Cultic Games are on Kickstarter and smashing funding targets with a tabletop RPG in which characters rise up against human tyranny. In Human No More, player characters aren’t human.
Let’s take a look at the pitch video before we get onto our interview with the publisher.
Backers can get the Human No More digital core rulebook with a pledge of $25 (about £20).
At $45, the physical corebook is added to the digital editions as a backer reward.
There are many higher tiers, so let’s summarise them quickly before the interview. $50 unlocks the digital Essentials Set of extra books, but not the STL print files. Those print files are added in at $80.
The Essential Set of physical productions, which includes all the books but not the minis, dice and GM screen, is the reward at $95. The complete physical core set with those dice and minis is more expensive and at $210.
There’s a Chrome Version at $230, a Street Resistance Edition at $240 and a Street Edition in Chrome at $260, each one of those tiers adding in more and more, such as t-shirts and plated minis. The special editions keep coming until the tally is $57,0 and then there’s a jump to the Creator Edition at $1,000.
At the time of writing, there are two backers at the $1,000 tier.
If you’re curious to see if the game is worth it, you can check out the free Guerrilla’s cookbook preview set.
An interview with Cultic Games
To kick things off for our readers, who are Cultic Games? I see you’re based in Istanbul. Is there a story behind the studio’s name?
Hi Andrew! Thanks for the interview opportunity. Cultic Games is a game collective that’s been developing narrative-based games for a decade now. We like the playful notion that we’re some kind of cult conducting its rituals through creating interactive experiences.
We last saw the Cultic Games name on the Lovecraftian CRPG Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones. I even found an old interview from 2016 where you mentioned Stygian was once a board game concept. How has your experience developing a deep computer RPG influenced your move to designing a tabletop RPG?
You are a true archeologist! Yes, Stygian also had its own RPG system, and digital or not, we always start from the tabletop. After all these years, I have concluded that if the two design processes of actualising an RPG concept can be separated and approached with complete force, the results will be much more substantial and permanent in the game culture. This time, I want to take the necessary steps to have a very good foundation before moving on to other media.
There’s a lot of discussion from fans who loved Stygian but felt its story ended abruptly. It’s a common challenge in indie development. What happened there, and what lessons from that experience are you bringing to Human No More?
Unfortunately, it was discontinued by the publisher and later transformed into an RPG-lite survival game. The main lesson in that for us was how important it is for us, creators, to be able to control and protect their IPs, but at the time, it was, unfortunately, a necessary evil for the realisation of the game as we were entering the industry for the first time.
We have learned tremendous lessons from that experience and made our second title, “Cats and the Other Lives”, completely independently with higher production control, and happily, to better critical acclaim.
Human No More… What can I say? We can’t be more excited! I’m also personally thrilled to see what we will come up with, given all the accumulated experience poured into a brand-new setting and system.
For readers who have just heard the name, how would you describe Human No More? What’s the core experience you want players to have?
We define ‘Human No More’ as a tabletop roleplaying game that explores the hope and struggle for revolution in a grim galaxy. Players portray non-human freedom fighters operating within a guerrilla movement against a totalitarian human regime in a not-so-distant future.
It is a TTRPG where the player group needs to maintain a really tight connection throughout the game, as they form a unit whose survival depends on the mutual effort of its members.
Roleplaying-wise, I find it provocative and fascinating to put the players into the shoes of beings branded as “non-humans” by our own kind, humans. I believe art has the power to ask difficult questions without forcing answers. What better art form than games to do that?
You describe the gameplay as “XCOM with your friends” and the system as “H2O,” a D20-based open-license system. What makes H2O a good fit for this tactical, revolutionary setting? What does it do differently from other D20 systems?
First of all, to make the entry easier, we decided to base the core of the system on D20, in terms of dice rolling, checks, saves, and so on. Wrapped around that core, we have the Action Points system enriched by cover, elevation, overwatch, sector-based movement, group-based initiative, and many more systems that elevate the game into a squad-based tactical level, like you’re playing XCOM or Necromunda as a TTRPG. Still, every player controls a force member, and the teamplay element is essential.
Shortly, this was our approach: If it’s working and familiar, keep it. If it’s slowing the game down and is clunky, cut it. If it’s not meeting the tactical gameplay that we aim for, update it.
We view H2O as a well-baked cake, crafted by a talented and creative patissier. You are all familiar with the dish, but once you taste it, the composition of the ingredients is what makes it surprisingly fresh. Of course, if we succeed in our design goals. So far, our playtests have gone surprisingly well!
In your email, you mentioned the game is a “cautionary tale” about real-world intolerance and oppression. Was there a specific moment or event that made you and the team decide, “We need to make a game about this”?
It is impossible for individuals to separate themselves from the machinations of the world and human culture. Even when we assume, by choice or not, that we are disinterested in matters such as politics, economics, global power dynamics, and so on, their repercussions shape us deeply.
As imaginers and game designers, we have the power to explore those concepts through abstractions and systems, perhaps illuminating them from different perspectives. In this process, with the help of our ideas, if we can unearth a little truth that gets buried within the never-halting, cacophonic noise that is modern times, we’d be more than happy. Yet, we choose to stand on the line as world-builders, not as ideologues. Our job is to lay the stones for our players to make their own decisions, not forcing them into conclusions.
Players get to be “non-human freedom fighters.” The press kit mentions everything from sentient cats and revived Neanderthals to alien hybrids and androids. What was the design process like for creating these unique species, and how do they offer a different roleplaying experience than just playing a human?
First of all, we strongly avoid caricaturisations and stereotypes when it comes to our species. Sentimals (sentient animals) are not anthropomorphic humans, but actual animals that have risen to a human-level sentience; therefore, they have different physiologies and behavioral patterns that we want our players to roleplay to some extent. Or Neans (gene-resurrected Neanderthals) are not primitive humanoids but, as modern anthropology also suggests, beings that are more progressive than our ancestors in many areas. Therefore, our City Neans achieved tremendous technological accomplishments in HNM’s universe. Of course, until the rise of the Human Apartheid… I can provide many more examples, but to sum it up, we are doing our best to let our players view the universe from different perspectives while prioritising interesting roleplay moments.
Your Kickstarter is already successfully funded with time to spare—congratulations! Why do you think people have been so happy to pledge their support for this specific vision? (And, I have to ask, whose idea was the Sentimal Cat Statue?)
Thank you! I think the idea resonates. We are at a point in time where we are starting to question what we are capable of as a species, as a popular idea.
Additionally, our newly formed community recognises that we are investing considerable effort in creating a living, breathing universe with all its intricacies, challenges, mysteries, and dilemmas.
Lastly, we are ambitious about streamlining gameplay, creating emergent combat moments, and fitting tactical wargaming into the smallest available space possible.
I think all of these pique the interest of our players and hopefully more in the future. And the Sentimal Cat is actually inspired by my cat Mirage ;)
What would you like Cultic Games to be best known for?
Creating meaningful moments that our players carry with them through their lives.
Finally, what’s next? Assuming the Kickstarter is a great success, what can we expect from Cultic Games and the Human No More line in the near future?
What we are in right now is just marketing. Completing the game with our goals in mind will be much harder than hitting our stretch goals since we don’t want to make just another TTRPG with an interesting trope. It requires hard work, lots of playtests, and a full guerrilla approach like our resistance fighters’, so we are focused on delivering the best experience possible at the moment. Having said that, I would also like to share that we see this process as the first step of the HNM project.
Thanks!
