The concrete facade of the modern world is cracking, but you don’t need a specific rulebook to peer into the dark urban fantasy of Ævum Malum.
In this video, we are stripping away the constraints of a single system and declaring Ævum Malum completely system-agnostic! Whether you love tactical grid combat, deeply psychological horror, or narrative-driven political scheming, you can bring this grim, atmospheric world to your table using the dice pool you already know and love.
Today, we break down how to map the shadows of Ævum Malum onto massive RPG engines like the World of Darkness Storyteller System, GURPS, In Nomine, Savage Worlds, Urban Shadows, and more.
About Ævum Malum
Ævum Malum is a modern, urban dark fantasy campaign setting where hidden powers, forbidden knowledge, and living myths collide in a world held together by lies, secret societies, and the desperate effort to delay an inevitable unmaking. It was created by Adam P Campbell in 2025.
Transcript
Cold Open
Every game master has a favorite set of tools. Maybe you swear by the narrative flow of a d6 pool, or maybe you prefer the gritty mathematical realism of a percentile roll under. The truth is, the monsters lurking in the alleys of modern cities don’t care what dice you throw at them. The blood spills just the same.
Intro
Welcome to Eviliv3 Play, a celebration of my favorite tabletop role-playing games. This is a sister channel to Eviliv3. Subscribe if you’re new to the channel, because this is where we build dark, atmospheric worlds and untangle the threads of modern supernatural horror. For a while now, we’ve been deep in the trenches of developing the Ævum Malum setting. But I don’t want you to feel handcuffed to a specific set of rules to play in it. Today, I’m showing you exactly how to port this dark world into whatever RPG engine your table plays best.
Discussion
When you’re looking to bring a setting like Ævum Malum to life, the first place your mind probably goes is the massive engines that have defined urban horror for decades. And honestly, you can’t go wrong starting with the Industry Heavyweights.
First up, we have the Storyteller System, famously used in World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness. If your vision for this city is all about personal horror, internal monstrous struggles, and deeply entrenched supernatural factions, this is your effortless drop-in. The d10 pool is perfectly optimized for tracking political paranoia, dark elegance, and characters who are desperately trying to hold onto their humanity while navigating the shadows.
But maybe your table doesn’t want gothic elegance. Maybe you want cold, hard math. That’s where GURPS—the Generic Universal RolePlaying System—comes into play. GURPS is built for extreme realism, high lethality, and mechanical precision. If you want a campaign where caliber size actually matters, where tactical positioning is paramount, and where a single stray bullet from a supernatural creature can be instantly fatal, GURPS is your answer. Its 3d6 system allows you to build a hyper-detailed, incredibly gritty, and dangerous simulation of modern urban occultism where every single decision carries massive weight.
Now, if you want to move away from simulation and lean heavily into specific narrative themes, we have what I call the Thematic Contenders. These are systems built from the ground up to tell very particular types of stories.
Let’s talk about In Nomine. This system is entirely focused on the grand, cosmic war between angels and demons played out on the mortal plane. It features a unique ‘d666’ roll that completely dictates the vibe of the game. If the version of Ævum Malum you want to run leans heavily into literal celestial or infernal politics happening just beneath the city pavement, this engine is brilliant. It elegantly tracks divine intervention, demonic corruption, and the cosmic stakes of a street-level war.
On the complete opposite side of the mechanical spectrum, you have Urban Shadows. Utilizing a lightweight, 2d6 Powered by the Apocalypse engine, Urban Shadows completely skips tactical grid math. Instead, its mechanics focus entirely on gritty faction warfare, political debts, and shifting street-level alliances. It’s the ultimate toolkit for exploring drama, backstabbing, and what happens when the supernatural power players of the city clash over turf, forcing your players to choose a side.
Next, we have to look at the extremes of gameplay: do you want explosive cinematic action, or do you want a descent into absolute psychological madness? This is where our Action and Psychological Toolkits come in.
If you want your players to feel like badass monster hunters, you want Savage Worlds, specifically paired with the Horror Companion. This system delivers cinematic, fast-paced, action-forward pulp horror. If your campaign features high-speed car chases through rain-slicked streets, supernatural gun battles, and dynamic magic usage, this explosive polyhedral system delivers chaotic, thrilling combat without dragging down the narrative flow of your session.
But what if the real monster isn’t outside, but inside the mind? If your campaign focuses heavily on the psychological scars left behind by witnessing the unnatural, you need to look at Kult: Divinity Lost or Unknown Armies. These systems are designed for pure psychological horror, mental trauma, and the unraveling of human sanity. They provide deep, unsettling mechanical frameworks for tracking stress, madness, and the literal shattering of reality around your players as they realize just how dark the world truly is.
If your vision for the city involves peel-your-skin-back psychological surrealism or tight-lipped investigative conspiracies, then you need to look at the percentile engines. Let’s start by highlighting Unknown Armies (3rd Edition). This game isn’t about ancient gods; it’s about human obsession. It features a brilliant, brutal Shock Gauge that tracks how characters break down under violence, helplessness, and isolation. Magic here is fueled by human mania, making it a spectacular fit for an urban setting where the supernatural is birthed directly from the city’s worst impulses and secret subcultures.
On the flip side, if you want your players to feel like fragile mortals trying to keep a lid on cosmic horrors, you look at the d100 titans: Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu (Modern). Both systems utilize a lethal percentile mechanic where a gunfight is a death sentence and sanity is a depleting resource. Delta Green injects a brilliant layer of bureaucratic paranoia and modern federal cover-ups, perfect if your characters are agents trying to hide the existence of the unnatural from the public. Call of Cthulhu in a modern context delivers pure, unadulterated investigative dread, where the players are just ordinary people pulling at threads that will inevitably unravel their minds.
Finally, we have to talk about the d20 juggernauts. What if you and your table don’t want to learn an entirely new rulebook? You can absolutely reskin the world’s most popular fantasy engines: Dungeons & Dragons (the 2024 / 5.5 Edition) and Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
Running an urban occult setting in D&D 2024 means leaning into high-octane superheroics mixed with supernatural flavor. By swapping swords for firearms and castles for corporate skyscrapers, you get tactical, balanced combat that your players already know by heart. The updated 2024 rules streamline tactical options and subclass features, making it easy to reskin a Paladin into a divine street-vigilante or a Warlock into an occult corporate operative.
If you want that same d20 familiarity but with tight tactical balance and deep customization, Pathfinder 2e is an absolute dream. With its three-action economy and extensive archetype system, you can precisely build unique supernatural abilities without breaking the game’s math. Using PF2e’s Dark Archive or modern gear homebrew allows you to run intense, deeply tactical, encounter-based combat where monster hunting feels like a highly strategic chess match.
The bottom line is that you don’t have to sacrifice your familiar beloved tabletop roleplaying game system to immerse yourself in the modern, urban dark fantasy campaign setting of Ævum Malum. I am even developing an advanced system of my DL6 Basic system that I use for my Direlands Dark Fantasy Campaign Setting. Look forward to more details on that system in the future.
Outro
Thank you for watching today’s Ævum Malum episode. Subscribe and ring the bell if you are new to the channel. Don’t forget to click the like button and comment to let others learn about this dark and engaging, modern urban fantasy tabletop roleplaying game campaign setting. You can join my actual plays and get $10 by signing up to StartPlaying.Games, and even pick up other tabletop roleplaying games using my affiliate link in the description below.
Thank you to Creator Patrons Aaron Hardy & D. Robert Handy, Producer Patron David Galindo, and Developer Patrons Chris Androu & Sam Ruiz!
And as always, remember that evil spelled backwards is live, so get out there and Be Evil!