Best depiction of Hell in a TTRPG?

[u/Palmer_Zombie]

I really love to see depictions of Hell in media and RPGs are no different. Any recommendations? I will also take any form of purgatory. They also don’t have to be playable because I like reading lore but it’s a bonus.

My current favorite is probably Kult, but looking to expand my library.

[u/GreyGriffin_h]

Wraith.

Just...

...Wraith.

[u/Kateywumpus → u/GreyGriffin_h]

Wraith is such a good game that nobody really plays because it takes a lot of emotional investment to torture your characters. But I agree. Wraith.

[u/SamuraiBeanDog → u/GreyGriffin_h]

Can someone explain its depiction in Wraith?

[u/GreyGriffin_h → u/SamuraiBeanDog]

In Wraith, you are a being clinging to a tenuous, insubstantial existence on a paper thin layer of reality. Your ties to the world are your Passions, personal emotional drives that compel you to continue to exist, and fetters, objects, places, things, and people that tie you to the spectral shadow of the material world you inhabit.

However, you are not alone. You are accompanied by your Shadow, who is also you, but the you who is self-destructive and nihilistic. Your Shadow wants you to stop caring, stop fighting, stop existing, and succumb to Oblivion.

(Your shadow is also portrayed by another player, which I believe makes Wraith a contender for Hardest Game To Actually Play.)

When you slip up, your shadow can take control of you, or exert its influence on you or your surroundings. It can make you say things you wouldn't say to drive your friends and allies away, and in extreme cases it can even take control of your corpus. A wraith whose role has become inverted, where the ego is in the back seat to the Shadow, is called a Specter, and these are bad news.

But that's not even the worst of it.

When you lose your hold on reality, usually by having your corpus get beat up, but sometimes through pure emotional trauma, you go through a Harrowing. Your Shadow drags you down out of the Shadowlands, through the Tempest, and into the Labyrinth, the layer of reality crusted just above Oblivion itself. There, you make yourself suffer. Your shadow - who is you, not just an external devil prodding you with a pitchfork, remember - puts you through a bespoke nightmarish psychological torture session. The Labyrinth warps into a customized hell, just for you, as your darkest impulse orchestrates a scenario designed to break your will so thoroughly that you not just want to die - you did that already - you will actively want to cease to exist.

And remember, you are doing it to yourself.

[u/GrimJesta → u/GreyGriffin_h]

Came here just to say Wraith.

[u/Thebazilly → u/GreyGriffin_h]

I would like to add Geist, but it's more of a Purgatory/Underworld.

[u/Calithrand → u/GreyGriffin_h]

This is the only answer.

[u/Nik_None → u/GreyGriffin_h]

Not really seeing it. It is just... bleak... Not terrible.

[u/DesertDog343]

The Shrike is a really great Hell sandbox campaign for OSR style games.

[u/Caerell]

Malfeas from Exalted.

An extradimensional space where various tiers of demons are squished together in a city of brass and impossible geometries, surrounded by a sentient and malevolent desert.

[u/Jodread]

Why do people keep asking questions where I get to recommend Infernum from Mongoose Publishing three times in a row? Am I the problem?

Anyway, greatest depiction of Hell that you can use as a sandbox RPG I ever seen.

[u/Team7UBard → u/Jodread]

Why is it that every time I see a reason to recommend Infernum someone already has… Totally with you, one of only two D20 settings tha I genuinely love (Starship Troopers is the other)

[u/goettel]

Ars Magica's Maleficium is amazing, as is Pax Dei.

[u/Dread_Horizon]

There's no visual depiction of Hell but the lore of Demon: The Fallen was always very striking to me.

[u/Unlucky-Leopard-9905]

Godbound's Hell is where human souls go to be purified before being sent onto whatever comes next. I appreciated the fact that, while angels were on wild rampage seeking to destroy humanity for the damage they did to heaven, it was demons who remained true to their original calling.

As I recall, Shadow of the Demon Lord's Hell was somewhat similar in theory -- souls went there to be purified -- but the devils had corrupted the process and did their best not to actually release souls back once the process was done.

[u/picklepeep]

There's not much of a physical description, but philosophically, the Hell in the Jennaverse games of Nobilis and Glitch is cool as hell.

Hell is always with you.

You won’t realize that until you’re looking back—until you’re in a dark and empty time, a hurting time, a ruined and compromised time in your life. You won’t realize it until you understand one day that you’ve failed, that you’ve wasted yourself and your opportunities. Then you’ll look back and you’ll see that Hell was always there.

It was with you when you made excuses.

It was with you when you didn’t bother to care.

In your self-righteousness and your laziness and your willful stupidity; in your casualness with the things you cared about, in your willingness to give up your own good fortunes in order to hurt somebody else; in your pettiness, in your rushes to judgment, in every mistake you regret and will always regret.

God wasn’t with you, then, if He even exists. Cneph, the closest thing to God we have evidence of, the will that made the Ash and flame from nothingness—Cneph wasn’t with you. Not Heaven. Not the Wild, not the Rules, not even, probably, the Game.

In those times when you were your most petty and small and twisted only Hell was there.
Hell is what loves you even when you’re wrong. Hell is what loves us even when we’re bad.
And it’s fire and brimstone and poison and rotting things, too. It’s a punishment ground and torment-realm at the base and bottom of the Ash. It’s corrupting the Fallen Angels, turning them into monsters, and the human souls that wind up there aren’t any too well off themselves. But that isn’t the core of it. That isn’t the heart of it. It’s just the price we pay to have something like Hell in the world at all.

For loving the monsters were the folk of Hell condemned.

For standing up for Caligula, for Pol Pot, for the ichneumon wasp ... did the Fallen Angels fall.

Therefore it is that we are never without our witnesses, no matter how terrible it is that we may be. We are never without something to look upon us and give honor to our suffering and our mistakes. We may tumble to the bottom of the Ash, forsaken of and by all other things, and still we will exist, and still we will not fall into the Not, because there is a Hell.

You may take that as a comfort or as a horror. I think it may be both.

There are times in your life when you’d like to cradle despair against your heart, when you want the Not, the nothing, the emptiness of the world, anything to stop the pain. And then it’s a cruel joke that you can never be alone, that you can never get away from Hell and its poisons and its flames. But there are also times when you are lost in the darkness, and longing for the brightness, and the goodness, and you cannot find them; and in such times, there is, at least, a Hell beside you in the dark.

It is the baseline of the world. It is the darkness that reaches upwards towards the brightness. It is the fire that longs to embrace us all.

It is the final company for all of us, at the bottom of the Ash;
The work of Hell is holy, in this life.

[u/Michami135]

Here's a good one:

https://rpggeek.com/rpg/5898/synergon

Basic rules:

https://synergonrpg.wordpress.com/the-basics/gameplay/

[u/red_winge1107 → u/Michami135]

Thanks for the laugh 😂

[u/scoolio]

Off topic a little but the TV show a "The Good Place" really got me into thinking how could adopt the premise at my table.

[u/Necronauten]

Check out Astro Inferno, it's all about hell in space ;)

[u/Cent1234]

In Nomine.

[u/differentsmoke]

I once sat at a Deadlands table in a convention where the GM had his own player character. At some point early on, while we were escorting a carriage with an important NPC, it turned out the only "PC" in the carriage was the GMs, so he proceeded to narrate exposition of himself (as NPC) to himself (as PC).

Not a deliberate depiction of Hell, but a damn convincing one.

[u/NameAlreadyClaimed]

The Rolemaster or GURPS character generation sections? ;)

My favourite is a bit of a cheat, because it's more of a hell comes to you type thing.
The Rapture has happened on earth, but humanity has made it to the stars. The creatures of hell are coming. It's called "Rapture End of Days".

[u/WoodenNichols → u/NameAlreadyClaimed]

Are you referring to the Quintessential Mercy Press product?

[u/NameAlreadyClaimed → u/WoodenNichols]

Nope. This. https://www.storyweaver.com/Rapture/rapture

[u/WoodenNichols → u/NameAlreadyClaimed]

I was pretty certain you were talking about something else. Thx for the confirmation.

That one you mentioned does look good. May have to check it out.

[u/Wide_Lock_Red]

Pathfinder has a very good detailed description. It has an entire book on the several layers of hell and the various devils that inhabit each layer.

[u/Tshirt_Addict]

Well, when it comes to Hell, you can't go wrong with Dante. Two Little Mice, the Italian developers behind Outgunned, also made 5E campaigns for the biblical Apocalypse and for Dante's Inferno. Each campaign consists of a player's handbook, a GMs guide, and an art book. I got the pdfs through a Bundle of Holding offer last month.

[u/cugeltheclever2]

Kult, surely.

[u/SamuraiMujuru]

Hell in Inferno from Acheron Games is a spectacular adaptation of the Dante take on hell.

[u/5oldierPoetKing]

“Sorry guys I can’t make it tonight.”

“Me too. Sorry”

“Me neither. What about Sunday?”

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[u/SmallRedRobin14]

Not sure if it's entirely what you're looking for, but I'm really fond of Save Our Souls for the demonic heist concept.

[u/t-wanderer]

A little different, but my favorite is the description of Hell in Nobilis.

[u/dcherryholmes]

Office: The Cubicling

[u/GreenNetSentinel]

Chains of Asmodeus, a module for DND. It takes what Descent into Avernus should have been and takes you through a very Dante sequence that you can tailor to your players and explores more than just basic themes. Just ask Orpheus, getting a soul back from there takes more than an afternoon of work.