Geist

[Jangalian]

Geist: The Sin-Eaters is the newest White Wolf game, and came out fairly recentlyish. Leading up to the release I hadn't paid it much attention, mostly due to WW's attempts to attract attention to it by teasing information about it very slowly ended up just turning me off. So instead I decided to just wait until the game actually came out to find out what the heck it was. Now it's out, and having read some reviews and the quickstart it actually seems to be quite interesting.

The basic premise is that you're an ordinary person who died for one reason or another, and while on the brink of death a Geist (a particular kind of ghost) came along and offered you a second chance at life on the condition that you let it come along for the ride. The geist gives you a bunch of supernatural powers and lets you see and interact with ghosts, but also tries to push its desires onto you. If you really want you can also see through its eyes or go for a walk into the underworld.

Geist follows the double-axis style of most NWoD splats. Sin-Eaters have a Threshold, which is based on how they died (violence, deprivation, sickness, nature or chance) and appears to be the main thing that determines which powers you can get. You also have one of eight Archetypes, which is what your character has decided to do with his new lease on life (Celebrants decide to live life to the fullest, Advocates try to aid restless spirits, Necromancers want to understand more about undeath, etc.), and determines how you can recover Plasm, the Sin-Eater's respective supernatural fuel. Plasm is recovered the same way as willpower - by following your virtue and vice - except that you only gain plasm from acting out your archetype as well. Alternately, you can regain plasm by eating ghosts. I imagine this has dire consequences.

Thresholds are broad enough that most ways of dying can be fit into one of multiple options depending on which better suits your character (being mauled to death by a wolf, for instance, could be violence or nature, or even chance if it came out of nowhere). I'm also impressed by the range of archetypes, although I haven't seen the actual book yet and some of the descriptions in the quickstart were too brief to fully grasp what some are about.

You also have to come up with your geist. They're a ghost that has shed its former identity to become a representation of a concept rather than a particular person. So the ghost of Molly Walker might become the geist known as The Weeping Widow, an incarnation of anguish over lost love. This seems like an area of the game with a lot of potential to get creative with your concept, though as far as I can tell there's no mechanics involved.

Then you get to pick your powers. You start off by picking two Manifestations, which are various powers of the underworld and are each tied to a different attribute. You then pick two Keys (keys are a big part of the theme), and each key can unlock each manifestation differently. It's definitely an interesting mechanic, but based on the powers listed in the quickstart the extent to which the keys alter the manifestations often seems limited. For instance, all versions of the Boneyard manifestation seem to allow you to extend your senses to the area around you, they just do so in slightly different ways. But with five levels for each manifestation, each being unlocked by one of eight different keys, it makes sense that there's some overlap, it just seems like there's some wasted potential there.

Overall, I'm intrigued. It's a good fit for the World of Darkness line, as ghosts were something that were introduced in the core book and are a big part of the supernatural yet no splat has really dealt with them in such a direct way. The fact that you're basically mortal and can still retain your old life means you're not as restrained in concept and the game isn't as alien as some of the other White Wolf lines can be. It's a basic concept with some very interesting ideas and has a lot of potential depth. My main concerns are with the powers (are the ones in the book more exciting than the ones on offer in the quickstart?) and with the logistics involved in running a game where everyone has an imaginary friend talking to them in their head. It's hard to fully judge without reading the actual book, but I'm definitely impressed and keen to check out more. It looks to be one of the better things WW have come up with in a while.

[Vigiltog]

Sorry about the late reply, I only just noticed the post

It sounds interesting, but the main thing I am wanting to know is: why? whywhywhy why why? Why does the geist give you a second leese on life? and what sort of things are its motivations that its pushes on you? It sounded a bit like most "sin-eaters" were farely nice chaps that just wanted to get on with things and maybe help people with their new found abillities, or at worst they will innately be dragged in to the supernatural undertones of the world simply by being able to sense them. Is this a game of nice people walking around with a beast like geist inside them telling them to rape and pillage everything they see? Or is the geist as altruistic (I doubt btw) and straight forward with this gift of life as they seem? Does molly just want you to match up the unrequited lovers or does she want revenge?

[Jangalian]

Super very delayed response time! Having actually read the book and not just the quickstart, I'm better informed to answer this now...

I wouldn't say Geists are necessarily altruistic. I think a better word to use is sympathetic. By bonding itself with a Sin-Eater, a Geist gets a medium through which it can influence the world. However, a Geist doesn't have a lot of ways to directly influence a host other than just talking and the threat of buggering off the next time the host dies (until the host is dead, the two of them are bound to one another). So it's generally not in a Geist's best interest to pick someone who it won't get along with, or to refuse to cooperate with its host. Geists that want to rape and pillage may exist, but they're more likely to attach themselves to a Serial Killer or someone similar, both because they're more likely to get what they want, and because a Geist is naturally attracted to those who suffer similar circumstances to themselves. Still, there's room for someone to make a character who really is at odds with their Geist, and all the interesting drama that entails (there's a sample character who went a bit insane after he became bound).

Basically, your Geist is your friend. But he's your creepy friend, and it's not a good idea to just do everything he says.