Wretched is an old-school role-playing game designed to play anti-hero characters in a cinematic setting. In Wretched Space, the genre is space opera.
Unlike most other space operas, this one isn’t about heroic characters whose actions have significant consequences for the future of civilization. Here you are meant to play on a smaller scale, and the higher purpose your character serves is his own self-interest.
The deeds of an anti-hero go against society’s recognized social standards and expectations. Your character might be ethically ambiguous or unethical. That doesn’t imply you’re playing a villain. You can still traverse the galaxy, enjoying extraordinary adventures and possibly even helping others.
The characters will most likely commit crimes and exhibit contempt for other people’s rights and wellbeing, but perhaps they will wind up saving the day after all.
This book contains a setting – though not a very thoroughly described one – and plenty of ideas for you to come up with other worlds.
To be true to the Wretched spirit, the default setting casts the players as members of the Wretched Legion, a special corps of the Galactic Federation Army made up of pardoned criminals given an old, battered starship and second-rate weaponry and
deployed to enforce the law on backwater worlds.
If this prospect doesn’t appeal to you, there’s a whole universe of wretchedness out there:
Maybe you’d rather play conniving scoundrels, villainous thieves, corrupt Galactic Federation bureaucrats, dishonourable mercenaries, bloodthirsty killers, rotten pickpockets, debauched hedonists, dirty Outer Rim law-enforcers, vicious gangsters, shameful priests, savage brutes, undignified soldiers, greedy smugglers, unprincipled
adventurers, rapacious gamblers, mistresses of misery, shady traders, trigger-happy pistoleers, debased dealers, untrustworthy galactic travellers, rough cyberenhanced
thugs, lords of debauchery, disreputable space swashbuckler, despicable void pirates,
sordid cosmic wanderers, degenerate soldiers of fortune, hot-headed vigilantes and various other scummy bastards.
EPIC!
EPIC! is the first in a series of adventures crossing Wretched and Cha’alt universes. It takes place mainly in a space station built in the style of Alpha Blue.
EPIC! is the first in a series of adventures crossing Wretched and Cha’alt universes. It takes place mainly in a space station built in the style of Alpha Blue (99 pages).
In the Adityan homeworld, The Cronos, an ancient power source, has awakened and disrupted from its slumber by events taking place far away on the remote desert planet Cha’alt. The Cronos will drag its Adityan Guards all the way across the galaxy and into the path of a group of scoundrels forcefully recruited to police the ass of the Galaxy – also known as the Outer Rim – as part of the Wretched Legion. Neither Adityans nor Legionaries are interested or prepared to save the Galaxy. First and foremost, they must survive the threats and treachery of Theta Blue, the most infamous space station in the system.
This Wretched Space scenario was written for the Cha’alt Game Jam and it is the first episode for Wretched Cha’alt, a series of adventures mixing the two universes. EPIC! is inspired by Alpha Blue, and takes place mainly in Theta Blue, a wretched knock-off of the famous space brothel.