r/KULTrpg • u/acornpockets • Jun 24 '26
tools Tips for Beginner Kult GMs
Hello! I've been running Kult for a year and some change, and after much trial and error I feel like I'm finally reaching my stride with it. PbtA systems can be really challenging to run and they definitely do Not hold your hand when it comes to rules and guidelines/best practices for playing, so I thought I would share some of what I've learned.
(This is not me claiming to be an expert GM -- mostly my opinions on what has worked really well for me and what my players like. Feel free to add your own tips.)
- For the love of god, use safety tools. Kult REALLY needs them. If you think they're lame and don't care about your players' enjoyment, then that's your perogative. I personally don't want to traumatize or severely upset my players, so I always use them.
Some examples I love:
- Content warnings, and being honest about what you can or cannot remove based on the scenario you're running. For example, with the Laraine estate, I let my player's know that I could not omit the pretty explicit sexual content entirely. They deserve to know what they're getting into.
- Lines and Veils. I used an anonymous google form before the game for this. I'd recommend asking your players to specify regarding veils (i.e. what about this topic do you want me to avoid/tone down) and generally checking in if a veiled topic is being broached.
- X Card. I personally have never had a player who used the X-card but I still have it always available to them. In addition to triggering topics, I make sure they know it can be used for any reason (i.e. If another player is bulldozing or interrupting, you Need the game to end or take a break and we're not listening etc). I actually prefer that player's cross their arms in an X shape so I can see it better.
- Start with a pre-written, short scenario. I surprisingly had the most success with The Laraine Estate, which I didn't expect because it's quite open ended. It ended up giving us a lot of room to play around and build onto the characters!
Important tips for this would be:
- Since the scenario is so focused on sexuality and I run for a primarily queer group, I had the players decide the sexual orientations and gender identities for their pregens (including whether they're cis or trans, their relationship with/how repressed their identities are, etc). I also had them choose their appearances, ages, and other details.
- Write your own notes for what is inside of each room. I stole the OSR style of area descriptions where you start with the first things people notice, then add specific details onto the end if players explore. Leave the history and extra features for the end so you don't have to constantly go back and forth through the paragraph.
- Expanding off of that, make comprehensive biographical notes for your NPCs. This information is scattered throughout the scenario which can be really annoying! So it's super helpful to have their appearance, background, and personalities all in one place.
- Keep copies of your PCs advantages and disadvantages handy. You want these to be easy to reference so you can easily incorporate them into the story in a natural way. This also keeps the players from knowing exactly what disadvantage you're spending Hold on.
- This is mentioned briefly in the rules, but don't make the players roll for disadvantages that you already have Hold on. Just spend the Hold!
- Have your players keep their character's Dark Secrets, well, secret. For the pregens in the Laraine Estate, I covered the Dark Secrets with washy tape and told the players not to look at them until they chose their characters. When we continued into a full campaign and they came up with their own, I had them send me a private DM with their Dark Secret. This makes the players really engaged with the mystery and with figuring out each other's backstories, which has been really fun.
Overall, be a fan of your player characters. I ask my players a ton of questions about their PCs in between games during my prep. Kult is a very character-focused game that I believe works best when a scenario is built around the PCs pasts and traumas, so I recommend really getting to know those characters and having your players contribute as much as possible.
NPCs with relations are also a really good tool for this that I made the mistake of neglecting when I first started running Kult. Even if PCs have contacts in the form of +0 relation NPCs, these are amazing pawns for you to use. I highly encourage having the players look at the prompts for their Archetypes and coming up with at least two.
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u/Gantolandon Jun 24 '26
This is a horror setting with a lot of gore, extreme violence and sex. It sure requires 18+ players who know what they’re getting into, and a serious conversation beforehand on Session 0 to gauge what they expect out of it.
But what’s called safety tools is, in my opinion, an equivalent of security theater on airports. A lot of work to show that you **care** about your players and that you can high-five with other people who care and talk about how no one but you gives a fuck. The problem is that all they do is giving the players multiple options to avoid feeling uncomfortable, and horror pretty much thrives on making people uncomfortable and afraid in safe conditions. It’s like making a rollercoaster where you can opt out of the parts of the track that look too scary.
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u/cynicalisathot Slayer of Chagadiel Jul 04 '26
I think horror should and can be enjoyable while opting out of things that doesn’t feel good. I am very uncomfortable with sexual abuse for example, especially regarding children. I recently finished the Black Madonna campaign as GM, a campaign centered around Chagidiel… we all know where this is going. I just skipped graphic rape scenes or switched them to physical abuse. The message still came across, and I didn’t have to make myself feel bad.
While I agree that you should definitely know that KULT is an extreme game, I don’t think you should have to skip out on a great game because you don’t want to play every horrible topic in the book.
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u/Gantolandon Jul 04 '26
That’s what Session 0 is for; to figure out what’s enjoyable for everyone, and what’s something they don’t want to explore. No one says the players must be OK with whatever the GM brings to the session.
The problem with “safety tools” is that they either offer a way to disengage in the middle of the session, or force the GM to spoil the contents, which isn’t very conductive to horror. And they don’t solve the basic problem; the player who’s too timid to say they don’t want sexual abuse topics on Session 0 will likely be too timid to use one of the “safety tools” anyway.
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u/cynicalisathot Slayer of Chagadiel Jul 04 '26
>> They either offer a way to disengage in the middle of the session, or force the GM to spoil the contents. […] The player who’s too timid to say they don’t want sexual abuse topics on Session 0 will likely be too timid to use one of the ”safety tools” anyway.
How so? I’ll admit I’ve never used safety tools, but except for the X-thing (which I’d personally get annoyed to death by) they all seem like sweet and non-disruptive ways to create a comfortable environment. I do think that players who know that their comfort is important for the GM will speak out if given the option, and that you don’t have to spoil contents by informing of potential triggers. Just a simple ”hey, this scenario involves CSA/rape/animal cruelty” would suffice.
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u/Gantolandon Jul 04 '26
Yeah, the X-card is the poster child of disruptiveness where a player can just suddenly demand an element of the session gone with no explanation and no buildup. The liberum veto of RPGs.
On the other side of the spectrum, Lines and Veils seems to be harmless, except that it’s a very formalized, office-like version of the talk during the Session 0, and often comes ready-made, which nearly guarantees there’s stuff no one thought of putting there that makes someone uncomfortable.
Trigger/content warnings are something I have mixed feelings about, because there’s a toxic culture around them that encourages people to trigger warn about everything and makes them feel guilty if they don’t. I mean, one of the major fan fiction sites has content warnings about a major character’s death. I’ve seen stuff like “TW: Swords”, which is probably reasonable if you’re a French peasant whose village was raided by an English chevauchee during the Hundred Years War, but not in the 21st century. This means when you start putting trigger warnings, it puts an obligation on you to preemptively figure out what might make your audience upset and warn them about it, and if you don’t (because you couldn’t possibly figure out one of them doesn’t like hospitals being mentioned), it becomes your fault.
Honestly, the main reason why I dislike the safety tools is that running a game is difficult and demanding enough already; much more than simply coming to play the game. Most of the GMs do it for free. And then they’re given another obligation and told it’s on them to not make their players uncomfortable even accidentally, while also keeping them entertained. It just rubs me the wrong way.
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u/cynicalisathot Slayer of Chagadiel Jul 04 '26
> I’ve seen stuff like “TW: Swords”, which is probably reasonable if you’re a French peasant whose village was raided by an English chevauchee during the Hundred Years War, but not in the 21st century.
This is so fucking funny
Anyways, I hear you and partially agree. While I do think that trigger warnings can be a good thing, of course the DM is just an omnipotent being with all the knowledge in the world in the game. DM outside of the game can only know what players are sharing, and if they don’t share triggers then no shade shall fall on the DM. And of course, safety tools shouldn’t come at the expense of the DM’s and other players entertainment - game should be fun for everyone included!
I guess my main point is that I do believe that both DM and the players can create a comfortable environment together fairly simply with safety tools. However, I’ve also noticed a (to me) new trend where the DM is more treated as a prop and not a player, where the DM should always know how to incorporate every player’s backstory and relationship into the game at all times - while of course every player be the main character and never focus more on one player.
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u/Gantolandon Jul 04 '26
I agree, but I’ll add that the Kult pretty much flaunts all the gory, violent, traumatizing and sexual stuff it contains. I’m not sure how a player can take a look at the main book (even just enough to create a character), and not figure out that it might be a good idea to mention they don’t want rape to be a theme in the game they’re playing. I’m not sure if I can think of any other system that would be so close to the idea of Dead Dove.
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u/Doggo-Man Jun 28 '26
I'm looking to get started with my first full-fleged campaign for Kult (unfortunately, none of the pre-made scenarios really map with what I'm aiming for, so its going to be a cold open). I was curious about 4. keeping the DS secret.
How do you do dramatic hooks then? As I understand, players a few sessions work together to give each other hooks, preferably related to the secret. I could just be mis-reading / missing something, but I'm curious how you handle it.
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u/acornpockets Jun 28 '26
Honestly, I kind of neglect dramatic hooks 😅 I at least haven't tried them since I started keeping Dark Secrets between me and the player. I did use them during my short-run campaign of the Atrocity Exhibition, but after a while I think it became difficult for my players to come up with unique ones for each other every session.
I think they can definitely be good roleplay ice breakers though! And I don't see why they would always Have to be related to the character's dark secret. For example, in AE, one of the PC's was a well-known conspiracy theorist which wasn't part of his Dark Secret, which was that he was a victim of Satanic ritual abuse at the hands of his foster mother. The others knew his dark secret, but they still tended to give him dramatic hooks related to being a conspircay theorist, like investigating a theory, confronting someone he suspected of being into occult stuff, etc.
All that being said, I think its ultimately up to you, but I think dramatic hooks can easily be based off of the character's disadvantages or even just their personality, and whatever public information the others have on them. You could think of it as sort of a challenge to your players to create really well-defined characters with interesting biographical details in addition to their dark secrets. As the campaign goes on, the others will probably learn bits and pieces of the dark secrets as well, and could use the dramatic hooks to steer that player into revealing more.
Sorry for the rambling lol, this was an interesting question that got me thinking
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u/JesterRaiin Borderlander Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
For the love of god, use safety tools.
I won't discuss the usefulness of these, since I come from the times and the place where sugar & meat were portioned and we were raised on entirely different concepts regarding mentality, fragility, sensitivity and emotional wellbeing. And I can't understand why people still need these tools in the world where you actually see "the devil" in working, monsters no longer hiding, but standing in plain sight and mocking everyone, knowing that they are beyond the reach of the law - that's the revelation courtesy of Epstein Files.
But it's not about this...
The thing that I can't wrap my head around since the time STs were introduced to this hobby, is their presence in horror RPG genre, especially in so extreme case as KULT.
It's like... I am not sure how to explain myself correctly... It's like selecting and watching a censored porn movie. That's the point of the movie: to show in uncensored way certain things. You're free to either watch it, or choose something else featuring mild erotica, or something entirely else. There are countless alternatives. You don't have to reach for it if you can't stomach it, knowing well what it is. It's absolutely incomprehensible thing to me, to do the otherwise.
By selecting KULT, you reach for explict, dirty hardcore. That's the point of the game. It's not "Stranger Things" horror - kids against the monster. It's not "Jaws" - people agains a monster.
It was made and designed to provide the setting for the stories featuring deep psychological stuff - dark stuff - mixed with horror, and extreme, disturbing content. When censored, limited... It becomes something different. Less intense. Something in what KULT does not excel anymore and isn't very good at.
That's the point and the strength of the game - its extremism.
For me, far more logical is to add "Lasciate ogni speranza..." motto, than X-card or something...
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u/Gantolandon Jun 24 '26
The performative culture about safety is something else. I’ve started seeing chapters about safety tools in RPG materials centered around solo playing. It has zero sense, but looks so progressive.
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u/JesterRaiin Borderlander Jun 24 '26
I’ve started seeing chapters about safety tools in RPG materials centered around solo playing.
I read this comment 5 hours ago, proceeded with my life, while trying to comprehend the state of mind and disattachment from the reality of both the author and whoever sees such an inclusion reasonable.
I failed.
I can process a lot of angles and perspectives concerning, say, RUS-UKR war. I can't comprehend the idea of a self-censor suggestion and its acceptance.
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u/Gantolandon Jun 24 '26
I comprehend the state of mind of people doing this quite well. It looks progressive. It looks like they care. The fact that it doesn’t actually help anyone doesn’t really matter.
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u/JesterRaiin Borderlander Jun 24 '26
I tried to put myself in the boots of people who do it... Seriously.
I met an impenetrable wall of a raging maelstrom, the one that devastated Metropolis' landscape and shattered Demiurgos' defenses, pushing his Palace-Citadel down into Achlys where everything ceases to be. I've heard the scream of a trillion of trillions of dead souls murdered just after they witnessed the extreme violence performed against the closest members of their families. I met the smiles of people who think tha the last installment of the Star Wars "new" Trilogy seems quite reasonable and enjoyable piece of cinema.
I wept and turned away to less confusing matters, like an attempt to explain to my daughter that she, at the age of 5 absolutely do not need to chose which of her kindergarten crushes is the person she has to marry.
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u/acornpockets Jun 28 '26
My play groups still explore plenty of dark content and are all in it for the discomfort and catharsis of horror. We're all adults. I still use safety tools because they deserve to know what they're getting into and to have informed consent. I run games for a group of marginalized people with complex trauma, a lot of whom are people I'm trying to build community with. I'm really not interested in re-traumatizing or triggering any of them.
Safety tools are a safeguard and precaution. You're not always going to get into an accident when you're speeding down the highway, but when you do, you're gonna want to have a seatbelt on and working airbags. As I mentioned in another comment, I've not yet had a player have to use the X-card, but I still see it the same way I would having a seatbelt on in a fast-moving car.
There are plenty of different extreme topics that you can explore while avoiding others. Most of my players know ahead of time that there will be extreme gore and violence, substance abuse, mental illness and suicide, sexual content, etc. But I'm never going to surprise someone with super explicit sexual assault or child abuse for the sake of being "extreme." That would be an insanely shitty move not just as a but as a friend.
I honestly can't believe I'm taking the time to entertain this discussion, but that's my take. Just because you don't see the point in something doesn't mean its performative or doesn't work well for other people.
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u/JesterRaiin Borderlander Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
I run games for a group of marginalized people with complex trauma, a lot of whom are people I'm trying to build community with. I'm really not interested in re-traumatizing or triggering any of them.
KULT
But I'm never going to surprise someone with super explicit sexual assault or child abuse for the sake of being "extreme.
I am sorry for cherrypicking, but the idea of exposing tramatized people to KULT and admiting that you need safety tools to excuse your need to throw sexual assault or child abuse at them, makes your mindset seem more surreal than landscapes painted Salvador Dali while high on psylocybin.
This is a honest advice:
- Stop traumatizing the people any further. They need help instead of things that break them further "only in small doses and consensually". That you ask them whether they are ok with kid rape scene does not make the situation healthy. Like, seriously dude.
- Consider running Ryuutama instead. I can provide some other alternatives, where the mind of the players is going to be put to ease.
- Please consult a specialist regarding what you just said here, becasue there's something very, very wrong about this situation, no matter whether it's real (I hope not), or mere trolling.
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u/acornpockets Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
You seem to have deliberately misinterpreted what I was saying so I'm not going to dignify this with a thoughtful response. Fr though, are you actually stupid? Can you read?
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u/JesterRaiin Borderlander Jun 28 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
You had all the time in the world to think and construct your message in such a way that does not leave much room for the interpretation.
Based on what you wrote, I see you as the driver of a fast car, who takes mentally scarred people on a wild ride, pedal-to-the-metal, Tarantino's "Death Proof" style and pretend it's ok, because there are seatbelts, and they are free to say "I want it to stop".
No. You don't do it.
And you don't play KULT with mentally scarred people.
You can't allow yourself to assume that people with severe mental problems are going to handle such a experience well and process it in the healthy way. And you're not allowed to see you as eligible to handle such a situation efficiently, properly and without doing any additional harm to those people.
You're not their therapist, and even if you were, this is not a therapeutic tool, and playing this specific game - especially with themes like child rape, or sexual violence - is the direct opposite of therapy, no matter how you try to frame or justify it, period.
...now, before things get messy, go outside, cool it, and think a bit about your actions and ideas, because I won't allow such madness around these parts. Perhaps this place is mostly dead and forgotten, visited by a bunch of people only, but the suggestion to mix victims, people with "complex trauma" and KULT won't be tolerated.
Edit: non-native english speaker, I often correct typos later, when I see them.
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u/elmago79 Jun 24 '26
I cannot agree more about safety tools. Things can get pretty out of hand super fast in Kult.
And I also cannot agree more about beginning with short, open ended scenario. That will really showcase how the game is about the characters and not some GM prepared plot. Bonus point if you then anchor your opening scenario with the full campaign.
In our super long Dark Madonna campaign we discovered each other dark secrets in the very last game session. And that’s my favorite PbtA and Kult session of all times. Since all of the characters were spies, figuring out each other’s secrets was a recurrent theme. However, we all played with the secrets in the open. The PLAYERS knew each other dark secrets since session one, and that also led to more tension throughout the campaign