Does anyone here understand Wraith: the Oblivion?

[Baeraad]

I'm considering running a game of it, so I'm going over some of my old sourcebooks. So far, I can only report that I can make no more sense of it than I could ten years ago, when I last tried. Can someone give me some advice?

For a start, what's the deal with Haunts? Supposedly wraiths are drawn to them because they can touch the Skinlands from them more easily... but given that it's stated that no sane person willingly lives in a Haunt, it doesn't seem to be much point in being able to manifest arcanoi more easily in an empty, ruined house.

And Necropoli... I'm having trouble even picturing how they're supposed to work. Are they completely deserted in the Skinlands, and full of wraiths living next door to each other in the Shadowlands? Or are they more like social constructs, with every spooky ruin or creepy underpass within miles considered part of the same "city" even though they're separated by Quick-populated areas?

Also, what do good Mortuum Dictum-abiding wraiths do all day? I can imagine what wraiths willing to break the law do - they hang around their Fetters and objects of Passion and obsess over them. But when you don't need food or shelter and you can't ply most trades anyway because raw materials are so scarce, what do you even do with your time?

I'm willing to consider the possibility that the answer is, "yeah, the game is badly designed. You'll need to change a couple of things if you want it to make sense." :p But I'd like to at least try to figure out how it was meant to run first.

 

[Necrozius]

I had trouble figuring it out too. if I ever went back, I’d definitely be in the boat of "change things up".

So I don't have any further clarifications, sorry.

But I like to ponder how I'd tackle it. I'd tap into other media. The "wraith world" would overlap with ours exactly the same way as the Upside Down in Stranger Things. Exits into the mortal world would typically exist in haunts.

And Wraiths would be the explanation for everything: fairies, cenobites (angels and demons) and other strangeness. It could work.

 

[Imperator]

The setting of Wraith is terribly explained. At the mechanical level is all pretty straightforward, but everyone I know, myself included, has a very hard time picturing how the world looks and works.

 

[Necrozius]

One thing I didn't like about Wraith, or many other WoD games, was the trivializing of many supernatural concepts with mundane or clinical terms. Normalizing some things kind of took some of the wonder, mystery, and magic out of it all. To me, anyways. I understand the need to codify abilities, powers and such for playability, but I hate it when characters, in-game, refer to each other's powers like that.

It's like in the X-Men movies when a character's like "Oh you're a level 3 mutant with pyrokenisis. I'm a level 2 mutant with telekinetic abilities and zapper eyes". or "I'll counter your phase Y ice beam with my phase Z boom-boom shields ha!" like fucking Pokemon or something.

</grumpyRant>

 

[Baeraad]

One thing I didn't like about Wraith, or many other WoD games, was the trivializing of many supernatural concepts with mundane or clinical terms. Normalizing some things kind of took some of the wonder, mystery, and magic out of it all. To me, anyways. I understand the need to codify abilities, powers and such for playability, but I hate it when characters, in-game, refer to each other's powers like that.

It's like in the X-Men movies when a character's like "Oh you're a level 3 mutant with pyrokenisis. I'm a level 2 mutant with telekinetic abilities and zapper eyes". or "I'll counter your phase Y ice beam with my phase Z boom-boom shields ha!" like fucking Pokemon or something.

</grumpyRant>

I dunno, that part I kind of like. It gives the game a nice kind of surrealism - arcanoi and plasm and Shadows and Fetters are all part of a wraith's everyday existence. It's not something distant and mysterious, it's right here and they have to deal with it 24/7. Really, I think all the supernatural stuff is really cool, it's the mundane details that are a bit scarce - which is my problem with most WoD games, actually.

 

[Ladybird]

I could never quite tell if Wraith wanted to be a horror-fantasy adventure game set in the land of the dead, or a psychological horror game about losing touch with the world you died in, but the combination of both didn't seem to work for me. And playing part of another player's psyche... I like some psychological horror, but I would be very wary about many other players in that situation. Requires a lot of trust.

 

[Baulderstone]

I could never quite tell if Wraith wanted to be a horror-fantasy adventure game set in the land of the dead, or a psychological horror game about losing touch with the world you died in, but the combination of both didn't seem to work for me.

That's the central problem with the game. It seemed over the course of the supplements, they got more interested in the fantasy game angle. It had a lot more RPG adventure potential than hanging around and resolving your life issues. The vagueness of the setting was the real issue though. If the GM isn't even sure what the setting is like, there is no way the players can hope to operate in it.

Like Changeling: the Dreaming, I felt this was a game that nobody on the design team had actually ever played before publication. They had lots of cool ideas and even some interesting mechanics but all the glaring holes would have been apparent to someone that did even the lightest of playtesting.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

I knew people on the design team and they absolutely did play it before publication. People from WW talked about it in the old AOL chats and on The Storyteller's Circle MUSH.

I also knew outside playtesters.

Anyway, I'm too far removed from the game right now to be able to answer the questions in the OP, unfortunately. The last time I read a Wraith anything was Orpheus close to if not over a decade ago. And Orpheus wasn't actually Wraith. I am confident there are answers to the OP's questions, and I'll see if I can pass them along to one of the writers for Wraith 20.

 

[TristramEvans]

Wraith reminded me very much of Changeling in that they were both a glorious hodgepodge of ideas with very little editorial oversight and lacking a clear singular vision. Basically every writer had their own view of the game, and these were all presented in one giant hot soup. Wraith was trying to be every ghost story mixed together, along with Beetlejuice, Ghost, and Jacob's Ladder. I think the only way to run it effectively would be to treat the setting like a GURPs toolbox, starting with what interests you , ignoring the rest, and building from there. This of course requires players that aren't hung up on the "official WOG declarations and metaplot", which at least are a lot easier to find today than in the 90s. I personally thought Wraith was at its best, setting-wise, with the supplement Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth. I wish a third edition had come along that had used this as the primary focus of the game.

 

[Baeraad]

I think I have actually arrived at a possible answer for my third question. What do wraiths do that don't want to break the Dictum Mortuum, who don't want to join the Legions and don't get one of the few opens spots as soulforgers or other Arcanos-using specialists? Well, they either drift along, spy jealously on the living, get into trouble because it's not like they can die anyway (they can suffer fates worse than death, but they might not realise or fully believe that) and just generally act like disenfranchised youth gangs. Or they sit around, mope, have angsty conversations with each other that they're trying to believe are really profound, also spy jealously on the living, and try to figure out just what the point of anything is anymore. What Pathos they have, they get from passively leeching it off Quick activity without influencing it.

Which works in two ways. Firstly, it means that the two groups are well on their way to becoming Renegades and Heretics, respectively, if they actually decide to get serious about their delinquism or their soul-searching. Secondly, it makes for a nicely demoralising setting where, after having lived a meaningless life, you end up in a meaningless afterlife - you're still broke and unemployed, and no one still cares about what you want or wants you to do anything other than stay out of their way! :p

 

[TristramEvans]

they sit around, mope, have angsty conversations with each other that they're trying to believe are really profound, also spy jealously on the living, and try to figure out just what the point of anything is anymore.

the perfect premise for a disaffected 90s teen goth LARP I guess.

 

[Baeraad]

the perfect premise for a disaffected 90s teen goth LARP I guess.

Well, obviously the player characters are either going to be Legionnaires or other Hierarchy hotshots with a bunch of important stuff to do, or they're going to be the badasses who are willing to ignore the law and mess around with the living or whatever. I'm just trying to figure out what the "civilians" are doing in the meantime. :p

 

[Baulderstone]

I knew people on the design team and they absolutely did play it before publication. People from WW talked about it in the old AOL chats and on The Storyteller's Circle MUSH.

I also knew outside playtesters.

Anyway, I'm too far removed from the game right now to be able to answer the questions in the OP, unfortunately. The last time I read a Wraith anything was Orpheus close to if not over a decade ago. And Orpheus wasn't actually Wraith. I am confident there are answers to the OP's questions, and I'll see if I can pass them along to one of the writers for Wraith 20.

Fair enough. It still feels to me a like a game that didn't get enough feedback from people that didn't already know how to play.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

Fair enough. It still feels to me a like a game that didn't get enough feedback from people that didn't already know how to play.

That I won't argue with. It's a subjective feeling and I also feel that Wraith first edition was not entirely a finished product.

 

[Sosthenes]

I heard someone describe Kindreds of the East as the best Wraith game.

 

[The Butcher]

I loved Wraith... as a supplement to our V:tM LARPs. Specifically to my recurring Giovanni characters. More to the point, the better to weaponize my army of Necromancy-bound ghosts, some of which grew into Storyteller favorites.

Heh. Good times.

Also, Wraith's afterlife would make a great OD&D setting. John Bell (who used to post as Psedoephedrine over at the Site, until banned by Pundit a few years back) had an OD&D campaign setting called Necrocarcerus that struck me as somewhat Wraith-like, with an extra dollop of gonzo.

 

[Baeraad]

New question: are the Shadowlands a separate dimension that just happens to take its form from the real world, like the Umbra from Mage and Werewolf? Or is it an invisible-except-to-select-people overlay over the real world, like chimerical reality from Changeling? 'Cause the fluff (which keeps describing the Shadowlands as empty and desolate and definitely not full of regular humans running around) seems to say the former and the crunch (which after all has a lot of special powers that's all about affecting the Skinlands, and which seems to assume that they are always there to be affected) seems to say the latter.

Also, Wraith's afterlife would make a great OD&D setting. John Bell (who used to post as Psedoephedrine over at the Site, until banned by Pundit a few years back) had an OD&D campaign setting called Necrocarcerus that struck me as somewhat Wraith-like, with an extra dollop of gonzo.

It's certainly a lot easier to use it as a dark fantasy setting than to try to maintain its urban fantasy roots... but that leaves a lot of mechanics just sort of flapping in the breeze without being connected to anything. That sort of thing always disturbs me.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

The crunch doesn't say differently. The Skinlands are always there to be affected but you have to reach across the Shroud to affect them. The Shadowlands, aka the Dark Umbra, is a separate but linked dimension. It's not like The Dreaming.

 

[Baeraad]

The crunch doesn't say differently. The Skinlands are always there to be affected but you have to reach across the Shroud to affect them. The Shadowlands, aka the Dark Umbra, is a separate but linked dimension. It's not like The Dreaming.

Yeah, but what does that mean, exactly? Do you see the living or not? Or only when you really work at it? Do they look differently from wraiths to you, or can you mistake one for the other?

 

[Belle Sorciere]

Yeah, but what does that mean, exactly? Do you see the living or not? Or only when you really work at it? Do they look differently from wraiths to you, or can you mistake one for the other?

You can see the living and they do not look like wraiths. If they pass through you or you pass through them you take one corpus of damage.

 

[Baeraad]

You can see the living and they do not look like wraiths. If they pass through you or you pass through them you take one corpus of damage.

Okay. How does that square with descriptions of the Shadowlands as being desolate and ruined? Do you see the living drive around in rustbucket cars that are in reality brand new? Do the living walk straight through the soulforged walls of Hierarchy Citadels? Because that's... really kind of stupid, and kind of ruins the ambience. Possibly it will make more sense to me as I continue reading, but I still think that there's two mutually exclusive versions presented of what the Shadowlands look like.

The best solution I can think of, so far, is that the living are visible, but that they look kind of like glowy outlines to the wraiths - basically, they look like ghosts to the ghosts, only bright instead of shadowy. I'm not sure what to do with items, though. They need to be accessible, because there are several Arcanoi that are all about manipulating inanimate objects, but they kind of ruin the mood if they're always lying around looking crisp and clear and new.

 

[Baulderstone]

I think a lot of these weird inconsistencies were more of a problem in Wraith and Changeling due to the popularity of the World of Darkness. Most gamers I knew at the time were picking up the books and running into these issues. With a lower profile game, like Over the Edge, I was the only one around that ran it. I could make Al Amarja my own, and nobody was any wiser. With Wraith, any attempt to slap my own interpretation on it was countered by someone finding something in the book that contradicted it.

It would probably be a lot easier to run now when it has faded in memory. Also, people are just a lot cooler about making games your own than they were in the 90s, when too many people were caught up in metaplot and canon.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

Okay. How does that square with descriptions of the Shadowlands as being desolate and ruined? Do you see the living drive around in rustbucket cars that are in reality brand new? Do the living walk straight through the soulforged walls of Hierarchy Citadels? Because that's... really kind of stupid, and kind of ruins the ambience. Possibly it will make more sense to me as I continue reading, but I still think that there's two mutually exclusive versions presented of what the Shadowlands look like.

The best solution I can think of, so far, is that the living are visible, but that they look kind of like glowy outlines to the wraiths - basically, they look like ghosts to the ghosts, only bright instead of shadowy. I'm not sure what to do with items, though. They need to be accessible, because there are several Arcanoi that are all about manipulating inanimate objects, but they kind of ruin the mood if they're always lying around looking crisp and clear and new.

The Shadowlands are desolate and ruined. In addition, you can see into the Skinlands and stuff in the Skinlands has an impact on stuff in the Shadowlands. The rule of ouch or whatever it's called makes no sense at all if the Skinlands is not perceptible in the Shadowlands.

All of this is explicitly explained in Wraith. At this point I just suggest you read the book. Wraith isn't perfect, but you're making this specific thing into far more of an issue than it really is.

 

[Baeraad]

So... you see both places at once? Like, superimposed on each other? Or what? Look, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but I feel it is in fact a pretty big issue. How am I supposed to run a game when I can't answer the most basic player question of all: "what do I see?"

 

[Black Sun]

The way I tried to square that circle was to basically give wraiths an additional dimension of perception: in-and-out of the Shadowlands. I kept the Shadowlands as a desolate dark fantasy setting vaguely analogous to, but in no way directly affected by, the Skinlands. However, wraiths at all time can also see and walk toward Skinlands (which appear somewhat distant). If they do so, they can use their arcanoi on Skinland objects, are vulnerable to contact with the Quick and so on.
To avoid abuse Wraiths had to stay in roughly the same area when close to the Skinlands and when they walked back toward the Shadowlands would reemerge basically where they started out from (to avoid using this extra dimension to move around obstacles in the Shadowlands - also it makes Wraiths inherently "haunty" as they are always bound in place when interacting with the Skinlands).
I think I remember this approach causing some weirdness with some arcanoi or something, but for the most part it worked well for us.

 

[Belle Sorciere]

So... you see both places at once? Like, superimposed on each other? Or what? Look, I'm not trying to be difficult here, but I feel it is in fact a pretty big issue. How am I supposed to run a game when I can't answer the most basic player question of all: "what do I see?"

The game literally explains this in explicit terms. The answer to your question is addressed in detail in the core rulebook.

The short version is, as I said before, you can see into the Skinlands. Everything actually looks decayed because of deathsight, and people who are going to die soon have that death stamped on their features. Things in the Skinlands are distinguishable from things in the Shadowlands. The Skinlands are visible from the Shadowlands, and this is the only interpretation that makes sense because many of the Arcanoi wouldn't work if it were any different.

I can't give you an answer in more detail because I do not currently have access to any Wraith books. I strongly suggest just reading the book. The explanation you need is right there, as I have already stated previously.

 

[Baeraad]

Yes, I know you have stated that previously. It's just that your stating it does not make me any wiser. Okay, you can see the Skinlands and also you can see the Shadowlands and they look different. But my question, which neither you or the book (which I have read, actually, repeatedly) seems to be able to explain to me in a way that I understand is, how does that work, exactly?

I mean, if you said, for instance, "the watch is on the table," I'd need no further explanation, because I have personal real-world experience with watches, tables and things lying on top of other things. You don't have to give me all the details, I can fill in the blanks on my own. But since what you're saying is, "you can perceive two different levels of reality," well... that's going to take quite an in-depth description before I develop a working understanding of it, since I'm basically starting from scratch there. In my own life, after all, I have only ever been able to perceive one level of reality.

 

[Necrozius]

I also got confused by that. Instead I just split the two worlds completely. Wraiths can hang out in the Skinlands, that realm that overlays our own (but every thing is given the Silent-Hill treatmen, i.e., all is rusty, rotten and decrepit). Or they can travel to the Shadowlands, the "wraith world" which is like hell, purgatory or whatever, with cities and landscapes of the after-world.

If you want to have adventures in our world but creepy and depressing, interacting with mortals and such, dealing with introspective horror, hang out in the Skinlands.

If you want to deal with surrealistic fantasy horror worlds, including the politics of the different socio-political groups, hang out in the Shadowlands.

Hell, you can do both! Let's say the "party" needs to go from New York to Moscow. It would take ages in the Skinlands. But take a detour into the Shadowlands and hop a ride on a colossal skeleton demon train and it only takes a couple of hours (just make sure that you have your tickets or you get devoured by the Silent-Hill-esque abominations that staff the passenger cars.