The World of Necroscope (1995) is one of many licensed properties picked up by West End for the MasterBook game (the big get was Indiana Jones, but I don’t own a copy of that). I dunno if I would call Necroscope a big get, but it isn’t a small one — the whole series is like 17 books long and the run has at least one best-seller.

I don’t think I would call Lumley a good writer, but based on Burrowers Beneath, he is an enthusiastic one. Excitable, perhaps. To wit: the Necroscope series tells of the war between psychics (primarily Harry Keogh, the titular necroscope, who can politely chat with the dead) and vampires (parasitic leeches from another planet, grown from fungal spores). In the mix is E-Branch, the secret psychic/supernaturalism bureau of the UK government, perhaps some Russian scientists and a sentient time travel device? I’m not sure. I do know that after five books, Harry brings about the nuking of Vampire World and his consciousness is sent out and attaches to other people (to fuel the next 12 novels) while his own vampire fungus-infected corpse is sent back through time…to infect the first vampire? I would have thrown that novel across the room, I think.

Anyway, this is the world the Necroscope RPG explores, one of psychics, vampires and naked women doing questionable things with corpses. No joke, there are at least two illustrations that fit that description. Maybe more. The box is clearly an attempt to steal some lunch from Vampire: The Masquerade, Kult and similar edgy ’90s horror games, but it winds up feeling more like Leading Edge’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: a bit WTF and desperate. It did get several expansion books, though, which is more than most MasterBook settings.