Geist: The Sin-Eaters
You are dead. But that doesn’t necessarily mean your journey has come to an end. Supernatural creatures called geists find people like you. When alive, you had an interest in or were sensitive to the occult. That, coupled with your will to live, has convinced a geist to seek you out and offer you a Bargain. In exchange for a second chance at life, the geist can live inside you and you become a Sin-Eater. Right after you accept the deal, the game Geist: The Sin-Eaters by White Wolf Publishing beings. Weighing in at 306 pages, the text provides a wealth of information about the world of Geist, a familiar-yet-different character generation system in the game, and the rules for playing and storytelling.
Geist is an interesting addition to White Wolf’s World of Darkness setting. At first, I thought it was a reimagining of the Wraith game, which allows characters to take on the roles of ghosts who remain after death to accomplish a few final goals. I was wrong – Geist is a new setting that plugs seamlessly into the World of Darkness and provides a whole new avenue for power and adventure. After learning this, I was far more interested in taking on the role of a Sin-Eater and much more interested in the game as a whole. The game did not disappoint and opened several new ways to play World of Darkness games. Not only do I find the setting compelling, but I can think of several other settings I want to play with the rules.
Why? Overall, there are several things that Geist does very well. First, it presents a compelling setting, which stands on its own even or plays well with the rest of the World of Darkness. This setting material begins by explaining that before becoming Sin-Eaters, the characters were typically outcasts or misfits with some sensitivity to the dead. Many of these characters become obsessed with death and ghosts right up until the moment when they, too, die. As they perish, they do not lose their passion for life, which the geists sense.
A few of the living don’t accept the offer and pass into death, but most take their second chance and return to the land of the living changed. They are changed not only by their brush with death, but also because they now share their body with the geist with whom they made the Bargain. These geists are beings of great power, but they are ultimately alien and driven by passions which are often dark and violent.
The Sin-Eaters are also changed because they are able to manifest powers far stronger than those they had before they died. They are also able to see ghosts and ghosts intuitively know the Sin-Eaters are around. This inevitably leads to conflict with the many ghosts in the world.
Once Sin-Eaters have come to terms with who they are and have recovered from their mortal wounds, they are free to do as they please. Despite, the fact they have geists inhabiting their bodies, the geists cannot exercise direct control over the Sin-Eater. All they can do is whisper thoughts and make suggestions to the Sin-Eaters.
If that weren’t enough, eventually characters will end up in the Underworld, the place where ghosts go when they have lost their way. The game dodges many life-after-death, Heaven/Hell issues by saying that no one knows where you go when you die. The Underworld, then, is a place of lost hope for ghosts who cannot die and cannot be released. In the Underworld, ghosts wander, waiting for someone (like the Sin-Eaters) to help them.
In addition to ghosts, the Underworld is full of strange plants and fungi which produce potent psychotropic drugs and do other strange things. Also, what Underworld would be complete without a series of new demons and undead creatures? Geist features two new denizens of the Underworld: the Kerberoi, who enforce a strict code of conduct in the Underworld, and the hideous Chthonians, the spirits of aliens from times past who devour ghosts and assimilate them. These demons are horrible, terrifying, and should be featured in every Geist game because they are cool.
The setting is the strongest part of Geist, but I also liked some of the new character generation mechanics. There was a greater emphasis put on skill specialties, which really only grants the player a single die for each specialty, but they do a good job of representing what the Sin-Eater was good at before she died.
Also, instead of Clans, magical traditions or packs, Geist divides Sin-Eaters into groups based on how the Sin-Eater, and the geist itself, died. These are called Thresholds, and include death by violence, deprivation, chance, etc. Also, your Sin-Eaters’ Archetype is important as it defines what your Sin-Eater thinks about death and defines her relationship with death and dying. Sin-Eaters also gain powers from their geist, but you will have to buy the book to find out what they are.
If Geist has any issues, it is the fact that it suffers from being too integrated into the rest of the World of Darkness. A lot of the setting material constantly makes references to ghosts and ghostly mechanics (such as anchors and ghostly goals). Perhaps it was just my personal bias, but I kept feeling the Geist borrowed so much from Wraith that I needed the Wraith book to get the most out of the game. To be fair, the Geist book has everything I need to play, but to fully understand what’s going on with the ghosts, I just wanted to refresh my memory about Wraith.
All in all, Geist: The Sin-Eaters is another strong entry from White Wolf. Despite the repeated allusions to ghosts/Wraith, the nature of Sin-Eaters and their avenues of power make them unique in the World of Darkness. Plus, the conflicts that arise from having a geist sharing your character’s body while your character is hunting rogue ghosts or avoiding angry Kerberoi give Storytellers fantastic tools to create games unlike any other in the World of Darkness.
Want to learn more about Geist: The Sin-Eaters? Read on…
- Atomic Array: Geist: The Sin-Eaters (Atomic Array 027)
- Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
- Flames Rising: Deal with the Dead
- Gnome Stew: Running Geist
- Mad Brew Labs: The Sin-Eaters
- RPG Aggression: Rudis Review
- Atomic Array: Free Demo Quickstart
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July 18th, 2009 at 23:17
Just a small note: Wraith would be a bad place to go to look at info for the ghosts in the current World of Darkness setting, since ghosts in Wraith have a much higher degree of autonomy and sentience. Ghosts in general are more limited in their awareness and abilities in the new World of Darkness. There are also significant rules discrepancies between Wraith and any new World of Darkness game.
There is, however, a lengthy write up in the back of the core WoD book, starting on page 208. That’s where any rules would be coming from. This is handy since you need that core book anyway in order to play.
July 20th, 2009 at 19:01
Eolirin speaks the truth. Wraith: the Oblivion is the old version of the World of Darkness. While it could possibly be used, to do so you’d have to ignore several cannon rules regarding ghosts from the current version. Essentially you would be shoe-horning Wraith into the new World of Darkness. I wouldn’t think they would publish Geist with the intent that you would have to go to old material in order to get a feel on how ghostly mechanics work.
There is actually a plethora of information regarding ghosts and the underworld published already, it is however scattered across many source books.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:06
[...] Geist: The Sin-Eaters, no Game Cryer - ”Geist mostra dois novos tipos de habitantes do Submundo: os Kerberoi, que um impôem um código de conduta estrita neste reino, e os abomináveis Ctónicos, espíritos de extraterrestres de tempos idos que devoram fantasmas e os assimilam”. [...]
July 21st, 2009 at 15:35
Hey all,
I appreciate the comments. I realize that Wraith is older canon, I just couldn’t separate the two in my mind. Plus, with Wraith, I felt like I got a good insight into the motivations of the dead who stay behind.
However, I’ll take Scabsaw’s advice and go out looking for ghost material in other books.
July 25th, 2009 at 17:53
It should also be noted that the authors themselves said that if it was Wraith, it wouldn’t be called Geist…
Really, the World of Darkness corebook is all you need to know to add ghosts to your game, and you should have that book already if planning on playing Geist…
July 26th, 2009 at 05:00
Lunatik,
I see where you are coming from. What I meant (and perhaps said poorly) was that for me to understand the bad guys in the setting (ie the ghosts) I wanted to go back and read Wraith, which is a rich source of material on the motivations of ghosts.
I felt the same way about Changeling. I wanted to read Werewolf since topically they were both about shape changers. That’s all.