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By the way, “Degenesis” is not German but a combination of the Latin prefix “de-“ and the Greek “genesis” meaning something like de-birth. In the game world, the mutant Psychonauten are called “homo degenesis”. A speaker of German would pronounce it “DAY-genezes”, with a g like in “garden”.

Editions and Printings

Although the current book is not clearly defined as such, my review is actually about the second edition of Degenesis. Author Christian Günther published the small post apocalyptic role-playing game Degenesis - ein Stern wird fallen in 2001. The timing might have been a bit unfortunate, as Feder & Schwert’s Engel was in full bloom and another small press post apocalyptic game called Endland had also been published (and for a while been freely downloadable) in 2000, lavishly illustrated, among others, by Germany’s most prolific fantasy game illustrators Marko Djurdjevic and Klaus Scherwinski. Günther’s game, although supported by a comic like Engel, only got some positive reviews by experts but was largely unnoticed by the gaming community.

Then came 2004. Seemingly out of the blue, Degenesis was back, and this time with a bang. A limited edition (1000 copies, each numbered and signed by the authors) of the 380+ pages hardcover quickly sold out. Luckily, Sigh Press also made the game available as a free download. What had happened? Günther had contacted Djurdjevic and in a joined design marathon created a completely new game which was not a simple post apocalyptic wasteland adventure game but what the authors call “Primal Punk” – a fully fleshed out setting in a bleak post apocalyptic Europe. 2005 saw not only the long awaited first supplements (more on them later) but also the second, unlimited printing of the rulebook.

The Physical Book

Developed and written by Christian Günther and Marko Djurdjevic, Degenesis also features Tim Struck and Malte Beltz as the transcribers of Katharsis, the rule system. Layouted by Günther and chiefly illustrated by Djurdjevic, it belongs to what I would call the current German style of artsy and expensive rules-light RPG books like Engel or the upcoming Aera and Opus Anima. This includes large sidebars, long introductory stories, excerpts from poems or songs between chapters (I see White Wolf’s influence here…). Personally I like this style, but I can understand that some people would rather just have a bunch of rules and be done with it. Equipment has been drawn by Klaus Scherwinski, which is great as his style is similar to that of Djurdjevic and the illustrations complement each other beautifully. The map, as in most German quality RPGs, is by Tobias Mannewitz.

We get around 380 black and white pages bound in quite sturdy hard cover. The download includes handy bookmarks. Degenesis is divided into 12 chapters in four Bücher (“books”): Primal Punk (Setting), Katharsis (Rules), Almanach (Equipment and Drugs), and Sperrzone (“off limits zone”, GM material).

Supplements, Support, and the troubles of the Setting

Before I talk about what the Degenesis Grundregelwerk offers, let us have a short look at the game’s support. It is quite understandable that many gamers (especially GMs) base their decision of buying a game on how well the support is, whether there are any (good, useable) supplements, and how accessible the setting is. In this category, Degenesis is somewhat of a mixed bag. The “enemy” sourcebook promised for the end of 2004 in the rule book never appeared. Instead, a screen with a huge map, Eisbarriere (“ice-barrier” – the name of a geographical feature in the Degenesis world), and a city guide of one of the setting’s main locations, Justitian, came out. 2006 has seen the first in-character “field report”, the Feldbericht: Psychonauten, which also replaces the never finished Psychonautik book which had been promised in the back of the first printing. I will post reviews of the three supplements in the upcoming months, but I can summarize them as gorgeous, well written, and expensive. The first splatbook, the Kultbuch: Spitalier, is scheduled next, followed by another Feldbericht, this time for the city Noret. A Degenesis novel has also been promised by Günther. The problem I see here is that with the current rate of releases, we will never see the full 13 cult books and accompanying field reports. And the release policy screams for them, as the complex setting doesn’t really explain itself in the rulebook.

Another big problem I see with the game is the high amount of secrets and meta-plot collected between its covers. Even the 100+ NPCs in Justitian feature at least one mystery per person. While one might easily ignore published meta-plot and NPC secrets, Degenesis’ setting has a certain complexity and strangeness, which might require the cult books to really play them convincingly. Speaking of “cults”, let’s move to the actual content of Degenesis and see what the setting has to offer.

The Setting

As I said, the world of Degenesis is quite complex and I do not pretend to be able to sum it up properly. After a short introduction of the game and an overview of the cultures and cults (see below), we get a 10 page history of what happened from 2073-2585.

In short, a massive computer malfunction caused earth’s strategic defense systems to fail the planet when a meteor swarm hit in 2073 an destroyed most of the world in what is called Eshaton. Later, strange fungi like structures appeared, especially around the main craters of these meteors (Pandora near Warszawa, Souffrance in southern France). Close to these structures, mutated people, the Psychonauts, were born. These are enigmatic inhuman servants of the Prime, the power behind the spores. In the normal world, nations and societies have collapsed, contact to overseas and east of Poland has been lost. Unlike other post apocalyptic games, new societies have arisen out of the ruins, though.

Characters will be from one of seven “culture circles”, which include Borca (Germany), Franka (France), Pollen (Poland), Balkhan (the Balkans), Hybrispania (Spain), Purgare (Italy), or Africa (black north Africans). Each culture has around six pages of write up. Borca is the default setting and has the theme of “lost civilization”. Franka is slave to the power of the psychonauts and frequently invaded by expeditions from Borca while there is a religious struggle between Purgare and Balkhan. Pollen is basically a barren wasteland while Hybrispania wages a guerilla war with the invading Africans. Africa is the last higher civilization in the old world and on the rise.

[As a hobby ethnologist I find this part a bit frustrating, as it oversimplifies European cultures and makes some too general statements about people, especially concerning “mentalities”. Although Christian Günther assured me at the convention Hannover Spielt! 2006 that some research went into this part and that the co-author, Marko Djurdjevic, co-wrote the part about his home region, the Balkans, I still have a bad feeling about the huntingtonese term “culture circles” and its implications. It is still quite a progression from D&D though, and the different cultures do not play a large role in the rest of the book.]

The order of these cults is supposed to reflect some development of the meta-plot and will also be the order in which the Kultbücher will be published. There are 13 cults to choose from, but that doesn’t mean you could pick whatever you would like, as there is a quite strong antagonism between some of them. Before we have the full English translation, it would be a bit redundant to try to translate the group names, so I will just post the original name and explain the groups quickly:

Spitalier - not so friendly doctors who fight the Prime and Psychonauts, remnants of UN troops and organizations.

Chronisten - collectors of data and ancient artifacts, keep the financial system running in Europe and probably have the most background knowledge. See themselves as part of a gigantic machine.

Hellvetiker - mercenaries from Switzerland, an area which was left mostly intact from the apocalyptic Eshaton.

Richter - “judges” armed with huge hammers which try to keep order. They are carving a new country out of the remnants of western Borca with Justitian (which has an own sourcebook) as the capital.

Sipplinge - not an organized group, but the various tribes of “normal” people. Basically a default cult for everything, from stone age level barbarians to the average peasant.

Schrotter - scavengers who sell their stuff to the Chronisten.

Neolybier - African traders and leaders of expeditions to Europe.

Geissler - tribal warriors from Africa on a revenge spree in Europe.

Anubier - mystics from Africa. The spiritual counterpart to the scientific Spitalier.

Jehammedaner - followers of radical redemptionist religion with a Muslim theme (the religious background is a mix of the three Abrahamic religions).

Apokalyptiker - rogues, thieves, hookers, organized in “flights of birds”.

Wiedertäufer – almost medieval followers of a gnostic monotheist religion with a Catholic theme who fight a relentless war against the Prime.

Bleicher – pale people who had lived underground for centuries to support and protect chosen people who where put in stasis before the Eshaton.

As you can guess, Jehammedaner and Wiedertäufer hate each other, while both despise Apokalyptiker, while everyone is at war with Africans. Each cult gets between 8 and 10 pages, including the cult’s known history, some famous characters, opinions on the other cults, cult organization and internal factions, and some standard equipment. While this is already enough material to portray cult members, the many secrets hinted at of course make one ache for the Kultbücher.

KatharSys - The Rules

As could be expected from a setting rich “storytelling” book, the basic rules are rather simple. One adds attribute (Intelligence, Agility, Body, Expression, and Psyche) and skill to get an “action value” and rolls 2d10 below it. Difficulties are expressed by numbers which you have to beat. So an “action value” of 12 with a difficulty of 4 means you’ll have to roll a 5-12. A double which is within this range is a critical success, a double which isn’t is a botch. Skill specialties can modify this. My personal experience at conventions implied that this makes starting characters rather weak, but then maybe I didn’t minmax them right. We get some handy examples what individual values mean for the character and then the character creation rules.

Player characters are based on three ideas - culture, concept, and cult. Culture is the home region, concept a background theme of the character (Pain, Decay, Craving etc.) and cult the character’s organization. All of these choices affect which skills, advantages, and disadvantages you can pick and give boni to attributes. The skill values will then affect your starting rank in the chosen cult.

Fights - covered in the third section of the rules - take the basic rules and expand them by giving characters “action points”, with which they can modify the usually set initiative or other actions in battle. Damage is done by rolling a number of d10 under a certain number, both of which are given by the weapon stats. Armor would be a threshold which has to be beaten, just like with difficulties in normal rolls. Needless to say, guns (if you can get any ammunition!) can be quite deadly in the setting while fighting with bare knuckles can take a rather long time

There has been some criticism of these rules calling them either too simplified or full of bugs. I haven’t played Degenesis often enough to comment on this. KatharSys can be summarized as a working but not perfect rule set with little crunch, grittyness, and no player empowerment.

GM Material

There is another section on equipment and goods, but that is just a normal list of stuff to get. Each cult has some specialty items, like fancy weapons or vehicles. Another section has information on the drug Burn, which is found in the craters and quite insidious.

The secret GM section begins with expanded histories form the viewpoints of Spitalier and Chronisten as well as four pages of the big secrets of the setting. Of course they are only hinted at. A lot of the pre apocalypse info ties in to current events and the digenesis forums are full of discussions about these things. I really hope we will see some more official info in the future.

Anyway, next an antagonists chapter with a few mutations, a first peak at Psychonauts, Sleepers (advanced humans who just came out of stasis), robots, and more. Book 4 ends with an 11 page chapter on game mastering and a short and useful campaign set in Ferropol (which begins a story which is expanded on in the Justitian sourcebook).

Summary

So, is Degenesis worth buying? Hell, yes. It is a rich and beautiful setting, has playable rules and is pure eye candy. Of course I can’t tell how many supplements there will be in English (or German), but even without them, the main rules give you everything you need to play, even if you’ll miss half of the metaplot. The stories hinted at can give an imaginative GM years of plots anyway. Anyway, I’ll buy any future supplement without looking at the price.

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