This is Wraith: The Oblivion (1996), for my money the gothiest of the World of Darkness games, because the characters you play are recently dead. Like Beetlejuice, but without the jokes. Players seek transcendence (entry to heaven, basically, though it may just be a rumor), while trying to avoid oblivion. You can check in on the life you left behind, but that is technically illegal in the bureaucratic empire of the dead.

Wraith: The Oblivion is a horrific nightmare of a game and I honestly can’t believe anyone ever played it. Its sooooo dour. I am not the biggest proponent of laughter, but there are limits and WtO is out about a mile past them.

There is cool stuff though. Player wraiths draw their power from the connections to the living world, the stuff they were passionate about, the people they cared about. There exists within a wraith, though, a self-destructive id-like force called Shadow that pushes them to the release of oblivion. Most interestingly, that Shadow is played by another player at the table, which sounds either amazing or like it is a recipe for disaster, depending on the maturity of your group.

WtO is also interesting because its metaplot wrapped up so conclusively that the final book in the line revealed all the remaining secrets and the whole thing was put to bed after, finished, final, forever.

Super weird thing about WtO: slavery is a key thing? The afterlife’s entire economy is dependent on slavery. Worse, everything “physical” in the afterlife is made from souls. Basically, if you need something, you buy some slave wraiths and smelt them down and forge them into whatever you need. Literally rendering sentient entities down into inanimate objects. Basically, to do anything in WtO is to participate or profit from slavery. This is a hideous concept and I have trouble believing that it was left in the game. Yet there it is.