# Wraith: the Oblivion tags: #game/rpg/wraith ![[Wraith the Oblivion (cover).jpg|600]] **Wraith: The Oblivion** is the fourth game in the **[[World of Darkness]]** line, and the one where you play a ghost. Not a spooky one, either — a dead person with unfinished business, stuck in the Underworld, trying not to get dragged down into the void by their own dark side. It's the World of Darkness game that's less "you are a monster" and more "you are a corpse with a therapy problem," and it's famously the one that's brilliant, bleak, and almost impossible to run well. ## Setting You play a **wraith** — the Restless dead, a ghost who refused to pass on. The Underworld is layered: the **Shadowlands** mirror the living world, the **Tempest** is the roiling storm at the rim of reality, and **Stygia** is the great city of the dead at its heart. The dead are governed by the **Hierarchy**, a bureaucracy founded by **Charon**, the first wraith, and policed by the **Legions**; the **Guilds** — the Artificers, Masquers, Sandmen, Spooks, and a dozen more — hold the secrets of the ghostly powers called **Arcanoi**. Every wraith is anchored to the living world by **Fetters** (the people, places, and things they can't let go of) and driven by **Passions** (the emotions that keep them going). And every wraith carries a **Shadow** — the dark, spiteful half of the soul that feeds on **Angst** and wants nothing more than to drag you into **Oblivion**, the void at the end of everything. **Spectres** are the wraiths who already gave in. ## Mechanics It's the **Storyteller System**: roll a dice pool of d10s equal to your **Attribute + Ability**, with each die meeting or exceeding the difficulty (usually 6) counting as a success. More successes mean better results; a botch — no successes and at least one 1 — makes things actively worse. Wraiths track **Corpus** (their ectoplasmic body, starting at 10), **Pathos** (emotional energy that powers their Arcanoi and heals their Corpus), **Willpower**, and **Angst** (the Shadow's fuel). The unique twist is the **Shadow**, which is often played by another player at the table — your own dark side scheming against you from inside your head. ## Editions **Wraith: The Oblivion** has three editions, all in the library: - **1st Edition** (1994) — the original. - **2nd Edition** (1996) — the canonical edition, a cleanup of the rules. - **[[Wraith - the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition|20th Anniversary Edition]]** (2018) — the Onyx Path compendium that consolidated the whole line. ## Library The collection holds a substantial slice of the Wraith line, grouped by how the books relate. The standalone-worthy books have their own entries: - **[[Wraith - the Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition|Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition]]** — the consolidated compendium. - **[[Wraith - The Great War|Wraith: The Great War]]** — the World War I period book. - **[[World of Darkness - Tokyo|World of Darkness: Tokyo]]** — a city sourcebook. - **[[Necropolis - Atlanta|Necropolis: Atlanta]]** — a city sourcebook. - **[[Charnel Houses of Europe - The Shoah|Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah]]** — the Holocaust legacy book. The rest, grouped by how they relate: **Player's & Storyteller's Guides** - **Wraith Player's Guide** — player options and expanded rules. - **Shadow Player's Guide** — the guide to playing the Shadow. - **Wraith: The Oblivion Storyteller's Guide** — running the game. **Guildbooks** (each covers one of the wraith guilds) - **Guildbook: Artificers**, **Guildbook: Doomslayers**, **Guildbook: Haunters**, **Guildbook: Masquers**, **Guildbook: Pardoners and Puppeteers**, **Guildbook: Sandmen**, **Guildbook: Spooks and Oracles** **Setting sourcebooks** - **The Hierarchy** — the bureaucracy of Stygia. - **Book of Legions** — the Legions. - **Renegades** — the faction that rejects the Hierarchy. - **The Risen** — wraiths who claw their way back into life. - **The Quick & the Dead** — ghost hunters and the living. - **Dark Reflections: Spectres** — the corrupted dead. - **Dark Kingdom of Jade** — the Asian underworld. - **Haunts** — haunted locations. - **Midnight Express** — the ghost train of Stygia. - **The Sea of Shadows** — the Tempest. - **Love Beyond Death** — romance among the dead. - **Mediums: Speakers in the Dust** — mediums. - **Buried Secrets** — companion to the core rulebook. - **Ends of Empire** — the line's final metaplot. - **The Face of Death** — an oversized artbook. **Anthology** - **Haunting Shadows: The Wraith The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Anthology** — a collection of fiction. ## References - [Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/233842/Wraith-The-Oblivion-20th-Anniversary-Edition) - [List of Wraith: The Oblivion books - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wraith:_The_Oblivion_books) - [Wraith: The Oblivion - White Wolf Wiki](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Wraith:_The_Oblivion) - [Wraith: The Oblivion Review - RPG.net](https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_6839.phtml)