In the future, telepathy is no longer a fantasy; it’s a job.

Gina- just Gina- is a woman with no future, trying to make her living along the Street of Eyes, where people go to hire the desperate and the suicidal for their unique services. She is one of the sellers, the new underclass, who use “third eye” or “Spice”- a powerful drug that gives them the ability to read minds- as their way of making ends meet. The drug has only one downside- it drives the user insane.

Street: Empathy is the first volume of the acclaimed online series by Ryan A. Span. Buy it now from Amazon.com.

Borrowing snippets from the back cover of the book, Blood Games II is an occult-horror role-playing game about courage, self-sacrifice and desperate heroism with no hope of reward. I think of it along the lines of “John Constantine meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. There are a lot of great ideas in the book and there is an underlying sinister tone that helps separate this game of occult horror from lighter traditional urban fantasy.

Lily rolled down the passenger side window, leaned out, and flailed blindly with her silver dagger, feeling it sink into whatever it was on top of the car. In the back seat, Leroy desperately fired his weapon into the roof of the car, temporarily deafening the occupants in the process. The wolf-man smashed his massive paw through the driver’s side of the windshield and slashed at Chloe, slicing into her scalp and sending blood flowing down into her eyes. Keeping her wits about her, she floored the accelerator and then braked sharply.

Written by El Zambo

In short, Cold Space has the benefit of a setting which promotes instantly understandable motivations for action and this should at least help players and GM alike structure a campaign and anticipate what kinds of scenarios are likely to be played out. The game is not likely to promote a richer appreciation of the reality of recent history than one of basic confrontation but, then, that is not really its purpose. My immediate response is to conceive of campaigns or characters who would subvert what seem to be the premises of the historical background but then I am nearly always an outlier when it comes to these things.

It was too late for tracking. This close to nightfall it would be tired of running. If he gave it an opening it would charge into the open. Abram made himself sound as panicked as possible, he broke branches, stumbled over roots and force himself to pant. It went against every instinct he had developed over the years of the hunt. Pam was right behind him, mimicking his actions but she wasn’t pretending. Whatever façade of strength she had summoned up to come with him tonight was gone now. There wasn’t time for a pep talk. “In a few minutes it won’t matter anyway,” thought a particularly bitter piece of Abram.

Written for the Blood Games setting by Daniel Potter

Clash tells us about his company, Flying Mice LLC and the RPGs that he has worked on, including Blood Games, Starcluster and more.

Let’s walk through the book, and examine the contents as we go. After a brief introductory story which is continued in series throughout the rest of the book, Blood Games launches immediately into their version of the secret history of the world. Here we find that a universal savior of sorts (known alternately as Norandon, Prometheus, etc.) has given humanity the ability to fight back the “Creatures of Night”, such as werewolves, vampires, demons, etc. Think “Warlock: The Armageddon” with its hidden society of witches. All in all, the introduction lays out a limited groundwork for the nature of games, including basics of how magic is used and constrained.