While previous Wretched games are meant to play anti-heroes, Wretchploitation goes a bit further allowing you to take the role of obvious villains, such as Dominatrix Nazi officers with a taste for blood, sadistic wardens, psycho-killers, deranged cult leaders and other distasteful personalities. Wretchploitation expands the Wretched line into exploitation movie territory, already rife with seedy anti-heroes. Whether you like violent action, in the way of blaxploitation, 70s cop movies, Hong Kong flicks and Eurocrime, or if you would, instead, emulate the horror and gore of cannibal, zombie, Giallo and splatter films, or even if you prefer the sleaziness of sexploitation and nunsploitation, this set of rules has got you covered!
Knuckles of steel
A triad crime boss kidnapped his former girlfriend’s sister and uses the hostage to persuade Lois, model and aspiring actress, to marry him against her will. However, Lois still has a card up her sleeve: A group of brave, determined and wretched friends willing to help her no matter the odds. A situation like this could be solved in a one-shot, but Knuckles of Steel provides plenty of plot hooks and non-player characters and places in Hammettville.
Sexual Holocaust
Sexual Holocaust is an exploitation horror scenario designed for the Wretchploitation role-playing game. It should be run like a low-budget horror movie with adult themes treated in an extremely distasteful way.
The scenario takes place in a fictional town, Hammettville, located in the surrounding area of a large metropolis – such as New York -, known among its inhabitants as Crime City, and it should be set from the early 1970s to mid-1980s, as those decades are more in line with the kind of horror movie being emulated.
As with every other Red Room scenario, this is a sandbox-style adventure with enough information and plot seeds to last from a one-shoot to a small campaign. Sexual Holocaust includes pregens and player handouts, so it can be run without much preparation.
Resort of the Dead
Zombies, yeah, I know, they have been done to death… But there’s a catch, these are beach zombies. Ok, that was already covered by a few video games. Wait: it’s a George Romero and J.G. Ballard crossover about a Zombie Apocalypse set in a formerly luxurious – but now decaying – summer resort in Portugal during the 1980s. That has never been done, right? Phew, that was a close call! Resort of the Dead provides you with a sandbox-type location and a cast of characters to run your zombie apocalypse scenario. You can use the Wretchploitation rules, or you can run it in other games.
All around, there are pristine beaches, crystal clear waters, lovely cafés and restaurants, drunken Brits, sunburnt (nearly overcooked) Germans, and obnoxious American tourists complaining, in broken Spanish, to the lazy-ass Portuguese manager about some minor issue, such as the room’s TV set not working properly during the Armageddon. We do understand Spanish here, by the way, but it’s not our native language. Just to make that clear! Anyway, we are here to provide you with the perfect spot to be killed by zombies. Well, not that perfect; the Torralba resort has seen much better days. But at least it’s cheap. However, we’ll screw you over the restaurant bill, and watch out for those cab drivers, too; they’ll rip you off. Welcome to sunny Portugal, have fun being devoured by the undead hordes!
IN WRETCHED DEPRAVITY
Inspired heavily by the movie The Dead House, in this Wretchploitation scenario the players may take the role of a gang of psychotic house invaders, the family inhabiting the house or even the authorities investigating the case. Besides the conflict between the gang and the family members there will be many other events, mundane and supernatural. So, whether you’re looking for a fun one shot night of horror, or something that could be much more expansive, then (hopefully) this will be an explosive fuel for your inspiration (38 pages)
Double Feature: The Old House/ A Sweet Serenade
This Double Feature includes two horror adventures easily used without any preparation if you mean to run them in Wretchploitation or any other contemporary horror game. With some adaptation you can run them in Wretched Époque or other games set in the not-so-distant past.
The first scenario, The Old House, is a loose collection of ideas and random tables for supernatural encounters in a haunted place. The second adventure, A Sweet Serenade, is a more structured scenario about a group of characters (that may be vampires, humans or half-breeds, depending on the Game Master’s and players’ preferences), who find themselves waking at dawn, in a strange place, after a night of partying. They may have broken the annual truce among vampire clans by murdering a woman, and now must find out what really happened the night before.
The Sisters of the Seven Sins (Wretched Version)
This horror scenario takes place in a Portuguese convent with a dark history of demonic possession, black magic, and Devil worships that, in the mid-1970s, is occupied by a recently founded unusual religious congregation made up of disgraced women who wish to atone for their past, the Reprobate Sisters of the Seven Sins. Players can take the role of nuns, Vatican authorities sent to investigate reports of demoniacal manifestations, reporters interested in exploring the story behind this atypical catholic sisterhood or even criminals working on a devious plan to restore a sinister painting to the convent where it originally belonged.
In this scenario, you will find a summary description of the fictional Convent of Saint Mary Magdalene, located in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, followed by some information about the country during the late 1970s and various detailed characters. This assumes you will run it in Wretchploitation or other modern horror games. But if you’d rather play it as a Wretched Époque scenario, there are notes for adapting each player and non-player character to the Belle Époque and more plot hooks and details about Lisbon in the late 19th century.
Note: The first version of this scenario was published last year by Postmortem Studios. This one has different rules (OSR mechanics for the Wretched system), more plot hooks, for the Belle Époque, and some player handouts.
ORPHEUM LOFTS
Orpheum Lofts is a thriller/ horror role-playing scenario inspired by Dario Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy [Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Mother of Tears (2007)], Polanski’s The Tenant (1976) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), ’80s and ’90s sitcoms, and romantic comedies. Yes, it’s a strange mix, but it will get weirder… As usual in Red Room adventures, there is no predetermined plot, only suggested ones, and no described scenes; instead, there are many story seeds. Though it was planned for a series of connected stories set in the mid-80s, Orpheum Lofts can easily be turned into a one-shot. The timeline isn’t set in stone either.
This book contains the scenario previously published by Postmortem Studios as part of the Postmortem Giallo series and also part of Her Heart was a Locked Room, and Nobody had the Key: A Giallo Series Companion, adapted to old-school mechanics. If you have purchased those two books do you need this one as well? No, not really.
THE MEMORIAL
The Memorial is a contemporary horror scenario inspired by Lars Von Trier’s cult TV series Riget (1994), Milos Forman’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and The Killer Nun (1979), an Italian “video nasty” classic starring Anita Eckberg and Alida Valli. There’s undoubtedly some Green Wing, ER, House M.D. and Scrubs in it, hopefully not that much, as it is meant to be horror, after all.
The Memorial was previously published by Postmortem Studios, part of the Postmortem Giallo series. The new Wretched Memorial is meant to be run using Wretchploitation, an old-school game which emulates the exploitation movie genre and it also includes a few plot hooks meant for Wretched Époque. Nevertheless, you will find it easily adapted it to most contemporary horror role-playing games.
The scenario takes place in a rundown old hospital,The Ernest Spencer Memorial, especially in its psychiatric ward. This surreal institution is populated by bizarre people with a troubled past and where strange things occur frequently. Part of those occurrences is of supernatural origin, but some of them are illegal experiments and common medical malpractice
