For the non-regular on the Forge forum it is much easier to describe what Charnel Gods is for, than what it is.....

Charnel Gods IS a supplement TO a supplement, TO a roleplaying game. Specifically it is a supplement to 'Sword and Sorcerer' a meditation and lengthy essay on rpg campaigns for real pulp fantasy as opposed to the omnipresent 'high fantasy' of the endless Tolkien imitators.

Sword and Sorcerer is a supplement to Sorcerer a rules-lite rpg that focuses on a single niche, the idea of superhuman abilities derived by a disfunctional relationship with some kind of demon.

Sorcerer has proven to be almost supernaturally adaptable to different settings. Ron Edwards, the games designer/publisher (also author of Sword and Sorcerer) had little trouble adapting it to pulp fantasy, though the forge has lenghty accounts of the game being used in science fiction, cyberpunk ,even superheroes, and a number of setting by other designers are available.

Charnel Gods is FOR one particular type of niche setting. It's about the end of the world.

One of the things I always hated about D&D (to be sure there is very little about D&D I don't hate...) is the tedious process of 'leveling up'. That lengthy period of kicking in the doors on orcs that you go though in the game's version of making you pay for the privilege of being 'somebody' in the game world. In some versions of the game this process can take YEARS of regular gaming, and of course if you roll bad and loose a character, get ready to climb the mountain AGAIN.!.......

None of this crap with Charnel Gods bucko......

And none of this spending a couple of years to clap your little hobbit hands with glee because you killed a platoon of orcs to get the +2 bodkin of pimple-popping...

You show up for work 9 am monday morning and Scott Knipe hands you Stormbringer, or Mournblade, or the One ring, or the Spear of Longinus or their (Im)moral equivalents and, beaming paternally all the while he hooks his thumb toward a campaign setting and says 'get to work youngster, I expect to see that baby in flames by tuesday week....."

The universe of Naur Tier is best described as a meta-setting, a universe which is caught in an endless cycle of rebirth and destruction.

Aeons ago the old gods died in an cycle of wars against the alien (and suspiciously Lovecraftian) Nameless leaving their rotting corpses piled up a against a cosmic gateway as the only thing keeping the Namelss out. But every few aeons or so the Nameless chew their way through, so they left behind the Fell (midievalese for 'serious badass'...) weapons for mankind to battle the nameless and throw them back into the abyss.

The only problem is, the backwash from this much firepower destroys the world....

Your character's mission, whether they feel inclined to accept it or not, is to journey into the carrion fields (that heap of dead gods),find their own Fell weapon and begin the apocalypse.

A Charnel Gods gives you the tools to do it. The Fell weapons are spectacularly powerful Sorcerer demons. The Sorcerer system uses a power combining system that is reminiscent of Champions but more abstract and orders of magnitude simpler. It can also produce interesting powers that can be hard to reproduce in other systems.

Take a look at one of the pregen Fell weapons. Periffon is a magic sword which in addition to proferring the usual combat advantages also confers the 'cover' of Demagogue. In Sorcerer a cover is something like a character class but much more abstract, A collection of thematically related abilities. Under the right circumstances Periffon can make you Demaogue with an ability of 9.

Now the way Sorcerer scales abilities Hitler MIGHT have been a 6 demagogue. Your character is a MUCH better rabble rouser than Hitler, a better political writer than Thomas Paine, a better organizer than Lenin etc... get the picture? In Charnel Gods you can be the antichrist right out of Chick Comix. You are a SOMEBODY that can do more than mop up a small army (but you can do that too....,) Or take Cebbeline, a dagger that confers the cover Spy. With a cover of 8 you make James Bond look like a rank amatuer.

And when you consider that unlike most fantasy worlds, the Fell weapons are the ONLY magic weapons or indeed magic of any kind. You arent just another bozo with a glowing sword.

In Sorcerer uses the characteristic Humanity as a metric for what you have given up for the power to boss demons around. Interesting humanity is defined individually by each group (as is the actual nature of a demon). In Charnel Gods its basically how much karma you have built up from ruthless or beneficial behavior.

More than this, the humanity of the players is the metric for how far the apocalypse is progressing. The game encourages thematic descriptifve changes to reflect the rise or decline in humanity. The first bearer of the Fell weapons to go to humanity zero becomes the Harbringer. Quite simply the harbringer has the privilege of being the stage master of the apocalypse.

Within certain broadlimits the character has the ability to create the events of the end of the world. Rains of fire,plague, earthquakes,cats and dogs living together, whatever. This should be enough power to sate most bloodthirsty powergamer. The game outlines 3 sub-settings withing the Naur Tier universe, but they are pretty minimal, qhich is just as well since the whole idea is to reduce them to flaming rubble and because CG derives from Sorcerer and Sword which stretches the principle of creating your world as you go along like the pulp authors did.

Charnel Gods is a PDF game of 51 pages, and costs $5.00 It is is well laid out and and has some very good black and white interior art by Jeremy McHugh,D. Malach Penney and David Hendee. It can only be acquired online and requires a Paypal account to make the purchase. But since you get $5.00 for just signing up, first timers can get Charnel Gods, or any of the other Sorcerer supplements for free! Such a deal!

Charnel Gods may be purchased here: http://www.sorcererrpg.com/product.php/charnelgods.html

And you migh take a look at Sorcerer and Sword and Sorcerer both accessible from that page.

Reccomended reading:

Stormbringer Michael Moorcock

The Spear of Destiny Trevor Ravenscroft

666 Salem Kirban

Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.