Line #88 TabletopGame/WraithTheOblivion


1	[[quoteright:198:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Wraith_Illo1_5981.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:198:''Death was just the beginning.'']]
3	''A Storytelling Game of Death and Damnation.'' --1st edition {{tagline}}
4
5	''A Storytelling Game of Passion and Horror.'' --2nd edition tagline
6
7	A tabletop role-playing game in the TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness, considered by many to be '''''the''''' most depressing of the lot. First of all, [[DeadToBeginWith you start off dead]]. And we don't mean [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade undead]], we mean ''dead''. You've failed to pass on to the true afterlife, and your soul has ended up in the [[TheUnderworld Shadowlands]], a decaying spiritual reflection of the real world. You're bound to this side of reality by your Fetters and Passions, [[UnfinishedBusiness emotional and physical ties to your old life]]. You have to negotiate the viper's nest of politics that's been set up in the Shadowlands -- a three-way clusterfuck between the oppressive Hierarchy, the revolutionary Renegades, and the devout Heretics -- while trying to protect and, eventually, resolve that which ties you to this life and move on to the true afterlife.
8
9	It goes FromBadToWorse, since also parking its tuchus in the Shadowlands is a grand malevolent force known as Oblivion. Seeking to drag all existence down its sinkhole, Oblivion sends its soldiers, the Spectres, out to make the world a much worse place. One of those soldiers is parked in your head. It's called your Shadow, and it's constantly going to wheedle you, cajole you, taunt you, set you up, and make your life a living hell until you give it what it wants -- that is, all control over you, making you a Spectre in full.
10
11	''Wraith'' was considered a tough concept to handle, even for the World of Darkness. The characters were constantly at war with themselves (and sometimes each other) while trying to find their place in both life and death. The concept required advanced troupe-style roleplay, with each player playing their own character, someone else's Shadow, and occasionally other characters; for a group that wasn't experienced with this (i.e., players of nearly ''any other'' tabletop RPG), this placed a heavy burden on [=GMs=]/Storytellers. The first edition focused more on the personal struggles than the actual setting; it took the second edition to truly flesh out the Shadowlands. ''Wraith'' was the first and only gameline in the Old World of Darkness to be cancelled before TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.[[note]]There were a couple pages dedicated to it in the MET's ''Laws of Judgement'', but nothing like the other books.[[/note]] However, its passing was not ''quite'' the ending it seemed, as the circumstances that shut down the setting tied directly into the backstory for both ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' and ''TabletopGame/MummyTheResurrection'', and to a lesser extent, ''TabletopGame/HunterTheReckoning''.
12
13	The game later received an AfterTheEnd sequel in the form of ''TabletopGame/{{Orpheus}}'' (which dealt with humans and ghosts who dealt with troublesome spirits and investigated the wreckage of the Shadowlands). The [[TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness New WoD]] gameline ''TabletopGame/GeistTheSinEaters'' is a SpiritualSuccessor, delving into the [=NWoD=]'s Underworld, with the [=PCs=] basically being half-human spirit mediums who have merged with mostly beneficial -- if unbalanced -- ghost partners.
14
15	A 20th anniversary edition was announced at [=GenCon=] 2013. [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/deluxe-wraith-the-oblivion-20th-anniversary-editio A Kickstarter for the game went live on December 2, 2014, and was fully funded within hours.]] The book went on sale to the public in 2018.
16
17	''VideoGame/WraithTheOblivionAfterlife'', a VR game by Fast Travel Games, was released on April 22, 2021, for release on all major VR platforms.
18
19	''[[https://www.theorpheusdevice.com/ The Orpheus Device]]'', a free interactive audio story for voice-enabled devices, was released in October 2020.
20
21	----
22	!!This role-playing game provides examples of:
23
24	* AfterlifeAntechamber: The Underworld is ultimately this. It takes a very specific balance of hope and despair, attachment to life and angst, to turn someone into a Wraith. Most people never get there (they either move straight on to whatever lies beyond, or they're instantly consumed by Oblivion) and Wraiths who Transcend move on to someplace else. Whatever it is other than Oblivion that can be Transcended to (or ''into'') isn't elaborated on but is generally accepted to be an unquestionable "good end".
25	* AfterlifeExpress: The Midnight Express, which shepherds souls across the Shadowlands and serves as peaceful ground for all sorts of factions... including Oblivion.
26	* AndIMustScream:
27	** Soulforging. Since physical objects can't cross the Shroud (outside of [[UsefulNotes/ChineseFuneraryCustoms hell money]] or relics), Stygia makes most of its goods and technology by forging Wraiths into them. Officially, the consciousness ''should'' be destroyed by the process, but "haphazard work" by some early Artificers resulted in paving stones that screamed and there ''are'' high-level Arcanoi that allow you to draw knowledge from forged souls. Notably, Soulsteel may lack a mouth, but that rarely prevents it from screaming.
28	** 20th Edition states that most soulforging involves Drones, ghosts who do not have the sentience of wraiths, or Plasmics, creatures of the Shadowlands that often don't have sapience. Sadly, they can't be used for the really effective artifacts, and the Hierarchy is more than corrupt enough to look for excuses to soulforge enemies or slaves.
29	** 20th also offers another soulforging alternative with the Alchemists' relicforging, which makes use of relics, the 'ghosts' of inanimate objects. Why isn't it a significant alternative to soulforging? Because a group in the Artificers saw it as a threat, and they had powerful friends...
30	* ArtificialAfterlife: Within the ''actual'' afterlife. A number of wraiths, from the powerful Ferrymen to the determined Fishers, weren't happy with the state of the Shadowlands and went to go make versions of mortal afterlifes off on the Far Shores. Some were started with noble ideas, with the Ferrymen trying to make the theme park version of the afterlife so that the souls who arrived there would eventually realize the artifice and pursue Transcendence. Others, however, decided to make a Hell out of Heaven.
31	* BackFromTheDead: In a way. It's possible to permanently yield some power to your Shadow in order to reenter your body and become one of the Risen until you take care of some unfinished business. Yup; you become Franchise/TheCrow.
32	* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Imagine that nearly all the historical figures from the other gamelines that weren't secretly a supernatural end up in the Shadowlands eventually. On the actual "historical influence" level, it's revealed that Guy de Maupassant's nervous breakdown and death was the result of his pissed-off brother's wraith, who screwed with his dreams using Phantasm, a deceased Red Sox player with a grudge was responsible for the Curse of the Bambino, and the Haunters played a part in the rise of Spiritualism.
33	** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] with extreme prejudice when it comes to ''Charnel Houses of Europe'' which makes it explicitly clear that UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust was '''''NOT''''' the result of supernatural shenanigans, that it really was solely down to Hitler and the Nazis' genocidal megalomania. Even as DarkerAndEdgier as Black Dog was, EverybodyHasStandards was fully in play given that using one of the greatest mass-murders in history as the backdrop to game lore could be a BerserkButton of epic proportions.
34	* BlackBugRoom: Harrowings. If your corpus is damaged past the point of coherency, you end up facing down your own worst nightmares, proudly fueled by Oblivion.
35	* BroadStrokes: Wraith 20th keeps the major setting points - Hierarchy, Renegades and Heretics, eight Legions, sixteen Guilds and five Maelstroms - but takes the opportunity to rewrite some of the details from the original sourcebooks.
36	* ButNowIMustGo: [[spoiler:Charon Transcends after beating back the Spectre hordes during ''Ends of Empire'', leaving the Underworld for good. Unlike most examples of the trope, this wasn't done voluntarily - it was the result of his plans [[GoneHorriblyWrong going massively off the rails]].]]
37	* CelestialBureaucracy: The Emerald Legion, who even pride themselves on customer service.
38	* CosmicHorrorStory: You're stuck in a godless afterlife facing down the soldiers of Oblivion, one of which has a key position in the back of your mind. Have fun.
39	* TheCorruption: Angst, the amount of influence a Shadow has on their wraith. Spectres invert this, with Pathos being a measure of how close the Psyche is to purifying them back into a normal wraith.
40	* CrapsackWorld:
41	** Not only is this the World of Darkness, but you're "living" in the darkest, grimmest, most hopeless place in it! The Shadowlands are an anarchic hellhole full of corrupted Wraiths and nightmarish creatures, Stygia is a corrupt empire that regularly enslaves and Soulforges new Wraiths when its leaders aren't backstabbing each other, and the closest alternative to either (the Yellow Springs) is even more corrupt and totalitarian. Oh, and Oblivion is constantly trying to encroach on the Underworld with the ultimate aim of eating it entirely.
42	** [[PlayingWithATrope Played With]] -- And yet, as many fans love to point out, it's weirdly the most hopeful of the settings. Managing to resolve your fetters and passions, thus ascending out of the Shadowlands is a very attainable goal, putting it way ahead of the all but impossible existential goals from [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade Vampire]] and [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Werewolf]], the at-the-very-least highly unlikely goals of [[TabletopGame/MageTheAscension Mage]], or the no-kidding-you're-screwed-no-way-out nihilism of [[TabletopGame/ChangelingTheDreaming Changeling]].
43	* CreateYourOwnVillain: Charon's instigation of the Tithe of the Dead[[note]]A system under which ''every'' Wraith had to pay a toll as [[CoinsForTheDead two coins]] upon arriving in the Underworld, or else pay with parts of their body - in either case, to keep the Soulforges running and Stygia expanding[[/note]] in the early days of Stygian history was a key cause of the First Great Maelstrom. The Wraiths left mutilated under this system sought Oblivion's aid; it responded with the First Great Maelstrom and turned them into Spectres, so they could exact their revenge.
44	* CreepyChild:
45	** The Striplings, Spectres of those who died before they went past 10 years old. Form a society unto themselves, with their own Malfean. Even other Spectres (including the Malfeans) find them creepy.
46	** {{Crossover}} example: the baby ghosts of dead [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse werelizards!]] The procreative biology of werecreatures is such that when they "inbreed", the result is usually a creature whose ShapeshifterDefaultForm in which they're born isn't human or animal, but their race's war form. Turns out that when you create your own [[OneWingedAngel war]] [[MixAndMatchCritter form]] by dreaming it up like the lizards do, ''it's helpful to first have a standard form in which you can dream''. The so-called Innocents are thus stillborn and their ghosts are [[AxCrazy not happy]] about it.
47	* {{Crossover}}:
48	** The supplement ''Ghost Towns'' is a crossover with ''[[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Werewolf: The]] WildWest''.
49	** ''TabletopGame/MummyTheResurrection'' has mummies [[OffstageWaitingRoom loitering]] in the [[TheUnderworld Shadowlands]] between deaths [[DerailedTrainOfThought and playing their little mind games, saying things like "You may be dead, but in the morning I'll be better!"]]
50	* DeadAllAlong: The premise of the game, though some Storytellers run a brief [[DeadToBeginWith mortal campaign]] [[BaitAndSwitch first.]]
51	* DeaderThanDead:
52	** The process of Soulforging is irreversible and it (supposedly) destroys the consciousness of the victim in the process, so there's no way for them to be resurrected.
53	** Falling into [[PowerOfTheVoid Oblivion]] will do this to anything.
54	* DealWithTheDevil:
55	** The Shadow is capable of offering temporary rewards to its host if they give it a little bit of power.
56	** The supplement, Risen, is basically a guide on how to turn your wraith into [[Franchise/TheCrow the Crow]], but the most important step, after still having a corpse, is begging your Shadow to let you get back into your corpse.
57	* DespiteThePlan: In the final book, ''Ends of Empire'', [[spoiler:the Dark Kingdom of Jade finally invades Stygian territory with a massive force of highly-trained, well-equipped soldiers, using back doors and stealth routes to take them past all of Stygia's defenses. However, the artifacts they used to open these routes were made with inferior-quality White Jade, and fully half of them detonate and kill the invaders attempting to use them. Thus, their lightning invasion plan quickly runs into trouble when half their troops die before entering the battlefield.]]
58	* DreamWeaver: The Sandmen, masters of the Phantasm Arcanos.
59	* DrivenToSuicide: Whether by their own hands or by third-party, every member of the Silent Legion is composed of wraiths who saught to take their own lives and succeeded in doing so.
60	* EldritchAbomination: The Neverborn are entities born directly of necrotic essence, intertwined with the power of Oblivion. They maintain the HiveMind network that runs through all the Spectres and seek to devour reality. And then there's the Kraken, an enormous tentacled monstrosity that occasionally pokes bits of itself into the Shadowlands and is believed by many to be an Eldritch Abomination of some sort.
61	* ElectromagneticGhosts: Artificers, wraiths who learn the Inhabit Arcanos, can [[HauntedTechnology possess machines]] and even travel along communication networks.
62	* TheEmpire: Stygia, as embodied by the Hierarchy.
63	* EnemyWithin: The Shadow, which keeps trying to get you to make deals with it and give into its will. Ironically, Spectres ''also'' have an EnemyWithin, the Psyche, that drives them to remember who they were in life and do good things.
64	* EpiphanicPrison: Transcendence can be achieved by fusing the Shadow and the Eidolon, essentially accepting that though your life had both its good sides and bad sides, [[{{Tearjerker}} it was worth living, and no matter how much it hurt first, the time has come to move on.]] You may have not been able to achieve every last thing you wanted, but no person ever can. But you did enough - you felt enough, loved enough, and made enough, and what matters is that to you, it's really enough. So you sprout great wings of light, and soar towards Heaven.
65	* EquivalentExchange: The books note that one of the things that makes soulforging suck is how much it ''averts'' this. While some Artificers make tokens from bits of their Corpus as part of initiation, these are cheap, flimsy things. To make something that has weight in the Shadowlands, an ''entire soul'' has to go into its making. That's why you can't just break down one wraith's Corpus into constituent parts and make a revolver; you have to use one soul for the chamber, one for the barrel, one for the hammer, etc. This is why Stygia typically uses soulforging for things with no moving parts, like swords or armor.
66	* EscapedFromHell: Characters can under certain circumstances claw their way back into the lands of the living as Risen. Even though they just reek of ''Franchise/TheCrow'', the white face paint is not obligatory.
67	* EvilIsEasy: One book eventually revealed that Spectres have an EnemyWithin, the Psyche, that was able to cause a HeelFaceTurn. Of course, the odds of that happening were ''much'' lower than a Shadow causing a Wraith to undergo a FaceHeelTurn. The trope is also subverted with the fact that Spectres, unlike wraiths, generally have an expiration date; it's not that the Psyche [[GoodIsNotDumb is inherently any less cunning or beguiling as the Shadow]], it's that it has less time to break Spectres free before Oblivion consumes them.
68	* FateWorseThanDeath: Oh, are there ''ever''. First of all, there's becoming a Spectre, which means your self is lost to eternity as you become a foot soldier for Oblivion. And then there's soulforging, wherein you are sentenced by the Hierarchy for crimes you have committed (or even ones you haven't) to have your corpus ''boiled into molten ore and forged into an object.'' Those who carry soulsteel swear they can hear it ''weeping'' at times.
69	* TheFerryman: Maybe the closest the game has to a BigGood. The Ferrymen can still be driven by purely human spite and anger, but they've completely divorced themselves from their Shadows (which split off into the form of an EvilTwin called a Pasiphae) and dedicate themselves to making sure wraiths can continue to pursue Transcendence unmolested. When the dead of the Holocaust flooded into Stygia, the Deathlords finally took notice of them as potential slaves or forge fodder... until the Ferrymen showed up and made clear they would dismantle Stygia brick by brick if these souls weren't left at peace.
70	* FunctionalMagic: The Arcanoi, Inherent Gifts based on manipulation of life energy.
71	%%ZCE [[GhostStory Ghost Stories]]
72	* GoneHorriblyRight: [[spoiler:The Mnemoi's persecution by the Hierarchy was actually part of a grand plan by Charon, in collusion with the Guild - they would use their powers to extract and [[MemoryJar store his memories, powers, and experiences]] while he was reborn, then return them to him when [[RightfulKingReturns Charon came back to clean house.]] Unfortunately, it went ''too'' well; despite their best efforts large amounts of Charon's history was lost in their persecution, causing his involuntary Transcendence in ''Ends of Empire''.]]
73	* HauntedHouse:
74	** There are Arcanoi devoted to hijinks you can use on [[Film/{{Beetlejuice}} people who mess with your former home.]]
75	** Likewise, wraiths often seek out Haunts as places to rest up and take shelter from Maelstroms. They can be as small as closets or as big as the Winchester Mystery House, but they do provide some measure of comfort.
76	* TheHeartless: Shadows and Spectres.
77	* HopelessWar: Stygia's war against the [[FarEast Dark Kingdom of Jade]], which pits the ghosts of the Western world against the even bleaker tyranny of the first and greatest of the Chinese emperors, who now rules all the dead of East Asia in death as he ruled the living in life.
78	** On a greater scale, the war against Oblivion. Most of the depraved, dystopian shit that Stygia does is to maintain war footing against an enemy that is inside everyone's heads and cannot possibly be conclusively defeated because it's a natural part of the cycle of death... just one that's turned cancerous. The only real way to escape Oblivion is to pursue Transcendence, which a, has been dismissed as superstitious hokum by most of the Hierarchy; b, doesn't look that different from getting swallowed by Oblivion from an outside perspective, only with different colored lights; and c, requires such personal investment and introspection that it distracts from the aforementioned war effort.
79	* HumanoidAbomination: The Onceborn. As opposed to the Neverborn, they were human at one point, but they were such bastards that upon death, they plummeted right into becoming Spectres, and then ascended to the grand ranks of the Malfeans. Some of them meet a ''very'' liberal definition of "humanoid," like Mulhecturous the Filth Goddess (best described as a gigantic crab that is constantly rotting and regenerating), but they have a sense of human perspective that the Neverborn lack, now matter how corroded it may be.
80	* HumansAreBastards: ''Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah'' deals with Wraiths spawned from the Holocaust. There's no "BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy" here; humans are perfectly capable of atrocities on their own. It is considered by some to be the single darkest sourcebook White Wolf has ever released. While many titles in the Black Dog line were simply RatedMForMoney, this one truly is ''not'' for the faint of heart.
81	* ISeeDeadPeople: Mediums, or anyone if the wraith has Embody.
82	* MagicalSociety: The Guilds, organisations specializing in a particular Arcanos, who each fill a particular role in wraith society:
83	** Artificers, masters of Inhabit, the ability to possess and control inanimate objects.
84	** Chanteurs, masters of Keening, the ability to evoke emotion through song.
85	** Harbringers, masters of Argos, the ability to traverse the Tempest.
86	** Haunters, masters of Pandemonium, able to create strange and unnatural effects in the Skinlands.
87	** Masquers, masters of Moliate, the ability to reshape the wraithly corpus.
88	** Monitors, masters of Lifeweb, manipulating the connections between wraiths and their Fetters.
89	** Oracles, masters of Fatalism, the art of seeing the past and future.
90	** Pardoners, masters of Castigate, the ability to protect against the Shadow and Oblivion.
91	** Proctors, masters of Embody, the ability to physically manifest in the Skinlands.
92	** Puppeteers, masters of Puppetry, the art of possessing the bodies of the living.
93	** Sandmen, masters of Phantasm, the art of dream-shaping.
94	** Spooks, masters of Outrage, the art of wraithly {{telekinesis}}.
95	** Usurers, masters of Usury, the transfer of Pathos and Corpus.
96	** There are also three Forbidden Guilds, banned for the abuse of their talents:
97	*** Alchemists, masters of Flux, the ability to strengthen or erode inanimate objects.
98	*** Mnemoi, masters of Mnemosynis, the art of memory exploration and manipulation.
99	*** Solicitors, masters of Intimation, the ability to create and remove desire.
100	* LightIsNotGood: The sect known as the [[SinisterMinister Fishers]] once used the promise of passage to the Christian heaven, only to turn the souls in their care into [[ReforgedIntoAMinion lobotomized plasmic slaves]] that enforce their masters [[KnightTemplar draconian vision of purity]] on the miserable realm known as [[HellOfAHeaven The Paradise of the Fishers]] in the Far Shores. The revelation of the depths of their betrayal was what finally [[DespairEventHorizon broke Charon's belief in the possibility of Transcendence]].
101	* {{Mana}}: Pathos, emotional energy that wraiths gather by feasting on examples of their guiding Passions.
102	* MarkOfTheSupernatural: Practice of the Arcanoi leaves an identifying mark on a wraith, from the black eyes of Argos to the odd mannerisms of Pandemonium.
103	* MeatPuppet: Made possible with the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Puppetry]] Arcanos.
104	* MemoryJar: We get the Mnemoi and their Arcanos, Mnemosynis, the sole purpose of which is to transfer and manipulate memories. In a place where memories are important for maintaining one's existence, the Mnemoi are far from welcome, and are therefore one of the three Forbidden Guilds. [[spoiler: In actuality, the Mnemoi are using their talents to store the memories of Charon for [[RightfulKingReturns his return]], and the whole persecuted thing [[FakeDefector is a ruse]]. One that, sadly, works a bit too well in the end.]]
105	* TheNecrocracy: The Hierarchy, rulers and supporters of Stygia, the Dark Kingdom of Iron. There are several other Kingdoms in the Shadowlands, such as the Dark Kingdom of Jade (the Far East); some (such as the Dark Kingdom of Obsidian, the {{Mayincatec}} Shadowlands) were even wiped out by an expansionist Stygia.
106	* OnlyElectricSheepAreCheap: Material goods of any kind are scarce in the Underworld, and what few materials exist are either fading Relic memories of real things or fabricated via ''horrific'' amounts of HumanResources. Genuinely living things or "real" objects that aren't caused by one of those two origins are incredibly rare status symbols that are hoarded by powerful entities like the Deathlords.
107	** One specific example are barghests, hound-like hunters used by some of the Legions. Unlike the spectral horses of the Equitaes, there aren’t many hound-like Plasmics that are easy to train… so barghests are condemned wraiths, contorted and lobotomized via Moliate into a feral state.
108	* OurGhostsAreDifferent: They're either perfectly reasonable folks tied to this world by old bonds... or evil spirits bent on destruction.
109	* PowerOfTheVoid:
110	** You ''saw'' the title, right? Same thing applies to all Oblivion's soldiers -- the Neverborn, the Onceborn, and the Spectres alike.
111	** [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow Looking at it]] even drives gods ''and the things that made those gods'' insane. You don't want to know what it will do to you.
112	* [[RecycledInSpace Recycled IN DEATH!]]:
113	** ''Wraith: [-THE GREAT WAR!-]'' (one of the very few games of any medium based on UsefulNotes/WorldWarI) and ''Dark Kingdom of Jade'' (Wraiths [-OF THE EAST!-]) There are actually several Dark Kingdoms based on different cultures, but Jade is the only one that got its own book; most of the other non-North American/European kingdoms were detailed in the ''Wraith Player's Guide'', aside from the First Nations of North America, who were covered in ''Mediums: Speakers with the Dead''.
114	** Averted in ''Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah'', which was ''not'' Wraiths of the Holocaust, but instead a respectful look at the horrors of what transpired and its massively devastating effect on the Shadowlands.
115	** In a more literal example, certain items that are destroyed will make their way into the Shadowlands, from guns to [[UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg rigid airships,]] and the Hiroshima Bomb.
116	* {{Seers}}: The Oracles' Guild, practitioners of the Fatalism Arcanos.
117	* {{Shapeshifting}}: The purview of the Masquers, who practice the Moliate Arcanos.
118	* ReligiousHorror: When the [[DarkMessiah Fishers]] arrived in the Underworld, they found no paradise or damnation to separate the wicked from the righteous. So of course, [[DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans they decided to make them themselves]].
119	* ShoutOut:
120	** Compare [[http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm224/Zenoseiya/wraith2epg207.jpg this artwork from page 207]] of the Wraith 2nd edition rulebook to [[http://www.gnosis.art.pl/iluminatornia/sztuka_o_inspiracji/zdzislaw_beksinski/zdzislaw_beksinski_1971.jpg this piece painted by Zdzislaw Beksinski]].
121	** The {{Splat}}book ''Pardoners and Puppeteers'' has a spirit modelled on Creator/JimHenson. He is, of course, a Puppeteer.
122	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The game's occupation of an extremely interesting point along it is often brought up as one of its main points of appeal. On the one hand, on the surface, it appears to be by far the most depressing of the World of Darkness games: it ''opens'' with the characters being not only dead, but spiritually unfulfilled and on the verge of succumbing to the cosmic force of nihilism. The corebooks are filled with extremely depressing imagery, and the setting is established on suffering and despair. At the same time, it's the ''only'' World of Darkness game in which "victory" is not just a theoretical, distant possibility (like Golconda or Ascension), but a realistic ([[EarnYourHappyEnding albeit extremely hard to achieve]]) goal. Being a wraith in the Underworld might be an incredibly horrible existence, but if you're brave, wise and compassionate enough, you ''can'' [[EpiphanicPrison attain Transcendence and Move On into the true afterlife, leaving all suffering behind you.]]
123	* SnapBack:
124	** Wraith 20th walks back the Sixth Great Maelstrom and the fiction building up to it, with there being no major developments during the years the game was cancelled... although the Orpheus Group have been venturing into the Shadowlands for a while now.
125	** The Dark Kingdoms of indigenous America have also gotten a reprieve. Before, the Flayed Lands were completely destroyed, and the Islands of Flint and the Lands of Gold (indigenous North and South America), if they still existed, were now possibly hiding deep in the Tempest to avoid Stygia. As of 20th Anniversary, the Flayed Lands have started making a comeback, with survivors of the Third Great Maelstrom creating their own houses that lurk in the background of Mexico's current Stygian outposts; the Islands of Flint just withdrew into the Tempest the second Hierarchy ships showed up in New Amsterdam, fearing another Maelstrom was afoot, thus cementing the Hierarchy's understanding that they were mostly wiped out; and the Lands of Gold survived as a puppet kingdom ruled by the traitor who helped spell their doom and collaborated with the Hierarchy, while a surviving emperor builds up a resistance effort in the Tempest. Further, other indigenous outcroppings exist, but they either lurk in the Tempest and hold a firm grip on who gets access to their Byways (like the Salish in Seattle) or they've learned to blend into the background using shapeshifting Arcanoi (like the Taino in Puerto Rico).
126	* SpiritAdvisor: Played straight with a Spectre's Psyche, subverted with a Wraith's Shadow.
127	* StevenUlyssesPerhero: Inverted when an extremely important wraith is reborn as a mortal: [[spoiler:Charon is reborn as '''Char'''les Anders'''on''']].
128	* TheUnblinking:
129	** The Monitors, and users of Lifeweb in general. Since the Monitors got rich manipulating and destroying the Fetters of others during the Guild Revolts, they are considered extremely untrustworthy and low among the Criminal Guilds. Any wraith noticed not blinking is going to get grilled on why and better be able to provide a good answer for it.
130	** In first and second edition, the Mnemoi have a similar mark from use of their Arcanos, which is why a number of them have hidden out in the Monitors (the 20th anniversary edition changes the mark).
131	* UnfinishedBusiness: Represented mechanically by Passions and Fetters.
132	* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: In some editions, it's recommended that the ''players'', not the Storyteller, provide the voices of another character's Shadow. It's not like they have any more motivation than the GM to screw you over with this - on the contrary, a Shadow that is too active can actually doom the entire group, including the Shadow's player's character. The book in question actually gave percentages involved for just how cruel things can be - generally, about a limit of 25% of the game involving "Shadow play," as it's called, was considered reasonable. Beyond that runs into the tabletop version of this trope. There's one more version of the game, with the Shadows having their own players - every character is then played by two people, one of which has completely no reason not to be active.
133	* WeirdnessCensor: The Fog. Because it's strongly implied that the Shadowlands started going to shit around the time humanity started viewing death as something to reject, fear, and generally not consider part of life, any exposure to a wraith doing clearly ghostly things (e.g., walking through a wall, using their powers) will result in most mortals experiencing pants-shitting terror and then writing it all off as a bad dream.
134	* WorldWreckingWave: ''Six'' of them. Five of the Great Maelstroms were caused by historical events that thrust large numbers of the dead into the Underworld: the fall of Rome, the Black Plague, the Conquest of the Americas, World War I and UsefulNotes/TheSpanishFlu, and the World War II-Holocaust-Atom bomb triple whammy. The relic of one of said atom bombs caused the Sixth and final Great Maelstrom when it was accidentally set off near the mouth of Oblivion.

Context TabletopGame / WraithTheOblivion