Revelation (role-playing game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Revelation

Designer	James C. Taylor Jr, Jason Knizley
Publisher	Happy Nebula Adventures
Publication date	1998
Genre(s)	Fantasy, Horror
System	Custom

Revelation is a modern fantasy horror role-playing game by Happy Nebula Adventures. It uses an in-house game mechanics system, the Happy Nebula System.

The premise of the game is that the players are agents of an organization which investigates paranormal phenomena. The basic rules provide for some of the standard horror fare, such as werewolves, vampires, and demons; however, the system is flexible enough to allow experienced game masters to pit the players against a more imaginative variety of foes.

Unlike many other games in the modern horror genre, such as Call of Cthulhu, in Revelation the players themselves are to some extent superpowered. The players' powers can be the result of belonging to a powerful race, such as vampire or dragon, or learned magical abilities, such as sorcery, alchemy, or technomancy. Because the players are often comparable in power to their supernatural opponents, certain aspects of the game play out more like a traditional dungeon hack than other modern horror games.

Character creation and advancement is point based and similar to GURPS (although gameplay is very little like GURPS). An interesting aspect of characters is that they have virtues and shortcomings which regularly enter into the role playing aspect of the game.

Recently "universal" game mechanics systems such as the d20 System and GURPS have grown in popularity almost to the exclusion of others, particularly among new gamers who may find it easier to use a system they already know than learn a new one. For this reason, Revelation is currently most popular with more experienced players.