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Dead Inside
Length: 126 pages
Price: $13.00 (as a PDF) or $25.00
Publisher: Atomic Sock Monkey Press www.atomicsockmonkey.com
ISBN: none
A lot of times, you'll see me hailing a game because of it's innovation, in the sense that the game brings something new to the whole concept of RPGs. Like the way mass production as an innovation for cars, producing the clunky but innovative Model T Ford.
However, sometimes you will find a game which, while it technically brings nothing new to the table, or at least nothing you haven't seen before in some way, it makes use of those tools in such a well-integrated fashion that it's a different form of innovation. Compare a top-of-the-line Formula One racecar to the Model T ford.
That's what Dead Inside is. It's a sleek, fast machine, using conventional but top-of-the-line and carefully integrated parts. It does what it needs well, with no wasted energy and all motion. It's a game about losing your soul, and what you have to do to get it back, and everything in the game focuses on that.
Which isn't to say that it doesn't have some warts. Let's get those out of the way quickly.
First, I hate 60% of the art, particularly the ugly cover painting, and of the remaining 40%, about half those pictures are mediocre. But since I don't care much about art in RPGs so much as content, this is a forgivable sin, and a matter of taste anyway. This game has content in spades. (Yes, I know art can be content, but it isn't in this game. It fills space. It's nowhere near as evocative as the text, tho a couple of the pictures approach it. Though I did like the digital clocks. You'll know what I mean when you see them.)
Second, and this is a nitpick, I hate the term "Dead Inside," as a noun, for the protagonists of the game. As in: "This man is a Dead Inside." It sounds awkward. I would have called the soulless PCs "Empties" or something rather than "Dead Insides", and kept the evocative name of the game the same, as in "Empties are dead inside." Nothing to stop me from doing that in my own game, but I stumble on it every time it pops up in the text, which is a lot.
Third, if you buy this game as a PDF, as I did, it is a bit overlong for a PDF. It's a good length for a "standard" print RPG book, but it's awful big when you're printing it yourself. Considering it's all useful stuff, this is really another nitpick.
That's it for the bad. Everything else in the game is good. So, let's talk about what you get.
After a brief introduction, the first chapter is about what it means to be Dead Inside. In essence, PCs are humans who are missing their souls. Perhaps your character destroyed his soul by persuing his base desires. Perhaps your PC was born without a soul. Maybe it was stolen from her, or she traded it for something.
However, not unlike Vampire: The Masquerade, now that you're damned, you get nifty powers. Being without a soul wakes the PC up to spiritual matters one normally wouldn't see, because having a soul insulates most people from them. Of course, being able to do things like see ghosts opens the character up to unique dangers and annoyances as well, and there's that ever-gaping hole the character wants filled...
The chapter goes on the explain the cosmology a bit. In essence, there is a spirit world beween the material world and "the Source", where all souls come from and return to upon death. The game's take on the afterlife is a pretty standard reincarnation-based setup. On the "other side" of the material world from the spirit world is the Void, which is the force of entropy, attempting to devour everything, including and especially souls. In essence, the material world is a shell protecting the spirit world and the Source from the Void. All of this is explained in more than adequate detail on a single page, which I appreciated a lot.
After that brief digression for cosmology, the chapter quickly goes over how to fill that soulless void. In essence, it's a matter of getting enough "soul stuff" (as it were) to grow a new soul, or just fill in that hole. In short, you can eat a ghost (i.e. steal their soul, which is all a ghost is made of), steal someone else's soul, get your own soul back (depending on how you lost it), grow a new soul (which requires, in essence, doing good deeds), or accept dangerous quests from archetypal spirit-guides called "Imagos".
Chapter Two is about the spirit world. Like a lot of games that feature a spirit world, supernatural powers work better there. Unlike a lot of other games that feature a spirit world, it's relatively easy to get there and you're encouraged to spend most of your time there.
For this reason, the spirit world is gone into in a lot of detail. You learn about the different types of supernatural beings one can find in the spirit world (and sometimes the real world), including the mysterious Imagos. Extra detail is provided on The City, an archetypal city at the center of the spirit world. The City and the surrounding Spirit World is filled with interesting and vibrant locations, with lots of opportunities to get into trouble. I particularly like the archetypal "bar/hang out", the White Monkey.
I particularly like Chapter Two because it provides more useful detail and ideas for running a game in sixteen pages or so than many games provide in 128 pages. Interesting, evocative, and succinct. You can't beat that.
Chapter Three is character generation. The system is best described as combining the best aspects of FUDGE and Over the Edge: You pick several Qualities for your character, like "Teacher" or "Roguishly Handsome", which are rated on a five-level descriptive scale anywhere from Poor (-2) to Master (+6). There is a wonderfully-described "penumbra" mechanic, dealing with the "shadow" cast by the Quality, i.e. all the situations where the Quality applies. PCs also have Abilities, which are supernatural powers, but are rated the same way, based on the rating of your Type Quality. (All PCs have the Type "Dead Inside" and have that Quality, though there are rules for playing other Types.)
Chapter Four goes into more detail about mechanics. It's a pretty basic task-resolution system. First, you compare the appropriate Quality to the "Difficulty Rank" of the task, which is based on the same scale. If the Quality is higher, the character succeeds, no roll needed. If the Difficulty is equal or higher, you have to roll. In that case, you roll 2d6 and add your Quality's value (anywhere from -2 to +6), aiming at a target number which is set by the Difficulty Rank (there's a tiny chart). Note that the target numbers are such that on an average roll on 2d6, when adding in the Quality, you'd be assured of success if your Quality is higher than the Difficulty, which justifies the diceless "simple task" for even those who like a little randomness. Chances are, there's no point in rolling if your Quality is higher than the Difficulty.
Now, if you're opposing another character, both characters roll, trying to beat each other in terms of total. Normally I'm suspicious of having both "static" rolls and opposed rolls in a game for a variety of reasons, but in this case the target numbers have been jiggered so that it's essentially the same as an opposed roll, only assuming the "opponent" rolled a 7 (average) on 2d6 for the sake of speed. If you cared, you could use opposed rolls for everything and it wouldn't be that different on average, just perhaps slower to play and with slightly more variation in individual results.
Conflicts (i.e. situations calling for opposed rolls) are a little more complicated in other ways as well. Really, they resemble the "extended conflict" rules for Heroquest. You determine intiative, see who wins a given exchange, and take damage to appropriate Qualities. After that, maybe you do it again, depending on the situation. This system is designed to work equally well for combat (which isn't the focus of Dead Inside) and for extended chess matches, a lesson which the author of Tibet: the RPG could have used.
After going over the basic mechanics, there is a specific virtue and vice system, and more detail on Soul Points. See, certain acts make your soul stronger, and others are "soul rotting". All characters have a Soul Point total indicating how powerful their soul is. Get enough Soul Points, and you're no longer Dead Inside. Every character has a Virtue and a Vice, which can give bonuses and penalties for appropriate rolls. Soul Points can be used to activate Abilities (supernatural powers), as spiritual currency, or for improvement.
As far as improvement, there is a well-defined progression in Dead Inside. With a lot of soul cultivation, a PC can cease to be Dead Inside. But even then the character isn't "normal". A character that "ensouls" becomes a Sensitive, a "whole" human who is nonetheless aware of spiritual matters and capable of supernatural feats. With more soul cultivation and a difficult ritual, a Sensitive can become a magickaly formidable Mage, and a Mage who cultivates even more Soul Points can perhaps become a True Immortal, if the Mage can figure out the correct method. As this progression continues, the game moves from "personal horror" to "urban fantasy", a line which it straddles well. Of course, burn too many Soul Points, or get them stolen or rotted, and you could backslide, even Husk and become a Qlippoth -- a being of arguably negative Soul, an avatar of the Void and an NPC monster.
After that is a succinct but complete section on supernatural powers, explaining everything each Type of supernatural being can do, how well they can do them, and what the costs are. Each Type, from those who are Dead Inside to Magi to Zombies (someone who is Dead Inside whose body died) have at least one unique "power" or effect, adding additional flavor to the game.
Chapter Five is called "GM advice", but it's more than that. There are guidelines for running games with other Types of beings than those who are Dead Inside, as well as some solid advice regarding setting the parameters of the campaign and running the game, including more details about the cosmology, spirit wold inhabitants, and the Qlippoth. (There's also an oddly out-of-place section on additional Spirit World locations and NPCs, which really belong in Chapter Two.)
Most important, however, is the section on adjudicating soul cultivation and soul decay, as this is really the heart of the game. While there is a default set of Virtues and Vices for the game, other options are provided, including the Eightfold Path of Buddhism. (Hmmm, this makes me think the game would be good for replacing the sytem in Tibet: the RPG.)
Regardless of the system you use, there is a system here for "Virtue Checks" and "Vice Checks", where characters might give into their worse (or better) natures against their will. The system is carefully written to add interest without railroading the PCs like similar systems sometimes do.
More important, however, is the system of "ticks and tallies". Whenever a character does something in line with a Virtue, the GM, who is keeping track of these things, puts a "tick" under that Virtue, regardless of whether it's the PC's "preferred" Virtue. Regardless of which Virtues are supported, the character also gets a Soul Cultivation tick. Five Soul Cultivation ticks equals a Soul Point, which doesn't have to be awarded right away -- there are a variety of options listed as to how to handle the actual award of Soul Points. Vices are tracked the same way, with ticks for Vices earning Soul Decay ticks. Five Soul Decay ticks, and you lose a Soul Point.
Some may argue that this makes it tough to be evil, but that's not so. There is an excellent sidebar on this. You can't be stupid and evil -- being evil means being the master of the cost-benefit analysis. There are many "evil" acts, like, eating a ghost, that have a decent chance of gaining more Soul Points than are lost through natural -- and slow -- soul rotting. Also, the system doesn't care who you're being nice to and who you're being nasty to, so it's possible to have an evil character with a large number of allies he's good to (and being kind to your minions is a good idea anyway, realistically, regardless of what the Evil Villian Hanbook(tm) might say), earning him some soul cultivation to offset the nasty things the evil person is doing.
In addition to this, the ticks for individual Virtues and Vices allow you to adjust a character's personal Virtue and Vice over time, representing how a given character is during a given moment. Perhaps the character used to be Cowardly, but is now more Cruel...
The chapter ends with a solid overview of scenario design. Nothing new, but all good advice nonetheless.
Chapter Six is a glossary and biblography, and the "games" section reads like a Who's Who of some of the best games in the industry. Good stuff, tho if you're low on printer ink, you can probably skip it. In the same vein, Chapter Seven presents a solid, but skippable, introductary scenario.
All of the above, however, cannot begin to describe how well-tooled this game is. Everything in the game is focused toward its moral center, and everything carefully machined so it works exactly like the author wants. I can honestly say this game has a level of craftsmanship I find very appealing. If you're even the slightest bit interested in the subject matter, the game is a wonderful value, even for the print version.
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