The original cover.
kill puppies for satan (stylized as all lowercase, because Satan can't afford capital letters) is an indie role-playing game published by Lumpley Games, where players are not just encouraged but required to play a Stupid Evil Goldfish Poop Gang of Hollywood Satanists who fuel their magic powers by ...guess.
While the original game was intended as nothing more than a parody, and, in the author's own words, a giant "Fuck you!" to the tide of Evil Versus Evil, '90s Anti-Hero-filled games inspired by Vampire: The Masquerade, to the point it was never even play-tested, its blissfully simple and story-focused mechanics were actually quite innovative. This alone probably wouldn't have enticed many role-players into trying such an ... uninhibited ... game, were it not for the gamebook's truly inimitable Lemony Narrator, who explains his awful world in a breathless yet hilariously matter-of-fact rant.
kill puppies for satan contains examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: How repugnant are our "protagonists?" Per the actual game rules, it takes less magical power to teleport the entire contents of the New York City sewer system into the Vatican than to "make one clean, attractive and healthy normal person consider for one second having sex with you."
- Affably Evil: It's suggested the GM roleplay Satan like this; he's quite charismatic and nothing the PCs can do will really faze him (he's already suffered a lot worse), but he is still the most evil being in the world.
- An Anti-Role Model is You: A typical PC is the abandoned dumpster baby of the loser bully from an '80s Afterschool Special and the dimmest psychopath from a Tarantino grindhouse flick.
- Bedlam House: The sample adventure revolves around rescuing a somehow even more pathetic friend from one of these.
- The Devil Is a Loser: No, but his followers sure are.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The PCs may be cold fucked up mean relentless motherfuckers, but they're not "totally heartless pieces of shit," so they're going to risk their lives to spring their buddy Gerald from the insane asylum.
- Evil Is Petty: And pretty much exclusively petty. The gamebook implies that Satan doesn't even really care if the puppies die, he just needs some makework to keep your bonehead characters out of the way of the competent evil.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Much like in Paranoia, if the PCs are able to make their lives better in any significant way, the GM isn't doing his job right.
- For the Evulz: Don't expect the PCs to have some Visionary Villain excuse for why they're torturing small animals.
- Goldfish Poop Gang: Satan wouldn't dream of letting the PCs near any 'important' evil, like tempting people to sin or figuring out whose death will actually make the world a worse place. In-game, this because Hell's demons are unionized with an exclusive work contract, and if you thought the Teamsters were bad, wait until you try scabbing for a millenia-old incarnation of evil. Out-of-character,
Word of God is that the characters need to stay pathetic to keep the game enjoyable for anyone who's not a bona-fide sociopath in real life. - Hollywood Satanism: The PCs' job is to play this absolutely straight, minus any genuine menace or competence in general. Satan himself really doesn't care what they're up to and generally tries to keep them away from the real work of corrupting the world.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain:D. Vincent Baker: You play the game, and there's this thing that happens where the characters suck, and oh my god, these are like the worst people ever, and all you want to do is see them punched over and over. For a while, you punch them and it's really funny. I'm punching my character, and you're punching my character, and the GM is punching my character, and it's just hilarious, the hamster wheel of evil, where I go killing puppies, but that gets me in big trouble, so I spend all my evil on flashy, gigantic, ridiculous, hilarious escapades that are ultimately fruitless, because it's the hamster wheel. You know, I'm in that trouble because I was pursuing killing puppies for Satan, of all fucking things. After a while of that, you start to say, this guy could catch a break. You know, this guy is the worst person I've ever conceived of, I've just spent four hours barfing out whatever sick, loser, pathetic shit comes out of my brain, but you know ... maybe he should get to go on a date, maybe he should get his mother's underwear, or whatever he wants. And there's this real moment, and it doesn't happen every time, but it happens really consistently a majority of the time, where there's this moment where you as a player feel compassion and sort of benevolence towards your character.
- Kick the Dog: is what you do in a boring game for sane people. Here, your magic powers directly depend on how creatively you can kill that puppy.
- Moral Guardians: are just huge fans of this game. The author, D. Vincent Baker, keeps a running tally of how much hatemail he's received, complete with statistical breakdown of why they hate him. (So far, people seem to hate dead puppies more than Satan).
- No Animals Were Harmed: The author's website features a collection of several dozen angry emails from people who needed to be told this personally.
- Perpetual Poverty: An integral aspect of the game. In the words of the Lemony Narrator, "if your pcs want to be all independently wealthy and shit, ask them why they're killing puppies for satan (small fucking potatoes) instead of gutting cities, murdering the poor, and raping the developing world like good little industrialists. shit, those guys are satan's real toadies."
- Pest Controller: One of your two trademarks, as discussed below. You can spend your hard-earned evil to call up a swarm of any kind of vermin (rats, mosquitoes, leeches, Rottweiler-sized capybaras), and Satan not just refuses to award you any evil points for killing them, but actually takes some back, because you just sent their slimy little souls straight to Hell and now he has to pay for an exterminator.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: One of Satan's rules for his followers is 'try not to kill people'. After all, if they're good people they get to go to heaven, and if they're evil, Satan wants them on Earth making things worse for everyone.
- Toilet Humor: 90% of your Satanic powers are either this or vermin-based.
- Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: How can you tell the difference between a satanist and a sorcerer? Per the expansion 'Cockroach Souffle': "they're rich, suave, educated, and they take showers."
- Three-Stat System: Cold is your Intelligence stat. Fucked Up is your Perception/Stealth stat. Mean is your Strength/Combat stat, and Relentless is your Stamina stat.
- The Worm That Walks: One of the many vermin-based powers available to the PCs.
