OSR Review & Commentary Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg By Miguel Ribeiro & Sílvia Clemente

 "Wretched New Flesh is an OSR adaptation of Postcards from Avalidad, a Postmortem Studios setting. This is a near-future sci-fi/ surreal horror game inspired by the works of William S. Burroughs, David Cronenberg, William Gibson, and Clive Barker. Almost 400 pages crammed-full of information about the bizarre world of Avalidad, with mechanics compatible with the previous Wretched games."

"The game setting is centred on Avalidad, a futuristic city in Morocco, where corporations have been conducting research in genetics, cybernetics, augmented and virtual reality, and biotechnology. By default, characters are expected to be ZoneSec operatives or executives for Takeda Technologies, one of the most powerful corporations in Avalidad, but other roles such as Avalidad’s celebrities, fiscal royalty and seedy underbelly are also possible."

So the Red Room folks have been busy again & this time it's a full rpg that we've been waiting for!   Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg  By Miguel Ribeiro &  Sílvia Clemente is perfectly aligned with it's rpg setting. The rpg is readable, well laided out, & is a labor of love. The Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad rpg takes Avalidad & brings it to life in a 379 page tour of a futuristically dangerous city alive with elements of the supernatural, high tech, and the dark criminal underbelly of this near future. Sure there have been other rpg other early versions of Postcards From Avalidad Post Mortem Studios.

Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg By By Miguel Ribeiro &  Sílvia Clemente is the definitive version & edition of the game. Why?! Because it features band new additional content & older supplements distilled into one game wrapped around a very Wretchploitation core. Wretched New Flesh does an excellent job of taking the Wretched engine & bringing it in line with the Postcards from Avalidad Rpg setting completely and utterly. And Wretched New Flesh PC's are generated the usual way. The rpg system is pure OSR and does a solid job of casting the PC's in Avalidad   but this isn't the player's only option. Oh no they can be : Assassin, Common Citizen, Cyborg/ Transhuman, Investigator, Man of Action, Proselytizer, Psionic, Rogue and Scholar, plus the optional Conjurer. These classes fit the Earth of Wretched New Flesh. This is an Earth on the edge but the edge of what?! We're not sure, because this is a world where the weird is pronounced in spades. Cults, horrid bio technological weirdness,  transhuman elements, horror, naughty nuns,gun wielding thugs, alien entities  and much worse all await the PC's. 

PC's level out at tenth level and they Wretched Flesh rpg incorporates a psionic & magic system in addition to the high tech weirdness of Avalidad. And so we wind up with an OSR  adventure game that can handle anything from full on horror to neo Noir with little issue. 

Avalidad is not a place that you as a normal person want to get lost in. This is an Earth with a defined timeline going back to the Sixties so the PC's could start with Wretchploitation & end up in Avalidad. Around every corner there's the weird & the  supernatural lurking and it bleeds into this reality. And we're not talking about the nice kind of supernatural here. But Hellraiser and co types  ready to rip your PC's appart. And this is a theme that follows throughout the world of Avalidad. That around some corners PC's shouldn't venture. And it bleeds through into the PC's themselves. Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg By By Miguel Ribeiro &  Sílvia Clemente is a game where the PC's have secrets. And those secrets come out during play as your PC's find themselves against the powers, patrons, and weirdness that makes up the wedding cake of Avalidad  itself. The Zontec organization  gets a huge update as the force of the city that PC's can play or  don't want to run into; "Wretched New Flesh’s setting assumes that most players will (at least) consider taking the role of ZoneSec operatives, more specifically within the black ops’ unit under the command of Clayton Reed. ZoneSec operatives enforce the role of a state police, and their mission is to protect the corporations’ assets, important personnel, and most importantly their secrets. But even within the operatives, there are different loyalties. The ‘official’ operations division is strongly aligned with the Kobayashi Corporation, whereas Clayton Reed’s secret unit answers directly to Takeda." 
Wretched Flesh is an OSR game where the player's PC's can have a direct impact upon the world around them completely and change it for better or worse. And this system gets a work out within the  Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg. And this is a good thing allowing domain change on a quick level of reality from the ground up. A nice quick level montage as we've seen in many classic films. This same system works for the peusdo bio Cyberpunk asthetic of  Wretched New Flesh.

 Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg's Earth isn't one that we want to live in. Adventure in? Oh yes, we've got organe accumulators, psionic drugs, pleasure cyborgs, androids, and many other staples of weird science fiction. We get the Earth of ' Postcards from Avalidad' but distilled down into a usable OSR framework and it's done quite well. Where could  Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad be used?! Where couldn't it actually. If one is looking for a weird far future  campaign setting for an OSR game then Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad could easily fit the bill.  Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg is a rarity among OSR rpg's because it's actually complere unto itself. All you need are dice, players, paper, and a few sessions in and you've got a campaign going. 

Now let's talk about using  Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg with other OSR systems. The one that comes to mind is actually Mutant Future as a soft post apocalptytic alternative that could be blended in with Wretched New Flesh. Dial this campaign in with Skirmisher Publications Wisdom From The Wastelands & this would be Science Fantasy  campagin with years of play. 

The option that comes to mind is Night Shift Veterans of The Supernatural Wars which could easily work as a supernatural basis for a complete campaign occult adventures campaign. There are in point of fact several future worlds baked into the Night Companion: A Sourcebook for Night Shift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. 

Is Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg By Miguel Ribeiro &  Sílvia Clemente worth getting?! In a word yes if your players are looking for a complete rpg that works on something akin to David Lynch mixed with Hellraiser mixed with David Cronenberg served with a light side of Cyberpunk style Blade Runner. That being said I want a physical copy as the pdf made my eyes want to bleed from three hundred & seventy nine pages of reading. 

Wretched New Flesh - Postcards from Avalidad Rpg By Miguel Ribeiro &  Sílvia Clemente in PDF Is Available Right Here

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