Although individual campaigns can focus on combat or direct conflict, Heaven and Hell settled into a cold war called the "Great Game".

Bands do not tend to have a similar problem; redeeming a demon typically requires Superior intervention, whereas an angel can Fall spontaneously by itself.

If their answer is to their superior's satisfaction, then they will be brought before the Seraphim council where they will be given a task to perform (usually in some way related to the word they seek to obtain).

The Archangel or Demon Prince which a character works for shapes their nature, personality, abilities, and restrictions as much as their Choir or Band.

Most Archangels are hesitant to support one particular religion, but Dominic (Judgment) and Laurence (the Sword) take extra pains to promote Catholicism, while Khalid (Faith) is avowedly Muslim.

To accommodate both these perspectives, game literature often describes a morally gray universe, where angelic and demonic forces sometimes work together for mutual benefit.

Rolling all 1s or all 6s results in an "intervention" - divine or infernal, respectively - essentially filling the role of a spectacular success or failure.

Rolling 6, 6, 6 (the Number of the Beast, sometimes referred to as the freight train from Hell) results in an Infernal Intervention which has the opposite effects.

Though there are numerous powers players can purchase with experience or earn through missions, the rules themselves are at a level of simplicity that stands in stark contrast to the complex politics and baroque cosmology.

In the November 1997 edition of Dragon (Issue 241), Rick Swan complimented Steve Jackson Games for tackling "a volatile premise head on."

While he liked the streamlined rules, Swan thought the game's most impressive achievement "is not a vivid setting nor its imaginative mechanics, but its respectful, even reverent treatment of a sensitive subject."

"[3] In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted that this game "takes itself rather seriously.