[Let’s Study] Degenesis, Primal Punk Roleplaying by Posthuman Studios

I’ve always had a soft spot for European games every since I was exposed to the Engel Roleplaying Game by Feder&Schwert via the D20 English version translated by White Wolf. There’s something utterly interesting about the layout, art and writing that comes off as exciting and new as compared to the usual tropes of most rpgs.

Thanks to the insistence of Mappy, I picked up Degenesis, originally a German language rpg written by Christian Günther and Marko Djurdjevic and translated into English by Posthuman Studios, of Eclipse Phase fame. It didn’t take me five minutes from opening the PDF to realize that Degenesis was going to blow my mind.

And so I figure that I might as well get started with something that I’ve not done on this blog for a while now. A Let’s Study series where we break down a game and analyze its components, and then see what kind of games we can run with it. Over the next few days, we’ll examine the setting, character options, dabble a little bit with regards to the game’s own CatharSys rules and see if we can make a sample character or two while we’re at it.

I’ll admit that I was completely puzzled by how this game managed to slip under my radar. The focus on culture and interesting character options should have sent me running to pick it up. Still at least I’ve got it and now it’s time to pick this game apart.

Tomorrow, we’ll go over the broad strokes of Degenesis’ setting, and take a peek at the game’s unique take on the Post-Apocalyptic future. *Goes off to scrounge up his old Rammstein CDs*