Orpheus

by Richard Dansky, John Chambers, Bryan Armor

'This is Radio Free Death
the Voice of the Afterlife. Science thinks it's shattered the barrier between life and death, but it's only opened the floodgates. Stop meddling with the affairs of ghosts and close the doors before something follows you back through. You should have left some secrets buried, because now they won't go back to sleep without a fight.'
I See Dead People
It's called projecting, the ability to separate the soul from the body and interact with ghosts. It's a multi-billion dollar enterprise for companies like Orpheus Group, which offers its services to public and private interests. It's also a portent of dark things to come.

Orpheus is a new type of game, a ghost story for ghosts told in a six-book limited series. Hardcover. Core Book.

Genres: Role Playing Games, World Of Darkness, Horror, Ghosts

310 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

By day, Richard Dansky works as a professional video game designer and writer for Red Storm/Ubisoft, with credits on games like Splinter Cell: Blacklist. By night, he writes fiction, with his most recent book being the short fiction collection SNOWBIRD GOTHIC. Richard lives in North Carolina with his wife and their inevitable cats, books, and collection of single malt whiskys.

Reviews

[Wesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tabletop RPG by White Wolf Publishing marginally set in the (Old) World of Darkness, though it is created as a stand-alone game without attempts at crossover for the other game lines like Vampire: Teh Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, etc (Wraith being a possible and notable exception).

Without illuminating the big secrets of the game, the book outlines a setting in which a former cryogenics company unintentionally discovers a means of astral projection and upon doing so also find that ghosts are real. They form an investigative corporation called Orpheus Group, creating a corporate team for afterlife detective work. The company is hired by clients who may want to find out if a loved one is still wandering as a ghost, to exorcise a malignant spirit, or more clandestine operations. After all, when your body is legally dead in cryogenic stasis it is questionable whether the laws still apply to you. Why not slip into a rival corporate board room and learn its secrets, or use your newly acquired Horrors (aka ghost super-powers) to possess another person to do your bidding, or meld your spirit into a car to scare your client's unfaithful husband to death like in Stephen King's novel Christine?

The setting is ripe with possibilities and surprisingly effective, with a system that promotes teamwork without sacrificing individual strengths and weaknesses.

The game system is the Old World of Darkness d10 system, which has its statistical anomalies and vicious system for critical failures, or botching. Mass combat is particularly slow, favoring flavorful descriptions over efficiency and flow of dice-rolls.

The book has some typos, mistakes and confusing bits most of which were cleared up in an interview with its lead developer Lucien Soulban. However, this interview is not easy to find and as far as I know there is no easily accessed errata online or in subsequent books in the series (a total of 6 books in the limited meta-story).

There are clear connections and parallels to the game Wraith: The Oblivion and many of the same writers and game designers were involved in this production as well, Richard Dansky and Lucien Soulban perhaps being the most recognized. While this game has clear "Easter Eggs" and tidbits for the Wraith junky, it is NOT Wraith at all. The game mechanics in Orpheus are much clearer, the storyline is more accessible, and the style and game-play much more empowering and fun in Orpheus.

I would recommend this game for those who enjoy Roleplaying and Storytelling in a world of corporate espionage, ghost hunters and haunting spectral phenomena.

[Meow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This game has some minor issues that should/could have been ironed out with a little more care, but is, in concept, an amazing standalone WW game. The book itself is delightful, with the player getting clips of inter-office correspondence, news articles, and a number of other media to get a grip of the Orpheus world and lifestyle, and the game content is organized with White Wolf's usual beautiful artwork inbetween. If you can find a copy of this book and it's expansions, it's a great paranormal game to play with storyloving players.

[Oriana]

Orpheus (Orpheus) by Bryan Armor (2003)