You Might Love It; You Might Hate It: Cha’alt Reviewed

Title: Cha’alt

Publisher: Kort’thalis Publishing

Author: Venger Satanis

Illustrators: Glynn Seal, Monstark, Yannick Bouchard, Brent Schreiber, Dan Brown, Paul Carrick, Luke Oram, Matthew Bailey, and Slappy

Year: 2019

Pages: 213 pages

Price: $20 PDF from DriveThruRPG

Part setting, part megadungeon, Cha’alt is a gonzo, post-apocalyptic world mashing science and sorcery in a fight for fortune, glory, and survival.

Cha’alt is a difficult title to review. On one hand, there’s plenty to praise. The worldbuilding is in-depth and well-thought out; Satanis does a great job in not only establishing the setting, but imbuing it with a sense of history and the feeling of being truly lived-in. His dungeon design rewards curiosity and exploration and his enemies feel as if they belong in the world he’s created. The book’s layout and design does a solid job supporting the text, offering glimpses of the glyphs and sigils that play such an important role in Cha’alt’s magic. Satanis’s prose is clear and often engaging, even with the smattering of grammatical challenges that arise. It’s clear that he has a vision for Cha’alt that’s been refined over time and iteration — but it’s also clear that vision isn’t for everyone.

Take, for example, the Kingdom of Ja’alette, one of the settings described in the book. Despite its name, it’s ruled by a matriarchy that has “decreed that masculinity is inherently evil and those born male are inferior to females.” The women of Ja’alette worship Tha’ates, the goddess of “feminism, pride, vanity, isolation, and revenge.” They castrate men and force them to “serve a female master in order to eradicate the corrupting influence of testosterone, which the matriarchs despise” meaning that about “90% of the males in Ja’alette are eunuchs.” Never fear, though, as “[e]veryday, a handful of males attempt to sneak out,” including “adolescents with their testicles still intact.”

This is already a lot to unpack. Those familiar with some of the darker corners of Reddit, including r/MensRights and now-defunt r/incels will likely notice a certain similarity in the rhetoric. Reading it aloud, it’s hard to miss the aural similarity between “Tha’ates” and “THOTs,” another term Santanis is fond of, and “Ja’alette” and Gillete, which drew criticism earlier this year for a commercial attempting to address toxic masculinity. Careful readers of Cha’alt will notice that unlike Kra’adumek —a city where everyone’s thoughts and actions are dictated by a demon worm¬, A’agrybah, The Domed City, or The Great Sunken Library, Ja’alette receives no real treatment of its technological or magical capabilities. Readers are simply informed that “most civilized lands refuse to do business with Ja’alette” and, as a result, zuleks are in use due to a “weak economy.”

This is on top of references to “hover-tanks” that police The Domed City, D-1, on guard against “illegals attempting to enter the dome, blend into society, and either steal what they can or enjoy what D-1 has to offer, pretending to be a natural citizen” and a humanoid author who has been “imprisoned for crimes against conformity” and has written “a novel about swords and sorcery in a gonzo, eldritch post-apocalyptic realm with some hot [g*psies] thrown in for good measure.” There’s also Cassa, leader of the “elite Scientific Reform Society” who is “ruthlessly determined and never in a good mood” as she pursues the society’s goal of “brainwash[ing] ‘the savages’ into believing that scientists must rule over mankind.”

The art is a similarly difficult topic. On the whole, it’s skillfully rendered in full-color. There’s been thought and care put into its use and the depictions of the monsters help to enhance the understanding provided by the written text. At the same time, however, it suffers from Cyberpunk 2020’s issues with visual depictions of women as well as the completely indecipherable decision to give its female monsters prominent genitalia — a fate its otherwise male or genderless monsters seem to be spared.

Needless to say, this is not a family-friendly game.

Cha’alt doesn’t suffer from a lack of creativity or an incomplete vision. It hasn’t been rushed; it’s been well-considered; and, if nothing else, it’s like few other games on the market today. This is a game that knows its intended audience and was clearly created with them in mind. Those who share Satanis’s apparent views and enjoy a robust roleplaying experience will be delighted with Cha’alt.

For anyone else, the game will be a hard sell, leaving would-be players put off at best or offended at worst.

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Sami Yuhas

Writer, gamer, and necromancer bard (at least in D&D). Sami focuses primarily on board and tabletop gaming, with a focus on sci-fi and fantasy, as well as worker-placements and co-op titles. She prides herself on the ability to overthink world building in games, and cites a three post manifesto on the costuming of XCOM 2 as among her greatest nerd achievements.

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