The Wretched

Introduction

It's been a while since I played a journalling RPG (Thousand Year Old Vampire last summer) so I thought I'd finally try out The Wretched by Chris Bissette. I got it in a bundle on itch.io but the thing that always stopped me from trying it out was that it needs what Bisette carefully calls a "tumbling block tower" - he means Jenga. I thought it was a weird idea to design a game that relied on you owning a whole other game first, but just recently I noticed he has a link in the rulebook explaining how to simulate the odds of a Jenga tower and how likely it is to fall.

All you need is a hundred D6s. Luckily we've got Tabletop Simulator so I can easily spawn in that many dice. To take a block from the tower you simply roll all the dice and remove any that come up as ones. You do that each time you're told to remove a block, and eventually you'll lose all your dice, sending the tower crashing down.

My slightly wonky grid of dice

You also need a deck of playing cards with the jokers removed, another D6 and ten tokens of some kind.

The game itself is similar to the final act of Alien: You're the sole survivor of a small crew of blue collar spacers who encountered a hostile alien lifeform in the depths of space. You managed to flush it out of an airlock but it's still alive and you can hear it moving around on the hull, trying to find a way back in. The two goals are to repair the ship's distress beacons and engines. If you can repair the beacon, keep the ship from catastrophic failure an avoid the creature until someone rescues you, you've won. If you can repair the engines you can blast off back to Earth, throwing the creature from the hull. It sounds like it'll be easier said than done however.

Each turn represents a day, during which you carry out tasks - drawing cards from the deck, rolling a die, possibly taking a block from the tower, and then record your log at the end of the day which can be as long and creative as you like. Bissette recommends doing an audio or video log, but I'm imagining an Alien style retro future here, so typing entries into a computer will do fine for me.

The Game

Firstly, we need to see how damaged the ship is. I have to roll the single D6 and then remove that many blocks from the tower.

I rolled a 1, it shouldn't be too badly damaged then. Here we go:

That's 20. So the ship is operating at 80% capacity, not too bad. I've used my favourite real world name generator over at Seventh Sanctum and got the name Adrian Barker for our main character.

The rulebook gives you a first log entry to use, so let's get started.

Day 1

LOG ENTRY // THE WRETCHED // BARKER // DAY 1

Day 1, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Barker reporting. The other members of the crew are dead and the engines remain non-operational, though ship integrity remains good and life support systems are still active.

I succcessfully jettisoned the intruder from the airlock, but it remains alive and continues to try to access the ship. With a little luck I can repair the distress beacon and somebody will pick me up. This is Adrian Barker, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

Day 2

I'm going to list the details of today's tasks but after that I'll just type out the log entries. You'll be able to tell how many dice are left in the pool based on the percentage I give for the ship's capacity each time.

I roll my D6 and take that many cards from the deck, keeping them face down: 5.

I turn over the first card and check the operations manual for my task. Five of hearts. Hearts represent the ship's systems, and five is a problem with the oxygen supply. I fix it, "but what caused it to break?" asks the operations manual. I roll the dice pool and lose 12 dice.

I turn over the second card: King of clubs. Clubs represent the lost crew. "As you were passing the Officer's Mess you tried to avert your eyes from the carnage inside, but you're sure you saw something move amongst the bodies of your crewmates. What do you think it was?" I'm told to put this king card to one side. If I draw all four kings, the creature has found me and kills me.

The third card is the jack of spades. Uh oh. Spades represent the creature. "The creature can survive out in the cold black of space, where nothing should be able to live. Is it coming into your territory to destroy you, or is it simply defending its domain?" I roll the dice pool and lose 8 dice.

Next is the nine of diamonds. Diamonds are the structure of the ship: the hull, vents, airlocks, bulkheads etc. "Your gravity drive fails. It's a long, slow process dragging yourself over to it with no gravity, and a long day fixing it, but you manage to get it back up and running." I roll the dice pool and lose 7 more dice.

The final card of the day is the king of diamonds. "When you launched the creature out of the airlock you couldn't seal it again. Every now and then the creature comes back to that hole in the side of the ship, scratching and prying at the single internal door that separates you from the cold black of space. How do you react to this?"

LOG ENTRY // THE WRETCHED // BARKER // DAY 2

Day 2, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Barker reporting. I'm typing this at the terminal in my cabin, ship time 01:47am. Had the longest day. I woke up in the early morning struggling to breathe. Thought it was a panic attack until I noticed the red blinking light on the systems panel across the cabin. Oxygen leak in zone 3. That's the Officer's Mess. Ground zero.

I quickly grabbed an oxygen mask and tank, and forced myself to go back in there. It all came flooding back. Garza silhouetted in the open doorway as we ate our synth-noodles, except it wasn't Garza. His skin bubbling and splitting open, tearing and falling off in clumps as that thing burst out of its disguise and launched itself across the room. Anyway. I found a ruptured pipe, gashed open in the chaos. Welded it up and the oxygen levels began returning to normal.

As I turned to leave something caught my eye. Part of Garza's jumpsuit lying on the floor was wriggling like a worm. I looked at it and saw it wasn't part of his actual clothing, it wasn't fabric. That thing had grown its disguise... it was living tissue. I ran from the Mess and locked the door behind me.

That bloody thing, the intruder. We detected the breach when it got in but where did it come from? The engines broke down in deepspace, between stars. There's nothing here, no rogue planetoids or even asteroids. Is this where it lives? Did it follow us, consider us prey?

I was thinking about this while working on the inductor coils when a huge judder went through the ship and my tools rattled their way out of the toolbox and floated into the air. The gravity drive had failed again. I'd told Bolton it was bound to happen sooner or later, that useless cretin. But I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. I wasn't wearing magboots obviously so I had to make my way through four decks to the gravity drive and spend four hours finding the new parts Bolton should have installed last week. I got it working again in the end though.

On my way to my cabin just now I walked past the airlock that I blasted the intruder out of. It was back again. Every few hours it makes its way back to airlock 14B and starts banging on it, the sound carrying through the structure and into the corridor, echoing all the way to my cabin. I can still just about hear it now.

Ship structural integrity now at 53% and holding. This is Adrian Barker, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

LOG ENTRY // THE WRETCHED // BARKER // DAY 3

Day 3, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Barker reporting. I realised today I need to work on the distress beacon. There could be other ships, longhaulers, just a few lightyears from my position and they've got no way of knowing I'm here. As I worked I thought about the way the lights flickered whenever the intruder was nearby, and that strange dense feeling in the air. It got worse the closer the thing got to my hiding place a few days ago, before I spaced it. Like back home when a huge thunderstorm had been on the way for hours but hadn't quite started yet. Some kind of electro-magnetic field it emits? But how would I know? I'm the flight engineer not the science officer.

For fuck's sake! Just after I typed that the comms system came on and delivered a short burst of static followed by some chatter from another ship, but when I ran over to it the chatter died down again and sank into the noise. I'd set it to maximum range so god knows how far away they were. No way to make contact now though. Got to get that beacon up and running! Spending time on it today lost me some valuable structural integrity though: it's now at 40%. This is Adrian Barker, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

LOG ENTRY // THE WRETCHED // BARKER // DAY 4

Day 4, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Barker reporting.The distress beacon is attached to the outside of the hull, and while I was working on it from the inside I swear to god I felt that same weird electrical sensation like the creature was nearby. All the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. It lasted a few minutes then faded away like it was moving off. Does it know what the beacon is?! How can it????

All this time working on the beacon... my mind keeps wandering. Thinking about Luisa. If I hadn't made that move the night before the intruder got in, would things be any easier for me now? I wouldn't be sitting here wondering if what we shared that night was going to lead to anything long term. Wouldn't be regretting giving her the all clear to make a run for it across that access tunnel a few hours later. Then seeing a second blip on the motion sensor as the thing skittered towards her on however many legs it had grown by then. Seeing that look on her face as - Sorry, whoever's reading this, just check the footage on the black box. You'll see the worst moment of my life. And hers I guess.

Sitting here at the terminal, drinking the last of the whiskey I'd been saving, I can't help thinking about the others. I'd totally forgotten about that nightmare Blaine told us about in the Officer's Mess just a few days before the incident. He'd said he was in the cargo bay (in the dream) doing his usual checks, and one of the crude tanks suddenly opened on its own. As the thick black oil spilled out across the deck a figure raised itself up from it. The oil dripped down the figure and revealed his dead father, grinning at him. "You're gonna see me soon, son." Blaine's father had said. But he knew it wasn't his father, it was something that looked just like him. Then he woke up. Luisa told me Blaine had confided in her that his father used to get drunk and beat him black and blue when he was a kid, and the only consolation he had was knowing he must be burning in Hell.

Anyway, after working all day on the beacon I wanted to treat myself to some fresh veg for a change. There was enough to go around now. I opened one of the pods in Hydroponics and somehow this weird black mould had grown all over the produce. What else can go wrong around here?! Structural integrity now at 30%. This is getting serious. This is Adrian Barker, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

LOG ENTRY // THE WRETCHED // BARKER // DAY 5

Day 5, salvage ship The Wretched. Flight Engineer Barker reporting. No luck with the distress beacon yet. I couldn't take any more of the tedium so I made my way to the engine. Spent twelve hours taking it apart and putting it all back together again, but it's not exactly my area of expertise. I'm better with calculating flight paths and orbital approach vectors, not working with nuts and bolts.

Some of the parts were fried so I'm having to cannibalise bits and pieces from other systems now, feels like I'm gambling with the structural integrity. Each circuit board I rip out is one more step on the road to total destruction of the ship but if it helps me get the beacon working again it might not matter because I could get rescued and get the hell away from that thing and this timebomb of a ship. I think I might have taken one too many components out of the life support system now, it keeps making a low grinding noise. If it fails I'll have to get into an EV suit. Even sleep in one if it comes to it.

I could have sworn I heard something moving in a vent above me while I was in the Engine Chamber. It sounded like the horrible spidery skittering sound the thing made as it ran around, its hoof-like feet tapping on the deck. They were like the hooves an insect would have, if insects had hooves. I should probably delete that last bit later, I sound like I'm going stark raving mad.

Sitting here thinking about the others again. About how I bottled it after seeing what the creature did to Luisa. I just couldn't take it after that, I know we had a whole plan worked out, I know I was meant to draw it down to Deck 16 where Gomez was waiting by the incinerator... But it was the dumbest plan ever, that thing wasn't some kind of animal, it knew exactly what it was doing. I just ran and ran. Found a locker outside Sickbay and hid inside it, heard it tear the Sickbay door off and the screams from the wounded ones inside. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Holy shit. Wait.

The comms system just came to life again like before, but this time it was totally different. It wasn't distant comms chatter, it was a single voice, distorted and choppy. It sounded kind of metallic, slow and raspy. Almost like someone repeating something they heard in a foreign language without knowing what the words meant. "Yooooouuu'rrrre gonnaaaaaa seeeeee me soooooon, sssson."

Structural integrity now at 20%. This is Adrian Barker, the last survivor of The Wretched, signing off.

Note: The part about possibly hearing the creature moving around in the vent was the king of hearts, the third king I've drawn. If I draw the final king before I can repair the beacon or the engine, the creature will get into the ship for real and kill me.

TIGHT BEAM COMMS // THE GERRITSEN // REYES

Tight beam comms message to HQ, Special Operations ship The Gerritsen. Agent Ander Reyes reporting. Attached text file recovered from black box found in debris field at deepspace location X-0-Theta. Confirmed wreckage of company ship The Wretched, registration number 6H72F3DH-8.

Video footage also recovered, appears to corroborate flight engineer's story. Flight engineer observed opening plasma valve of starboard engine during repairs on day 6, at which time extra biological entity gained access through valve into engine chamber where flight engineer was working. EBE observed extending proboscis-like appendage and #̸̢̨̧̢̻̗͚͉̝̠͖͕̤̱͇̹̗̎̃͋̈́̏͊̍͊̽́̐̽̚͝#̷̡͇̞̹͍̻̞̹̱̺̲̫̙̞̦̬͎͍͕̆͒̇̑̂̑̎̐͌́̀͂͆͆́͐͋̋̍̌̈́́͆̀̅̆̌̕̕͝#̵͉̗͓̱̣̻͉̥̉̂̄̊͝#̶͙̞̾̒̆̃͆̆̊̈́̚͘̕#̷̡̡̨͈̘̜̟̙͖̹̼͔͙̫̟̠͖̳̪͇̞͎̹̣͎̍̃͂̽3̶̧̛̛̣̭̈͌́̌̾́̎́͂͂̽͒͗̓͗̋̓͝͝2̴̡̮̯̤̭̻̬̲̖͉̼̩̣͈̯̞̂̃̊̇̀͐͋͊̍̒́͋͘͠4̴̮̮͎̣̟̬̇͊̓̑͊͑̐̑̎̄̏̂̈͌̉̍̏͑̅̓̈́͌͗̕͘͜͠F̵̢̡̢̢͉̮̺͔̦̘̥̳͖̗̺̙͇̭͛͋̄̌͋̉̉̔̊̆̒̓S̶̢͇͖͙̫̬͍͔͈̭̱̩̩͇͈̱̹͙̗̱͓̥̞̀̂͐͘̚͜͜F̴̢̢̜͎͙̂̎#̸̧̛̫̤͎̺̙̝͚͓͇̗̖̘͈̯̭͇͛̄͂͒͛̂̈́̋͐̒͆̆̅͐̈́̈́̊̈́̈͗̓͒̈̍̕͝͝D̶̥̞̙̣͚̼͚͖̈́̄̃͑̔̈́͑͛͑̐̒̃̏̓̓̈̔̌̀F̶͇̰͙̯̙͖̻̽́̌̽̿͊͒̃̔̾̑̾̊̔̍̾͝͝ͅḐ̶̢̢̛̛̻̗̖̙̰̗̼̻͓̤͔͈͇̲̱̺͈̲̻̻͉̺̙̀̃̀̈́̓̋̈́͒́̈́̈́̓̈̅́̽͜͝ͅŞ̶̧̢̢̤̭̜̻͈̗̙͖̺̤̯͈̞͈͊̄̽́̀͜ͅͅD̴̢̠̣̗͕̱̣̗̦̭̉̿̈́̾F̵̡̧̛͙̺̼̩͔̩̣̠̫̰͚͔̀̎̐̃͒̀̏̄̂̆̇̈́͗͐̎͒̇̑͘̚͝#̶̧͇͖̬͓̠͇͙̞̺̩̳͛̊̽̋̎͑̒̉̈́͒̑͋̄́͒͗̈́͘͜#̸̛̬͎̟̄̈́͂̑͂̓͒̓͌̋̒͛̉͌̀̃͐̿̉̈́̍̅̈́̏͠D̵̘̮̲͛́̒̈́F̶͔̭̣̦̝̠̭͌́͒̔͗̒͂͝F̷̥̙̦̹̰̖̝̠̯̙̱̹̬̈̅̏̈́̄́̏͑͜͝͝ͅͅ4̷̢̢̨̢͙̩̞͇̩̰͖͙̭̺͔͔͕̤͖͚͍͖͙͈͓̖̰̀͂̅̀̅̍̒ͅ3̴̬̼͎̯̗̟̗̹̰̱̖̞̫̖̹̠̫̰͕̳͇͙̘̤̜͔̘̼̻̆͐͌͋̓͐̂̾͑̾̍́̑̃͂̀̐́͛́̓̕̚͘͘͜͝͠

##DATASTREAM CORRUPT##

No sign of EBE at location X-0-Theta. Longhauler crew that discovered debris field boarded and terminated as instructed. Requesting new orders.

Well, the very next card I drew was the fourth and final king, which meant the creature got onboard and killed me. I didn't want to do the classic "Oh no it's coming down the corridor towards me and I'm still typing, AAAH!" ending, so I imagined what would have happened afterward. The ship was rapidly losing integrity so it definitely would have been destroyed soon after Adrian's death. As for the creature, maybe it's still out there somewhere...