Making A Mystery For The 7th Order: Humanity, Divinity & Consequences
The apocalypse has often been used as a vehicle to explore societal issues or fears... The main reason I made the Knights low-grade security guards is because it puts their position in this conflict into two different perspectives.
By Brian Miranda
The Seventh Order is a TTRPG about a motley crew of low-grade security guards finding out about the apocalypse and being tasked by a divine deity– called The Saint– to put a stop to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Not only that, our unlikely heroes– called Knights– have begun to notice that Angels, Demons, and all other manner of threats are terrorizing their city. By addressing those threats and solving these mysteries, the Knights can learn more about the divine world, the apocalypse, and maybe even the knights that have come before them.
The apocalypse has often been used as a vehicle to explore societal issues or fears, and this game is no exception. The main reason I made the Knights low-grade security guards is because it puts their position in this conflict into two different perspectives.
On the first perspective, we have the divine. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have decided that humanity has run its course, and it’s time to hit the red button. A divine deity– named The Saint– has approached you and your coworkers. Not badass men in black, not superpowered demon hunters, not super powerful and influential people; they have chosen you: a burnt-out adult with one too many responsibilities, as it is to defend humanity. You against the actual demons, angels, and god-like beings that have lived right under your nose. Worst of all, you don’t get a say in this.
On the other front, we have the Knight’s mundane lives. Regular people– to me at least– already feel small. People are constantly at the whims of forces much greater than themselves: billionaires, politicians, world leaders, CEOs, and while we will probably never meet these people and they will probably never meet us, their decisions–for better and especially for worse–have a real impact on us and, worst of all, we hardly get a say in it. Our Knights, much like us, are also caught in the middle of that conflict. They also have worldly concerns like paying their bills, caring for the people in their lives, trying to keep the pantry full, and everything else in between. Surviving in this world is a fickle task.
Everything about the game is about managing these two fronts.
Let’s take the mystery “Lupita the Pilgrim” for example. On the surface, this Mystery is about an alt-right media group, The Crusaders of Freedom, recruiting a young woman– Lupita– into their organization. This Lupita is actually an angel and is using her influence to bring more people into the fold. Clearly, a group of normal people– much less a group as nefarious as the Crusaders– have no business using an angel’s power like that, so you must find some way to put a stop to that. That’s the first front. The second front is the alt-right group themselves. The Mystery shows the Crusaders, even long before Lupita entered the picture, have done some real harm to people in the community. The Side Characters featured in the Mystery show this from several different angles such as a concerned parent, a professor, some of the Crusaders themselves, and even a young man who is at risk of falling into the pipeline.
While there are no predefined conclusions to the Mysteries– or even the campaign arc as a whole– I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that Lupita the Pilgrim doesn’t magically solve the alt-right problem. It may disband the Crusaders; it might even get some people to see the error of their ways. But the damage is done! There’s no reversing that! Because at the end of the day, Knights are just regular people trying to make it by like all the other Side Characters. But make no mistake: The game isn’t saying that nothing matters, there’s no point in trying, everything is going to suck forever. What the game is doing is saying, “I’m going to respect your intelligence: things aren’t looking good, and you may feel powerless to stop that. But by giving up or just lying down and letting the Four Horsemen end everything, you are forgoing the chance to try to make things just a little better. So as powerless as you might feel, you need to try.”
If you are interested in exploring these ideas, confronting the ills of our culture & deciding if the world is worth saving, check out The 7th Order and its companion game Ritual Deck over on Backerkit till October 24th.
