Review: Kult “Rumours”
by PeterAmthor
version 1.1

This review will cover different parts of the game. From the quality of printing and
layout to the writing and illustrations. There will be no averaged stat from each of the
sections. Each will hold its own merit to the reader and are rated from 1 (bad) to 10
(good). Also I am not a professional review writer and I get nit picky about certain things
more than others.

The outside - Rating = 4
First things first. This is what you see just by picking up the book and looking at the
outside covers and reading the grab text place on it. First off the title of the game is a dark
red on top of a dark gray background. This makes it a little hard to see from a distance.
However they did keep it a decent size so they can show more of the cover art.
Cover Art. Great artist, good picture... for another game. The picture has nothing to
do with the game. I fits better as a SLA Industries picture of a person in bio armor. Why
this picture was chose I don’t know.
Back Cover Art. The new updated Kult ‘symbol’ on the dark gray background.
Nothing major but then again there doesn’t need to be on the back cover.
Back Cover Grab Text. Just a few lines. But that is all that is needed. Here they
captured the feel of the game pretty quickly and gave us a good idea of what kind of
characters are involved.
Other Back Cover Text. Couple lines telling you that this is basically the players guide
and basic rules book and that ‘Beyond the Veil’ will be the GM book and is forthcoming.
Misspelled recommended and the Seventh Circle logo is in French.

Layout - 5
First glance through the book the layout looks great. Some of it is more eye catching
than others. Then you start to notice all the repeated fillers. About a fifth of every page is
taken up by border artwork from top to bottom with a different piece of art for each
chapter. Then the bottom corner along the border there is another image that juts out into
the text section of the page taking up even more space. The top borders are pretty large
with a big KULT being on every odd numbered page and the double K symbol on every
even page.
Then you have at the beginning of every chapter a quote. Usually about one or two
lines, nothing very large. They give this an entire page so you have a lot of blank space
staring back at you. Two pages of credits in large font that could have easily been taken
to one page, same with the table of contents. They also raised the font size on the fiction
sections as well to help them fill an entire page.
Normally stuff like this doesn’t bother me. But the fact that it is so obvious is really
annoying. They were trying to up the page count by any means they could other than
putting in more material. Some of which is sorely needed - Dark Secrets, a hit location
chart, an index, a couple more archetypes anything such as this. But instead they opted to
give us more white space.
Now as far as laying out all of the material in an organized usable fashion. That they
did do. Its sectioned out in a reasonable order starting with the usual write up on what
role-playing is. Followed by character creation and skill resolution. Then going into
combat and all the rules covering healing, poisons and etc. Finally some info on
equipment and some misc. info on playing your character. Nicely done.
Throughout all of this are several mistakes. Forgotten bold face, places where there
should have been paragraph seperators, an occasional reference to something not in the
book and other various little problems.

Art - 9
Nearly all the art is reused from either books from previous editions or from the CCG.
However they did use the good artwork from these. This is something I have no problem
with since it they had to license out all of the Kult properties from Paradox they might as
well use them. It also is an effective cost cutting technique since they don’t have to hire
out new artists.
One note is that some of the CCG art is shown complete. Before we it was cut up and
one picture may have been used for two or three different cards. Now we can see the art
as it was originally meant to be.

Writing - 8
Well nothing spectacular. Most of it seems to be reproduced from the previous books
with a little modification here and there. But it works, is pretty clearly explained and easy
to follow through. They try and keep it simple and succeed throughout most of it except
in areas where it is necessary to get a little complex.

Game System - 7
I have always been a fan of the mechanics that were used in Kult. Easy to get the hang
of and pretty quick for basic skill resolution and such. Combat may have been a little
clunky at points but it did work effectively and is much more streamlined than other games
on the market.
They kept the base system as it was. Still rolling a D20 under a skill number. The
lower under that number you roll the greater the success. No major changes here. I have
noticed a few problems that could have been solved with asking around the listserv or
forums about problems in previous editions. One is repeated here yet again concerning
basic skills, it was a pretty talked about topic back in the day on the list. Cannot find the
Mod to Ego even though threre’s a space for it on the character sheet. Add in the fact they
decided to leave out the Dark Secrets because they think they give away to much of the
cosmology or something like that. This helps make what is supposed to be the core rules
a bit incomplete and confuses new players.
Combat is done using the 2nd edition rules using the DEF stat. I had no problem with
this change myself except in the 2nd edition they forgot to change over all of the combat
stats throughout the book to the new system. Thereby leaving a half finished transfer that
again led to confusion among players. In the combat section they talk about body armor
and give armor that covers a smaller part of the body a lower number than armor that
covers a larger portion of the body. This is apparently done to remove the hit location roll
to make combat quicker. However it tends to be less realistic and makes aiming for
specific locations pretty useless in the game. I am a fan of body armor by location
systems but this is not to terribly bad.

Bells and Whistles - 2
No index. I don’t know why but there is no index. To me this is a major oversight,
every game needs an index.
Character Sheet. In the back is a three page character sheet of which only two pages
are really necessary the other is handy to keep track of non system important information.
They are laid out well but and look good but there are a few mistakes. The weapon stats
are laid out for first edition stats with the individual areas for Scratch, LW, SW, Fatal all
of which is replaced on weapons with the DEF stat. This could confuse new players all to
hell. The skills are laid out in order but there is little room for write in skills that people
may come up with. They are copier unfriendly with gray tone pictures in the backgrounds
on each sheet.
Net support. Always a good thing. There are two links listed in the book, one to the
actual rights holder Paradox Entertainment the other is to the 7th circle website itself.
Neither of them have any real material for support on their sites. I understand why
Paradox doesn’t, but you would have though the company putting out the book would
have something up. Downloadable character sheets, a few extra freebie bits, something.
Besides a couple links and a bit of fiction there is nothing.