Geist Noir: Proposal

Originally published December 25, 2013

Last fall, my local gaming group got together to plan some new games. I proposed a selection stories set in what I called Geist Noir. Using the Geist: the Sineaters system the game was to be set in 1930s New York in a Film Noir style. Partly I wanted to run Geist, partly I wanted to play with the God-Machine Chronicle's spirit/ghost rules, and partly I wanted to indulge my wife's love of old school detective stories.

Unfortunately for me (as a game master), one of the players wanted to run a game (using the 7th Sea system I reviewed here). The scheduling crunch between that game, my game, and my wife's new game (which I had heavily favored at our last planning session) meant that I felt the need to bow out. So the Geist game is indefinitely on hold.

As is often the case I put a lot of work into this game upfront and I'd like to share that material with you. For my proposed game, I wrote up three story lines each made up of three different story seeds. The idea was to keep the game down to 6 sessions, which was the window of game time I had available at the time.

This week we will start with the proposal:

Proposal

In the city that never sleeps, the dead don't rest either. Thanks to your "accident", the one that should have killed you, you can see them. You made a deal with something older and stranger than a ghost and in exchange you find yourself bound to it. Now you are a private detective for the dead, tied up in the weird strange world of ghosts, vampires, and others like yourself.
Setting: It is New York in the 1930s. Things are bad all over and gangsters and corrupt politicians run things. The odds are stacked against good guys like you. Makes you wonder why are doing it sometimes.

Mood: Noir. In a world of shadows and pessimism, hardboiled detectives and feme fatales, your investigators are trying to do the right thing. Or at least make the rent.

Action: The game would be mainly investigative punctuated with two fisted combat and betrayal.

Theme Possibilities:

• Rise of the Psychopomps: some ghosts see as a sort of ferryman of the dead. Someone to help them complete things they couldn't in life. Their payment is odd but honest. But there are older odder things than you. Shadowy ravens and owls who nest in low places: gateways to the Underworld. Why are those gateways opening so easily these days? Why are some people not staying dead? And why are there so many ravens around?
• Old Secrets: everyone has secrets and the older they get the worse it stinks. Vampires have their fangs in this city. But they also pay well if you can hold your nose. You do odd jobs for the Giovanni's, a clan of gangsters, mystics and politicians. But why is it that the moon looks red to you these days? What are the Giovanni smuggling into the city? And why are there bodies turning up that seemed gnawed on by human teeth?
• Transitions: Death is a doorway. Everyone goes through and it swings one way. But sometimes rules get broken: a wealthy man staves off death by sacrificing others, a mad ghost decides to possess a human being forever, a corpse crawls out of the grave to inflict vengeance. Then you need to get involved. Somewhere someone is gaming the system. Why is it happening more often? Who is behind it? The Giovanni necromancers? The Orpheus Corporation? Or one of your own?