Made by Black Dog Game Factory, a subdivision of White Wolf, Charnel Houses of Europe - The Shoah in 1997 is a subject few roleplaying games touch upon...the killing from 1933 to 1945 of six million persons of Jewish decent and six million homosexuals/gypsies/mentally and physically challenged/Jehovah Witnesses/sex workers/communists/Poles and Soviet citizens and soldiers/dissidents and other persons "undesirable" to the Nazi party. It is an important game book.
The world of Wraith: The Oblivion is populated by the corpus of those who have died with unfinished business in the land of the living. It is no surprise that the deaths of so many, so quickly and horrendously, for nothing more than prejudice and pseudo science generated a multitude of wraiths. It treats the subject with honesty and realism that, like all the other Black Dog game products, is for people 18 years and older.
One might think that this subject matter should not have been used as a reference book for a role playing game. The woman who wrote the forward, Janet Berliner, thought the same thing. She first thought, after being asked to write the forward, that the Holocaust was not a game but she also knew that we must teach people through the tools with which they are more comfortable. To show acts of injustice, weep, and learn so that it may never happen again. That is why I purchased this used role playing book. Why I wept. How I learned more about this awful event. What I will never forget.
This game book was dedicated to "the survivors of the Holocaust who have spent 50 years telling their stories . What you have in your hands is a tribute to their perseverance, and in some small way an attempt to carry on their legacy for the sake of the generations who will never know them. Todah raba."
No comments:
Post a Comment