New RPG Afterlife: Wandering Souls Explores What Comes Next

May 3, 2019 by dracs

New indie RPG Afterlife: Wandering Souls has come to Kickstarter, funding an exploration into the whatever lies beyond the veil of death.

In Afterlife, you take on the role of the newly deceased. Together with those others whom you met on the boat ride from life to death, you must wander this strange in-between world known as the Tenebris, stepping through portals to Limbo realms, in order to recover the memories of who you once were.

The setting of this world is an intriguing one. The Limbos the players explore can be literally any environment you can imagine, filled with denizens all unaware of the Tenebris and realms outside of their own. This provides a huge amount of creative freedom and means that you might well go from exploring an alien world to a bustling metropolis over the course of the one adventure.

The method of character creation is also interesting. The GM takes on the role of the Boatman, asking the players questions, based on a series of dice rolls, while ferrying them to the Tenebris. How they answer then gives the Wanderers their stats.

This seems like a very interesting way to create characters, while keeping their backstory a mystery even from the players, since the driving focus of the game is recovering those memories. It is also a great way of incorporating character creation into the actual gaming experience.

I am a sucker for afterlife explorations. I could wax lyrical on the subject of Sartre's No Exit, The Third Policeman, Dante's Inferno, What Dreams May Come, or The Good Place for hours, until someone distracts me with something Discworld related (which brings me onto Terry Pratchett's Eric!). The idea of exploring an afterlife setting in an RPG is not new, with previous titles like Wraith: The Oblivion and Orpheus both following similar lines.

However, this game's eye-catching style and focus upon the personal journey is something that has me really interested. I am very keen to learn more about this, and potentially even run it one day.

You can find more about the game from Angry Hamster Publishing, or by checking out the Kickstarter.

You can also download the Quickstart from DriveThruRPG.