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[fantasyfantasygames]

Circles of Heaven

Circles of Heaven, Eustace Selden, 1998

Circles of Heaven (CoH) started off as a hard rebound against the Satanic Panic - by an evangelical kid. The goal was to make an RPG that would be considered holy. This... did not happen.

The author did his first writing when he was 14, which beats me by a year. Unlike me, he was raised in... well, a cult. The first version of CoH was about playing angels, but it was also full of proto-quiverfull eschatological heaven-justifies-the-means propaganda. By the time he was 17, his friends had successfully pulled him out of the cult and gotten him living with distant relatives in Tacoma. The author's changing worldview, the evolving music scene, some bootleg anime, and suggestions from the same friends - seriously, this friend group is fantastic - led to a major revision of the game. It was published locally in 1998, printed by a local shop and driven around to game stores and bookstores until they found some that would sell it.

Chargen is mostly random. You pick your Nobility and Corpus. Nobility is your rank, which doesn't let you order each other around but does apply to certain creatures. For example, Archdukes can give orders to insects; a Prince or Princess of Heaven can give orders to mammals (except humans). You get some alliterative skills related to your type of creature - Archdukes get bonuses to Clandestine, Collective, and Contaminate.

Corpus is your body, and I think it's a particularly fun part of the game. Characters in CoH are angels. They're not traditional biblical angels, because the bible is secretly the work of Satan - full of half-truths more dangerous than outright lies. Instead, they're inspired by the weirdest of monsters: adlets, nuckelavee, ouroboros, futakuchi-onna, penanggalan, and a several others. You are both a human being and your monster self at the same time. You can do things that either form could do, or even things that would need both a monster and a human in the same place at the same time, and it doesn't have to make sense to see.

You roll for your Hunt (the kind of people you're here on Earth to help or punish, gives skill bonuses), your Time (the hour each day where you have extra-special powers), your Vision (how you think the world could be made ideal, gives you more skill bonuses), and your Ruling Virtues. Oh, and your attributes. Those are done on a 5-15 scale generated from a d100 table. I did say this game was written in the early 90s.

You also roll for your equipment. Not boring mortal stuff, but for a wide variety of sacred items that you hold in potentia near you and can manifest at need. Shields of fire. Shadow citadels that can hide you overnight. Flocks of stained-glass butterflies that provide cover and distracting fascination. Daybreak, the mace made of pure sunlight. Nullblades that wield themselves and absorb bullets and magic alike. Fatehook, a crochet hook that can re-knot the fabric of the world - slow to use but flexible and devastating.

The system is mediocre. It's basically a heavily-stripped-down Rolemaster, with no critical hits or spell lists. If you can't come up with anything from Rolemaster that isn't the critical hits table, you're not alone. CoH's system sort of slid into my brain and slid right back out without making an impression.

The place the game is really lacking is art. Most of it is from early otaku who loved anime but had never taken an art class. The best of it turned out to be traced from manga. The cover was a black-and-white ouroboros on a white background, which, while still not particularly well-drawn, was at least striking on the shelf.

Eustace eventually moved on. In an interview in 2012 he said that writing the game was a cathartic experience for him, helping him understand where he came from and embrace where he was going. Once it was out, he didn't feel the need to keep writing. I hope he finds a creative spark again some day - I think a shorter version (with better art) would fit well with games like Mörk Borg and Songbirds.