White Wolf Publishing

OK, here's how this works. Kelley gave me the go-ahead to post the logs from my Geist playtest write-ups once a week, starting Monday. As luck would have it, I have eight write-ups, and there are eight weeks remaining before GenCon (I'd have run another session and started last week if I'd known).



The first session you're going to get is the character write-up I did for my playtest character, Bobby Wren. Sorry, crunch-fiends; no Mechanics. I will tell you in advance that his Threshold is Silent and his Archetype is Pilgrim.



Anyway, I'm going to link all eight of the posts now. Thing is, they're going to get unlocked on the appropriate Mondays, whenever I wake up and stumble to my computer. This way we've got one central post that I don't have to edit, because the links are already there.



06/22/09: Meet Bobby Wren

06/29/09: Middle of Nowhere, Session One (Run by John Newman, incidentally)

07/06/09: Middle of Nowhere, Session Two

07/13/09: Dying Confessions, Part One (I ran this one)

07/20/09: Dying Confessions, Part Two

07/27/09: Dying Confessions, Part Three

08/03/09: Dying Confessions, Part Four

08/10/09: Dying Confessions, Part Five



Please do note that some of these have playtest notes in the comments or in the posts themselves, and that since these are playtest write-ups, some things may have changed between when we ran these games and when the book went to press (in fact, I know some things did). Marketing may make me edit some stuff; that's totally their call, but just don't expect, like, screenshots from the book or anything.



Beyond that, enjoy! Starting Monday.

Sweet. I'll bet this is as cool as your Werewolf games.

RP. The relationship between Sin-Eater and geist is pretty much up to the player.

Interesting that it seemed to require Bobby's agreement the first time round.  I was hoping that the geist making a "devil's bargain" with the human might be a potential aspect (rather than just the human's bargain being devilish).

Well, "required" is a strong word. That's my character's backstory; your concept might require a different Bargain.

Entirely poetical, particular to his type of death, generally universal possibility of crossing over? I'm aware of Lake Avernus and it's connection to the Underworld in Greek lore.....is it Roman, Greek......I'll go with Roman. That is probably one of the things they'll be waiting a few to spoil I guess, as the Underworld would seem to be a bit more key to Geist than the other lines which vaguely mention it.

That is a completely awesome backstory, my good man.



I'm just curious as to if/when we'll see a sheet on this guy, or would that be too spoileriffic at this stage of the game?

so.... the playtest was set a while after Bobby died the first time? OR..... There are ways of starting play, at first death, with a higher grasp of Keys, Manifestations et all????



do the geists themselves come in different levels of power and influence?

Aw, thanks. I actually had no idea what I wanted to do for the character until I remembered I'd been meaning to make a character with that as his theme song. A lot of my characters start with songs.

As a Raleigh native and a guy looking forward to Geist, this is really cool!   Can't wait to see what happens next!

Bump!



Because today is Monday and we get another one. Can't we get this stickied, even temporarily so we don't lose it each week?

what was the "Aspect" mentioned in the playtest?

it refered to the Killer, Murderer, and Victim I think....

does this define the Geist itself, since the Archetype has more to do with the Bound than the Geist itself?

 The parts that jumped out at me would be "Ethos Commitment" and "Krewe Merits". Anything that gives a bonus to degeneration can be quite nifty, and I'm always a fan of groups of people having inter-related Merits that show their dedication and ease working as a whole. One of the things I really liked about Hunter, Tactics give you the feel of people on the edge who rely on their connections to one another to survive against larger threats.

Given the (thematic) resemblance of a Geist to the Shadow, at least in purpose -- the passenger in your skull -- and that some of them sound a lot like old Shadow Achetypes, those three... thats what I'd lean toward.

Monday bump.

Yeah, it was a short session, and it didn't help that it was, like, two weeks after the session that I wrote it up. Next week's is a lot meatier, I promise.

I really don't know what you're asking here. Might be terminology confusion. All Sin-Eaters have Archetypes; that's just kind of their philosophies on life, death and related topics. Not all Sin-Eaters have Aspects.



And it's not possible for two Sin-Eaters to have the same geist (not while they're both alive, anyway).

I'm not talking about Aspects, sorry for confusion. The question was if Archetype comes from Geist's or Bound's personality? Can peaceful and kind person be Reaper because of Geist, who posses her, and be forced to kill by her Geist? For me looks like Geists have Archetypes, not Bounds, but most of other people here think otherwise.

Your Archetype is your character's approach to life, death and things relating to both. The geist doesn't dictate it, but certainly helps to shape it, to some degree.

Hmm..So does this mean that there are two "x-splats" or mandatory splats for Sin-Eaters? Archetypes and Thresholds?

Yeah, forgot about the "sort of" mandatory definition. Thanks for pointing that out.



Another little novelty that interests me is the format of "Archetype before Threshold" which is unique from the other gamelines if Archetype would be considered the social splat.



The other gamelines list the inherent splat first, then the social.



See the quickstart character sheets as reference.

Remember that these are being unlocked, meaning that these were concerns raised 4 months ago. I'm sure they came to some conclusions that worked for them in that time.

Here's your weekly bump. New post opened.

The sun's barely up on the east coast.  Give him some time.

apologies, just that the others were always unlocked when I got up, so I figured you were ahead of me in timezones.