A Last Hope in Hell

Wayne Douglas Barlowe, Inferno

Pandatheist is a bad influence, who encourages me to do RPG things.

This idea is old, and I couldn't tell you how old. I think it originated before I started the blog. I don't know if it will ever see the light of day properly, but here it is.

0) Canterbury Tales + The Inferno + Ultraviolet Grasslands. A game about a pilgrimage through hell. Lots of Darkest Dungeon influence. Very anachronistic, probably.

1) The line between Hell as divine punishment and Hell as an incursion of a hostile alien environment is deliberately blurred.

2) In the center of hell there is a church. No one knows why it is safe there, but everyone is certain that it is the safest place in the world.

3) The emergence of Hell absolutely involves the plague. As far as characters are concerned it is the absolute and real end of the world. It might still be, but not for the reasons they think.

4) Lots of premade characters all known only by their title.

5) The mental image I have for Hell is very much in the horrible fungal disaster zone of the Sepsis in Degenesis. It is not unthinkable that it is some sort of terraforming device.

6) Things might be worse on the outside

7) The more horrible the environment is the more the LISA the Painful OST goes into my rotation. Treat it at given that someone is going to learn Secret Technique: 666 KILL CHOP DELUXE.

That out of the way, where would I go if I wanted to do something with this?

I've considered using David Schirudan's handy guide for translating UVG into Troika! at first. This is an easy and predictable place to start and honestly you could find and replace your way to a very good game based on that alone. The pilgrimage lends itself to a pointcrawl, and combat and exploration can be abstracted into random events such as are already in there. It could even be turned into a solo game with relative ease.

What will come of this, if anything? Who can say.