Aloysius the Baseball Dog

Pages from the dream journal kept by the monk Myōe (明恵) (1173-1232) for most of his adult life, here featuring his sketch of a female version of the cosmic buddha Vairocana (毘盧遮那仏) from a dream in 1221

From the collection of Kōzanji Temple (高山寺) up in northwest Kyoto

Mirjana Nikolić as Radojka in the first Serbian horror movie Leptirica, 1973

Seekers Beyond the Shroud (2019) is a joint production of Black Oath Entertainment and Exalted Funeral. It’s a solo RPG, but it seeks to deliver a different experience from their previous solo effort, Disciples of Bone and Shadow. Here, you take the roll of a normal person who has awakened into a secret, supernatural society in modern London. The set-up reminds me quite a bit of the Secret World MMORPG (the only MMO I ever played and adored), with play focusing as much on personal occult exploration as it does on inter-factional skulduggery.

There are lots of things you can do in this game — the breadth of which is testament to the game’s ambition. It really wants to be a narrative sandbox and often manages it. Want to stay home and call up demons or explore the astral plane? Go for it! Want to go to the Omphalos to socialize? That’s cool too. Want to get involved in the the factions? You can do that too — most of the dungeon crawls are like occult shadowruns you’re hired to perform on their behalf, in fact. Doing so requires using dice and tables to randomly generate the locale, events, NPC reactions and what have you. It is pretty robust!

There are two main problems, though. First, because this is essentially an analog computer, you’re bound by the limitations of the programing, if that makes sense. I really want non-lethal stealth options and that isn’t really on the table. I think I was pushed in that direction by the difficulty level — I die a lot playing this game, which is the second problem. I know there are digital rules expansions that work to correct this, but I haven’t fiddled with them yet, so YMMV.