I love so much of what this game is doing. Its vibes are immaculate. It has… just… so much, for better and worse. I wish my experience playing it had been more satisfying.
Apocalypse Keys is designed by Rae Nedjadi and published by Evil Hat. It’s “the Hellboy RPG” — a game in which you play monstrous humanoids investigating world-ending supernatural mysteries while you balance your humanity against your monstrosity. (It’s gay.) It kickstarted fall of 2022, and a full version of the rules was released to backers during the campaign.
I recently started what was going to be a campaign with a weekly group. We played a session 0 plus ~5 sessions of mystery at ~2 hours / session (which I now believe is not enough time to give this game per session). We decided to leave the game behind after our first mystery.
Still, there was a ton I loved about the system, and even more I wanted to talk about. I’m fascinated by this game.
The Core Mechanic and Theme
The thing that got me immediately horny for AK was how it takes the usual PBTA dice roll and flips the partial success and full success ranges. That is to say, in most PBTA games, you roll 2d6+stat and a…
6- = failure
7–9 = mixed success
10+ = full success
In Apocalypse Keys, you roll2d6+[however many Darkness tokens you want to spend] and a…
7- = failure
8–10 = full success
11+ = partial success
I’ve heard of this re-stacking before, but never in such a fully developed game. It’s a brilliant piece of design tech, turning every roll into a conversation and a balancing act. What’s more important: getting this done no matter what, or getting this done right? What if we add that hoarding Darkness tokens is bad for you? Are you feeling gonzo or restrained? Monstrous or human?
That’s the real genius: this makes every single die roll a microcosm of that core humanity vs monstrosity theme. It’s an underline on that idea and experience every single time you pick up the dice. It’s a way to bring a laser-focus answer to “what is this game about?” It’s wonderful.
The ways you get Darkness Tokens underline the theme further still while replacing stats (nice) and encouraging roleplay. They’re like Heart’s Beats or Blades in the Dark’s XP triggers: something to help guide and reward your roleplaying if you’re stuck. They give each playbook a distinct flavor while always pointing back to that core theme.
Overall: it’s such a simple core mechanic that the game packs so much on top of. Far too much to my taste.
Complexity — There’s a Lot of It
This is the most complex game I’ve willingly played since I left D&D behind (possible exception for Band of Blades). I am not someone who typically likes complexity, but I knew almost every individual piece of this game before playing it from other PBTA stuff (Ruin = Jaded from The Watch, Unlock Doom’s Door = the Brindlewood Bay mystery move, etc). I figured it might be fine, but there were still too many things to keep in my head.
Darkness Tokens and five triggers to get them (FIVE!!). XP. Ruin. Your Impulse, Bonds, Powers of Darkness, Conditions, and What the Darkness Demands of You. Keys (which are clues, not keys) and Doors (which aren’t doors). Basic moves, playbook moves, other playbooks’ moves, DIVISION moves, and Ruin moves. It’s so much. As Mark Rosewater might say, this game is way over its complexity budget, and the resulting cognitive load bogs it down.
When so many of the mechanics are pulling in the same direction (Darkness Token triggers, Impulses, Bonds with What the Darkness Demands of You, and Ruin are all covering basically the same ground), I wonder why we needed them all. There’s redundancy here: why not just give me the best two of these so I didn’t lose all of them in the forest?
All the complexity of course means memory problems and constant delays that come from looking things up and second guessing rules, but my real disappointment is how much it distracts from that wonderful core theme. Why am I worrying about keys and doors and shit? None of that has me thinking about my monstrous humanity. Why are we doing mysteries in this game? And if we’re doing mysteries, do they need to be so complex that they steal focus from that good good monstrous humanity stuff?
I’m skeptical of the Brindlewood Bay mystery mechanic at large. It’s so clever, but it also makes everything about a mystery outside the PCs feel… not real in a way until the whole thing is over. Did that NPC and I just have a wonderful heart to heart? Or are they a Harbinger who just pulled one over on me? Depends on what theory we come up with at the end, which means I remained emotionally distant in the moment. It’s a great way of creating a cohesive piece when all is said and done and we’re looking back on it, but it makes the process of getting there less satisfying for me. In a game that’s so clearly trying to be about feelings, it’s especially grating.
Individual Moves Are Like Short Stories
The moves in this game are like beautiful short stories. They’re so evocative and cool, but also, they’re the length of fucking short stories, which makes them clunky and narrow.
Take The Hungry’s “Enthralled by You.” This move is 279 words, a length within the length requirements for a personal statement on the American college system’s Common Application. It tells the story of you seducing an NPC, turning them into one of your kind (vampire / werewolf style), and the complex power dynamic that results. Sweet. To trigger it, you need:
An NPC you want to stick around
To have convinced that NPC that becoming your thrall is a good idea actually
An intimate moment with that NPC in which you ask them if they desire you
For them to say “yes”
And that’s just to trigger it. Then you have to roll, and the Keeper has to interpret results.
I’m being mean. There is nothing inherently wrong with long moves — Mobile Suit: Firebrands and its ilk are great games. But those scene-length moves, which many AK moves read and play like, are easy to trigger. They’re not trying to fit within other scenes the way most PBTA moves are. AK’s moves are tough to set up and then completely dominate the show when they trigger.
But also, every result on this move is fucking awesome, right down to the miss. So maybe who cares about the complexity! If you pick this and trigger it, that scene’s going to be sweet as hell! How hard do I hold it against the game that I’ll probably never trigger it?
Conclusion
By the end of our first mystery, I could feel myself getting a handle on Apocalypse Keys. I think I could keep up with it now. But do I want to keep giving my time to it in the hope that it’ll eventually yield a fruitful harvest? I don’t know. Certainly my group did not unanimously think so.
It’s like… Apocalypse Keys is the TV show your friend is telling you about that totally gets good in season 3, you just have to power through the 25 hours of content before that. I promise it’s worth it, bro, I promise. And it probably is! But I don’t know that I want to do that powering through. I don’t want to fight with a game until I’m able to tame it into something I can play.
Maybe another time I’ll write about how much that’s a problem I have with the whole TTRPG ecosystem. But I’m sure plenty of others have spoken there, and I’m out of steam.
Give Apocalypse Keys a read. I think it’s worth that at least.