This week I decided to go back into my "archives" and look at a game from the early days of electronic publishing for tabletop gaming, the Dead Inside role-playing game by Chad Underkoffler and put out though his Atomic Sock Monkey imprint. As far I know, there was never a print version put out of this game (or if there was it was such a small print run that I missed out on it). Dead Inside is a game of personal horror informed by previous RPGs like Atlas Games' Unknown Armies line. I think that, for many of us right now, the themes of a game like Dead Inside resonant right now.
I first encountered Underkoffler's work through the Pyramid Online pay forum and online magazine that Steve Jackson Games used to run. It was a great gaming resource where you could read reviews, new gaming material, playtest upcoming games from Steve Jackson Games and other publishers. It was also combined with a private forum where you could interact with the various authors, talk about your games and do the sorts of things that you do on forums. Underkoffler had a column on Pyramid called Campaign In A Box where he would give an elevator pitch for a campaign that GMs could use as the starting point for their own campaigns. They were brief, but they gave a GM everything that they needed to get things started: an overview of the world, an idea of some of the important NPCs and some things for the player characters to do. It was similar to Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmissions column, but more focused on usability by a GM.
Over the course of his Campaign In A Box columns, Underkoffler started developing what he called the PDQ or Prose Descriptive Qualities System as a method for describing characters. This was a very rules light system (13 pages covered basic character creation and resolution rules), inspired by previous "descriptive" games like Atlas Games' game of surreal horror Over The Edge and early versions of the Fate rules.
I used to use the basic PDQ System for pick-up games quite a bit. The lightness of the rules made them easy to teach, and even someone without any foreknowledge of the rules could put a character together quickly with it. In comparison to more contemporary systems, I would put at about the same complexity of the Fate Accelerated rules. Fate Accelerated characters might actually be a little more complex than a PDQ character.
The qualities used to describe a PDQ character are central to the resolution rules for the game. The rank of the quality is a modifier to the 2d6 roll that determines the success or failure of a character's actions. Damage taken by a character reduces the ranks of their qualities, which can make future actions more difficult for them. This method enforce the trope that you see sometimes in comic book super-heroes like Spider-Man where you "punch" a character in their love life, because combats can have social repercussions in addition to physical ones.
This is a place where I think that PDQ actually outshines Fate. While Fate conflicts can have social or physical consequences, they are more delineated and you aren't as likely to get the result of someone being "punched in their love life." I think that this can make for more nuanced conflicts for characters that can have a narrative "punch" to them.
If you haven't tried a PDQ System game, I really suggest giving the rules a try. You can see some reflection of games like Dead Inside in Underkoffler's work on other role-playing games, like the Dresden Files game from Evil Hat Productions.
So, what is Dead Inside about? It is a game about magic and the soul, about people who discover that, through sale, bargain or theft, they are dead inside. One of the precepts of the game is that magic is powered by the soul of a person. Some have too much, and they are able to manipulate this as magical power. Some have none, and they are dead inside. Some physically die while they are dead inside, and they become less even than they were than when they were alive.
It isn't really a complicated set up, and unlike the games that inspired it, you don't get a lot of factions or organizations in the world of Dead Inside. There is no "inspired by real world occult beliefs" to this game. The idea is that one day a character wakes up with a gulf between them and the rest of the world. The people that they know find them to be strange and unnerving, and the characters struggle with being able to emotionally or socially connect with others, or even understand a joke.
Being dead inside opens up the doorways of perception for a character. They can now see spirits of the dead which, having a surfeit of spirit and a lack of a living body, are like the polar opposites of those who are dead inside. They can sense supernatural effects, like magic, and see the places where the boundaries between the different planes of existence are thinner.
Much of the game's setting breaks things down into the distinction of the physical and the spiritual. There are two main "worlds" in the game, one is the cold, hard world of "reality," and the other is the more mythic world of the Spirit. Whether magical or dead inside, mortals who are more in tune with the spirit energies of magic, are able to cross between the two worlds. Magical effects are easier in the spiritual world because there is less push back against them.
There is also a supplement for the "real world" of the game, called Cold, Hard World. Apparently I never picked up this PDF, and need to change that.
One of the main reasons why I liked this game at the time, besides the ease of the system, was the fact that it was an original idea. Most of the occult/horror games of the time were either recovering from Call of Cthulhu or trying to out dark games like Kult or Vampire. It might not seem like it on the surface, but Dead Inside is a pretty hopeful setting for a horror game, which is something that you don't see very often in horror games.
Yes, finding yourself (your character) to be dead inside is a downbeat concept. However, the default idea is that your character struggles to find a way to regain themself without losing anymore of their humanity. This can lead to a struggle more heroic than you'll find in most super-hero games. There are easy ways to regain your character's soul, but none of the easy ways help as much with their humanity. If a character regains their soul, but loses their humanity as a consequence, that can be as bad as having lost their soul in the first place.
This makes Dead Inside into a game that is simple to play while creating a rich and complex play experience. One of the reasons that I have drifted towards games with simpler mechanics over the last few years or so is because a game does not have to be complicated to offer up a rich and complex playing experience. The PDQ System is one of the games that taught me that lesson.
As an aside, something that I never realized until I started writing this piece, the cover for Dead Inside was made by artist and musician Steven Archer, of the atmospheric electronic band Ego Likeness. Fans of gothic and/or industrial music may be familiar with the name. The cover (which you see at the top of this article) does an excellent job of conveying the tone of the game.
The black and white line art of that is the bulk of the interior art is hit or miss. It is obvious that this is a self-published game, by the standards of the art and layout. Both are workmanlike and utilitarian. They work with the game, but they don't help to improve it either.
As much as I enjoyed the game, I do think that it could use a revision. Some of the more freeform aspects of the game could stand to be a bit more concretized.
Unfortunately, Underkoffler isn't as active in RPG design and development as he once was. In some ways, his design work was ahead of the curve for narratively-focused tabletop games and I think it would be interesting to see what directions that he would take a game like Dead Inside if he continued to push his PDQ System with newer developments in RPG design. But, who knows, maybe seeing talk about him and his game might spark some new interest in PDQ game development.
I first encountered Underkoffler's work through the Pyramid Online pay forum and online magazine that Steve Jackson Games used to run. It was a great gaming resource where you could read reviews, new gaming material, playtest upcoming games from Steve Jackson Games and other publishers. It was also combined with a private forum where you could interact with the various authors, talk about your games and do the sorts of things that you do on forums. Underkoffler had a column on Pyramid called Campaign In A Box where he would give an elevator pitch for a campaign that GMs could use as the starting point for their own campaigns. They were brief, but they gave a GM everything that they needed to get things started: an overview of the world, an idea of some of the important NPCs and some things for the player characters to do. It was similar to Ken Hite's Suppressed Transmissions column, but more focused on usability by a GM.
Over the course of his Campaign In A Box columns, Underkoffler started developing what he called the PDQ or Prose Descriptive Qualities System as a method for describing characters. This was a very rules light system (13 pages covered basic character creation and resolution rules), inspired by previous "descriptive" games like Atlas Games' game of surreal horror Over The Edge and early versions of the Fate rules.
I used to use the basic PDQ System for pick-up games quite a bit. The lightness of the rules made them easy to teach, and even someone without any foreknowledge of the rules could put a character together quickly with it. In comparison to more contemporary systems, I would put at about the same complexity of the Fate Accelerated rules. Fate Accelerated characters might actually be a little more complex than a PDQ character.
The qualities used to describe a PDQ character are central to the resolution rules for the game. The rank of the quality is a modifier to the 2d6 roll that determines the success or failure of a character's actions. Damage taken by a character reduces the ranks of their qualities, which can make future actions more difficult for them. This method enforce the trope that you see sometimes in comic book super-heroes like Spider-Man where you "punch" a character in their love life, because combats can have social repercussions in addition to physical ones.
This is a place where I think that PDQ actually outshines Fate. While Fate conflicts can have social or physical consequences, they are more delineated and you aren't as likely to get the result of someone being "punched in their love life." I think that this can make for more nuanced conflicts for characters that can have a narrative "punch" to them.
If you haven't tried a PDQ System game, I really suggest giving the rules a try. You can see some reflection of games like Dead Inside in Underkoffler's work on other role-playing games, like the Dresden Files game from Evil Hat Productions.
So, what is Dead Inside about? It is a game about magic and the soul, about people who discover that, through sale, bargain or theft, they are dead inside. One of the precepts of the game is that magic is powered by the soul of a person. Some have too much, and they are able to manipulate this as magical power. Some have none, and they are dead inside. Some physically die while they are dead inside, and they become less even than they were than when they were alive.
It isn't really a complicated set up, and unlike the games that inspired it, you don't get a lot of factions or organizations in the world of Dead Inside. There is no "inspired by real world occult beliefs" to this game. The idea is that one day a character wakes up with a gulf between them and the rest of the world. The people that they know find them to be strange and unnerving, and the characters struggle with being able to emotionally or socially connect with others, or even understand a joke.
Being dead inside opens up the doorways of perception for a character. They can now see spirits of the dead which, having a surfeit of spirit and a lack of a living body, are like the polar opposites of those who are dead inside. They can sense supernatural effects, like magic, and see the places where the boundaries between the different planes of existence are thinner.
Much of the game's setting breaks things down into the distinction of the physical and the spiritual. There are two main "worlds" in the game, one is the cold, hard world of "reality," and the other is the more mythic world of the Spirit. Whether magical or dead inside, mortals who are more in tune with the spirit energies of magic, are able to cross between the two worlds. Magical effects are easier in the spiritual world because there is less push back against them.
There is also a supplement for the "real world" of the game, called Cold, Hard World. Apparently I never picked up this PDF, and need to change that.
One of the main reasons why I liked this game at the time, besides the ease of the system, was the fact that it was an original idea. Most of the occult/horror games of the time were either recovering from Call of Cthulhu or trying to out dark games like Kult or Vampire. It might not seem like it on the surface, but Dead Inside is a pretty hopeful setting for a horror game, which is something that you don't see very often in horror games.
Yes, finding yourself (your character) to be dead inside is a downbeat concept. However, the default idea is that your character struggles to find a way to regain themself without losing anymore of their humanity. This can lead to a struggle more heroic than you'll find in most super-hero games. There are easy ways to regain your character's soul, but none of the easy ways help as much with their humanity. If a character regains their soul, but loses their humanity as a consequence, that can be as bad as having lost their soul in the first place.
This makes Dead Inside into a game that is simple to play while creating a rich and complex play experience. One of the reasons that I have drifted towards games with simpler mechanics over the last few years or so is because a game does not have to be complicated to offer up a rich and complex playing experience. The PDQ System is one of the games that taught me that lesson.
As an aside, something that I never realized until I started writing this piece, the cover for Dead Inside was made by artist and musician Steven Archer, of the atmospheric electronic band Ego Likeness. Fans of gothic and/or industrial music may be familiar with the name. The cover (which you see at the top of this article) does an excellent job of conveying the tone of the game.
The black and white line art of that is the bulk of the interior art is hit or miss. It is obvious that this is a self-published game, by the standards of the art and layout. Both are workmanlike and utilitarian. They work with the game, but they don't help to improve it either.
As much as I enjoyed the game, I do think that it could use a revision. Some of the more freeform aspects of the game could stand to be a bit more concretized.
Unfortunately, Underkoffler isn't as active in RPG design and development as he once was. In some ways, his design work was ahead of the curve for narratively-focused tabletop games and I think it would be interesting to see what directions that he would take a game like Dead Inside if he continued to push his PDQ System with newer developments in RPG design. But, who knows, maybe seeing talk about him and his game might spark some new interest in PDQ game development.
