One of my all-time favourite obscure and indie RPGs is The Whispering Vault. It’s the first (and one of the very few) games I bought in PDF and then had to buy in softback which, in this case, meant hitting up eBay.
The Whispering Vault was first published by Mike Nystul in 1993, then moved to Chris Pramas’ Ronin Publishing and then in 2003 to Ronin Arts.
Ronin Arts, a company by Philip J Reed and Christopher Shy. Philip Reed is known from Steve Jackson Games and hundreds of successful Kickstarters and Christopher for the conceptual art in the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th, the Call of Duty and God of War: Ascension graphic novels.
Philip Reed Games has just re-released The Whispering Vault via DriveThruRPG, which costs $10.
In the game, characters are Stalkers, supernatural entities who generate bodies for specific missions to hunt down and capture would-be renegade gods.
The new blurb says;
Beyond the Realm of Flesh is an Unseen Realm of Essence where the dreaming spirits dwell. Slipping across the Rift between the Realms the Unbidden indulge their bloody passions in the world of men. The most resolute of those who oppose these renegades are chosen to serve a higher purpose as Stalkers — immortal guardians of the Flesh. Players explore the nightmare world of The Whispering Vault as Stalkers, supernatural entities with strange powers who pursue their otherworldly prey across time and space to the darkest corners of mankind’s history. A complete roleplaying game, The Whispering Vault combines an original setting with simple mechanics which allow the new player to generate a character and experience a hunt in a single session.
The Whispering Vault was first published in 1993 with a trigger warning and something akin to safety tools, which might be useful the next time you’re debating how RPGs have changed in recent years.
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