Darksiders RPG

What would be the best system to do a Darksiders tabletop? Some ideas I had was Scion, Exalted, maybe Rifts. Especially if the players are Horsemen or something similar I want them to feel powerful but still have growth.

Could any d20 system like Mutants and Masterminds work?

That's unfair, M&M would work almost with everything

I think you could also try Godbound. I've heard it is pretty satisfying.

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this desu

Thanks for the art bumps.

Checked it out, looks interesting.

Any other system recommendations?

From what I recall Godbound is pretty good for what you need for Darksiders, as its quite similar to Exalted but far less wonky.

If it were me, I'd be careful about letting players be one of the Riders as it ties them a bit too much to the stories of the games rather than the setting of them (if that makes sense). On the post-apocalyptic Earth / Base of the Destroyer's Tower alone you have demons, angels (fallen and otherwise), abyssal nightmare creatures, watchers, Makers and their creations and undead of all shapes and sizes. DS2 adds in all those other worlds as well, so you could theoretically have characters like Ostegoth who are survivors from dead and dying worlds (There's even some concept art floating about for surviving humans, but I don't know how well they'd gel in a party of nightmarishly powerful and/or huge supernatural creatures). Godlike's "3 Fact" system would work quite easily there, because a player could go "I am a Demon" "I'm in debt to Vulgrim, so I work for him" "I collect stuff relating to the Horsemen" just as easily as "I am an Angel" "I am a disgraced Hellguard" "I want vengeance against War" without too much mechanical fiddling.

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Savage Worlds, GURPS, and maybe Scion or Exalted.

It doesn't do gritty well. But for Darksiders yes, should work.

I had an idea for a game where players were dead humans in the City of the Dead. Only unlike most they were not as scared. And they really wnated to get to Earth for different reasons. Like ghosts in other franchises who have something unfinished.

At the start they were supposed to be hunted by henchmen of the King who wanted to put them back into the Well. Over time, with the help of a certain merchant, they could have really gone back to Earth to meet demons, angels and all the other nasty stuff.

I'm fairly certain you had to get some guys like that as part of the "collect three things to collect three more things" puzzles of Darksiders 2. I do remember the Chancellor talking about how some souls do escape the City of the Dead before they get purified and put into the well, but most go mad before then.

As an idea I think its got legs. It would probably be more like a stealth game for at least the first half of it, with the souls trying to avoid all the horrible things in the Land of the Dead or bargaining with entities like Vulgrim or one of the old Kings for power. You could even tie it into the events of Darksiders 1, where the entire human race going extinct and having to be Welled in one go causes more escapees than usual.

One of the things I found Godbound lacking was info on demons. Could demon stats from other OSR games work?

Yeah more or less this. Vulgrim was supposed to give PCs a credit somewhere at the start. They would just need to repay it 10 times over later.

Accepting the deal would give them a decent amount of power and a fighting chance against some of their pursuers. Refusing the deal would mean going for the stealth approach and trying to scrounge power where you can.

Player characters were supposed to be almost obsessed with returning to Earth so Well not being able to keep them during the Apocalypse was pretty straightforward.

Cortex allows for you to do whatever you want. Exalted wasn't a terrible Idea, but it would probably require more brewing than it's worth.

>Especially if the players are Horsemen or something similar I want them to feel powerful but still have growth.
Just have it before the Nephilim genocide. Nephilim still exist and so do a bunch of races and worlds to play with before shit went to shit

Where could I find some OSR stat blocks for a variety of demons and undead?

That could work, but it does sort of lead to "and then the four murdered you". That's not necessarily an issue, but some groupsort won't like that kind of sething in stone ending

There is also Angels, Demons, Old Ones (which can cover a great variety of races). Also using godbound apparently heroic humans can be playable.

I really hope this thread survives till tomorrow because I'd really like to try and make some DS characters in Godbound

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I'm really leaning towards this rules set to, I just need stats for demons (a lot of different ones), various undead, and some constructs.

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Would porting directly from another OSR type game work? I'm still going through the book, and I'm honestly not familiar with old school D&D either.

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Vulgrim is my favorite character from the series. I hope he's more featured in the third game.

Me from here, I've tried to make up something.

Broodling Sycorax: A fat little teleporting spider spy
Goal: Escape Silitha and set up a nest lair of its own.

Attribrutes Score Mod check
Intelligence 18 +3 5
Dexterity 16 +2 7
Wisdom 13 +1 8
Charisma 16 +2 8
Constitution 10 +0 11
Strength 8 -1 13

FACTS:
#1 - Chainspider Spawn of Slitha (Abyssal Creature)
#2 – Stole a secret from an Angel
#3 – Emissary of the Broodmother

WORDS & GIFTS:
Alacrity (All Directions as One 1, Faster Than Thought 2)
Deception (Deceiver’s Unblinking Eye 1)
Knowledge (Omniscient Scholar 2)

ARMOUR: Light (Rubbery spiderflesh)
WEAPONS: Fangs and Mandibles (two-handed weapon doing 1d10 w/ Dex mod)
HIT POINTS: 8
EFFORT: 2
INFLUENCE: 2

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Murias: Architect of Hell On Earth
Although a neutral party in the End War, the Makers were used by both heaven and hell to construct cities and fortresses. In ther aftermath of the Apocalypse, Murias was employed to recreate the dark castle he had designed for a Prince of Hell in the ruins of earth. Before the work could be completed, however, a palace coup led to Murias’s patron being ousted. The new overlord proved to be happy with the completed fortress but proved far less forthcoming about payment than his predecessor. Murias barely escaped with his life.
Goal: Get what’s owed

Attribrutes Score
Strength 18
Dexterity 13
Constitution 16
Wisdom 10
Intelligence 14
Charisma 13

FACTS:
#1 - Maker
#2 – was employed by the forces of hell to help construct fortresses and cities on Earth.
#3 – Grudge against aforesaid Demons.

WORDS & GIFTS:
Artifice: Perpetual Perfection (2), Ten Thousand Tools (1)
Earth: Mountain Thews (1)
Endurance: Elemental Scorn – Heat (1), Untiring Inspiration (1)

ARMOUR: Heavy (-4 to Evasion and Hardiness)
WEAPONS: Heavy Hammer (1d10 STR)
HIT POINTS: 8
EFFORT: 2
INFLUENCE: 2

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Seems like character creation is pretty straight forward. Should we come up with racial traits for angels, demons, and the various old ones? Or does the word & gift system cover that good enough?

As the guy who made those two, I think the Word and Gift system cover it perfectly well for PCs alongside Facts – you just have to say “I am an Angel” and you get bonuses to doing Angel-y stuff. You could make pretty much all the canon Maker characters from the video games using a combination of Artifice, Command, Earth, Endurance, Fire, Health/Fertility and Might. Most Angels seem pretty straightforward with Bows, Swords, Sky, Sun, with Command or Sorcery for the leaders (and swap bows for Alacrity for the teleporting gribblies from DS2). Demons work pretty well with Fire and Might plus whatever their particular specialism is., Undead similarly. I may have missed it, but there does seem to be missing an obvious way to replicate the ice powers a lot of beasties have, but it seems fairly straightforward to just reskin Fire. It says you can make up your own words, even.

I’m not entirely sure how this all translates to NPCs, mind you, I haven’t got to that bit yet.

Bump.

Is there a dead tree version of Godbound?

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Not really you could either set it so far back that it doesn't matter
Make it alternate universe
Or have them have a chance to stop or change it

There is, but I've never seen them in a shop. You can get it on Amazon, but its quite expensive. Its quite a shame, actually, I'm getting kind of excited to do a Darksiders Godbound (Darkbound? Godsiders?) game myself.

I've got both the Darksiders concept art books. They're interesting, and the landscapes in particular are nifty, but you can really see how DS2 was made on a shoestring. Lots of cut content and almost all the monsters are just DS1 things with a new skin.

Ideas I have kicking around:
>Set after The End War
>Other Humans survived The End War like The Hunter, others could have made deals with different Demons (including Vulgrim, Samiel or the Chosen), Angels (like Uriel), or one of the many Old Ones (like Ostegoth or Ulthane), allowing Heroic Human characters.
>All the Horsemen appeared during the end war and were accused of starting it early. Stay have since gone on the run to prove their innocence and may have even split up to cover more leads / make harder to track.
>The Charred Council are recruiting capable and power warriors from across the realms, Angel, Demon, Old One, Undead.
>Hunt down the traitorous Horsemen.
>Find this mysterious Destroyer, determine how it was able to turn the Horsemen against the balance and lead the hordes of the Abyss to crush the armies of the White City.
>Patrol Earth, stop the depredations of the Demons and unceasing fury of the Angels, find any surviving Humans and protect what's left of the Third kingdom.