running on empty

Wow. There are very few role-playing games that simply floor me with the possibilities. Nobilis was one, although that was more for the perfection of the writing (in both versions), than the world or system. Underworld had a game setting that just bled magical reality and flavour text to match. Kult knew how to step on the reader's psychoses... There have been others, albiet very few of them really when you consider the number I've read, all the way back to when a friend brought back a strange little boxed game called Dungeons & Dragons from a vacation in America in the late 70s (back then the whole concept was exciting and intriguing and new). But Chad Underkoffler's Dead Inside is the latest of games that make me go "wow" (and probably the best to date). The basic premise of the game is simple. You have no soul. Perhaps you were never born with one or you let it wear out. Perhaps you lost it somewhere or had it stolen from you by a mysterious stranger. Maybe you sold it for that new expensive sports car and trophy wife, or simply staked it on that last hand at the casino - the one you knew had to win! Or you should have read the very small print in that too-good-to-believe sales contract before you signed. Whatever method you chose, you are now lacking a soul, and the world is now a cold and discomforting place. As Lois McMaster Bujold put it in Memory: "The one thing you can't give away for your heart's desire is your heart." But all hope is not lost. Perhaps you can convince someone to give them their soul. Maybe you could just steal it from them. Or eat a ghost. Or hardest of all, cultivate a new soul in it's place. And now that you are lacking the confining armour of a soul you are noticing new things you didn't see before. Like that Ghost who just walked through the wall. Or that zombie bagging groceries really is a Zombi. And that rainbow shining gate seems to be leading somewhere rather strange ... a place which reflects your inner nature. Chad has created a vibrant cosmology to support this premise, the lynchpin of which is the Spirit World, a place of the Jungian collective subconscious that changes as you do. A place of magical reality that can be manipulated, either purposefully or accidentally, and which will change as you do. A place where a rock may not simply be a piece of stone, but a symbol of a burden you must carry. Where the Woods are alive [1]. And your shadow is your Shadow (a Jungian archetype term). And once you have managed to re-ensoul, if that is your desire, the game doesn't need to stop. You can continue your spiritual evolution along alchemical/philosophical lines to gain a higher level of understanding. If you can manage to wed your anima/animus in an alchemical marriage (the syzygy), officiated by the Trickster, you can even become a powerful mage. And true enlightenment beckons if you can defeat your own Shadow. Perhaps even True Immortality. In many role-playing games characters tend to grow more proficient with time, or gain a measure of economic, political, spiritual or magical power. But in very few games do the character's actually grow or evolve as themselves [2]. And this is the focus of Dead Inside. It's a game where not just your actions which are examined, but the reason for why you took them, and your actions have more than the obvious consequences [3]. Highly reccomended. [1] I knew there was something about Juliette... [2] Pendragon, with its personality traits and passions was one, although it was rare for a character to progress beyond the level required to aquire certain advantages. Kult has the whole spiral down into madness or ultrasanity (both as bad as the other) thing going for it. But in most other games such changes in character were really only detailed in the character generation sections of the rules. [3] I always thought it would be interesting to run a pseudo-hawaiian game, where the greatest threat to a warrior was being haunted by the ghosts of your victims.