Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah: For Wraith: The Oblivion

Understand, I don't play Wraith. I read it for the background, which I find extremely interesting. So I can't help you on the subject of rules, game balance, whatever. But I can tell you something of the quality of this book.Perhaps the most suprising thing, right off the bat, is that this is a soft cover. Generally, one does not expect deeply disturbing images to leap from the pages of an oversized floppy book. Consistantly, White Wolf has challenged that assumption, and this is probably the best example everywhere.When you open it, you will find a two-page black and white image. This image is one of the most haunting pictures I have ever seen. Countless thousands of men, women, and children stand on the shores of a river. Garbed in prisoner stripes, heads shaven, they wait, some standing in edge of the water, some with their arms raised in supplication. There are so very many of them.There is a single small boat, with a single ferryman, ferrying them one by one into the afterlife. The magnitude, the idea that death is never wholesale, that it is always, always a personal matter, is message enough to be worth the purchase price.This book is never trivial. It is never "fun". It draws immensely from history, and makes it very clear what is fiction, and what is drawn from a history far darker than that found in any fiction.The background is superb, the infomation interesting and vivid. Places described are disturbing and realistic. Characters make sense, plots seem feasable.For many who read this, this will likely be a first look into the subjects described. It is much more intense than they may be used to. It is recommended for "Mature Audiences", and while I think teenagers should read this exact sort of thing, I think care should be taken that they be aware of the seriousness of such a subject.This is the sort of book that will remain on my shelf,long after the game system fades into obscurity.Castle Wolfenstein, this is not.Indra

I am only 3/4ths of the way through this book, but I can honestly say that it has changed my views on the Burning and has possibly changed me as a person. I've read the history books, but they're nowhere near as detailed as "Charnel Houses". A few excerps shook me.Even if you aren't a fan of Wraith: The Oblivion, or ANY role-playing game for that matter, you can still get the messege that this book is trying to get across: Never again.

Understand, this is not an expansion for you and your friends to sit down and play after watching Monty Python. In the darkest game of the World of Darkness, Shoah is the darkest corner. The opening artwork is a brutal example of what you'll find in the rest of the book: if it's too much for you, then you may not want to get any deeper.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.