Creating a cult?

Any superhero

A confluence of two things (needing to create background for Strange City, the four-part Friends of Jackson Elias podcast on cults, which I recommend) has me thinking about cults.

Now, from a story point of view, cults are often used to create hordes of nameless mooks who fight to the incapacitation. That's fine, but there could be other stories or other uses. For instance, in a superhero game you might want to have a significant NPC fall into the clutches of a cult, or you might want the Hunted to be a cult, or you might want the super-powered villain to be granted powers by a cult. But to do that, your cults need to be a little more nuanced.

What do cults do (narratively)?

Okay. So what do cults do, from a story point of view?

• They provide disposable mooks, as mentioned.
• They can pursue relentlessly (because it's their sense of self being threatened).
• They take members away from the characters.
• They enable the entrance of villains.

There might be more, but those are the ones that strike me immediately. Let's concentrate on that third one, because that one has the most to do with the cult.

Is there magic in this cult?

So the first thing I think of is, “Does the cult have real access or fake access to the supernatural?”

In most superhero game environments, there really is some kind of access to evil demons, spirits, other-dimensional entities, trapped gods, and so on. So: Does the cult have access to one of those? (And you can ring changes there, like this is the aftercult after the demon was exiled, this was a fake cult until the amnesiac joined who was actually the exiled demon Nialliv, or whatever.)

• If the cult has real access, then at some point, the players have to see it. The adventure is building to fighting the evil thing or stopping the ritual. The evil thing might be a bunch of misguided supers or maybe a freed demon or some kind of world-altering magic, but it exists.
• If the cult doesn't have access, then you have to decide what the real goal of the cult is. The adventure is building to freeing someone(s) from the cult. You can still introduce super-powered beings; most game worlds have those available for hire. But the cult as it is isn't about freeing Cthulhu or Ba'al or even Christ.

(Or not defeating the evil thing or not freeing the person. But you knew that, so I'm not going to mention that sort of thing again.)

This decision affects your adventure, not the design of the cult, but since this is a tool to an adventure, we do it now.

What do they say they want?

Look, relatively few people join a cult whose avowed goal is "release the evil world-destroying demon.' Even the Rapture fans who want to bring about Armageddon are doing it because they're sure that they will be on the side of good. (This is, I suppose, the equivalent of voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party, because you're sure that your face is safe.)

Whatever the thing is, that's what people are joining for. People tend to join at a time of confusion or uncertainty, and that's your goal. The supporting character wants protection from these eeeevil mentalists? The cult is an organization teaching useful mental protection techniques.

Real world things that have been used (and this isn't all of them, by a long shot, just a sampler).

• Tolerance and inclusivity (go ahead, look up Jim Jones)
• Ecological help
• Self-control
• Personal improvement generally
• Improve your money situation (this tends to be part of multilevel marketing scams instead, but "don't have financial worries" has certainly been used)
• A supportive community
• Personal fulfilment

What does the cult really want?

You probably want to specify this in two ways:

• The vague general goal, which could be “Make me money!” or “Free the voice in that book so it can give me money!”
• The specific, actionable goal, that your heroes are going to interfere with

I mean, if you only come up with one goal, great, but if it doesn't lead to a plan by the bad guys, then the good guys can't interfere. And if it's too specific, the cult doesn't return after your heroes interrupt the summoning. Now, sometimes that's okay, but sometimes you want the cult to hang around. “Oh, the Wave of Shimmering Light...those guys are bad news.”

(It occurs to me that you can use the same general step for creating an evil villain-based multi-level marketing campaign, too, but I digress.)

How do the heroes get involved?

So you have a vague idea of what the bad cult is doing, and you know why Feckless NPC joined. What does Feckless have to do that leads the heroes to the specific goal? Do the heroes find out about it because they're just researching the cult to find out if it's safe for Feckless? Or does Feckless have enough extradimensional energies in the body from various superhero-adjacent romps that it's specifically Feckless who has to be sacrificed for the incantation at midnight to work?

From those things, you should be able to generate a cult, have some idea of what they're doing as a recruiting tactic, and how the heroes get involved.