Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah (Wraith - the Oblivion) (Paperback)

Shoah: Charnel Houses of Europe opens with a brief bit of history (prompting some to even go so far as to use this section as a textbook) before detailing the Dark Kingdom of Wire: the Holocaust's wraithly inheritors. The book presents the falsified Jewish society that detoured a Red Cross investigation (which, in turn, kept the world blind just long enough for a few million more deaths), the Polish ghettos of Warsaw and their almost-victorious hero, and a Russian camp. These are, obviously, in descending order of darkness, but each are richly detailed and usable for any who think their troupe can handle the content.

Auschwitz is last. It is detailed. It is thorough. If you decide your troupe should go to Auschwitz, it contains enough information to horrify the players: that this is the worst atrocity in human history.

The book is dark, troubling, nightmarish, and easily worth three thousand times the cover price for any roleplayer who knows what it contains. It is very simply the best RPG book I've ever read.

It's about the people who didn't survive the Holocaust. In it, you play a Jew killed in the camps by Hitler.

It's a subject I honestly don't believe I could run. Not because it's immoral, not because it's disrespectful, but because I just couldn't attatch the necessary gravitas to the story. It's just too big.

That said, this is a sterling attempt to deal with a subject we'd all rather didn't exist. While there is undeniably now a slightly voyeuristic industry building up, to capitalise on the "popularity" of the subject, I do not believe this book is even remotely exploitative. It's simply too well researched, and forms one of the strongest pillars of the whole Black Dog experiment.

Wraith: The Oblivion was always the roleplayer's game of choice, with it's emphasis on motivations and multiple characters, and as such, it lends itself very well to the Black Dog ethics of deep roleplay. If played properly, with a mature storyteller, and group of players who were willing to take this completely seriously, then this could easily be one of the strongest roleplaying experiences of a person's life.

I will not hand out a silly "over 18's only" warning, as I don't believe any age is too young to learn the depths that society will sink to to preserve it's ignorance. However, if you are too young mentally to take this book seriously, then I strongly suggest looking somewhere else. There is nothing here that can be solved through violence and superpowers.

Overall an excellent and disturbing book of the most profound integrity.