on social standing follows the story alteration. Social standing is awarded by GM when the players play their characters as true fiends; being nasty gives low social standing, disregarding the norms of civilisation around you moderate one, really being into destruction and such gives pretty high values, while "Prolonged obscenity involving a character who is so atrocious, underhanded, devious, and hateful to the disgusting weakness which surrounds him would be a suitable candidate for the 8 or 9 range…". 10 is the maximum. Social standing is lost by being mocked, failing and being oppressed. High social standing lets a demon order his or her lessers around and even to steal their powers. Further, the number of spells a character can cast per hour equals social standing.
Hideous paradise is a parallel to social standing; increasing is a matter of depravity. To quote the PDF: "A singular act of ultimate, distorted, absurd perversity will raise your HP score by one. " High hideous paradise gives the character (and through him, the player) the ability to distort in-game reality to his or her purposes, but it costs hideous paradise (between 1 and 4) to do so. Others demons can't be directly affected by hideous paradise.
For those searching for reward systems in games, these two are the immediate ones. There is even a paragraph of advise on giving the rewards "fast and furious" and as a reward for tangible things done.
Magic works as other tasks do, but separate damage mechanic is included. Magic is freeform within the numerous schools of magic, or magic skills, presented.
The next chapter talks about character goals and the author's intentions. The former: transcend through the Dark Way. The chapter also has an unrelated piece of being good sport when there are conflicts between player characters, and GM giving experience for good roleplaying. The author's goals are best quoted: "Even more that that, it’s about achieving power, blasphemy, and revenge over all those normal people and civilizations out there." This is a problem with the game. It would, setting- and system-wise, be best fir for adolescents playing out "evil games" and generally power-tripping. I doubt most people would be happy seeing adolescents play a game with tentacled whores and wanton destruction and all that stuff in it. Essentially, this game does not considerate the social context in which it might be played.
Character generation follows. It is somewhat unorthodox to place it in the middle of the product and caused minor dissonance for this reason. It is basically a very simple point-buy with single pool to use for attributes and skills, some of which are more expensive than others. Social Standing and Hideous Paradise start at 1. Starting at the bottom is something I often like, but it does not seem to fit the rest of the game too well. Maybe it is supposed to act as pressure to get the PCs doing something.
Advancement is a matter of gaining experience and using it. Higher abilities cost more to increase, attributes are more expensive than skills, all standard stuff. Development by experience will likely not happen every session unless the PCs are all trying to become jacks-of-all-trades.
All PCs have a colour sphere, which essentially works as a roleplaying guideline, much like alignment in some other games. When the character tries something and the player narrates this according to the character's colour +2 is gained to the roll. The colours also affect the fiend's position in society, though no clear material is provided. Only vague hints. The colour spheres are a good inspiration for adding flavour to the characters and the setting, as part of narration. I like them.
Characters who get Social Standing 6+ can get a deformity, which are primarily cosmetic chances. Also, the organisation of this PDF is not exactly great.
Fiends can also buy "cool" stuff, like light… sorry, void sabres, green tentacled whores, invisible spears and such.
The gamemastering section and adjoining "What else to say"-part are fairly good. They encourage to let player characters be powerful and do whatever they wish, but also remind that adversity is needed. There are few words on different styles of play, but nothing revolutionary or especially insightful.
The game has adventure seeds, more extensive (and cheesy) background/setting information, some undeveloped (intentionally) alternative magic niches, two mercifully short pieces of fiction (they weren't actively bad; they just didn't have any point), and three decent sample adventures.
All in all, the game fails miserably at being innovative. It does have a niche, but people of that niche are unlikely to stumble upon it or get directed to it. The rules are the good part of this game.
