''Inferno'' is a fantasy role-playing game published by Death's Edge Games in 1994.

Description

''Inferno'' is a role-playing game set in

Hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell ...

. The player have a choice between playing a heroic

player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

who tries to rescue the souls of the innocent that have been taken by evil forces and aids damned spirits struggling to achieve redemption; or an evil necromancer seeking to conquer Hell. In addition to role-playing rules, the book also contains magical spells, and a compendium of infernal creatures.

Character generation

Players choose one of four races (mortal, shade, hellspawn, or imp), and roll dice to create the character's attributes. Players then choose a class, which also determines faith status from Faithful to Infernal. Faithful characters are more constrained in terms of actions and magic, but Infernal characters have no protection from more powerful evil beings. To finish the character, the player purchases skills using a pool of creation points.

Skill and combat resolution

To resolve both skills and combat, the player must roll a twenty-sided die and get the same or less than the target number. For every two points by which a combat roll succeeds, an additional point of damage is done.

Publication history

''Inferno'' is a 136-page perfect-bound book written by Gabe Ivan, with illustrations by Thom Thurman and Sean Parrack, and was published by Death's Edge Games in 1994. The following year, Death's Edge published an expansion supplement, ''Gods of Hell'', and an adventure, ''Out of the Abyss''. No further publications were released.

Reception

In the August 1994 edition of ''

Dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted as ...

'' (#208),

Lester W. Smith Lester W. Smith is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games. Career Early work and GDW Lester Smith began his game-design career in 1984 with ''Mind Duel'', a science-fiction board game submission to ''Space Gamer'' mag ...

thought "The game system itself is quite good." But despite this, he believed the game's divide between good and evil players was a built-in weakness. He foresaw that most players would opt for Infernal characters, and then rapidly get bored "with having their characters torment less powerful creatures, and will become frustrated when their own characters suffer at the hands of creatures more powerful than they." He concluded by giving the game an average rating of 4 out of 6, predicting that most players "will just toss the book and go back to their video games." In the January–February 1995 edition of '' Shadis'' (Issue 17), Dirk Dejong didn't think this was the most innovative on the market, except for the setting of Hell, which he thought was ingenious. But he liked the tone of the game, and concluded with a strong recommendation, saying, "It's new, it's funny, it has the capacity to scare the pants off of you, and it gives the good guys a good name once more (as well as giving players a reason to be good)."

Other recognition

A copy of ''Inferno'' is held in the collection of the Strong National Museum of Play (object 110.2414).

References

{{reflist Role-playing games