# Wretched Bastards *Created:* 2026-11-05, *Modified:* 2026-11-05 ![[Wretched Bastards (cover).jpg|600]] ## Setting Antillia is a whole world rather than a kingdom, and the setting chapter walks it region by region: Albiyu, Alkebula, Andril, Antillia and Archemenia, Avalidad, Baetica, Bavarr, Braban and Cydonnia, Corphye and the Eastern Lands, Enodean and Hasua, the Helvetii and Huaxia, Jambu, Kharabas, Kadok and the Lepparo Sea, Mizraim, Rodhenia and Riget, Ruz and Sale, Scania and Vitulya, Yamanto and Zindhu. It is the ancient and Renaissance world with the serial numbers filed off, drawn on the map that comes with the book. Religions get a chapter of their own — the Araknyd Brotherhood, the Daughters of Ksenia, the Enodean Faith, the Huaxian and Mizraimian faiths, the Priests of Xhardox, the Vitulyan and Scanian faiths, the cults of Jambu and Yamanto — and the chapter called *Darker Antillia* covers slavery, sex and race, drugs and debauchery, prostitution, torture and the infamous people who practise all of it. The tone is set by the filmography the book opens with — Hercules, Ator, Deathstalker, The Beastmaster, Conquest — and by the introduction's insistence that this should play like a low-budget movie with over-the-top action, lousy effects and much more violence than the American version. The player characters are greedy, violent, lecherous, cruel and untrustworthy, and the book means every word: these are the heroes because they are the ones still standing. ## Mechanics ### A dark-fantasy book for the Wretched core **Wretched Bastards** says plainly that it is not a standalone game: its rules chapter carries only what a dark-fantasy campaign needs on top of [[Wretched RPG]], or another OSR game, and the setting is written so it can be lifted into either. The additions start at character creation — a 2d6 racial roll (gnome, dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc, human) and a long list of additional archetypes, from the Alchemist and the Araknyd Brotherhood Shaman to the Cultist, the Druid and the Daughters of Ksenia healer. ### Archetypes, feats and rituals Every archetype follows the same shape: a choice of free perks, one unique feat usable once a session, and — for the conjuring archetypes — a list of rituals it may learn. The feats are the flavour of the game in miniature: the Alchemist brews a +2 potion once a session, the Shaman's spirit guide grants +2 to all rolls for 1d6 rounds twice a session, the Cultist may ask an entity one question a session and is told the truth only a quarter of the time, and the Druid takes an animal's shape for a number of rounds equal to level. ### Generators, bestiary and a starting campaign Half the book is a sandbox kit: adventure, NPC, name, city, kingdom and dungeon generators (including an Adityan dungeon), then a bestiary and the gazetteer. The bestiary is a generator in the core's style rather than a list — classification, health dice on 2d6, and a 3d6 table for size, habitat and main ability. The other half is an actual campaign starter, which the contents page does not advertise. **Andril County** is wine country in the kingdom of Riget, squeezed between orc raids from the Orc Mountains and the usual noble, guild and sect feuding, and the village of **Fork** is where play begins — the Veteran's Nest inn, Dwight Bowie the ex-soldier innkeeper, Captain Ruger Otomo short of men, and the Mad Earl Windom, who used to be a commoner and a captain and is now neither much of a ruler nor entirely sane. From Fork the book fans out into the Aldrin Castle, the Morass Witch in her swamp, Lord Capra Zargos and his opposition, and the Tomb of the Cold One, with a carousing chapter and an appendix on the Rotat to close. The Rotat is the appendix worth knowing: a Tarot stand-in created centuries ago by the Followers of Tedric in Cydonnia, and now used by the Daughters of Ksenia to fleece rich women. Each card gives an event, a character and a place, and there are no rules for reading it — pick a card and interpret it against the night's events, which makes it a random-encounter engine disguised as a fortune-telling prop. Seven pregenerated characters carry it: Erik the Warrior, Bela Tusa the Dwarf, Jonquil the Bard, Alyshya the Priestess, Zora the Barbarian, Talya the Ranger and Nix the Magician, each introduced by the letter that summons them to Fork. A group can start playing in ten minutes. The opposition is worthy of them. Dunnia was a slave bought in Kadok and taught Adityan lore by a mage who used her to test artefacts, because he was too sensible to touch them himself; she survived what killed his other purchases, went quietly mad, disposed of her master and took over the Anta Odeli Uta cult. She has come to the Zagros mountains chasing the tomb of Aelita and the Cold One, and found an ally in Lord Capra Zagros, who is not the man he appears to be: he is the spirit of a mage who served the Cold One, and he and Dunnia are lovers. Her plan is to wake the dormant Adityan deity and be its vessel — which is the campaign, if the players get to the tomb first. ## Editions - **Wretched Bastards** (1st edition) — the original release; the second edition arrived a year later and says so. - **Wretched Bastards (2nd Ed)** (224 pp) — the revised and expanded edition, with Sílvia Clemente's additional writing. *In the library.* - **Wretched Bastards (2nd Ed, updated 1.2)** (284 pp) — the current build of the second edition, sixty pages longer again. *In the library.* ## References - [Wretched Bastards at The Red Room](https://moordereht.com/product/wretched-bastards-2/) - [The Red Room's store and blog](https://moordereht.com/) - [The Red Room on itch.io](https://moordereht.itch.io/)