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It all begins with the word Metaplot. Much like PC gaming's once maligned term "Interactive Movie", the word "Metaplot" has often been the bugbear of many a game. White Wolf's new limited release game, Orpheus, is the latest in attempts to bridge the gap between metaplot and playability.

Unlike previous gamelines - both by White Wolf and other games companies - Orpheus is a six part game series. That's right, six books and then the game is completely published and completed. There is a seventh fiction anthology - but that is not the focus of this review series.

This review covers the first book - Orpheus - which contains the rules and opening gambit of the game's metaplot.

Setting

"I can see dead people, and they work for me now."

The game is set in White Wolf's much popularised World of Darkness setting - a more visceral and gothic vision of our own modern world. However, while the core setting is the same, Orpheus never crosses over to any of the other gamelines in the World of Darkness. It is essentially its own world.

Recent research by a company known as Orpheus Group has developed a new technology that allows the living to interact with the Hereafter. The realm of the dead. Although the regular public are yet to truly believe in this technology, Orpheus soon finds that there is good money to be made dealing with the dead.

Yet there are some strange details that are cause for concern. Firstly, there are no ghosts older than three years. That is no one who died earlier than three years from the beginning of the game is a ghost. They seem to have just all disappeared, and nobody knows why.

Secondly, a new drug has begun to surface - Pigment - which purports to have hallucenogenic properties that allow users to see ghosts.

Finally, strange ghosts - twisted and somehow more animalistic - have begun to plague Orpheus' agents. These creatures are hostile and alien, totally unfathomable to agents of the company.

It is into this strange new world that the players are thrust as "Projectors" the agents of Orpheus who can detach their souls from their bodies and wander the hereafter as ghosts themselves. Either through tantric meditation, or cryostasis; Orpheus agents traffic with the dead to help the living, spy on people and perform a variety of useful activities which clients are happy to pay for that utilize these special abilities.

Layout and Style

X-Files meets Sixth Sense

Visually Orpheus is a beautiful book. Each chapter has a different form of presentation to allow for easy reference, while still providing a cohesive unified structure. The fonts used are clear and easy to read, and the general impression is a tight, professionally produced product.

While there are the occasional errors - overall the book is presented in an easy to read manner.

The visual style is effectively haunting - pages are bordered with clippings from x-rays, chains, nuts and bolts and even what looks like shredded top secret documents. The art is evocative of the feel of the game - a gritty ghost movie. Which brings me to the main style.

Orpheus is a cinematic game at the core. It draws from a variety of ghost movies and attempts to emulate the feel and atmosphere of those films. At the beginning of the book is a small diatribe about the ethos of the game - that of a movie model - and explains how Orpheus intends to tackle its metaplot.

Each book is effectively the next 15-20 minutes of the "movie" and so focuses on the core structure of each narrative arc. Being the opening book, the main rules simply sets the scene, hints at what is going to happen and takes the time to let the players get comfortable with the world before things go to hell.

The opening chapter's mix of direct setting description combined with numerous clippings and printouts gives a variety of clues and hints about what may be happening without directly saying "X is suspicious" and "Y is the bad guy."

System

Things to do when you're dead

Utilizing the revised Storteller system from the World of Darkness gamelines, Orpheus does make a few subtle changes. Essentially the system is a dice pool system that uses dots on the character sheet to represent the number of dice a charater has in each attribute and ability. The more dice, the more capable your character is. Pools consist of combining Attributes and Abilities, then rolling against a variable target number set by the Storyteller - White Wolf's catchterm for "Game Master.

So, for example, a character with Dexterity of 3 and a melee skill of 4 would roll 7 10 sided dice against a difficulty ranging from 1-10. Each die that rolls the number or higher is considered a success - with players wanting to net the most successes they can.

Character Creation

The game's character creation rules mirror those of most other World of Darkness games, but with a couple of minor alterations. You are given a set number of dots for each step of creation, with which you define your characters' traits. Then you select a Lament. This is how your character "projects" his or her spirit.

There are four Laments in the main rulebook. Skimmers - these are talented agents who can project their spirits through meditation and other yogic techniques. Sleepers - sort of Flatliner type projectors who are placed in cryotubes where they are made clinically dead, forcing their spirits from their bodies, but without completely killing the body. Spirits - these are ghosts. Now dead, they still wander the Hereafter and have been hired by Orpheus to make the most of their situation. In return, Orpheus helps Spirits to resolve their unfinished business so that they may then pass on to their final reward. Finally, there are Hues - spirits of people who have been Pigment addicts that died. Somehow the Pigment has made their souls weaker than usual, and they are somehow tainted.

After selecting a Lament, the player then chooses a Shade. This is much like the traditional White Wolf "clan/tribe/tradition" deal. The Shade dictates what kind of a ghost your spirit is. There are five listed in the main rulebook - however there is evidence in Orpheus that suggests there are three other Shades...

The shade you choose dictates your Willpower, Vitality and Spite - as well as what Horrors you can use. (These are the special abilities of your character.)

Banshees are prophetic ghosts who can effect the world around them with their voice; Haunters are able to "possess" non-living things such as houses and cars - then control these things as if they were a body; Poltergeists are destructive entities that can move objects and attack the living by hurling furniture around; Skinriders are ghosts capable of possessing a living human being and controlling their body; Wisps are teleporting ghosts that are able to toy with human emotions and hypnotise them with shimmering lights.

Following this choice the player then chooses a Nature - this is something that describes the core drive of the character. Are they a dreamer, bon vivant, manipulator? Whatever you choose, it has an effect on your Willpower, Vitality and Spite scores. That's right, your personality has a mechanical effect on your character...

Then the player chooses background advantages and personalises their character.

One element I liked was that Orpheus also includes a new concept called "roles". While these are not necessary, they do help new players to create a character quickly by offering a number of archetypal character roles - Cop, Eco Terrorist, Student, Prostitute - and a guide on how to best spend their points creating that character without forcing them to take specific numbers in specific abilities. Very handy, and an addition that helped one of my players get her character up and running within twenty minutes.

My only complaint was that the skill descriptions had some irresponsible writing involved. In one particular instance the skill description actually gives away the ending to Sixth Sense. Now this might sound like a small thing - but as luck would have it, one of the players in my group hadn't seen the movie yet and had spent the last few years making sure that nobody told him the ending so that he could see it and still be surprised. I bring this up because he was, and I feel justifiably so, quite annoyed when he read the ending while trying to decide what skills to take. It seems small, but it is something that I do think is irresponsible - it's like giving away the secret of Usual Suspects. Sure, a lot of people know the ending - but some do not. To just state it clearly and in such a blasé manner was a bit off. Take note White Wolf... I had to deal with a good fifteen minutes of cussing and swearing that night because of that little sentence. Still it wasn't bad enough to ruin my opinion of the game - just enough for me to put this in here as a warning so that other people are aware of the existence of this offending sentence. Pg 178, Enigmas. Make sure that anyone who hasn't seen the movie, but is intending to does NOT read this page...

Aside from traits and abilities, characters also have a number of automatic special abilities - these relate to them being closer to the realm of the dead than most living. They are able to sense a ghost's needs and also can see the dead walking around, even then others cannot.

Vitality, Spite and Horrors

Three key elements of the game are Vitality, Spite and Horrors. Vitality is a measure of how strong a character's soul is; Spite measures the level of anger and repressed negativity is within the character's spirit; Horrors are the special powers of particularly strong ghosts - like the PCs.

Vitality has a variety of uses. It is a measure of a character's spiritual strength - and thereby is their health points when taking on a ghostly form - and it is also used to power their Horrors. Vitality is also used to power "manifestation." This is when a ghost decides to become visible to the Living. Depending on how much is spent depends on how the manifestation looks.

Naturally this means that Vitality is both a core stat, and one that can burn up pretty quickly. Players can spend Willpower points to restore Vitality - but there is also an easier way for those with weaker wills. Spite.

Spite is essentially a measure of how corrupted and negative a spirit is. How much they have allowed themselves to be filled with hatred and anger. Depending on how much spite a character has accrued, they can increase their Vitality by "tapping" Spite - this involves temporarily using a Spite to roll a die. Regardless of what the player rolls, they restore the Spite - however a success means that they also gain another point of Spite. Thus Spite never decreases, but always increases. Spite is also used to fuel another type of ghostly power - the Stain. Stains are mutations in the spirit that can be used to benefit combat - at the cost of gaining more Spite - and tend to be such things as growing spines and quills, breathing noxious fumes or having insectoid eyes.

Finally there are Horrors. These are the normal ghostly powers a spirit can use. These powers have different effects depending on how much vitality a character pumps into them. They also have a subsidiary ability that can be used to boost another Spirit's Horror.

GM advice and other materials

The book also contains a lot of GM advice about how to capture the right tone for Orpheus. Being built on a movie model, there are discussions on the various movie tropes that GMs can draw on to create the appropriate atmosphere. There is also an appendix of story hooks to help a beginner storyteller get started quickly, and these hooks are interesting and compelling enough to provide dozens of great adventures just from this one book alone.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Orpheus is a great game. The dice mechanic, for the uninitiated, is standard and reliable. The setting is great, a kind of X-files meets Sixth Sense, where one session players will be investigating a haunting, then the next they're spying on a cheating husband.

Given that there is clearly more going on behind the scenes in the game setting too - it helps to draw the players and GM into the metaplot without forcing it down their throats.

A definite two thumbs up. This book is complete and well worth the purchase - while also managing to make you want to see where White Wolf are intending on taking the game...

Should I buy it? Like horror movies? Want to try something new and inventive - then get this book!

Addendum - Wraith

No discussion of Orpheus can completely ignore White Wolf's previous ghost game, Wraith: The Oblivion. A number of die-hard Wraith fans have panned Orpheus for not being... well... Wraith. While Orpheus does draw upon the Wraith Mythos, it is a sequel that ties up loose ends from Wraith, but from a very different perspective. Much of Orpheus' mechanics improve on the somewhat cumbersome rules that shackled Wraith. The handling of ghostly manifestation and ghostly powers is definitely an improvement on the rather flawed design of Wraith's ghosts.

Ultimately though, Wraith is a game that ran its course. Orpheus has its own story and is based on different source material. Rather than being a dark, gothic fantasy - Orpheus attempts to emulate popular ghost films, making the Horrors and antagonists more like those seen in horror movies rather than ghost stories. They are two very different beasts and need to be treated as such. Having said that, given the direction of the latter supplements, Orpheus gains an added level of enjoyment for those familiar with Wraith by returning to many of the mythos elements of that previous game and providing a new relevatory twist to them...