Demon Creation

Ah yes, everyone’s favorite part, making your character, your own little guy through whom you can interact with the
game world.

First, choose a demonic species, your options being Imp, Succubus, Baphomet, Fish Demon, and Hellhound. If you’re
playing this game there’s a pretty good chance you know as much, if not more, about each of these species as I do,
so I’ll skip the foreplay and get into the guts of the game.

Version 0.1
Helluva-o, and welcome to Helluvan RPG, the Helluva
Boss fan TTRPG that I wrote in one night because I was
really excited after the new episode, using the guts of
a system that I was working on anyway for a different
game… which is how I did the “In one night” part.
This game requires 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12-sided dice to play,
as well as writing implements and people willing to put
up with each other for a number of hours.
If you like what you see, make sure to share it with your
friends and give me more reason to make further revi-
sions. If you don’t like what you see… well, share it any-
way, it’ll be hilarious, trust me.
Attributes
Characters have 5 Attributes: Strength, Agility, Aware-
ness, Intelligence, and Moxie (just one X)
Attributes are rated with dice representing a character’s
natural ability in those areas.
You have 2d6, 2d8, and 1d10 to distribute between at-
tributes.
Each species has one “Prime” attribute, whenever you
make a test using your prime attribute you get to add
a d4 to your attribute die. The prime attributes for each
species are as follows.
◊ Imp: Awareness
◊ Succubus: Moxie
◊ Baphomet: Intelligence
◊ Fish Demon: Agility
◊ Hellhound: Strength
I guess if you really wanted to you could also play a
condemned sinner. They get 1d6, 3d8, and 1d10, but no
prime attribute, and cannot leave the Pride ring.
Motivations
Characters also have 7 Motivations: Pride, Greed, Wrath,
Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth (that’s what we in the in-
dustry call “being thematic as fuck”).
Motivations are also rated with dice representing how
predisposed the character is towards each sin.
You have 1d4, 2d6, 1d8, 2d10, and 1d12 to distribute be-
tween motivations.
Alternatively, if you’ve bought a bunch of those
weird-sided dice and have really been looking for an ex-
cuse to use them, you can just take a fuckload of points
(38 for attributes and 56 for motivations), distribute
them however you fucking want, then use a d-whatever.
However, if you do not have an appropriate die you must
use the next size lower. And yes, this means you can put
a d50 in Lust and a d1 in everything else.

©2023 Z Gosck
Based on concepts created by Vivienne “VivziePop” Medrano
This is an unlicenced fan work and is not for commerical distribution
 Playing the Fucking Game
Alright, so I’m just going to go ahead and assume you know the basics of what a role-playing game is and how they
work in the abstract, and just explain how this one works specifically. Mainly because I don’t feel like explaining all
that stuff.
When to Roll The Dice
So as you play the game there will come points in which
the outcome of your character’s action is both uncertain
and meaningful. In such situations the game master will
call for a test to see if your character actually can do the
thing.
A test is performed by rolling the dice associated with
one attribute and one motivation, and comparing the
highest result of the two to the difficulty, with the fol-
lowing results.
◊ Both Exceed Difficulty: Fucking awesome, every-
thing worked out great, even greater than you indent-
ed.
◊ One Exceeds Difficulty: Success, you did the thing
you tried to do, good job sweety.
◊ Neither Exceeds Difficulty: Failure, you did not do
the thing, but at least you didn’t make things worse…
or maybe you did do the thing, and are going to have
to pay for it.
◊ Rolled two 1s: You’re fucked… like, in a bad way, not
only did you fail, but you actually made things consid-
erably worse.
But which attribute and motivation to use? Well, that is
ultimately up to the game master. There are really no set
combinations, just “Whatever makes sense at the time.”
For example, if you want to punch someone in their
bitch-ass face, you would obviously use Wrath+Strength,
but then you could also destroy someone verbally with
Wrath+Moxie, or hatch a petty revenge scheme with
Wrath+Intelligence. Whatever makes sense at the time.
Now given that the motivations were clearly picked for
their thematic value over their functionality, it may be a
little difficult to choose which one is most appropriate
for which situation. So here’s some general guidelines to
help you figure it out.
◊ Pride: Motivated by your own self-importance, used
when the goal is to elevate yourself or convince others
of your superiority.
◊ Greed: Motivated by desire for material wealth, used
when the goal is acquiring something.
◊ Wrath: Motivated by your anger and hatred, used
when the goal is to harm someone or something.
◊ Envy: Motivated by your disdain for someone else,
used when the goal is denying or taking something
from someone.
◊ Lust: Motivated by desire for experiences, used when
the goal is the acquisition of non-material wealth/
power and pleasurable experiences.
◊ Gluttony: Motivated by a desire to consume, used
when the goal is the consumption or destruction of
something or someone.
◊ Sloth: Motivated by desire to not act, used when the
goal is motivating others to act on your behalf or oth-
erwise avoiding action.
And here’s the best part, you get to roll for everything.
That’s right, player-fucking-agency baby! If you’re shoot-
ing at someone you roll Wrath+Awareness (or Agility,
honestly I don’t care how you want to rule on the “guns
use dexterity” versus “guns use perception” debate) and
if someone shoots at you, you roll Envy+Agility to dodge.
The enemy never gets a chance to roll a crit on you! You
can still get fucked by your own roll, but now it’s your
fault when it happens.
Here’s some more examples, specifically how each moti-
vation could be used in a situation where a character is
trying to sway someone’s attitude.
◊ Pride+Moxie: Impress upon someone your impor-
tance and splendor
◊ Greed+Moxie: Talk someone into giving you some-
thing
◊ Wrath+Moxie: Intimidate someone
◊ Envy+Movie: Turn someone against someone else
◊ Lust+Moxie: Convince someone to fuck you, or vote
for you
◊ Gluttony+Moxie: Convince someone to work against
their own self interests
◊ Sloth+Moxie: Convince someone to act on your be-
half
Wait, hold on, what
happens if I do get shot?
Oh yeah, good question. This game doesn’t use hit
points (because it’s not 1988) instead when you receive
a moderate injury you get a wound die. Just for a quick
reference, getting punched is not a moderate injury, get-
ting stabbed is.
Whenever you make a test while wounded, you roll the
wound die in addition to the attribute and motivation
dice and discard the highest result.
Example: If your imp was making a test using their Greed
of d10 and Awareness of d6+d4 (prime attribute) with a
wound die of d12, and got results of 6, 9, and 4 respec-
tively. The highest result, the 9 from their Awareness,
would be removed, making the roll result 6 and 4.
Wound dice start at d12 and then move down one step
with each additional wound. Once a wound die has
reached d4, taking an additional wound adds a second
die at d12 and discarding the two highest results.
Wounds are healed at the rate of “whenever the fuck the
game master thinks is an appropriate amount of time.”
But in general, characters try to avoid going out on dan-
gerous adventures when they’re still wounded from
their previous one. So usually heal up between outings.
 Running the Fucking Game
Someone has to be the game master and run this game, if you’re reading this section I guess that’s you. Once again,
I’m not going to go into basics, because I don’t feel like it, and only covering relevant information, as well as some
basic concepts people seem to have a really hard time understanding.
When to Call for a Test
As stated earlier, a test should be called for when the
results are “Both uncertain and meaningful.” It’s pretty
obvious when the results are uncertain, but how do you
know when they’re meaningful? Well fortunately for you
that’s the kind of question you really only write into a set
of rules when you have an answer for it, and that answer
is: when there are significant consequences for failure.
For example, let’s say a character is angry at a video
game and wants to flip a table. The results of that action
are uncertain, failing to flip the table is a distinct possi-
bility; however, the only consequence would be slight
embarrassment and lack of rage release. The results of
the action are ultimately meaningless, so you might as
well just let them enjoy the comically over-the-top mo-
ment.
However, if they wanted to flip the same table to cre-
ate a distraction while they run away because they just
got caught cheating at cards, a roll would be required,
because there would be significant consequences to
failure: The loss of time trying to flip the table with no
benefit.
Basically, only call for tests when doing so enhances the
game. Like yeah, engaging with the mechanics is fun,
but doing it too much can also slow things down to a
crawl.
Setting the Difficulty
As mentioned earlier, an attempt is successful when the
highest result exceeds the difficulty, but what is the dif-
ficulty? Well, it’s another die. That’s right, you get to roll
a die for every test. But what die to roll? Well, here’s a
general guide.
◊ D4-Easy: Things that almost anyone can do without
even thinking about it, only worth testing when con-
sequences of failure would be particularly bad, and/
or funny.
◊ D6-Average: The things that take a bit of skill and ef-
fort, but aren’t exactly rocket surgery.
◊ D8-Tricky: Things a bit more outside your comfort
zone, requiring moderate skill and ability.
◊ D10-Difficult: The sorts of things that make you go
“Dang, I wasn’t sure I was gonna pull through on that
one.”
◊ D12-Fuckin’ Hard: The sorts of things that you look at
and just go “Oh fuck me.”
◊ Impossible: Things that are literally impossible. Be-
cause of how the mechanics work, no roll is impossi-
ble. If you’re rolling 1d2 against a difficulty of 100d12
with 16d4 wound dice, success is unlikely, but still pos-
sible. So how do you get around that? Literally just do
not have players roll for things that are impossible.
“Falling Forward”
So, what happens when a character fails? Well that’s a
stupid question, the thing just doesn’t happen. I mean,
that’s how it works in D&D and therefore in every other
RPG right? Well let me give you a little scenario.
The characters need to break into a building, a single
door in a shady alley is the only access point.
They try to pick the lock… and fail
They try to break the door down… and fail
There is no path for things to move forward, so the game
ends and everyone goes home dissatisfied.
Now let’s try it again, but not like a fucking idiot.
The character tries to pick the lock… and fails
They hear the final pin click into place and confidently
turn the knob… setting off a screeching alarm.
They still failed, in that there were negative consequenc-
es for their actions, but those consequences were ones
that made things more difficult for the characters, not
placed them in a situation where there is no path for-
ward.
And hey I could go on quite a bit, but I literally made a
whole video on this topic, so if you want a deeper dis-
cussion on defining failure meaningfully, just watch that.
And that’s about it I guess, other than don’t be a dick…
or do, whatever. If you want to be the kind of person no-
body wants to play with, that’s really more a “you prob-
lem,” than it is a “game problem.”
Afterword
Well, that’s it For Helluvan RPG V0.1. As I said earlier, if
you like it, share it around. This is a thing I created for the
Helluva Boss fan community, and if I see no interest in it,
I don’t really have any reason to continue working on it.