In Memoriam to Wraith: The Oblivion

I have to admit it, I loved Wraith. I didn't buy every single thing that came out (although now that it's come to an end and it won't be a perpetual drain on my finances to keep up (the reason I've stopped buying most game-lines that are still active)). And, perhaps most importantly, I never played Wraith.

That's right. I never played Wraith. I wanted to desperately, but it came out after my college group had graduated or transferred, and when we got together it just never clicked. We all knew Werewolf well, and Mage well enough, but I was the only big Wraith nut. One of my friends refused to play because he had had such an intense Wraith game with another one of his ST's that he didn't feel like it was something he could handle. It frightened him.

And as far as I can tell, I'm not the only person who loved Wraith but never played it.

So why has Wraith fallen by the way-side when other ST games are going on to Revised editions? I have a couple theories.

Emotional Intensity

I'm not saying that other Storyteller/WoD games are not intense, but it seems to me like Wraith is possibly the one with the most emotional intensity built right into it in an inescapable way. You can play Werewolf as a killing machine game, Vampire as angsty politics, Mage as superheros, and Changeling as foofy. IMHO, by playing them in these ways you're losing a lot of what the game could be (but sometime Monty Hauling can be fun). And if you're playing Vampire with neonates and they're not having to debate over feeding in some way, their Humanity should be dropping big time.

But in Wraith you've got to reach for that Pathos, and if you're not it's probably becoming obvious pretty quickly. You've got to work for those Harrowings. From my perspective (and bear in mind that I have never played), doing Wraith 'by the numbers' in a remotely satisfying way should be nearly impossible.

And that means that every minute of every game is going to be work. With a good group, it is probably the most satisfying work I can think of. The GM and the players need to understand emotions, and a lot of those emotions aren't going to be pleasant or easily romanticized.

Character depth

As an extension of the emotional intensity aspect, character depth is also a big issue. Playing a shallow wraith is playing someone that should have gone to Oblivion. Furthermore, the players have to have a good grasp of things in order to not only play their own character, but someone else's shadow.

It's a different world...

In all of the other ST games you're playing in the World of Darkness, and the other levels of reality, the other aspects of the Umbra, are extensions of that. When it comes down to it, Wraith is played in the Low Umbra mostly, and the Skinlands are the extension.

While you can base the Shadowlands on what you know, that will only hold for so long. There's just a lot less consensual information to draw on, which means a lot more descriptive time is going to be needed, especially in the beginning.

Furthermore, while in the other WoD games, the supernatural societies are a sort of meta-level to the mortal ones. In Wraith, you've got a very elaborate society which is the primary level of engagement. Before adding in the other Dark Kingdom's you've got the three main divisions (Hierarchy, Renegade, Heretic), then you've got their sub-divisions, then you've got the guilds, etc. To my mind, the fluidity of Wraith's social structure makes it infinitely more complex than the Tribe, Auspice, Breed breakdown of the Garou.

Oh, and by the way, you're dead, and you're going to fall to Oblivion sooner or later

To return to the emotional intensity side of things, Wraith is potentially very depressing. You're fighting a personal emotional battle to keep from falling to Oblivion, and while the Vampiric battle with the Beast will probably drag on for decades (given that most player-character vamps have some experience dealing with it under their belts), Wraiths really are constantly on the edge of Oblivion. You botch badly in Vampire, you lose Humanity. You botch badly in Wraith, and pfft, you're gone. Oh, and someone else in your group is playing the thing that's trying to make that happen.

A lot of Wraith seems like it would be solitary

Again, you might be able to run a good game without running a lot of sections focused predominantly on one character, but it seems like this would also cost a lot of the Pathos of the game. From my perspective you really would need a group of player's that would enjoy the stories of all of the other characters as much as their own and as much as the group story.

With all that said and done, I really do want to say thanks to those of you who created Wraith. I think it's an immensely entrancing concept, and I honestly believe it has the potential to be the most rewarding of the Storyteller games (probably followed by Hunter for me). Of all that I said above, I hope that it is not taken as criticism by anyone who reads this, because while I think changing these things could have made it a better seller, they would have made it a worse game.

My thanks to Richard Dansky, Mark Rein(dot)Hagen, Jennifer Hartshorn, Sam Chupp, Andrew Bates, Beth Fischi, Nicky Rea, Cynthia Summers, Fred Yelk, Bill Aguiar, Jackie Cassada, Mark Cenczyk, Ben Chessell, Graeme Davis, Ian Lemke, Steve Long, James Moore,Joshua Mosquiera, Nicky Rea, Ethan Skemp, Wendy Soss, Richard Watts, Rick Huatula, Ken Cliffe, Richard Thomas, Lawrence Snelly, Aileen Miles, Mike Chaney, John Cobb, Mike Danza, Guy Davis, Darren Fyrendall, Michael Gaydos, Pia Guerra, Anthony Hightower, Fred Hooper, Leif Jones, Eric Lacombe, Brian LeBlanc, Vince Locke, Larry McDougall, Heather McKinney Chernik, George Pratt, Johnathan Rhea, Andrew Ritchie, E. Allen Smith, Ron Spencer, Joshua Gabriel Timbrook, Drew Tucker, Larry Friedman, Henry Higginbotham, Katie McCaskill, Bruce Baugh, Geoffrey Grabowski, Ed Huang, Ed Hall, Richard Thomas, Richard Clark, William O'Connor, Pauline Beeney, Bryan Armor, David Bolack, Dierd'Re Brooks, James Kiley, Jason Langlois, John McGrady, Mikko Rautalahti, Eric Thompson, William Van Meter, Dave Weinstein, and everyone who I do not have a credits list to find their name, but who worker on Wraith through writing, creating visual art, editting, play-testing, or just contributing to the zeitgeist that made it possible.

Thanks,
Ken Young

PS- I still want to play Wraith. I'm currently in Ann Arbor, MI, and would drive a fair ways to do so. If you know of a game, my address is drayk@monarchy.com.