“The Storytelling Game of Passion and Horror”

Copyright 1996, White Wolf

Original Design and Concept by: Mark Rein·Hagen, Jennifer Hartshorn and Sam Chupp
Written by: Bill Aguiar, Jackie Cassada, Mark Cenczyk, Ben Chessell, Richard E. Dansky, Graeme Davis, Ian Lemke, Steve Long, James A. Moore, Joshua Mosquiera, Nicky Rea, Ethan Skemp, Wendy Soss, Cynthia Summers, Richard Watts and Fred Yelk.

Back to the Horror Wing
Back to the main lobby

raith: the Oblivion is a fitting entry to the Musuem. Not only is it part of the enormously popular White Wolf World of Darkness series, a thriving subculture of role playing that the Museum (and it's staff) have neglected until now, but it's also appropriate because Wraith is a game about the preservation of dead people, and it is, itself, a dead game. While White Wolf has periodically rewritten its core games, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Mage: The Ascension; Wraith: the Oblivion does not appear to be on the list for resurrection.

Physically, the book is rather sturdy and thoroughly illustrated. There is a piece of mood fiction, cut into pieces and distributed throughout the book, to help set the tone. The book includes a blank character sheet at the back, a short index, and an advertisement for The Risen, a supplement to Wraith. The illustrations are usually bleak and occasionally disturbing.

The Setting

Wraith is set in an afterlife that bears no resemblence to the ones described by most religions. Only some of the world's dead arrive in Wraith's Shadowlands; the fate of the rest is unknown. This afterlife is apparantly a lot like life, only seedier. The Shadowlands are a ghostly mirror-image of the "skinlands," although everything appears rotten and decaying. The inhabitants of the Shadowlands, wraiths, are generally those who have strong emotional ties to life, or "fetters."

Beneath the Shadowlands, in an extradimensional sense, is the Tempest. The Tempest seems to be a mixture of physical chaos and emotional turbulence, and is described as a storm, where time and distance have no meaning. Within the Tempest are islands of stability and safety. The biggest and easiest to reach is called Stygia. Further away are other islands referred to as The Far Shores. The islands of the Far Shores may be the afterlives described by religions but they probably aren't. The Tempest itself is home to Spectres, dark beings who seek nothing more than the utter destruction of the physical world of the afterlife and its absoption into the Tempest. Occasionally, the Tempest surges forth in great Maelstroms that destroy all but the most solid regions of Stygia and the Shadowlands. The Maelstroms are mysteriously linked to events in the living world, either a result of great turmoils like the world wars, or a harbinger of such chaos to come. They are growing more frequent and stronger.

Travel through the Tempest is dangerous. There are safe paths, if you can find them, and there are the mysterious Ferrymen who travel these paths and fight off the threats. The Tempest occasionally breaks through into the Shadowlands, and the resulting portals permit wraiths to travel to and from Stygia. The trips to the Far Shores are described as too dangerous for most unless accompanied by the Ferrymen.

The afterlife is thus a spooky copy of life, neither eternal reward nor punishment. Wraiths speak of Transcendence, where they resolve the issues that keep them from moving on to their proper place after death. Some say the Far Shores are where Transcendance occurs. Hints dropped through the book indicate Transcendance is not tied to the Far Shores. The other choice for a Wraith is Oblivion, where they release their fetters and their personalities and cease to be...although this feeds the Tempest and makes it stronger. Those who rule and protect Stygia try to prevent Wraiths from seeking Oblivion, although their methods are brutal and unappreciated.

The setting is animated by the politics of the afterlife. The greatest of the Ferrymen, Charon, was master of Stygia for millennia. Charon's motivation was originally to keep the afterlife safe from the Tempest, and to assist the dead to seek Transcendance. In time, he built the city of Stygia to keep back the Maelstroms, basing it on the Roman Empire then in power in the Skinlands. As time went on, he continued to modify the political system to mirror that of the living, in part because he saw it was more workable, and in part, to make the dead more comfortable with Stygia. Thus, Stygia has elements of Rome, overlaid by feudal government and the industrial and information revolutions (a difficult task when you have a shortage of machines, fuel, and raw materials). Charon himself grew more distant and isolated, like a Roman emperor.

The upheavals of the world wars and the atomic age had their effects on Stygia as well, as massive maelstroms threatened to demolish all Charon had built. Eventually, one of the ancient primal beings of chaos rose and threatened to destroy the entire structure of the afterlife. Charon faced the foe alone, and in defeating it, vanished into the Tempest. Stygia is now leaderless, and Charon's lieutenants feud for power.

With the collapse of central authority, there was a corresponding rise in groups that challenge it. The Renegades are those wraiths that reject Stygian rule. There are many Renegade groups who cooperate only in the loosest sense of the word. Some seek a new order to the afterlife, most prefer anarchy, and a number of them just like to break heads.

One of the more interesting concepts of this afterlife is the shortage of raw material. Items and structures in the living world that have great emotional significance appear in the world of the dead, and if an item of significance to many in life is destroyed, it becomes a powerful and solid artifact in the afterlife, although one that decays slowly over time as the living gradually forget it. Lesser articles strongly valued by individuals who have died have a physical reality in the afterlife as well: emotional tokens such as old stuffed animals, houses, cars, and the like. These relics do not function unless a Wraith invests it with power (Pathos, in the game's vocabulary).

Aside from these emotional tokens, there are only two raw materials to be had. One is the solid stuff of which Stygia is made, which the state mines. Stronger and more durable is the ectoplasmic substance of wraith bodies. Wraiths are physically forged into items such as weapons, chains, coins, and bricks. This soulforging is permanent and if the wraith has any sentience left after the process, it is almost certainly going to be insane. These forged items faintly moan and scream. This is increasingly the fate of powerless slaves, and it is the ultimate penalty Stygia can administer. While soulforging is supposed to be relatively rare, for the spirit that has committed grave crimes or is too weak to resist the pull of Oblivion, the book implies that all Wraiths without political protection are at risk for becoming Forged, as the strong prey on them.

The setting thus provides room for all kinds of games. One can be based in the Shadowlands, near the land of the living, or in Stygia for high power politics, or travel the Tempest in search of persons or objects. But from the structure of the game, it's not really about any of these things. Wraith: The Oblivion is instead a deeply psychological game, where players explore the mental strengths and weaknesses of their characters.

The Game

The basic game system is simple. Characters have a number of traits and abilities, each rated by a number of dots from zero to five. For most actions, the referee (or Storyteller) will ask the player to add together a relevant character trait and ability to yield a number of dots from zero to ten. The player rolls as many ten-sided dice as he has dots against a Storyteller-determined difficulty number, ranging from two to ten. The player counts the number of dice that equal or exceed the difficulty number. The more dice that succeed, the better the success.

Rolls of one are bad. Each one rolled cancels out one success. If a player has any ones left after all of the successes are removed, it's called a Botch, and this is a critical failure. There are no critical successes, but if a character has as many dice as the difficulty number, it's an automatic success of the lowest order without needing to roll. (Players may roll anyway to see if they can get more successes.) If the Storyteller wants to modify the roll because of circumstances (such as character fatigue), she adjusts the difficulty number, or requires a minimum number of successes.

Character Generation

On the other hand, character generation is complex and multi-layered. Wraith players create their characters through a point building system: there is no die rolling. The process goes through five steps.

First, the player creates her basic concept. The book recommends starting with three basic questions: who was the person in life, how did they die, and why should they be a wraith, instead of passing on to her final reward? The book provides a number of suggestions to answer each question. Once these are addressed, the character should select an archetype to mold the character's personality, such as "caregiver," or "rebel." Notice that Wraith encourages players to have characters whose true, inner archetype (Nature) may be hidden behind a different personality that is that person's face to the world...or underworld (Demeanor). The rules helpfully mention that demeanors can be changed easily, and have no effect on play whatsoever, except for coloring in the character.

The second step is to set up the character's attributes. In other games, these might be called characteristics. There are nine: three physical attributes (strength, dexterity, and stamina), three social attributes (charisma, manipulation, and appearance), and three mental attributes (perception, intelligence, and wits). Players get one dot in each attribute at start. They then select one category (physical, social, or mental) to be primary, getting seven dots to distribute among the three attributes in the category. One category is secondary, getting five dots, and the third category gets three dots.

The third step is to choose abilities, what other games call skills. Like attributes, they are divided into three categories, and dots are given to be distributed within each category according to which is chosen to be primary, secondary, and tertiary. The categories are Talents (abilities learned through practice and innovation), Skills (trained abilities), and Knowledges (usually book-learning). There are ten abilities within each category, and these are listed on the character sheet and in the book.

Fourth, players get a number of Advantages. While these are categorized, they are not assigned to be primary, secondary, or tertiary: players get a set number of points to distribute for each category of advantages as they choose. Advantages include Backgrounds (social position in the society of the dead; 7 points), Passions (the character's primary motivations; 10 points), Fetters (the things that keep the Wraith in this afterlife: without them the Wraith is likely to disappear into either Transcendance or Oblivion; 10 points), and Arcanoi (occult abilities, akin to magic, that many wraiths possess; 5 points). The rules shift to points here because different numbers of points are needed to buy dots in these scores.

Arcanoi

Wraith: The Oblivion doesn't have magic, but the dead have access to occult powers called Arcanoi. Arcanoi are taught by guilds, political groups created by Charon as echoes of the medieval guilds to teach and preserve their arts. In time, the guilds attempted to overthrow Charon and were quickly defeated. All of the guilds are therefore illegal, although most of their arts are still sought after, and the guilds keep a low profile. Since all Wraith characters have five points to spend on them, some basic skill at an Arcanoi must be common among the Restless.

Arcanoi are divided up by the 13 guilds: Harbingers, who can travel the Tempest; Pardoners, who fight the Shadows, the dark side of a Wraith's personality; Proctors, who manifest in the world of the living; Oracles, who have a limited ability to predict the future; Artificers, who can enter into objects, possessing them and giving them the power to function as they did in the world of the living; Chanteurs, who manipulate emotion through song; Monitors, who can manipulate the ties between a wraith and their fetters in the material world; Masquers who can shape the flesh of wraiths; Spooks who haunt the living; Haunters who create strange manifestations in the physical world; Sandmen who manipulate mortals through dreams; Puppeteers who possess the living; and Usurers who can transfer energies between wraiths.

Using Arcanoi follows the typical Wraith rules. A player adds the dots she has in the Arcanoi to the number of dots she has in the paired Attribute (and each individual Arcanos has a paired Attribute for it), and deducts the required number of points of Pathos and Willpower (or sometimes Corpus, a wraith's hit points) to power the effect. Each Arcanos has a listed cost. The referee determines the difficulty level and the dice are rolled. The difficulty level is usually that of the current thickness of the Shroud, the wall between the dead and the living, which defaults at 9. Arcanoi are thus difficult to bring off.

The Shadow

The essential key to the game of Wraith is the Shadow, the anti-ego, the dark side of the personality that seeks to destroy the character and bring them to the surrender of Oblivion. The Shadow seeks more than simple destruction of the self: it seeks to humiliate and defeat the self first. Should the Shadow succeed in its task, the Wraith becomes a Spectre, an inhabitant of the Tempest that furthers the goal of the destruction of the worlds of the dead.

A Wraith character's Shadow is run by another player, who does her best to push the character into giving in to his darker aspects and self torments. Shadows are truncated characters themselves, created by the player who created the character, but given to another player, called a "shadowguide" to take the role. Like the original character, Shadows are created in a series of steps.

The first step is to determine the shadow's own archetype. Shadow archetypes that are simply the opposite of the character's are boring and thus not recommended. Wraith supplies Shadows with their own list of archetypes, such as The Abuser, which seeks to inflict emotional pain or the Freak, which attempts to drive the Wraith to degradation and perversion. The second step is calculating Angst, the Shadow's version of Pathos. As a Wraith character uses his Pathos to power his abilities, Shadows use Angst to power their own tormenting abilities. Third, Shadows have seven points to buy Dark Passions, the motivations of the Shadow. Fourth, Shadows get ten freebie points. These may be used to buy Thorns, special abilities like Arcanoi that the Shadow can use, powered by Angst. Sample Thorns can force players to re-roll a die, make a wraith noticeable (useful when the Shadow wants a wraith to be spotted by enemies), or summon Spectres.

Notice that the player of the actual character creates his or her own Shadow, handing it off to another player to run. A player is thus in charge of creating his own weaknesses for others to drive a truck through.

The game spends several pages explaining how Shadows should be played, and how Storytellers can avoid abuse. The very careful instructions ("address comments to the character, not the player," "allow only one person to speak at a time," "player and Shadowguide [should]...discuss the character") indicate the authors are aware of just how risky this particular type of play can be. As a final confirmation, the rules remind Storytellers that they must sometimes take over playing the Shadows from the Shadowguide player.

Character Advancement

Experience works much the same as in other games. Players earn points in play, usually one to five per session. These points are used to buy or upgrade character abilities. The rules argue that new abilities should be introduced in the context of the game: a character shouldn't simply appear with a new Arcanos. Instead, the character should be seeking out a mentor and spend time with him before spending the points. As in many other games, it's relatively easy to buy a new skill at a low level, but obtaining higher levels in a skill tends to be a bit more time consuming: it costs three points, for example, to buy a new ability, but raising an ability costs double the current level of the new ability.

Combat and Other Mechanics

The actual game mechanics are presented very late in the book (starting on page 245, in a chapter ambiguously titled "Drama"). Since these systems are simple applications of the basic game mechanic presented much earlier, it is no surprise that the authors chose to de-emphasize the rules by presenting them so late. In fact, the authors encourage the Storyteller to disregard all rules as mere suggestions.

As presented, the systems are helpful, as they provide concrete examples of which attributes and abilities should be combined for a particular activity, and what levels of difficulty are appropriate. For example, researching information (in a database, library, etc.), is based on intelligence + research (an ability), and difficult to find information has a difficulty rating of 8. About five successes are needed to get the whole story, unless the information is complex and obscure. Other rules suggestions are equally clear.

Combat

Combat follows the main game mechanic, with a few necessary elaborations. For a combat turn, all participants announce in advance what action they intend to take. Then they roll for initiative (Wits + Alertness, difficulty 4), and go in order from the most successes to the least. Those who roll no successes go last (apparently, all participants who fail go simultaneously), and those who botch the initiative roll don't go at all.

The attack roll also follows the main mechanic, using dexterity and the ability that matches the weapon used: firearm, melee, or brawl. (Melee is hand to hand combat with a weapon; brawl uses no weapons.) The difficulty rolled against depends on the specific weapon used, ranging from 4 for simple hand weapons like a knife, up to 8 for clumsier weapons like antique long guns. Players may choose to hold back some of their dice to use in later actions: it's possible to engage in multiple actions so long as the character has dice to spend.

Damage requires a series of rolls. The weapon used determines how many damage dice are rolled against a difficulty of six. Each success causes one point of temporary Corpus damage. Firearms are somewhat more dangerous, in that each success on the to hit roll adds another damage die.

Damage is reduced by three factors. The first is that a defender may usually attempt to dodge. The player may either abort a planned action (if the character hasn't taken their turn yet), or use dice that she has saved from her previous actions. The player rolls the dodge dice against a difficulty of six (for hand to hand combat; in firearms combat, the difficulty depends on the amount of cover available), and each success subtracts one success from the attacker's to hit roll.

Second, damage may be reduced by a "soak" roll, where the player rolls a number of dice equal to their character's Stamina score against a difficulty of six. Each success reduces damage by one point. Finally, if the defender is wearing armor, the armor adds dice to the soak roll.

All of this assumes that Wraiths are fighting each other in the world of the dead. Should wraiths duke it out with the living in the Skinlands, any meaningful physical injury, from getting smacked with a pool cue to being run over by a tank, causes one point of Corpus damage and forces the wraith to become insubstantial for a period of time.

One unusual aspect of combat is the "taunt." Wraith permits characters to banter as they fight, or a player may choose to have their character spend the combat turn taunting their opponent without physically attacking. The player rolls their manipulation + expression against a difficulty of their opponent's wits + 4; for every two successes in a taunt action, the opponent loses a die from their next action. Teams of characters can taunt together to cumulatively reduce an opponent, but when one player fails their taunt roll, no further taunting that turn will be effective.

Injury can be healed relatively easily: the player spends a point of Pathos and recovers a point of Corpus. And while the Restless cannot die easily, they run the risk of a nasty situation called a Harrowing, described below, if their Corpus drops to zero.

The Rest of the Book

The world of the restless dead is not without its hazards. We've already mentioned the Tempest, Maelstroms, and spectres. Spectres come in several varieties, each identified by its typical statistics and preferred means of attack. At the top of the spectral ladder stand the Malfeans, the dreaded elder beings who may have existed since the beginning of the afterlife, when it was all chaos. A small scattering of other beasts who either inhabit the Tempest or somewhere even further dimensionally afield are described, all of them hazardous to wraithly existence. But Wraith is not a game about monster-hunting: the true foes will either be the political foes of the societies of the dead, or each character's own Shadow.

As we have mentioned before, Wraith is written to be not so much a game of adventuring as it is a game of psychological exploration and manipulation. Character passions and fetters are powerful motivators. A player who refuses to dance when the referee pulls the string of his passions isn't doing justice to his character. The same can be said of a player who refuses to protect his character's fetters. Loss of a passion (by not attending to it) or a fetter (by its physical destruction) subjects a wraith to a Harrowing, a nightmare trip into the tempest (as does the loss of all temporary Corpus).

Harrowings are the ultimate in character manipulation. In the context of the setting, spectres in the Tempest drag a wraith in, often with the wraith unaware that it has left its usual plane of reality. The chaotic nature of the Tempest lends itself to manipulation by spectres, and they may choose to create a scene of such normality that the wraith is fooled. Spectres attack a wraith's personality through manipulation and craft, making it appear that their trusted allies and friends have betrayed them, and at the same time, the wraith's shadow attacks, forcing the wraith to question not only his sanity, but also whether it's worth continuing to struggle against Oblivion. Some wraiths are destroyed by the harrowing. Most apparently escape, but in weakened form, and a few emerge stronger.

In the game, the other players take on the roles of spectres, possibly even masquerading as their own characters, while the player who is the wraith's shadow is encouraged to do her worst. The rules state that referees should not accept pat decisions by players to do the right thing no matter the cost: this is psychological torture, and the character is supposed to feel it.

While harrowings should not be commonplace, they are apparently more than an unlikely threat. They are expected to be the awful consequence of a wraith character unraveling or failing to stay connected to the world of the living.

For those who prefer a gentler game, players can choose to resolve their fetters and passions, losing them in a peaceful fashion. Should a wraith resolve all passions and fetters without triggering a harrowing (a botch on the final resolution roll for each passion or fetter), that character Transcends, leaving the world of the dead forever to continue on his journey to the unknown.

A rather innovative feature is a three page comic with commentary on the side. The comic shows two player characters in action, while the comments refer to game mechanics and referee's notes that explain the activity.

The book concludes with tie-ins to each of the other main World of Darkness games of the time. There are connections to Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, and Changeling: The Dreaming. One can obtain useful summaries of the focuses of these games through the brief descriptions of how characters set in them would interact with wraiths.

Summary

This is a difficult game to summarize from our perspective, as it is clearly a piece of a much larger setting that we know little about. From our reading of the stand-alone rulebook, we see some real plusses and minuses. We find the mechanics simple, intuitive, and flexible. The setting is unusual and possibly unique at the time it was released. It was intriguing enough to make Wraith: The Oblivion our first choice for a World of Darkness aquisition. Charon is a great, flawed character for the background: well-meaning, immensely powerful, vengeful and compassionate by equal measures, it's a shame the writers took away any chance of interacting with him. We like the idea that emotionally powerful items continue to exist in the worlds of the dead, although they fade with time, and we think the idea of soulforging wraiths into more permanent objects is a wonderful touch of baroque horror.

Our objections lie in the intensely personal focus of the game. The shadow of the wraith seems to be either a wonderful innovation for powerful roleplaying or a mechanic ripe for abuse depending on how its used. Harrowings strike us as definitely grounds for player abuse, and we suspect few Storytellers could pull them off successfully. Given their illusory nature, we suspect players could lose confidence in whether they're playing "for real" or in an illusory harrowing. This could lead to loss of player interest due to the cop-out nature of the "it was all a dream" plot resolution device.

Speaking of loss of player interest, how does a Storyteller keep the trope fresh? A deep exploration of one character's regrets and alienation might be interesting. We could even potentially see it for a whole troupe of players, for a single game or two. We can't see playing in this vein in a series of games. Playing a tragic, doomed character unable to associate with a longed-for past might be fun. Being part of a whole collection of such characters would likely become tiresome.

In addition, while the setting has interesting features, the inconsistencies are annoying. How can Stygia and the Shadowlands support such a number of physical items: computers, autos, telephones, weapons, armor, and the like? Given that not everybody who dies becomes a wraith, how many wraiths are there, and how many must be soulforged to create material goods? The rules refer to turning one's foes into endtables and carpets—a stunning waste in a setting where material items must be rare. How can there be an industrial revolution without power sources or raw materials?

Our main objection is the mismatch between the game, the setting, and the purpose of the game. If Wraith is to be a game of psychological exploration, as the Shadows, Harrowing, Fetters, and Passions argue, why the extensive superpowers of the Arcanoi, the deep background, the monsters, the potential tie-ins to the struggles in each of the other World of Darkness games? If Wraith is a game of exploring and interacting with the world of the dead, why the distracting struggles of Shadows and Harrowings? Why the differentiation of internal and external archetypes? These are excessively subtle. We feel White Wolf would have been better served with a better focus: either psychological exploration or setting exploration.

As noted above, we find this game deeply flawed. It appears White Wolf did also, as the game is not supported and does not appear to be likely to be republished. But we are glad to have satisfied our curiosity.

—RAD

1/16/07