A fun addition to any mall: an art studio staffed by a cruel witch, filled with ghouls, with a deadly demon on patrol. Can FIST sneak through, setting themselves up for a picture perfect mission? Or will things take a turn for the negative? Outer Self offers a fun, tactical scenario that can easily be plugged into a larger narrative campaign or run as an enjoyable one-off. 

A neat dive into a fun horror trope.  A wandering deamon, an ancient villain, an unraveling mystery, and possible PC transformation is waiting the players in this detailed mission.

I’m a horror fan (as you can probably tell by now), and I’m happy to say, OUTER SELF’s cover gave me pause. The portrait in the top-right corner is downright creepy, and I actually zoomed in to try and tell if I could detect any signs of manipulation. Whether or not the photo is doctored is irrelevant. What’s important is, it’s unsettling. Not in a jump scare kind of a way, more like something fished out of an uncanny valley.

Outer Self Photo Studio is a mission, one of 52 planned for “Mega Mall 23,” a spin on #Dungeon23 I can fully get behind. They’re set in a middle American mall that has slipped deep into liminal territory.

The Mission Synopsis is straightforward: a witch bargained with a demon, trading souls for eternal youth. I’m not sure why, but I found this darkly funny: “She is only [Insert player count here] souls away from filling her quota and gaining incredible power.”

Layoutwise, this looks exceptionally easy to run, one of those missions you could practically bust out at the table and run without reading it all the way through. I mean, don’t do that – never do that! But sometimes… you gotta. And if you gotta, I highly suggest a scenario with a smart layout like this one to make things easier for your desperate brain.

I do find the text a little hard to read. It’s perhaps a wee bit narrow, especially the colored text, which doesn’t offer enough contrast against the white background. Maybe just setting it to bold might help.

OUTER SELF follows a control panel layout, with paragraphs careful not to stretch across multiple pages. There’s a photo collage map, three and a half pages of room descriptions (a photo studio, a dark room, galleries, etc.) and all the NPCs are collected together, complete with character portraits. And I really like that the items have photo art. It reminds me of a graphic adventure from the 90s. I wanna click the dagger and drag it on the camera, just to see what happens.

If OUTER SELF is a sign of things to come, then sign me the hell up.

Outer Self is an elegant and original FIST adventure.

This zine has such a striking, clean, and intentional aeasthetic. The red pairs so well with greyscale images and fits the tone of the adventure. The text accents are punchy and the map is a cool and unique culmination of the look. I love the attention to detail with the page border containing a signpost to the section the reader is on.

The adventure itself is well thought through, with a different pathways for players to explore. Each of the pathways has varied threats and meaningful discoveries for the players to make. The author has paid attention to the different ways that the players could reach certain points (even a a particulrly murder-y party). It definitely suits more of a creepy / horror vibe, as if the players get involved in combat the numbers look pretty deadly.  Successfully completing the mission leaves the players with an intereting set of potential items to use in future sessions.

I love the addition of a mission synopsis at the start to help the referee quickly get an idea of the scenario. I wonder whether shifting the npcs before the map might help them get up to speed even faster.

Outer Self is a mission for Mega Maul, which is in turn a mall-based mission pack for FIST.

The PDF is 9 pages with a subdued, classy aesthetic. It fits the mall themeing perfectly, and the text is layed out in a way that sits nicely on the page and allows for a lot of good white space---although it does require a little magnification to read.

Contents-wise, Outer Self's hook is fun and pulpy, mixing witchcraft and bland corporate americana. A witch is stealing souls through photography, and running her business out of the liminal spaces in a fading mall.

It works better the less information the PCs have going in, and may be ideal for non-FIST-agent characters. The vibe is kind of Unknown Armies or Liminal Horror.

There are a few extremely deadly scenario elements, and one puzzle is necessary for progress, but the overall flow of play is slow and atmospheric. There's lots of "nothing is happening" rooms to build tension, and there's a great eerie feeling that pervades the scenario.

The scenario has an innovative map which bashes together photographs into a collage of explorable areas---it's super creative, and fits the visual style really well.

Overall, if you want a grounded, liminal, creepy adventure for FIST, this is a great pick.