In January 2024 we presented the all-new Relics Bundle featuring Relics: A Game of Angels, the modern urban-fantasy RPG of earthbound angels by Steve Dee at Tin Star Games. You’re a fallen angel, trapped on Earth now that Heaven’s gates have closed forever. Powerful celestial items are scattered worldwide, and the cold war between light and dark has turned into a mad arms race. Control the Relics and you control the world – but first, you must find them.
Using the “blackjack with Tarot cards” Fugue System introduced in Alas Vegas, your angel explores its history through flashbacks, solving mysteries and developing new powers by revealing memories. Your angel character knows more than you (the player) do, and will surprise you during play. As unreliable narrators of their own past, angels expose deep secrets that help them grapple with the moral questions of their future.
In its theme of angels and demons waging a shadow war on Earth, Relics takes inspiration from In Nomine and films like Wings of Desire, Dogma, and The Prophecy. The game’s tone, if not the treatment, resembles early World of Darkness. “For the longest time, angels didn’t need to know anything or learn anything because they were connected to the cosmic truth of God,” the rulebook says. “Now they desperately need to know what’s going on. Ironically, humans may hold the very knowledge they seek.
“But that knowledge is tied up in powerful Relics, buried history, and sacred books, all typically possessed by dangerous and powerful institutions: godlike corporations, shadowy conspiracies, modern cults, and powerful religions. To find what they need, angels have to break into the most impregnable places on earth, fight the unstoppable power of worldwide organizations, and steal the unstealable from under their noses.”
To this end, angel personas (characters) have an Aspect (Striking, Resisting, Moving, Speaking) and power derived from a Dominion (Countenance, Excelsis, Intercession, Passings, Shaping, Witness, and others) that – if you possess your Relic – grants a Miracle, a supernatural power. The Level of a Miracle depends on the story’s Tier. A Tier 1 story allows brief glimpses of the future, a short believable illusion, minor telekinesis, and other semi-mundane effects. Worldchanging Tier 4 stories bring apocalyptic Miracles that level cities, rewrite scientific law or the past, and let angels destroy (or become) gods.
But to pull off a Miracle, you need your Relic. A Relics series is often about the hunt for these artifacts (both your own and those of enemies), and about the relics’ gradual awakening and revelation of the owner’s past. And your angel’s story develops in parallel: As your Relic activates a succession of new Miracle powers, your character reveals a past memory, narrated by another player. This memory works as a Blessing, an advantage in specific situations.
Relic activation, like every game mechanic in Relics, involves a Test, a random card draw from the Tarot deck. A Minor Arcana between 1 and 6 means failure; 7-10 is a yes-but “Grudging Success”; any court card is complete success; and most Major Arcana cards mean a yes-and Miracle. The Devil card is a critical failure. During character creation you pick your angel’s Signifier card; whenever that card is drawn, your Relic gains a new Miracle. There are also Complex Tests, which involve a blackjack-style system of multiple draws.
Funded in an April 2019 Kickstarter campaign, Relics (as the designer says up front) “plays fast and loose with the core mythologies of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, a bit of Zoroastrianism, and with several dead religions from the Middle East and Eurasia. Part of the thrill of the setting is the knowledge that, in-game, much of what these religions teach is inaccurate, incomplete, or only a shadow of the truth – and that angels get to know (some of) the real truth behind them.” The rulebook section “Ten Things to Know About Relics” – not “commandments,” note – starts with “1. The Bible Got Most of It Wrong.” And with God gone and Heaven closed off, the angels lack guidance and strictures. They must rediscover their morality and purpose from first principles. You know, like the rest of us.
“The purpose of angelic myth, fundamentally, is to discuss the nature of good and evil, and Relics is no exception. In particular, Relics is about the Problem of Evil, the philosophical question of what actions we take as good people to stop or curtail evil without compromising our own morality. This means there are no set moral boundaries or expectations built into the game.”
(There are no boundaries, but the setting definitely imposes expectations. Some other non-commandments on that “Ten Things” list: “The Path is Unclear” – “You Can’t Trust Anyone” – “Everybody Wants You Dead.”)
This all-new Relics Bundle included the entire game line for an unbeatable bargain price. There were five titles in our Relics Collection (retail value $60) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete 309-page Relics: A Game of Angels core rulebook (plus the free Quickstart Guide); the setting guide An Angel’s Guide to Las Vegas; the scenario By Demons Driven; a sourcebook/scenario, Treasures on Earth; and a print-and-cut Relics Tarot Deck in case you don’t have your own deck handy.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this Relics offer’s designated charity, the Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program. Each year, the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, amplifies the voices of up-and-coming game designers by featuring them during an expenses-paid visit to Gen Con. The global Emerging Designer Program focuses on creators from marginalized communities.
