VSS Geist

## Part 1: Basic Information

Name: Take 2

Venue: Geist: The Sin-Eaters: The Sin-Eaters

VST: Christopher Murrell

aVST: Sophie Marie Dixon

Time: Games are held on the Third Sunday of the month with check in beginning at 4:30 pm, game on at five, and game wrap at 9:30pm.

## Part 2: Style of Play

### Ratings & Rating Descriptions:

1 = Never present / 2 = Sometimes present / 3 = Often present / 4 = Usually present / 5 = Always present

Action (Combat/Challenges): 3

Character Development (Personal Dilemmas/Choices): 4

Darkness (PC Death/Corruption): 4

Drama (Ceremony/Grand story): 4

Intrigue (Politics/Negotiation): 3

Mystery (Enigmas/Investigation): 3

Gameplay taking place in the Real World:5

Gameplay taking place in the Underworld: 2

### Theme/Mood:

The theme of Take 2 is “Second chances always come with strings attached.” During the pilot especially the characters are only dimly aware of their own new powers and are likely to be baffled by the world as it exists for them now. How they interact with ghosts, other sin-eaters, and the flesh world in general will be affected by the urging of the Geists that brought them back. How do you pay back the gift of life?

The Mood of the game will be heavily influenced by the darker aspects of the Geist world. The aim is to capture the feeling of a truly horrible ghost story where the characters aren’t sure if they’re the protagonists or antagonists.

## Part 3: Description of Venue

### 3a) VST Venue Philosophy

Geist is a game that many people are unfamiliar with, even other New World players. This lack of familiarity is being cast as almost a character within the first few seasons of the game, as the PCs begin to grow into the kind of Sin Eaters they choose to be. In the eyes of the ST staff, one of the beauties of the game is in the culture clash, and personal freedom exhibited by the Bound. This duality of living and dead, horror and joy, celebration and mourning is a hard tightrope to walk but it is the intention of the staff to do so with bravery.

Our aim with Geist is to make a more “sandbox” style world than the Lost game that it accompanies. The world will exist with or without the PCs, so the primary job of the players is to forge their stories out of the world around them. There will be plenty to do, sometimes more than your characters can possibly handle. How you interact with it is where the venue will shine.

## Part 4: Storyteller Mechanics

### 4a) CHARACTER CREATION GUIDELINES

Characters should be created according to the Geist: The Sin-Eater main book. As time progresses we will create a list of rules from alternate books that are and are not allowed. Until then all non primary book rules must be cleared with the ST before hand. This includes, but is not limited to, alternate manifestations and tokens. Additionally, all ceremonies and customized mementos, must be written up and receive ST Approval.

Players may add an additional 30XP to one character in a given venue. If that character eXPires, or is removed from the venue in some other way, they may create another character with the bonus starting XP. Up to 5 additional XP may be awarded for a character history, a completed wiki page, and photographs and images of the character and/or important tokens, hollows etc.

Characters are subject to Storyteller review before entering play during games. A complete character record, ideally, should be sent to the VST no later than two weeks before the game. Additionally, while the ST staff will provide players with character sheets with the primary powers of their power type already on them, it is up to the player to record accurately and understand their powers, including their pull, cost, and effect.

Character sheets should be balanced. Characters with clear min-maxing will be brought into question, and have a limited amount of time to re-write their sheets before a penalty is levied. Appropriate concepts for the venue will also be taken into consideration. Outright antagonistic concepts which have no allies locally are unacceptable, and unplayable. With a limited storytelling staff, it is not practical to jeopardize one storyteller to play for one person. As such, characters must have reasonable ties to the freehold to be attached to this VSS.

While loner concepts work as the protagonist of a book or film, LARP is not the sort of venue where you have a star, a co-star or two, and a host of supporting characters. LARP is, above all, ensemble cast story telling. All characters in the story are equally important. In order to fully participate in the telling of an ensemble-cast story, your character should have at least some measure of interest in others, and at least one long-term goal that requires reliance on or cooperation with others (at least four) in the /local/ venue. Characters found to be lacking in any regard will have a limited amount of time to work with the storytellers to change their concept, or risk being de-sanctioned or removed from the VSS.

Geists will be created by the ST staff, and new characters will have a variety of Geists from which to choose. The Geist chosen will have a Keystone Memento already designed, and will influence the second Key that your character possesses at creation. All new characters should be complete but for their second starting Key before speaking with an ST about their Geist.

### 4b) Starting Plasm

Characters will begin games with an amount of plasm as determined randomly with a Storyteller. This will be determined by rolling one ten-sided die, then adding the character’s haunt fluidity merit to the result. If a haunt is controlled by a krewe, than the krewe must agree on the split of plasm it produces, if they cannot agree it is lost. Any 10 rolled may be re-rolled, adding to the result.

This value may be adjusted by Storyteller as suits the current state of the game.

### 4c) Experience Award Guidelines

Players may receive no more than 10 XP in any given month. Players receiving 10 XP every month should represent the ideal of LARP and be acting as leaders in the game.

Base Points (Up to 3)

* The STs will award these points at the game, during wrap-up. Most players will receive all three so long as they followed the rules and were committed to the game. They are awarded for
* Engaging in costuming/physical RP
* Advancing Social RP
* Having an up to date character sheet with an XP log.

Player Vote (Up to 2)

* For every 5 players (round up) attending, there will be 1 XP available each for costuming and RP.
	+ Ex: 12 players will mean, 2 bonus points available each for Costuming and RP.
* These points will be awarded by the Players through voting.
* Players may not receive more than 2 points (one for costuming & one for RP) from Player nominations.

ST Award (1 possible)

* Each ST will also have one additional point to award to a player who they “caught doing something right”.
* This may include small scenes, creative costuming/physical RP choices, or anything else that benefits the game as a whole.
* Players may not receive more than 1 XP from ST nominations.

In Between Games (Up to 3)

* Up to 2 of these points can come from filling out a Down Time Report Form.
	+ A report submitted at all is worth one point, as long as it gets the basic gist across.
	+ A well written, and detailed report is worth two.
* Up to 1 point are available for voluntary additional IC information.
	+ This can be awarded for work on the Wiki, submitting IC fiction, writing up scenes that you and another character share in downtime, or anything of the like.

Mentoring (1 possible)

* To be awarded point, both players must be active in the venue that month, whether through appearing at game, or in DTR.
* Both players should mention in their DTR what their interaction was IC for the month, and the one being mentored should summarize (there is space in the DTR form) what they learned from their mentor that month.
* The Mentor will be notified in the DTR response if they received the award for the month.

### 4e) Status

There will be no recognized status merit for Sin Eaters.

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