Concentration Camp Roleplaying Game

Man I thought the Chetchen war stuff and the Romanian splats were bad ideas glad it was handled wirh care

Engagement

Published 1997 damn im old.

This sounds like a wholesome family game.

First video seeing you and you sound like a young Matt Berry.

I must say, as someone who counts this among their favorite Wraith books, you made a lot of changes and additions to the lore. But I can't fault you on the real world history, which is obviously the most important. I will point out one particular discrepancy, cause I believe it's an honest mistake and not a creative liberty: The Tempest is separate plane 'underneath' the Shadowlands, not its wilderness. The Shadowlands are a perfect ghostly overlay of the physical world. You need Nihils to get from there to the Tempest and Stygia, so they're not all bad.

As a person who loves Wraith, I own this book and it's seriously the most depressing thing White Wolf ever wrote.

The thing you gotta understand with Wraith is that it's probably the darkest of the World of Darkness games even without looking through this particular setting book. Wraith is about people who are already dead, and not all ways to die are nice and peaceful like in your sleep.

I have lots of people whom I play all the other WOD games with, but who won't touch even plain vanilla Wraith, because it's too dark, I don't want to play a game where I've lost already, you're already dead what's the point? etc... etc...

Wraiths only become wraiths because of some sort of unfinished business with the real world.

And by the very nature of the Wraith setting, I'm not surprised that the writers of the game line thought about the questions... Oh, what about this tragic event in history? How did that play out in the Shadowlands? Certainly, an event like that would create a lot of wraiths.

Keep in mind that the actual game stuff in Charnel Houses is more about the aftermath in the Shadowlands. The game stuff is about how Wraith society dealt with this particular point in history and how it affects the modern-day Wraith society. But in order to respect the story of the tragedy that occurred they did the smart thing and told the unvarnished truths about what happened and did their research.

So it's part history book and part RP supplement, they don't try to tie any of the other supernaturals of the WoD into the history. They flat out say that the events were caused by plain old terrible human beings and while supernatural beings might have taken advantage of the situation, it was by human hands that things grew into the terrible tragedy that it was.

It's very clear when you read the book, that this wasn't something made to be disrespectful, it was a way to tell compelling stories about hard truths. I'd say however that in order to use it, you'd have to have a very mindful group who would be able to take the subject matter seriously. And given the want for more escapist fare in our modern day, I'd say that would be a difficult ask for any group.

I'm not sure I could muster a group that would be able to use it, but I'm glad that they told the story even if I never use it.

Because the story of Wraith as a whole is about coming to grips with death and what lies beyond, and I think that by telling this story it's a reminder that there is a real darkness in our real world too and that we shouldn't forget that.

I was born an hour from Oswiecim. I see this book as a tribute to the people who died, to always remember, and never forget.
Oh btw: Apel in Polish means like a muster or role call, or briefing. So yeah, the word is being used correctly in that sense.

Jewish guy here. Great video and im gonna get the book myself if i can find it. Just a little note. We say Shoah not to refer to our individual experience at the time, but because the word Holocaust literally means something like "a burning for God."
We dont like the implication of that so we use Shoah. Hebrew for "Catastrophe."

I'm fascinated by Pre-Paradox White Wolf's productions.
It seems like they flipped a coin every time they made a book to see if they were going to be incredibly racist like the Traveller book, the Assamites and Ravnos, or writing an incredibly powerful piece of TTRPG books like Charnel House.

Then they do something like saying an ongoing genocide is a vampire plot causing a diplomatic incident.

I wish I had friends to play these games with . I love your lectures on the lore .

Being a sucker for Wraith’s concepts of memory, moving on and a society of postmortem people making the most from a shite hand…I’ve come to write more than my fair share of the Restless Dead. As a result have I also had the DKofWire play a factor, as the conditions of its population and its environment by default are intensely uncomfortable and guaranteeing someone’s Catharsis if not a Harrowing.

This had led me to, in my chronicles, write the population of the DKofWire to be intensely interconnected and prone to the forming of Redeemed Spectres, Helldivers, and Doomslayers as opposed to everyday wraiths. This is because of the aforementioned interconnected relationship between citizens within Wire, as well as the near constant threat of a Harrowing and of Catharsis. This also means that, despite being in their own circle of hell, the Dybbuks are gaining a foothold in the Shadowlands.

At least, that’s how I write that section of the Underworld. Seeing as the threat of being consumed by Oblivion, of giving into your Shadow, or of the Tempest destroying you is so ever present, the idea that the DKofWire wouldn’t become the most hardy, the most determined and people-centric Dark Kingdom in the Underworld….doesn’t make any sense to me. There are still wraiths in the DKofWire, they had to have found something to fight against their Shadows and the Spectres, otherwise there wouldn’t be a DKofWire. And, what’s more, the idea of victims of tragedy overcoming the horror and trauma of their deaths, is inspiring in the gloomy picture that is the Shadowlands.

Again, this is my personal preference for writing Wire, as I find its conditions so oppressive that it couldn’t survive for decades on end in the way it’s presented to us. If y’all find this idea dumb or something similar, lemme know.

Wouldnt they be more likely to become Haints, not Mortwights? I looked up mortwights bc im new to this and it gave me both of those as options for starting off as a spectre, and Haints didnt have a tendency to be less savory people but were still severely traumatized, esp victims of genocides. I think the distinction is important in this context.

This book is incredible. Thank you for going over it. :)

YOu're gambling, with your Feelings... XD

Wraith: depression
Shoah: incomprehensible.

kinda hoping for deamon the fallen at somepoint

im so happy to find this channel hell yes i am here both for the hot lore and also for the even hotter takes 💜

I didn't know I could feel the genuine urge to vomit at a dry description of historical facts, but the way you described the way factional politics worked in the death camps did it.

"Racist spider people in australia"
As if the white australians weren't bad enough-

Kyiv, not Kiev. But yeah, expected to hear about it. There's is a lot more necropoli now, thanks to our deranged neighbour.

Kyiv, not Kiev. But yeah, expected to hear about it. There's is a lot more necropoli now, thanks to our deranged neighbour.

Kyiv, not Kiev. But yeah, expected to hear about it. There's is a lot more necropoli now, thanks to our deranged neighbour.

The historical side of this topic isn't new grounds for me, at all. But I had to stop and have a cry somewhere in the middle of the video.

Something messed up is when the Allies rescued eveyone from the camps, the victims who were there for being LGBT were put back in jail to serve out sentences. Even though it was not illegal to be LGBT in Weimar Germany (the pre-Hitler Germany), it WAS STILL illegal in the US, UK, USSR etc. So therefore in both East and West Germany. If as an LGBT person you survived the war and were resued you were just locked up again by whoever rescued you.

nah, while Im with you on what you said about the game taking the subject seriously and respectfully, and that being possible to do, I will say you lose me at "it would almost be more disrespectful not to"

Imma continue watching but HARD disagree on that particular statement
Its never more disrespectful for a game company to not touch a topic like that
But Im with you on it being possible to DO a game about it respectfully, sure

I did not think I'd be learning about the Holocaust when I clicked this. I like learning, tho.

How did he know I was going to exclaim the title aloud before watching?

You know shit gets real when he isnt holding the mic.

Any chance you plan on covering Promethean: The Created? I am interested in it a ton, and have been looking for someone to cover it more extensively before me and my wife try to start something up.

Scrolling through ideas for a Vampire the Masquerade campaign, I found out that one of the childe of Tzimisce wanted to die and so was turned by Tzimisce into a ball of flesh incapable of dying. Depending on the version that ball of flesh is part of some vampire as a parasite, or an object that's just somewhere.

Which means that you can make a game about a bunch of different vampires trying to get their hands on and diablerise that ball of flesh in order to achieve the great power of the 4th generation, and players find out about it at some point and decide to intervene- not knowing which ones among them want to prevent a rising of a new vampire demigod, and which ones might wants to eat the ball.

Of course, that is a Methuselah Tzimisce, so he might just take over the body of the one who consumes him. If that were the case he might be like Sukuna's finger of the WoD universe.

P.S: I was listening to this video while searching through the wiki, that's why I shared that idea in this comment section.

Given the fact that Viking shit is a white-supremacist dogwhistle to this day, it makes perfect sense that the werewolves loved Nazis.

Hold on, CRAB BOOK?! You can't just wave over that.

"To steal that gradient from people is bad because you rob the victims of their personality and their truth; and you turn perpetrators into an alien caricature that people cannot see themselves reflected in even though they should" ✍🔥

The first time someone explained what Mage was they mentioned entering the hollow earth and killing hitler with dinosaurs and now. Now I finally understand.

GODZILLA KILLED CHARON??!!??!

I only realized that you are German, when you pronounced 'Göhring' correctly. Also the higher voice pitch when you said 'Appell' gave you away. In all honesty, great video, did not expect it when I clicked on it. You know how sensitive this topic is in our county.

I still can't believe that White Wolf made a holocaust book and it was actually good

Man Wraith was the perfect splat to have this book appear in because... Let's be honest, Wraith is very much a story about Europe and our legacy and what we make of it in ways no other WoD game is. Like it holds up an honest mirror to us as a civilisation and the holocaust has to be a part of that

Your point about how all creative attempts to qualify the Holocaust do, in effect, trivialize it because nothing can come close to executing a 1:1 recreation of the phenomena/feelings of such a massive occurrence of evil is so spot on. If the research and seriousness is there, then a “game” about the Holocaust is truly no different from a historical fictional film or book about it.

Interestingly the Holocaust was not the single most atrocious thing to happen, the Great leap forward saw more people slowly starve to death. But that was caused by the super nice and benevolent Communists.

Was there supposed to be more charnel houses splats? because this is the only one I can find online, and houses to me at least implies more.

>110k
>500k
>1m
>2m
>3m
>6m
>11m
Pick a goddamn number.

Hey did Jonathan Blacke ever do anything else for white wolf or black do cus I can’t find anything on him

It will still never not be funny that he covered the Holocaust RPG before he did werewolf.

Why didn't the hierarchy just turn the jews into building material?