How to Run Wraith: The Oblivion

By

Matthew McFarland

Imagine, for a moment, that you died today. How is fairly irrelevant at this point. Maybe you were hit by a bus, maybe you were a victim of a mugging gone bad. The important thing to consider, however, is not the way you departed this world but what you leave behind.

That, in a nutshell, is Wraith: The Oblivion from White Wolf Game Studios. In the game, players assume the roles of wraiths, a fancy word for “ghosts”. The first step in designing a character, therefore, is to figure out who this person was in life, and what she felt so strongly about that it kept her around after death.

Passion is really the crux of the matter. Wraith characters, aside from the usual set of Attributes (Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, etc.) also have traits called Passions and Fetters. A Passion is exactly that: a stated goal or mindset with an emotion attached to it. It is simply the driving urge (or one of them) that caused the character to become a wraith instead of passing on to whatever afterlife awaits. An example of a Passion would be to Protect My Lover. The attached emotion really adds color, however. Protecting one’s lover would seem to be fueled by Love, and that’s fine, but what if it was fueled by Spite instead, or Envy?

Along with Passions, wraiths have Fetters. Fetters are material things (people, places, or things) that have special significance. The wraith who is resolved (for whatever reason) to protect his lover might well also take her as a Fetter, or might instead fixate on a place meaningful to the relationship, such as a favorite club or a piece of jewelry her gave her.

Wraiths watch the living world ¾ what they call the Skinlands ¾ from behind a barrier called the Shroud. The Shroud varies in thickness by how “death-oriented” a place is; a graveyard has a thinner Shroud than a shopping mall. The Shroud is not only a metaphysical barrier, however: there are rules against crossing it. (More on this below.)

The strange “in-between” place that wraiths haunt is called the Shadowlands. They appear as mirror-images of the Skinlands, but death and decay are highlighted. Wraiths see death in everything; a heavy smoker might exhale yellow, sickly fumes with every breath, while a car about to crash already appears dented and crushed.

Beyond the Shadowlands is the Tempest, an eternal storm that acts as a threshold between the Shadowlands and the Underworld, where the dead make their cities. Navigating the Tempest requires a special power called Argos; the unprepared are swept away into oblivion.

The final aspect of Wraith that needs examination here is the Shadow. The Shadow is every wraith’s urge to jump headlong into the abyss and end all his suffering. The Shadow actually talks to the wraith (and control of the Shadow is assumed by another player), and can even take control of the wraith at times.

There’s a lot of terminology in Wraith, and it’s easy to get bogged down. The important thing to remember is that all wraiths were human, all had very mundane concerns, and all were cut off from fulfilling those concerns ¾ and felt strongly enough about them not to let go.

Wraith’s system is much the same as White Wolf’s other games: It uses 10-sided dice, and a dice pool consists (normally) of an Attribute + Ability combination. Any given roll has a difficulty, from 2 to 10. Each die that rolls at or above the difficulty is a success. A wraith’s supernatural powers (called Arcanoi, singular Arcanos) work much the same way, usually combining an Attribute + Arcanos rating for the dice pool.

Wraith is a beautifully simple game, despite the extensive mechanics. You don’t need to be a mythology expert to play or run it. It helps if you’ve got an appreciation for ghost stories, but even that isn’t really necessary. All that is necessary is some understanding of the human condition and of passion. Therefore, this is not a game for weepy, angsty folks who think that life sucks and there is no hope. Wraiths are not people who wanted to die and be over (even the ones that committed suicide). They are people who died before their time, with issues unresolved, and took those issues with them. Wraith isn’t about death and it isn’t about endings. It’s about what comes after death, and it’s about resolution.

Of course, there’s a back-story here (no surprise in a White Wolf game). In brief, there’s a Hierarchy that oversees wraithly existence and forbids contact with the Skinlands. The Hierarchy is ruled by seven Deathlords, all of whom oversee a legion of wraiths divided up by their causes of death (violence, disease, despair, etc.). The Underworld includes a city — Stygia — where the Deathlords meet and the seat of power resides.

Note, however, that all bets are off as far as Wraith goes, because White Wolf ended the game line. The game is not out of print, however, and it’s entirely possible to run a satisfying Wraith game without ever involving any of the metaplot. Again, being human is enough to run this game. A Storyteller considering a Wraith game should make sure, first and foremost, that she has players who are mature enough to enjoy the game. This is not a game for power-mongers. It is not about combat or beating back the forces of darkness. It’s about the development and resolution of the soul, and that means that a player with very little life experience is going to have hard time creating a character too far different from himself. Consider: it’s easy enough to create a Navy SEAL character for Vampire, since the character’s feelings on his life are going to get very little “screen” time; most of the game focus is on the character’s struggle with being undead. However, a former Navy SEAL wraith will very likely have to confront issues raised during basic training and SEAL training — things that the player will probably not have any experience with.

Storytellers should encourage players to create characters that aren’t too far out of their own experience. That doesn’t mean “create yourself as a wraith”. That means “create a character with whom you can identify”. A character of similar age with comparable life experience will work just fine.

Another caveat to the Storyteller: this game is about responsibility. Don’t feel compelled to give players a way out of their own tragedies. An example:

I played a Wraith character who died of a heroin overdose while still in high school. He wasn’t a junkie (yet), just a recreational shooter, made a simply error in judgment, and died from it. His stepfather was so angry and embarrassed that he gave the kid’s body up for science and never had a funeral. This, obvious, didn’t help James (the character) on his way to the hereafter. But instead of being angry, James was wracked with guilt for what he’d done. He wanted forgiveness, but had no idea how to go about it or even how he’d know it (the end result was, of course, he had to forgive himself. The chronicle never got to that point; the game fizzled first. Story of my life.)

Except that the Storyteller later had me meet another wraith who’d been possessing James while he died. So suddenly, it wasn’t James’ fault. That changes the character’s outlook considerably, right?

The thing is, when you’re a ghost, outlook is everything. Your self-image changes the way you look and act, and can (and often does) give power to or take power from your Shadow. So the Storyteller needs to ask a million questions of the players and nail down the character concepts very firmly. This includes the Shadow.

As mentioned about, the Shadow is played by one of the other players. This is just one more reason why Wraith requires mature players; a person who is not capable of handling the psychological abuse and manipulation that Shadows employ should not play Wraith. Likewise, it might be wise to avoid letting one half of a couple Shadowguide the other half, simply to avoid any possible problems.

(Another possibility for Shadowguiding, incidentally, is to have one person role-play everyone’s Shadow. That works pretty well, but it requires someone who not only can take cues from the Storyteller well, but knows when to back the heck off.)

The best points of Wraith are the opportunities for great role-playing it provides. A wraith is the ultimate tragic figure: unlike vampires, they have no need of hurting others as part of their natures. They have their own, highly personal needs and desires, and this emphasis on personal (rather than societal) agendas is one thing that makes Wraith so unique a game.

However, the game does have its downsides. The major one has already been discussed; it’s hard to find players who can handle it. More than any other game I’ve ever run or played, Wraith requires work and focus. Some folks find it too dark to enjoy, too deeply psychological to be “entertainment”. Indeed, a three-hour game of Wraith feels much longer. As Storyteller, you must be ready to take a break if the players require one.

Another major problem is that White Wolf doesn’t support the game anymore. The hardcover is still in print, but many of the sourcebooks are not. As stated, you only need the hardcover to play, but the lack of source material might bother others. (If you do plan on running Wraith, I recommend buying the hardcover, the Shadow Player’s Guide, and The Risen.)

Wraith has a special place in my heart because it’s the first White Wolf game I ran. I had six players to start out: a housewife beaten to death by her husband; a high school chess champ run down by a drunk driver; a gambling-addict priest who died with his sins on his soul; a young actor who fell victim to a freak accident; a ghost-hunter who found a murderous spirit; and a porn star who died of an apparently accidental overdose — but knew what she was doing.

When the players made characters, I told each of them to purchase a Haunt (a safe place for wraiths, where their powers are stronger and the storms that ravage the Shadowlands can’t hurt them). Each of their Haunts turned out to be a different room in an old theater, one that they’d all had some history with in their breathing days. The title of the chronicle was “Escher’s Descent”. The mood of the game was to be very surreal — it was meant to be a story about the tragedy and strangeness inherent in death. The underlying theme was that they could take control at any time and work to resolve what had happened to them.

The very first game saw them introduced to their mentors and the other inhabitants of the theater. They also met Dorian, a type of ghost called a Spectre — a wraith whose Shadow had permanently taken over. Dorian turned out to be one of my favorite villains. Whenever the characters mentioned his name, he’d float through the floor and ask what they wanted (they quickly figured out not to say his name — he terrified all of them). Over the course of the story, they found some of their Fetters being collected by a necromancer and used to summon and demand favors of them. Eventually, they managed to retrieve and lock away these Fetters, with some help.

The chronicle saw the characters fall to various fates. The porn star eventually became a Spectre herself. Dorian destroyed the housewife; the actor resolved his Fetters and Passions and transcended, moving on to another life. (The chess player and the ghost-hunter are not going to be discussed.) Over the course of the chronicle, I think the themes worked themselves in nicely. The biggest problem was that since I hadn’t run anything by White Wolf, I fell into the “monster of the week” syndrome; every time I bought a new book I just had to work something from it into the game. The chronicle, however, proved to me that players will rise to whatever challenges you set for them.

Wraith is “black licorice” — it’s hard to feel ambivalent about it once you’ve played it. I love it. With the right group, I feel it makes for the best stories of any role-playing game I’ve ever run or played.

If I died today, I think I’d regret not running it again. J

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Wraith: The Oblivion and all associated terms are property of White Wolf Game Studio and this article is not intended as a challenge to these or any other copyrights.

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