A Dark Glimpse at the Darkest Underbelly of Swine RPGs
or RPGPundit's Wraeththu Rant
Today I give kudos to JRients who has written a thurough review of "Wraeththu", an RPG in serious competition for "worst roleplaying game of all time": according to jrients, it doesn't quite make it to that depth, but it is a horrifically bad game; based on a series of horrifically bad novels, and written by a guy who isn't so much a Swine as he is a piglet, a wanna-be Rein·Hagen that no one could take seriously.
Now, those of you who are unfamiliar with Wraeththu will find the following summary hard to believe, but I swear by the Magic Deer that what I'm about to tell you is absolute truth. Really. I couldn't make this shit up.
The story behind the RPG is about the Wraeththu, a race of gay androgynes that evolve from regular humanity and reproduce by raping teenage boys, which either kills them or transforms them into another Wraeththu, who then goes around raping more teen boys. In the novels, the Wraeththu eventually wipe out humanity. And these are the characters you're expected to play.
Oh, and I have yet to mention the really fun part: the Wraeththu are all beautiful goths with superstrength and magic powers, who's penises are shaped like flowers and shoot acid. And no, this isn't exageration. I mean it. Literally. Their penises are shaped like flowers and shoot acid. That's not a metaphor or a secret code, it means exactly what it says. In Wraeththu you play a goth with a flower-shaped penis who shoots acid and rapes teenage boys.
The system is basically a fantasy heartbreaker, something the author "Gabby" (yea, I know, it just doesn't have the "i am a dark lord of the night" ring to it that something like Rein·Hagen or even Justin Achilli have) had actually designed 15 years ago, apparently as a kind of variant to D&D. Its the total opposite of a unified system, from what I've read in Jrient's blog. He has a thurough summary of those rules there, so I won't bother going into detail.
Except to mention how Gabby had gone on RPG.net in a now infamous thread a while back proclaiming that Wraeththu would be the most innovative new system of all time.
Besides trying to have the general swine attitude and pretentiousness, the creators of this game had made several wierd claims over the course of the creation of Wraeththu, including that White Wolf's Vampire was directly inspired by Storm Constantine (the authoress of the very and justifiably obscure Wraeththu novels), and not Anne Rice. Or that Storm Constantine was thanked in the credits to the first edition of Vampire, which she was not.
So, in other words, bold-faced lies.
None of that matters much, what does matter is that in the game you're playing gay pedarast-rapist supergoths WITH ACID-SHOOTING FLOWER SHAPED PENISES.
I mean, I can certainly see how any gaming party composed of normal well-balanced human beings will just love this game and thank goodness that Gabby and Storm Constantine have finally brought us an RPG that allows us to run campaigns for years and years of teenage boy-raping flower-penised fun.
Aw, just go read his review:
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2005/07/wraeththu-report.html Its good, but lacks the righteous bile this game deserves. Really, this game and everyone connected to it deserves a vicious sack beating.
Actually, I think the industry as a whole would be a much better place if many people in it received vicious sack beatings.
RPGPundit july 19th 2005