Whoo, another GenCon over and done. It was a good one, all told. I spent not nearly as much time at the booth as I could have — I understand some folks stopped by looking for me and missed me, for which I apologize — but boy did I manage to keep busy. Podcast interviews, a nice panel, checking on the Wrecking Crew, freelancer dinner, ENnies awards, business lunches... oh yeah, and even stopping by the Succubus Club party. I was pretty run-down, ragged and hoarse by the end of it all, but would I do it again? Of course! (I could do without the luggage missing my flight both times, though.) Everyone who stopped by to say hi, thanks for coming. Those of you who actually praised Werewolf and Changeling to me, bless you, it always is utterly fantastic to hear that other people enjoy the sort of things you like, too.

Naturally, the big thing I was there for this year was the release of Geist: The Sin-Eaters. It seemed to go over well! Of course, there was one problem with it that most people working the booth admitted to me: it's hard to sum up. There is no convenient one-line elevator pitch for Geist, nothing as simple as "you play ghosts" (you don't) or "you are a medium" (closer, but neglects the geist). The more you talk about it, the more you find there is to reveal, from the neat structure of mementos to the absence of a "Y-axis" splat to the mood of the game. If you haven't heard the extended pitch, well, let me throw something at you.

It seems that one of the big things going on is to reveal stuff from the outlines of products as sort of a look behind the scenes... between the lines... behind the lines? Huh! So although I don't want to take up too much of this space with outline and bible, here's how the project bible opened up:

Geist: The Sin-Eaters
Project Bible 1.0
Every death is a door; every door has a lock.
We are the ones who hold the keys.

The Gist of Geist:

First off, the obvious question: Is it Wraith, or Orpheus, rebooted? No. If it were, it would use the appropriate name. This is going to be something that I don’t think people are expecting — well, some of them might have guessed, but you know how it is.

Geist is a game about death, though. Death and necromancy and the undead, things that I love with every corner of my shriveled necro-addict heart. And I think it’s gonna prove to be an approach that people will like. I hope so, anyhow.

Who are the Sin-Eaters?

In a bit of a twist, the word “geist” does not describe the players’ characters. It describes a part of them. The characters were sensitives before, people who were close to the invisible world — but then nearly died themselves. In the process, they were marked as mediums between the worlds of the living and the dead.

The near-death experience is where the point of attachment begins. A character in this game has a near-death experience, or dies temporarily, then returns to life. Along the ca1way, they have become attached to a very particular variation of ghost that is not quite the same thing as what we see in the World of Darkness core. Your character (called a “Sin-Eater”) is attached to, or possesses, or is possessed by a geist —an actual ghostly spirit that is more than just a reflection of a dead person, but also has picked up some measure of symbolic personality that makes it more of an archetype as well. The ghost of a long-dead gangster has absorbed so much resonance of guns and violence that when it became a geist, it became a geist of guns and violence, part ghost, part spirit. Or perhaps it was a spirit that absorbed/devoured/assimilated a ghost. We’ll present both theories, and let the fans decide what’s most interesting for them, though I think we’ll lean slightly toward the former. Spirits have had much more play in the WoD so far, and now it’s the restless dead’s turn to shine.
The mood for the game will reflect the Day of the Dead (the holiday, not George Romero) — creepy, morbid reminders of mortality fused with the reminder of the sweetness of what it’s like to be living. Memento mori. Sugar skulls, drinking rum and smoking cigars at the crossroads. Wakes that close out bars. Death-defying speed cults, from the muscle cars and tricked-out choppers of the ‘50s to the darker side of modern street racing. The intense emotion felt by a geist that surrounds its point of death, married with the question of what a character can do with this second life.

I would really like Geist to appeal both to the players who enjoy creepy, freakish horror, and to the players who are more looking for sexy, romantic, dark adventure with the trappings of horror. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die. Look Oblivion in the eye, and fucking spit in it.

The Basics:

This is going to be a game about death, but also about style. For example, characters gain extra power from mementos, which may be required for full manifestation of their power. A Sin-Eater may invoke his geist’s power by slipping on a deathmask, or wearing the suit jacket a person was buried in. Another might have jewelry made of bone or teeth, or a tattoo inked with the ashes of a cremated person. Watches and timepieces are a solid idea (the “maybe not always accurate, but hey, check this out” Wikipedia tells me that Mary, Queen of Scots had a big silver watch in a skull’s form). These strengthen the connection between the host and the geist. These mementos (deliberately referencing memento mori) serve as something of a minor code, a way for these mediums and geist-haunted to recognize one another, as well. And it would make for Fucking Cool graphic design. Some of this will deliberately be really off-putting and disturbing. Other parts will be elegant and morbid and really attractive in a creepy way. Best part is, we let players choose. It’s a formula that worked for Changeling: as dark as you want it, as cool as you want it, and the two are not exclusive.

Same is true for the geists. They would have a visual design that’s one part ghost, one part symbolism. Freaky abstract ghosts as in the Persona games would be possible. So would things like a drowned woman with no face behind her tangled seaweed hair (your typical Japanese horror movie geist, obviously), or a childlike geist with a body assembled from various toys and stuffed animals, that “speaks” by arranging words with wooden blocks and refrigerator letter magnets. The geist is the hook to the game, as it would have a power structure pretty unlike what people are used to. Many characters would have geists with specific names; potentially you have three names: your birth name, your name that you go by in this society, and the name of your geist. Crafting your geist would be the hook for the powers system. One player might build a geist with aspects of fire and glory that gives him pyrokinetic abilities and some heightened charisma when it manifests, then decide it looks like a beautiful woman with phoenix wings. To some extent, it would be like Demon: The Fallen’s apocalyptic forms, but the geist would be either a large manifestation above you, or perhaps wrap around you like armor; it wouldn’t just be a different form of shape-shifting.

Note that there is a lot of Twilight going on here. Geists appear in Twilight, but aren’t always manifested physically. Sin-Eaters can perceive ghosts, geists, spirits and other things in Twilight. In effect, it’s that “double world” effect of the World of Darkness, where ordinary people miss out on some of the stuff — though honestly, players want to scare the norms, and that will happen, too. They shouldn’t be obvious superheroes, but we should also see them do impressive stuff. We’ll be leaning toward a multi-stage form of manifestation; you can either stay covert, doing small telekinetic and other tricks, or go overt and fully manifest your geist. As usual, we’ll be making them plausibly subtle enough that they can stay hidden, but we won’t be putting in full-bore failsafes like the Mask and Lunacy. It will be enough that Sin-Eaters and geists can perceive Twilight, and that’s where their lesser powers manifest.

You can communicate with your geist; if it speaks in language, music, gestures or whatever, you can implicitly understand it.

There should be a sense of youth and vigor in the game. You’re not all teenagers, obviously, but there aren’t geists who attach onto near-death from old age. The idea is surviving an early death, so that implies youth. That said, geists should come in a wide range of personalities. The dominant theme will be the vigor of the second life, but playing a fatalistic, grim or morose character is entirely possible.

That's how it started, anyway. Actually, it started with the pitch process. I told that story at the con, and maybe I'll tell it again here in a couple of weeks — it might be worth revisiting the whole pitch process within the context of Geist, and how things mutated. So next time, let's get together for pitch mutation.

For now, though, how did your GenCon week/end go? If you weren't there, have you been to any cons before? Looking forward to specific ones? Do you go to buy stuff, or just to look around, or to admire the hot members of your preferred gender(s) in interesting attire? (I did more of that this year than I maybe should have. I missed my wife, apparently.) Do you yourself dress up in revealing attire to go pose and flex and bend over at booths while one of your friends tries to get some "alone time" with booth products while the staff is looking at you? [Hey, if you're reading this, "Red Sonja," nice try — but White Wolf isn't entirely made up of people that are (a) that lonely and (b) heterosexual males.]

Me, I'm still beat. But it was good. Good to be home — but good to go as well. And nice to see people taking a shine to Geist. On behalf of the folks who put it together, we really hope you enjoy it.

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Posted 19 Aug 2009 2:52 PM by EthanSkemp