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Talon Grasp Games
A Ghost reaches into a glowing interface, data surging around their hand, while a figure in goggles watches.
Talon Grasp Games presents

What do you do when virtual reality is the only reality left?

E-Scape is a science fantasy roleplaying game about surviving inside a digital world that is actively trying to delete you.

01The premise

You are already dead. The system just hasn't finished with you.

A vast archipelago partition seen from a clifftop — green islands, white sails, and a mountain rising from the sea.

Elysia — one partition among many

Players assume the roles of Ghosts — virtual copies of actual people who died in the real world. Untethered from the standard controls of the E-Scape system, they are not only doomed to slowly degrade over time, they are hunted by system authorities intent on purging their avatars before they can undermine VR integrity.

Every session is a negotiation with your own decay. Every test is a chance to buy one more tomorrow.

02What makes it different

Three things E-Scape does that your last system didn't.

i

You start strong and get weaker.

Characters don't begin fragile and grow powerful. They begin capable and erode. Degradation accumulates, Glitches and Bugs carve into your stats, and XP is spent buying back what you've lost rather than piling on new abilities. Barely failed a test? Push it — you'll succeed now and pay for it later.

ii

Your background actually does something.

Most systems let you write a character's past in the margins and then never use it. E-Scape gives those minor, flavourful background skills real mechanical weight — the life your Ghost led before they died is a resource at the table, not set dressing.

iii

Any setting you want, one coherent premise.

Partitions and the Sites they host span the ancient Mediterranean, low-Earth orbit, underwater arcologies — anywhere a GM wants to run. The visuals change completely. The stakes never do.

03How it plays

A dice pool that asks how, not just whether.

E-Scape uses a dice pool, count-successes mechanic on eight-sided dice. The stat types are a twist on the familiar ones — they describe how your character approaches a task rather than raw capability, which puts narrative agency back in the players' hands. Every test becomes an opportunity to narrate.

Dice pool, count successes
d8Dice pool, count successes
Players, plus a GM
3–5Players, plus a GM
Quickstart one-shot
4–5 hrsQuickstart one-shot

Introducing E-Scape

A primer on the game's concept, conflicts, and setting — start here.

Cover of The Vertice Extraction, the free E-Scape quickstart adventure.
04Play it tonight

The Vertice Extraction

A four-to-five hour one-shot and the fastest way into the E-Scape universe. Includes a basic rules overview, nine pregenerated characters, and a seek-and-hide scenario that drops players straight into life on the run in the virtual world. Ideal for 3–5 players.

PDF · No signup required

05The studio
Perspective is everything — the more of it we have the better we are, not only in how we game but in how we see the world.
Our mission

Talon Grasp Games is staffed by veteran gamers with decades of tabletop and live-action roleplaying experience. We believe a game's mechanics should embed you deeper into the setting, not distract from it — simple enough to learn, flexible enough that two players reach the same end by completely different narrative means.

RPGs are stories, communally built and nurtured. As producers, our job is to give you the tools to participate in that story without hemming you in.

Our commitment

No AI artwork. Ever.

We fully support the creative output of all artists. Talon Grasp Games refuses to use any artwork generated by artificial intelligence, and any artist we work with must make the same commitment. The art you see in our games is produced by humans.

Before the campaign opens

Be first through the door.

The Kickstarter for E-Scape is coming. Early backers get the best of it — and we’d rather tell you directly than hope the algorithm does it for us.

Signup goes live shortly. In the meantime, follow the campaign on Kickstarter and you’ll be notified the moment it launches.