Beyond the Supernatural

by Kevin Siembieda, Randy McCall

The supernatural is real. Psychic abilities and the paranormal are real. Magic is real. Yet science and authority figures dismiss them as hysteria, hoaxes and madness. However, special individuals gifted with special abilities or cursed with firsthand encounters find themselves inexorably linked to the paranormal and forced to deal with the consequences.

Some of our heroes are gung-ho psychics and sorcerers who see themselves as humankind’s hidden protectors. Others are drawn into the realm of shadows through quirks of fate, or fueled by feelings of revenge. Still others are reluctant heroes and even victims, but all have been touched, in some way, by forces beyond human comprehension – Beyond the Supernatural.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Horror, Games

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1987

About the author

Kevin Siembieda (born April 2, 1956) is an American artist, writer, designer, and publisher of role-playing games, as well as being the founder and president of Palladium Books.

Palladium Books, founded in southeast Michigan, claims to be the first to implement a role-playing system intended to work for all genres and to introduce the perfect-bound trade paperback format to the RPG industry.

Some of the role-playing games Siembieda helped produce include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (1985), Robotech RPG (1986), After The Bomb (1986), and Rifts (1990).

Siembieda is also an artist, best known for occasionally illustrating Palladium Books' products. In 1978, he started the now-defunct Megaton Publications in Detroit, publishing a digest style title called A+ Plus and several other titles. He also contributed art and cartography to several early Judges Guild products (for both their Traveller and Dungeons & Dragons lines).

Reviews

[Little Timmy]

Nice reference book for any supernatural game with great write ups and plots. Recommended

[Max]

An interesting early horror RPG that suffers from not really being sure what it's doing. In a lot of ways, Beyond the Supernatural 1e feels like a sort of beta version of Rifts. Sure, it doesn't have dragons or mecha or Illinois Nazis, but BTS has characters with psychic powers and magical abilities fighting monsters from other dimensions that creep into our reality through rifts at ley lines. Well, that's one of the things this game has. It also a sample adventure about 13 year old girls, a discussion of the magical abilities of Stonehenge, a made-up parapsychologist named Victor Lazlo spouting off random stuff left and right, and a bunch of other weird things that never quite cohere into a single setting. There are abilities that could allow the characters to travel to other universes, and one of the sample adventures even has a sort of cross-dimensional TARDIS, but there aren't any rules or guidelines for what other dimensions look like. There's a (surprisingly small compared to later Palladium games) list of insanities, but unlike Call of Cthulhu, there are no real coherent rules for how or when characters become insane. The equipment chapter, which is stuck at the very end for some reason, covers everything from medieval swords to ninja gear to laser weapons. The psychic heroes are generally cool, but the arcanist is likely to outshine them since magic is a lot stronger and has more utility abilities. There are also vague rules for playing as victim characters, including what stats to roll for characters from anywhere from baby to senior citizen. I do like most of the psychic classes, even if they feel underpowered, because there's some fun ideas such as the psychic mechanic (like the technowizard but making stuff with psychic powers and technology) and the genius, who puts latent psychic ability towards skills or physical fitness. There's also a pretty neat selection of monsters, from horror standards like vampires and werewolves (though even vampires get the twist of being basically Lovecraftian horrors incarnated in meat bodies, somewhat similar to what Buffy would later do) to three eyed sorcerers and ghouls that aimlessly wander the multiverse. Sadly, there's not quite enough of an implied setting to really figure out what sort of adventures you're meant to have, and the GM advice is pretty crappy and focused on being adversarial. Not that any of that is too surprising for the 80s, but between these issues and the general disorganization of the game, I feel like I'm far more likely to steal some of the neat ideas and adapt them to a system I like better than I am to run a game of 1e Beyond the Supernatural by itself. Still, I plan to read the only supplement and perhaps even the game's second edition, since there are some neat bits and this is also sort of fun in a history of Palladium way, as most of the books by them I've read came after Rifts.

[Eduardo]

My first RPG! I bought this in high school, and my friends and I played the crap out of it until they RUINED my well designed campaign. It was the end of RPGs for us.
I recently pulled it out and am trying to find somebody to play with, and while Jennifer seems to be willing, it is quite hesitantly.
Still, it has a lot of the chaos of being totally frightened without the overwhelming sense of getting killed that Cthulu may bring. And it isn't too goth, like the White Wolf games, though those have some very interesting mechanics as well.

Who wants me to scare them?