INTRODUCTION

Born from occult darkness, Seekers Beyond the Shroud is a solo-oriented tabletop roleplaying game featuring a unique style of play in a setting that appears grounded at first, but quickly spirals into a world of secret societies, hidden powers, and rituals. Blackoath Entertainment (Covert Wars, Disciples of Bone & Shadow) packed this unique RPG with evocative magic, an MMO-inspired hub world, deep lore, a full solo system, and much more.

Seekers Beyond the Shroud was originally launched on Kickstarter in September 2019, with Exalted Funeral at the helm, and was quickly successfully funded. With a limited edition hardcover release, along with a softcover version, the book is now widely available both physically (while supplies last) and digitally – links in the Wrap Up section of this highlight. Read our highlights for more details, along with an interview Alex T., the game designer and writer of Seekers Beyond the Shroud, from Blackoath Entertainment!

HIGHLIGHTS

Taking place in an occult riddled London, Seekers Beyond the Shroud is a truly unique take on a modern setting focused on what lies behind the curtains of reality. You’ll craft a single character using the included character generator and pick (or create) a background that leads your new character into the underbelly of society, where rituals, magic, and hidden factions determine the outcomes of events in the outside world. Character creation can take a few moments as you acclimate to the system, but once everything clicks you really feel the flow that Blackoath intended.

You’ll be introduced to the concept of magic fairly early, but aspects of the magic are truly revealed to you as you progress through the game. Rituals play a key role in how your character interacts with the darkness that you’ll inevitably come to rely upon, and these rituals are tied to specific timing of moon phases, astrological events, and more. In our opinion, it makes for an interesting divide between real world aspects that ground the world down in the reality we know, and the absolutely terrifying unknown. You’re forced to jump back and forth between this divide, if you want to survive, and it makes for an awesome game experience.

Seekers Beyond the Shroud includes a wealth of locations for your character to explore, non-traditional spells, adversaries to face, and loot you’ll ultimately be acquiring (oh, and a spirit compendium!). The last chapter also includes eleven scenarios for you to crawl through. It should be noted, there’s a ton to do in this game, the Locations & Activities section alone offers much in the way of game-able content. Alchemy fans will be pleasantly surprised by the crafting aspects introduced by the discipline, and trust us, you’ll definitely want to dip into that side of the system to keep your character goin’.

There’s an old school vibe throughout Seekers, from the pure amount of danger, to the tracking of your weight. You’ll definitely need to second guess taking on powerful enemies, and there’s no shame in running from a situation gone sideways. Those that did find shame in such, are already dead. Attribute tests, skill checks, and combat are all clearly outlined and should come easy to those already familiar.

All this is wrapped up in a cover done by the artist MosaEye which hits you right away with the morphing darkness you’ll be dabbling in. David Levi handles most of the interior artwork and oh does he handle it. Full page, evocative, black and white, pieces compliment each chapter. Stippling fans (or those that already know of Levi’s work) will not be disappointed. Wassai Khan also jumps into the mix with a number of dark sketch spot pieces that almost lean into the game itself. It’s as if your character quickly pulled a sketch book out while experiencing something unexplainable.

Alex T. designed and wrote Seekers Beyond the Shroud (with editing help from Vi Huntsman and the rest of Moonrat Conspiracy); you’ll ultimately be interfacing with his text as you navigate the game and setting. You can tell a lot of effort went into his creation, and the passion bleeds from the pages as you begin to understand the depth and intricacies of his game design. Alex was kind enough to answer a few questions we wanted to ask, and you might be surprised by some of his answers! Stick around and read our interview with Alex below, we hope you enjoy.

INTERVIEW

Q: First off, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions, Alex! You’re pretty established in the indie RPG scene at this point, but how long have you actively been playing tabletop RPG’s? Was this something you grew into, or grew up with?

A: I really wouldn’t say I’m established at all; I just got very lucky and started working with Exalted Funeral, and I’m riding on their glory, so to speak. I’ve been playing RPGs since 1992, although I had a period of 10 years that I couldn’t do so due to living abroad. I still had the desire to do so, but it simply wasn’t possible. My first RPG experience was actually before 1992 though, my cousins had the classic D&D red box, but the concept of “Role-Playing” wasn’t really a thing for us; it must have been 1990 or so. It wasn’t until 1992 that I really understood what RPGs were, and got hooked for life.

Q: Have solo-oriented RPG’s always been a passion, or was this spurred on by recent events?

A: I honestly didn’t know a person could play an RPG alone until pretty recently, like 3-4 years ago. I first started with boardgames that have solo options, simply because I didn’t have anyone to play with, and from there I moved to solo RPGs. The recent pandemic has simply exacerbated my interest in solo-oriented RPGs, of course. I’ve never played online, and it’s really not something that seems that interesting in my opinion, so the only option is to play alone.

Q: When did you first start working on Seekers Beyond the Shroud?

A: I started with Seekers about two years ago, basically right after I finished with my first game, Disciples of Bone & Shadow. I wanted to play a game with a modern-day setting, something reminiscent of Kult or Vampire: The Masquerade, so I just got to work and did my own thing.

Q: Did you face any unexpected challenges with this release?

A: Not that I can think of, no. Aside from the design problems, trying to come up with all the tools and options a player needs to have in order to be surprised and entertained while playing alone, everything went fairly smoothly. The Kickstater campaign was a success beyond our expectation and that really helped make the game better, we managed to get more content and better art thanks to it. The only problem we faced was after all content and design was done, trying to get the copies made in the middle of the pandemic, and later on distributed. We suffered huge delays due to all this, but our backers were really understanding and patient, fortunately!

Q: You worked directly with Exalted Funeral on this as well, how was that experience?

A: Working with EF is always a pleasure; they really know what they’re doing and having them handle all the business and distribution side of things allows me to focus on creating stuff. They are simply the best, and I owe everything to Matt and Cristin.

Q: Seekers has a very heavy dose of occult material weaved in and out of the system and the setting – what were some of your inspirations for this mysterious, dangerous vibe?

A: I simply took a bunch of real-world stuff and gamified it, as simple as that, haha. 99% of the stuff in the game is based on real things, so I really can’t take that much credit in that regard. I just weaved it all into a somewhat cohesive universe, giving it a more defined structure so that the player can interact in a meaningful way with the world.

Q: The solo experience you’ve crafted with Seekers is quite unique, can you tell us what some of your goals were when creating this system?

A: My main goal was to give the player lots and lots of things to do, in a lore-rich world. I wanted it to feel like a computer MMO or sandbox game; you go to the hub, grab your quests, do some crafting, and basically set your own goals. The tricky thing is making the world feel alive around the player, and make it so that things happen around them with or without their participation. It’s still a work in progress, and in that regard it is very much like a MMO, it’s a “live service”, as they call it. I keep tweaking things and adding stuff, and have years of content planned already.

Q: There’s a number of real world locations in the book, but the Omphalos is the “central hub” headquarters beneath London – was there any real life inspirations for Omphalos? Or was this purely inspired by MMO hubs?

A: I needed a central spot for all the different magic orders to meet, and I liked the Ancient Greek mythos of the Omphalos stone, the navel of the world. I thought it was a perfect story, making it a focus (or source?) of telluric energies. In reality, it’s more than that, as I hope will be revealed in the future. I think it makes for cool in-game lore to have all these factions fighting for control over this precise spot. And mechanically speaking, it’s exactly what the game needed.

Q: All the included artwork is extremely evocative, and really drives home the dark, doom-filled feeling of the world your character occupies. What was it like working with MosaEye (who handled the cover artwork), Dave Levi (interior artist), and Wassai Khan (interior artist)?

A: Yeah, the art is really fantastic! I’ve known Levi for a while cause I worked with him before in some other projects, and his art is really dark and really good. So I hired him to make a few pieces, Matt (from Exalted Funeral) loved them, and we decided to hire him for the KS campaign, to do all the main art pieces. He works so fast, and it’s really easy to work with. MosaEye is a Russian artist that I’ve been following for a while as well, and he has a superb domain of color; I thought he would be ideal for the cover art, and it worked out perfectly. I actually already have the art for the next Seekers release, and it’s his best work to date, if I may say so. Can’t wait to reveal it! Wassai Khan is an illustrator that I randomly found on the Internet; he’s good and fast so we hired him to do a few small pieces; all the sketch-like illustrations in the book are his, actually. He’s not really into darker stuff so it was a bit more difficult to make him understand what I wanted, haha. But it turned out well!

Q: Now, rituals are a big part of Seekers. Have you ever been a part of a ritual? Should I be afraid of the powers you might have as a result?

A: Yes, I wanted magic to feel like something you need to work towards, to earn. I wanted it rooted in real-world traditions, no fireball flinging mages here. So the most logical thing to do was to base it in evocation and ritual magic; slow, demanding magic to contact spirits and other entities, and through them, access powers beyond the limits of the common human.
I have been part of several rituals, yes. And that’s not even counting the most common ritual most of us take part in (willingly or not) at some point in our lives: the Christian Mass.

Q: Cheeky questions aside, the ritual system is extremely creative. As you say in the book, timing is everything with rituals – what inspired this unique approach to bestoying powers onto your player characters with such a focus on timing?

A: All entities are associated with a specific astrological event, a day of the week or a phase of the moon. I needed to translate that into the game, making it crucial for the player to perform a ritual to contact an entity exactly on the day that entity favors. It was part of making the magic system grounded in reality, and it also helped to track the pass of time and to give the sensation that things move forwards constantly.

Q: Obviously this being a solo game, people are free to play as they see fit, but do you have any tips, tricks, or advice that new players might benefit from? The world you’ve created for Seekers can be quite brutal, both literally and figuratively!

A: You must take an old school approach: just because there’s an enemy, it doesn’t mean you have to fight it; it is key to one’s survival (especially as a newbie) to choose your battles wisely, and if you need to abandon a mission because things are getting ugly and you’re down to 10 HP and have no more bandages, then just leave, and live to fight another day. It’s a bit of a grind at the beginning (I admit it), with one simply going to mission sites, maybe killing one or two opponents, taking all their stuff so that you can sell it, and slowly skilling up before having to run away, but after a few of those you will get powerful enough to survive (as long as you don’t do anything crazy). I am tweaking the formula constantly though, so all this is subject to change in the future; I recognize that magic is a key element to the game and right now it takes a bit too long before a player can start feeling powerful. I have released a few things that ameliorate that problem via my Patreon, and they’ll be available to the general public soon enough.

Q: I have to ask, how many solo runs of Seekers Beyond The Shroud have you personally done? Do you currently have a session going (and if so, how is that going)?

A: As the game’s designer, I’m afraid that instead of having a single ongoing campaign, I have fragments of different play-throughs, mostly because I want to test this or that other thing. So even if I have a character that’s been surviving for a while, I would then jump to a different one with a different set-up, to test a different thing. This is especially true when it comes to testing scenarios and missions…

Q: I’ve spoken to a number of people that have had a session with Seekers and all their stories are quite unique and different from one another. Do you have any stories you’ve heard from people’s experiences with the game that really stick out or surprised you, perhaps in playtesting?

A: I love it when the game organically creates a story that makes sense, like for example this player that had a character with the Involuntary Lucid Dreaming background, and kept getting missions that took him to the Astral, as if to slowly piece together what was happening to him. This then culminated with the final scenario associated with the Lucid Dreaming background, of course. It’s precisely this type of emergent gameplay that made me fall in love with solo RPGs, and even though the tools for it are frankly limited in Seekers right now (I’m actively working on adding more RPG elements into the game), there are so many moving pieces that our brain, as the pattern-seeking machine that is, can’t help but make associations between them, weaving cool and unique stories. There are a few Play Reports online, and reading them is always a joy.

Q: I know it might be a bit early to ask, but can we expect any expanded materials for Seekers Beyond the Shroud down the line? Or are there already existing supplements you might suggest that work well with your system?

A: As I mentioned before, I am actively developing material for Seekers all the time. Right now I’m working on adding four new Sites to the game, and there’s already a ton of new stuff available in my Patreon. I plan on releasing all this material down the line to the general public, most likely via zines. I am also working on a Narrative Playbook expansion for next year, that will add all the necessary tools to turn Seekers into a full-fledged RPG, with tons of oracles and tables to make it feel like an open, living world. You’ll even be able to play it with a GM, if you want. It’s basically the same I’ve already done with my first game, Disciples of Bone & Shadow. So yes, lots of new things coming!

Q: Now, I blasted death metal throughout my playtime with Seekers, and I imagine I’m not the only one that will be dipping into the heavier side of background music while playing. Do you have any band or album suggestions to jam out to while playing your game?

A: I actually made a Spotify playlist for Seekers! It’s mostly avant-garde extreme metal stuff, though, so probably not for everybody, but this is the music I think suits the game. Aside from creepy ambient stuff, of course.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3kbIlp1Upu96MdyB3pflPv?si=92QcBwi8RpWhSQxl9zDPCA

Q: I imagine indie RPG creators that are just getting started see what you’ve built and aim for the same successes – do you have any advice to those that might be trying to enter the sphere?

A: I really lucked out with Exalted Funeral, so I may not be the best to give advice, haha. The way I see it, you have two options: whether you find a good publisher, or go the harder way and self-release it all. Self-releasing gives you more control, but you also take more risks, of course. But the first thing is to focus on making a good product, and then simply create a network of contacts using social media or by joining an RPG Discord server where you can promote your work. As long as you’re having fun with what you’re doing and you’re passionate about it, you will eventually reach the right audience. I am still learning everyday, though! I really feel like I’ve just started, and there’s always so much to do!

Q: Are there any other indie RPG’s, or just new books in general, that you would like to shout out?

A: Anything that has the amazing Moonrat Conspiracy editing team deserves your attention, since they really know how to pick awesome projects. Double Proficiency is also doing incredible things, and I cannot wait to play their upcoming sci-fi game Project Aphelion. Diogo Nogueira is always doing cool things, and the amount of stuff he produces (both as an artist and a writer) is astonishing, especially considering the quality. Luka from WTF is always an inspiration as well, as is anyone who is working with Exalted Funeral, really. I mean, have you seen the stuff Donn Stroud, Adam Vass, Chance Phillips, and all the others make? It’s just all incredible. I don’t personally know them, but everything that the folks at Necrotic Gnome are doing with OSE is just pure gold, as it’s the team behind Mothership. I can keep on mentioning people forever here, because I’m just a little person surrounded by giants. This is truly the Golden Age of RPGs, believe me.

Q: Last, but not least, what’s the best way to keep up with Blackoath Entertainment?

A: I’d say the best is to simply join our Discord: https://discord.gg/b3hSKc6
Alternatively, our website is generally up to date (at least with the important announcements, not the day-to-day stuff that I share on Discord): www.blackoathgames.com, and Facebook is also I tend to keep an eye on: www.facebook.com/Blackoathentertainment

Thanks so much for asking such great questions, I really enjoyed this interview!

WRAP UP

Seekers Beyond the Shroud is a complete solo RPG package, with strong occult vibes pulsing throughout. Highly suggested for those that like to dip their toes into the darkness and solo RPG fans in general – you’ll certainly want to pick this up!

Purchase Seekers Beyond the Shroud at Exalted Funeral or on DriveThruRPG:
https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/seekers-beyond-the-shroud?_pos=1&_sid=cc7eee8df&_ss=r
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/298721/Seekers-Beyond-The-Shroud

Visit Blackoath Entertainment’s Website and Facebook:
https://blackoathgames.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Blackoathentertainment

And join Blackoath Entertainment’s Discord Channel:
https://discord.gg/b3hSKc6

Lastly, a huge thank you to Alex T. from Blackoath Entertainment for taking the time out of his day to answer some of our questions. Be sure to follow Alex, and Blackoath, as they prepare for the next big release. You won’t want to miss it! We majorly look forward to what Alex has cookin’ up.