Review & Commentary On Wretched Chanbara! By Olivier Scherschel, & Chris Cotgrove For The Wretched Rpg

 Wretched Chanbara! is a fully-realized game setting built on the robust foundations of the Wretched system, complete with a succinct yet rich world history and a solid background that can be used for both short scenarios and extensive campaigns. The heart of Wretched Chanbara! lies in its deep immersion into the atmosphere of classic Japanese cinema, spanning from the 1950s to the late 1970s but the myths and legends come true.


Wretched Chanbara! is a massive sprawling OSR setting by Olivier Scherschel, & Chris Cotgrove. This book clocks in at four hundred & eighteen pages of very well written rpg based on classic Japanese Samurai & Japanese horror films. What I'm talking about is classic cinema that spans from the 1950's through the late 1970's. If your expecting Legends of the Five Rings or other classic old school Japanese style historical rpg's this isn't it. 

Wretched Chanbara! takes full advantage of the Wretched rpg & has a completely cinematic take on Feudal Japan. This supplement includes are setting detail, character types and setting appropriate magic, gods and monsters. All of this is filtered through the lens of the Wretched Rpg. Wretched Chanbara! is well written has some great layout, really good A.I. artwork, and easy to read fonts within it! 
This setting is a spawling setting that pulls the PC's into it and adapts the PC's too it. There are ninja clans, royal families, evil chamblins, minor clans, and much more with haunted forrests as well as other locations where the supernatural overlaps with the mortal realm. PC's are drawn into this setting with the fact that thier playing the not so good guys in a Cinematic Japanese. 

Wretched Chanbara! is not a minor setting in any sense of the word. This is a massive setting with everything you need to add Wretched Chanbara! as a complete setting into your games. Gods, culture, mythology, religion, PC's, magic, and more all enclosed with the Wretched rpg system. So this is an easy rpg setting to add too your own OSR game & this is a very much a rich tapestry to  play against. 
The PC's are the fuel to get the adventures off to a flying campaign. Wretched Chanbara! is completely created for long term campaign play. The value of Wretched Chanbara! is the fact that there's so much material for play. 
There's some solid foundations within Wretched Chanbara! for both a one shot or a  complete campaign run. There's enough material here to keep a campaign going for years to come! I highly recommend Wretched Chanbara! for old school cinematic Japanese OSR play. 

Encounter With The Undead Village - Wretched Chanbara! Acutal Play Report

 Wretched Chanbara! is one of my favorite Wretched rpg setting. This faux Japan has some excellent hooks to bring in the PC's as Japanese horror/cinema style PC's. And this works very well for a Samurai themed action/horror campaign. I got the chance to run a character in DM Steven's recent game & we had a blast. 

We played a party of Ronin on thier way to act as the representives of a smaller poor clan who hired us to take care of the bandits who were taking over this clan's interests. 
We got to the village and the village was in rough shape. The bandits had come through the place and burnt everything to the ground. We walked into town and immediately were attacked by undead villagers. Things went from bad to worse as the villagers were attacking anything that moved. We lost two of our samurai to the undead. Our party actually retreated from the village. 
We heard calls coming from the villagers crying out for vengence! And we immediately pledged to avenge them. This seemed to quiet them for the moment. And we were able to go back into the village to look for clues. 
We found horse tracks along with some very well made arrows sticking into the local structures. Something fishy was going on! 
Our party had a conjurer among us who was actually a nercomancer in the employ of one of our lot. He used his 'communicate with dead' ability to find out it was  actually one of the larger clans who was using the guise of a bandit gang as a cover to drive out the villagers to expand. Now we need a new plan!