wraith the oblivion gothic rol game

Written by i j

Friday, 26 February 2010 14:48

Yesterday I was talking with vampire of the night about role-playing games when I thought that it couldn’t harm to write an article about one of my biggest hobbies, then I decided to write about:

Wraith: the Oblivion

Yes, I know that you were waiting me to say “Vampire the masquerade” well, no.

If you have played role-playing games you should know “vampire the masquerade” even if you don’t usually play but are interested in this kind of games you probably have read something about it (In deed I recommend you to test it).

But I wanted to write about a different game that probably has been unnoticed by many role playing gamers (specially if you started in the last 2 years or so).

This game was created by White Wolf (same as Vampire) and uses its famous D10 system, that means that if you have played Vampire you know all what you need for playing wraith, at least in term of general rules.

It was released in that epoch in which White Wolf had burned vampire quite a lot and they thought about creating parallel settings for their world of darkness, in deed it was released almost as same time than his brothers “Mage the ascension”, “Changeling: The dreaming”, “Mummies (cant remember the following)” and “hunter: the reckoning”.

As most of his brothers his expectative weren’t quite good and they perfectly meet them, as far as I know there isn’t much material about this games that saw an soon ending in the support from White Wolfs part.

Then… Why I’m going to talk you a bout this game? Because I love the setting and because I’m pretty sure that if your role-playing group is some short related with Goth they will love it too.

In this game you play with a soul that when he died leaved something undone in the living lands, therefore he rejected to cease to exists or earn the eternal rest and formed part of the land of shadows, a reflex of reality.

This reflect is an almost dreamy reflect where the undead life formed from what everything that was important in the living lands (or flesh lands as they call it) and was somehow destroyed or killed. For them to get to the lands of shadow its needed that some of the still livings remembers it and have some feelings (either good or bad) against it, the more people and the stronger that those collective feelings are, the stronger that the reflect in the lands of shadows are and somehow the more powerful it is.

That gives us the strange satiations in which the same building, destroyed several times and remembered for several reasons have several reflections in the land of the undead, that makes that the historic places are well defined and strong but the near streets where nothing important happened are shadowy and in the spark of disappearing (In deed the fastest way to get from one point to another its not the straight line but the “most forgotten” route)

That’s where the game gets its name, the fact is that the worst thing that could happen to you or your belongings its that they get forgotten by the living (ending in the oblivion), when that happens they slowly lost substance and they finally disappear without leaving any trace of their previous existence.

For ending the picture of this world, I only have to say that as you can imagine it’s a dark, tenebrous and oppressive land without any trace of colors and full of dangers… Well and I think that in definitive its gothic.

Wraith society turns around a hierarchy imposed by the Iron imperium, that society its the rest of what was created by Caronte and its ruled by a law code written in the “Dictum Mortem”, some short of old set of laws, in it its written (along other laws) that its completely forbidden to interact with the land of flesh.

But around this imperium there are some organizations that oppose (secretly or not) to those rules, so the conflict is created.

But if there is anything that we don’t lack in Wraith its precisely conflict (although its not solved in the traditional ways).

As I said if a souls ended in the land of shadows it’s because it refused to accept his destiny and if he did it was because he had really strong live reasons for doing so, in deed in the character creation you have to define precisely what those reasons are and they will rule your non-living existence.

¿It’s a code of laws that you probably never heard about to stop you from doing whatever made you to reject the opportunity of eternal rest?

The answer is no.

But not all troubles comes from outside, in deed every Wraith has an “alter ego”, a shadow that represent the darkest of himself, that shadow only exists for the auto destruction of the Wraith and for doing that, threatens, seduces and oblige to do things that the wraith don’t want to do.

If that wasn’t enough, there is an additional problem, the fact is that only what livings remember is not enough for maintaining the undead society and that the only construction raw material at the disposal of the lands of the shadow (for doing anything) is precisely souls.

There exists “blacksmiths” that shape souls and oblige them to adopt certain forms till the end of days (or until their oblivion) creating furniture, weapons, tools… that are still vaguely conscience of what happens to them and their surroundings and that will be trapped in their new form without a chance of escaping… In deed it has a sado “touch”

This kind of punishment it’s reserved for the worst criminals (those that don’t respect the Dictum Mortem that as we said its impossible to respect) but that doesn’t avoid the existence of a flourishing black market always hunting of the recent arrivals to the land of shadows, souls that no body will miss or someone that was in the wrong location at the wrong time… the sentence “you worth your weight in gold” was never as truth as in Wraith the oblivion.

But that’s not all you have to worry about, if you think this undead society it’s pretty unfriendly you still have to check what’s outside of the city walls, most Wraiths don’t have a chance out there but some of them exit the city and the Iron Imperium protection because vocation, looking for answers or because they have no other escape, there they confront the spirits of not human source (nothing healthy) and those humans that died under horrible circumstances and want everything to be destroyed.

Do you remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Well now imagine what those 2 atomic bombs made in the land of the shadows… nothing good…

And that’s all the revision to this game, my advice is that you try to get a copy of it before it’s too late, if not for playing for entering this cool setting that for me it’s quite captivating.