# Wretched RPG *Created:* 2024-02-25, *Modified:* 2026-11-05 ![[Wretched RPG (cover).jpg|600]] ## Setting **Wretched RPG** has no setting of its own and never claims one. It is the engine behind the [[Wretchedverse]] — the book that tells you how to roll, how to build a character and how to kill something, and leaves the world to the setting books. What it does supply is a stance: the player characters are anti-heroes, in every sense of the word — morally ambiguous or outright criminal, who may still save the day for reasons that would embarrass a paladin. The book calls itself an OSR-style game, and that describes the chassis it inherits rather than the morals it expects. The book is relaxed about how far that goes — it expects criminal behaviour and contempt for other people's rights, and it does not require the character to be a villain. The tone it asks for is spaghettipunk, a term the publisher appropriated from a review: Italian productions and their imitators, spaghetti westerns and Giallo and Eurocrime, Conan and Star Wars rip-offs and 1980s post-apocalypse movies, made with enthusiasm and no interest in historical accuracy. The stated goal is not to make history but to make an entertaining game, and the core is written to be paired with whichever setting book suits the table — a group can equally run a one-shot out of this book alone with a few dice and no world at all. What it does share with every setting is the **Beyond**: a dark dimension where time and physics stop meaning anything, home to things the book compares to the Great Old Ones, kept out of our world only by nobody saying their names. Every haunting, every ritual and every bargain in the line comes out of that one place, which is why a Wretched character can be dropped into any of the settings without a conversion. Contact with the Beyond is dangerous in a way the rules can express — nothing about it is certain, nothing is guaranteed. ## Mechanics ### Seven attributes and three modes Characters are defined by seven attributes — Muscle, Brains, Wits, Agility, Toughness, Magnetism and Sex-appeal — running from 3 to 18 with 9 to 12 average, and every score turns into a modifier from −3 to +3. How you get them is a dial the group sets before play. **Cannon Fodder** is the old-school mode: 3d6 in order, no assignment, with an optional re-roll if the lowest score is under 8, and a trade of two points from one attribute for one in another. **Safety Net** rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest, assign as you please, and uses a gentler modifier table. **Veteran** starts the character at 5th to 7th level, which makes them competent rather than safe. ### Sins and Virtues The first step of character creation is moral, not mechanical: choose one of the seven deadly sins, one of the seven virtues, or both. Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy and Gluttony sit opposite Temperance, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility, Charity and Chastity, and each choice carries boons and banes, so the pick shapes play instead of labelling it. The book offers several ways to use the system — anti-heroes take a sin, heroes take a virtue, nuanced characters take both — and it can be bolted onto a traditional alignment if the table wants one. The experience chapter carries the idea further with the Wretched Commandments and the Virtuous Commandments. ### Occupations, archetypes and species Thirteen occupations — Assassin, Common Citizen, Conjurer, Cyborg/Transhuman, Investigator, Man of Action, Mesmerist, Performer, Pilot, Proselytiser, Psychic/Psionic, Rogue and Scholar — each open onto archetype tables, so Pilot covers a bush pilot, a starfighter ace and a smuggler with the same chassis. Species come from across the whole line: the familiar fantasy peoples beside Adityan, android/biroid, Child of the Night, deva, Dolphar, Gustora, Jegarni, Klarish, loup-garou, Pherat, Seraphani, Tzangi and wampyr. That list is the line's argument in miniature — a swordsman and a cyborg are legal in the same party. ### Skills and resolution Tasks are 1d20 + skill level + one attribute modifier against a target number: 10 simple, 15 average, 20 difficult, 25 very difficult, 30 impossible. Skills run to level 5, and the attribute they pair with is chosen by approach rather than fixed — interrogating a suspect is Muscle if you threaten him, Brains if you outwit him, Magnetism if you charm him — which is the book's main lever for improvisation. Advanced skills (Academics, Astrology, Divination, Martial Arts, Medicine, Occult, Pilot, Science) cannot be attempted untrained at all. Cooperation gives +1 per helper who passes and −1 per helper who fails; opposed rolls go to the higher total; investigations are built to fail forward rather than stall. ### Perks, drawbacks, gear and combat Perks and drawbacks are taken in pairs, with superhuman versions for games that have left human scale behind, and ageing gets its own short subsystem. Acquisition is rolled rather than priced, and the optional rules make gear degrade through wear and tear and track supplies as resources instead of counting coins. Combat is a five-second round with two actions per character. Defence is 10 plus Agility, armour replaces that base, and shields, helmets and cover add to it. Surprise is a 1d6 roll where 1–2 means someone is caught out, initiative is 1d6 plus the best Agility in the group, ranged and psychic attacks resolve before melee, and damage comes off the weapon. ### Optional wretchedness The tuning dials sit in one chapter: a Wretched Pool, Wretched Rush, wild dice, exploding damage dice and the Wretched MEN of Action rule, plus experience points and a Wanted Level/Notoriety track for characters who would rather be famous than safe. ### Hazards, healing and downtime The back half of the book is where a campaign actually lives. Disease, poison, hunger and thirst, exposure to vacuum, radiation, and low or high gravity each get rules rather than a hand-wave, and healing is split between natural recovery and assisted care. **Carousing** is the downtime engine: declare what the character is doing, roll 1d20 + Magnetism or the carousing skill, and read it off a table where 1–5 means a fight, a pickpocket or a night in jail, 6–10 means nothing happened, 11–15 means a rumour or a small job, and 16–20 means a powerful friend, a valuable object, or a contact in the underworld. The events double as plot hooks, which is the point. ### Adversaries are built, not listed The core carries no bestiary, and says why: the monsters live in the setting books. What it gives you instead is a design kit — roll 1d6 for classification (animal, vegetable, fungi, unintelligent supernatural, intelligent supernatural, construct), 1d6 for size, 1d6 for damage resilience as a Defence band, 1d6 for health dice and 1d10 for habitat — plus the standing NPC rules that make the result playable: a creature's bonus to hit equals its Health Dice, Health Dice are always d8, and an NPC's avoidance roll needs 11 or better on a d20. ### Fear, insanity and derangements Fear is a mechanic, not a mood. Shocking and preternatural events call for fear rolls, and the consequences run from a lost action to insanity, with derangements, recovery, internment in a mental facility and therapy or medication all given rules. An optional wild-die rule exists to build tension before the roll rather than after it. ### Magic: rituals from the Beyond Magic is ritual work, and it all draws on the Beyond — the book says so in the first line of the chapter. What varies is the tradition: the Cybermancer works through circuits and processors, the Urbanomancer through graffiti and city plans, the Traditionalist through candles, daggers and tomes; the Dream Magician, Necromancer, Pagan Conjurer, Sex Magician and Shaman each get their own ritual list. Instruments and a consecrated space matter, a ritual takes about an hour adjusted for experience, and the most potent rites want blood. **Corruption** is the price: casting draws a corruption roll, and the rituals that open gates to the Beyond are exactly as unwise as they sound. Artefacts and runes have their own chapter. Duration is a function of experience — an hour minus ten minutes per level, never under ten — and there is no level cap on what a conjurer may attempt. The cost is corruption: any rite that calls on entities, demands sacrifice or involves a taboo forces a Wits avoidance roll whose target number moves with what the rite asks for and how carefully it was staged (human sacrifice −3, a protective circle +3, an assistant +2, a natural 20 on the rite's own roll −3). Fail it and the book grades the damage: minor derangement, moderate, or major. Rituals are organised by tradition rather than by level — Common, Cybermancer, Dream Magician, Necromancer, Pagan Conjurer, Sex Magician, Shaman, Traditional and Urbanomancer lists — and the book also gives you something to invoke: angels (Metatron, Sandalphon, Azrael, Haniel), named demons (Paimon, Buer, Glasya-Labolas, Andromalius) and the celestial bodies, each with its own preoccupations. Enchanted items are built rather than bought: roll 1d6 across size, shape, benefit and drawback, quality and activation mode — passive, command word, touch, charge, ritual, or blood sacrifice — and then name the thing. ### Psychics Psychic powers are the material world's exception rather than magic's cousin — they interact with gravity and quantum forces, which is why there is no talent for speaking to the dead (that being necromancy's job). A talent rolls against a simple TN 10 plus character level and the determining attribute modifier, a natural 1 costs a trauma roll, and the number of talents a character can perform is level plus modifier, recovered at an hour of rest each. The setting books each get their own flavour of it: **Psionics** in **Wretched New Flesh** and [[Orbital Decay]], the Adityan **Folding**, and the Knights of Cydonnia's **Attunement**. ### Duels, vehicles and settlements Three more systems round it out, each with real rules rather than a paragraph. **Duels** are their own minigame: both sides roll initiative with +1 per level of experience over the opponent, and the winner rolls on a 1d20 duelling table that runs from a jammed pistol through gut shots and disarms to a natural 20 that doubles the damage — or brings a third party into the street. Sword duels are a 1d6 exchange, first to two major hits. **Vehicle and starship combat** covers dogfights, cinematic manoeuvres, scale, customisation, ship types and sea battles with weather. And **settlement building** starts at 5th level, when a character's reputation is enough to draw settlers: the followers depend on occupation (an Assassin gets 2d6 criminals, a Proselytiser 1d20×10 common citizens), the site is a 10 × 10 km hex, and the population then lives on monthly birth and death rolls. ## Editions - **Wretched RPG (v1.4)** (304 pp) — the earlier build of the core, in the 5.5 × 8.5 in layout. *In the library.* - **Wretched RPG** (356 pp, 2023) — the core in its 5.5 × 8.5 in layout, some fifty pages longer than v1.4; also held re-laid out at US Letter (229 pp, 2026), which is the same text and not a separate edition. *In the library.* - **Expanded Wretched RPG** (630 pp, 2024) — the definitive core, folding material from the setting books into one volume, 5.5 × 8.5 in; also held re-laid out at US Letter (356 pp, 2026), which is not a separate edition. *In the library.* ## References - [The Red Room — core books catalogue](https://moordereht.com/catalog-core-books/) - [The Wretched line at Precis Intermedia](https://www.pigames.net/store/default.php?cPath=172) - [The Red Room on itch.io](https://moordereht.itch.io/)