System
Wraith: The Oblivion uses White Wolf's Storyteller System, a d10-based system in which player characters are rated in various categories (general Attributes, particular Skills, and special Advantages); these ratings are used to calculate a dice pool which the player uses to roll for success or failure against a difficulty rating for the task at hand. The difficulty, and the number of dice that must be rolled above that difficulty, are set by the Storyteller according to certain broad criteria.
As in all Storyteller System games, there are several special rules and systems that support the theme of the game. The most notable are:
- Pathos and Corpus
- Characters have variable scales to represent their Pathos, the wraith's emotional energy and ability to resist his Shadow, and their Corpus, the wraith's physical integrity or "health". When Corpus falls to zero, a wraith may undergo a Harrowing; Pathos can be spent to restore Corpus or to power various Arcanoi.
- The Shadowguide
- The game includes several systems for roleplaying a wraith's Shadow. The default arrangement is for each player in the troupe to play another player's Shadow; this creates a very confrontational style of play, as each player pursues a Shadow's goals to the detriment of another character.
- Character death
- As wraiths, player characters obviously cannot die; thus there is no system to handle character death (ie., a conventional hit points system). Wraiths, however, can be destroyed in several ways: by permanent loss of Pathos, Corpus, or by removing/resolving a wraith's Passions. Most wraiths who face destructive trauma have a last chance to escape Oblivion via a nightmarish psychodrama known as a Harrowing, which takes place in the Tempest and directly pits the wraith against his/her Shadow. Shadows can also initiate lesser Harrowings to damage wraiths' Passions or Fetters, bringing them closer to Oblivion. A few weapons and hazards of the Underworld, notably Stygian steel, inflict "aggravated" damage that can destroy wraiths directly without the possibility of a Harrowing.
Read more about this topic: Wraith: The Oblivion
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
“The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)