I am not sure if this game is supposed to be a serious game. If so, I would like to apologize in advance to designer Nathaniel Klein.

CLUE¹

Professor Plum in the Kitchen with the Candle Stick. Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Pipe. Astronomer in the Bedroom with the Chef Torch.

Ephemeris nails the feeling of a classic murder mystery. It has all the trappings. A stormy night where all the characters arrive damp and flustered to a mysterious mansion, all carrying invitations from a mysterious benefactor to join them for dinner and view a spectacular mysterious event, the titular blood comet. The players all play common old timey tropes, the doctor, the astronomer, the hunter, the alchemist.

It was clear from the second the game began that this was an opportunity to ham it up and play to the rafters. We embodied the prestige noire drama these characters deserve. Long monologues in front of stormy windows, passive aggressive comments over a pretentious meal, slapstick opening and closing of the same door.

This was Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a Knives Out mystery.

Sorry what is the game about?

Ephemeris is a self contained adventure with a bespoke system about being VAMPIRE HUNTERS in a WEIRD OLD HOUSE on the night of a BLOOD COMET. It rips.

The full adventure can take several sessions to complete, but we enjoyed a condensed one-shot version. The system is sleek, with roll under mechanics that I am familiar with, but combined with mixed successes and the ability to push your luck to succeed. For me the mechanics took a back seat, I was invested in the drama. The dice did their job and got out of the way. Inoffensive.

If I had one complaint about the game it’s that it TAKES PLACE IN SPACE. Why Klein, why did you choose to set this in space? Space vampires is fun to say, sure, but every time I was reminded that these silly Victorian era would-be vampire hunters were also space travellers, I got kicked out of the whole situation. There were several high tech items that probably need space as an explanation, but frankly, I could have accepted them as steampunk. The system is bespoke too, it is not as if it is catering to the Mothership or Alien RPG crowd.

Sigh. It’s not that big of a deal.

The Drama

Each room is carefully crafted, filled with webs of familiar betrayal, heartbreak, and tragedy. Lack of action leads to a cascade of deaths, but making your move too quickly could land you in the same grave as the NPCs. {This sentence is one major spoiler so I moved it to the footnote}². Can you do that in bog standard murder mysteries? I don’t think so.

This game lives and dies by the quality of its mystery, and this one has the juice.

Recommendation

This is a game that you will get to the table which is about as good a recommendation as I can give. I so often fall prey to the siren song of 300-page books with pretty pictures so I can lay in bed and pretend what it would be like to actually play them, but this game has promise. Ephemeris is attainable.

Gaze upon the blood comet.

Acknowledgements

Ephemeris: Omens of the Blood Comet can be purchased here.

Thank you to Nathaniel Klein for capturing the feeling of a dinner party murder mystery in a beautiful linocut game. The art, vibes, and mechanics all work masterfully together.

Thank you to Matthew Ayers for bringing this game to our attention and accepting our shenanigans, to Gemelli as playing a doctor deep in dept and looking to pocket every valuable in sight, to Zadig: resident cowboy, to RatCath the kitchen menace and flour thrower, and to John of Phoenix the long-spoken astronomer.

P.S. I think I am drifting more towards prescribed characters and scenario. I am feeling less and less interested in character creation mechanics and having a big open world sandbox. I want games that do their one specific thing really well. If you have any great recommendations, please send them to me at brett@birdmilkcafe.com

---

1. It is important to me that people understand that when I add these sections, I want them to act as giant title cards crashing down from the sky with the power of a thousand Dick Wolfs and Majora’s Masks. ↩︎
2. If you want you can fight the MOON! THE GOSH DANG MOON. ↩︎