Geist: some thoughts which don't greatly resemble a review and inevitably talk about Wraith
So, Geist: The Sin-Eaters, released a week ago, with some folks I know in the credits. From the offing, popular theory was that it would be the new WoD's Wraith. Which it is. Partially, as well as being something new into the bargain.
Talking about a WoD game to do with ghosts always leads back to Wraith because it was so big. It had a whole DIY Underworld spreading across several levels of reality as well as the interact-with-the-mortal-world stuff. It was a huge mad black-and-white fantasy world under the feet of the old WoD. Vampire was basically "vampires are real... don't tell anyone" and Wraith was as big a realm as Middle-Earth. Big chunks of it fuelled Orpheus and the revised Mummy, and the dead in Exalted had a strong family resemblance too. So comparisons are inevitable. And Geist doesn't mind, because with maybe half a page of house rules it could be a new WoD Wraith while also having a new living-people-see-ghosts game in front of that too. The main change would have to be making ghosts sane enough to be PCs, because Geists are nearly there but most new WoD ghosts are very clearly not.
The players aren't Geists, but are instead Sin-Eaters, people who died and were brought back by striking deals with Geists, which are ghostly things that have become slightly-Nobilis-y archetypes. The Geists provide the PCs with powers above and beyond seeing and interacting with ghosts.
So they're alive and can interact with the normal world, dodging the cut-off-from-everything problem Wraith often suffered, while giving a Storyteller plenty of powers and ideas to make a new Wraith should they so wish. Geists are NPCs by default, but there's a footnote about playing another player's Geist for those who liked that idea in ol' Wraith, and since Geists work with their Bound it won't cause PvP the way the Shadow did.
"People who deal with ghosts" is a plenty interesting enough idea for a game anyway, whether you care about previous games or not, which helps. The Bound are an easy bunch to get your head around, too. The Sin-Eaters are actually a large subset of the Bound who go out and deal with ghost-related problems while enjoying their second chance at life, so the PCs have reason to get out there and be active and helpful, and it's pretty upbeat for a game with Wraith as one of its ancestors.
It does continue one of my least favourite features of Wraith's old cosmology, though - the way that ghosts change as they age. I always thought they should be pretty static, maybe prone to 'decay', forgetfulness and becoming exaggerations of their own concerns, so I never liked the idea of ghosts getting more alien and being mutable. It always seemed to me to fit the Fae better than the Dead. It's presented here from an outsider's POV and played more for horror than the weird Beetlejuice style stretching and warping and ghosts being turned into pocket watches that helped make it my least favourite bit of the old grey book, but it still doesn't match my personal paradigm. But it's not a huge thing, and I could dump it then so I can dump it now. Ach, well, it gives me enough to think on playing it with all that aside.
And there's the thing, I could play this.
Talking about a WoD game to do with ghosts always leads back to Wraith because it was so big. It had a whole DIY Underworld spreading across several levels of reality as well as the interact-with-the-mortal-world stuff. It was a huge mad black-and-white fantasy world under the feet of the old WoD. Vampire was basically "vampires are real... don't tell anyone" and Wraith was as big a realm as Middle-Earth. Big chunks of it fuelled Orpheus and the revised Mummy, and the dead in Exalted had a strong family resemblance too. So comparisons are inevitable. And Geist doesn't mind, because with maybe half a page of house rules it could be a new WoD Wraith while also having a new living-people-see-ghosts game in front of that too. The main change would have to be making ghosts sane enough to be PCs, because Geists are nearly there but most new WoD ghosts are very clearly not.
The players aren't Geists, but are instead Sin-Eaters, people who died and were brought back by striking deals with Geists, which are ghostly things that have become slightly-Nobilis-y archetypes. The Geists provide the PCs with powers above and beyond seeing and interacting with ghosts.
So they're alive and can interact with the normal world, dodging the cut-off-from-everything problem Wraith often suffered, while giving a Storyteller plenty of powers and ideas to make a new Wraith should they so wish. Geists are NPCs by default, but there's a footnote about playing another player's Geist for those who liked that idea in ol' Wraith, and since Geists work with their Bound it won't cause PvP the way the Shadow did.
"People who deal with ghosts" is a plenty interesting enough idea for a game anyway, whether you care about previous games or not, which helps. The Bound are an easy bunch to get your head around, too. The Sin-Eaters are actually a large subset of the Bound who go out and deal with ghost-related problems while enjoying their second chance at life, so the PCs have reason to get out there and be active and helpful, and it's pretty upbeat for a game with Wraith as one of its ancestors.
It does continue one of my least favourite features of Wraith's old cosmology, though - the way that ghosts change as they age. I always thought they should be pretty static, maybe prone to 'decay', forgetfulness and becoming exaggerations of their own concerns, so I never liked the idea of ghosts getting more alien and being mutable. It always seemed to me to fit the Fae better than the Dead. It's presented here from an outsider's POV and played more for horror than the weird Beetlejuice style stretching and warping and ghosts being turned into pocket watches that helped make it my least favourite bit of the old grey book, but it still doesn't match my personal paradigm. But it's not a huge thing, and I could dump it then so I can dump it now. Ach, well, it gives me enough to think on playing it with all that aside.
And there's the thing, I could play this.