Sinjin! A PDF (so far) adventure-game by M Diaz and JacksonSmith. Art by Scrap Princess, Julie de Graag, Jackson Smith, Katie Vasquez, andAlfred Stieglitz.

Available here; https://thehexculture.itch.io/sinjin

Some nerds in late-Victorian Fantasy Florida accidentallykilled Death and took their (her?) stuff leaving the netherworld bollocked upand bleeding through in a Florida swamp.

Now YOU must wander about finding stuff and not gettingkilled in a magic swamp that’s a bit (but not very) different every timeyou go back, with the very general aim of making things better, or at least notmaking them worse, and maybe even FIXING DEATH.

(Note, criticisms or analysis are intended to have a neutraltone. I am not claiming I could do better (I haven’t), OBVIOUSLY this is theopinion of one man. I should not have to explicitly state something so fuckingobvious and banal but the west has fallen so here we are.)

The Grand Concept Sinjin is an Indy game. Looked at from a D&Dperspective, it’s an adventure with some decision processes attached, looked atfrom a storygame or AW-like perspective its .. perhaps the best descriptionwould be an object-and-location based game with an internal clock and somesimple arrangements for resolving conflicts.

It’s in the blurry boundary between a more hard-edgedD&D adventure, a soft Gauntlet-style ‘scene’ based game and an actual storygame. This might be a cognitive space that is actually quite hard to designfor. When I come to things I would probably question about Sinjin, many of themseem to have roots in its vague and curious origins. It’s a gypsy child in anoble House!

The Sinking Swamp The adventure space is made up from the combination oftwo main concepts; the geographic shape of the Swamp in which you are wanderingaround, and ‘Depth’ a kind of transformation of the play area rooted, in theparacosm itself; in the slowly deepening and decaying power of the supernaturalas the swamp is sucked into the netherverse, and in game design terms; indungeon levels and things like Emmy Allens Stygian Library.

The Swamp We have causeways, a river system and swamps in between,with a small number of specifically-mapped distinct areas called ‘Landmarks’and a variety of smaller less-specific minor landmarks.

With each new expedition the arrangement of the major Landmarkschanges somewhat, but some aspects of the nature of the linkages betweenthem remain, and the total number of major Landmarks doesn’t change and thedetails of their particular individual geography don’t change.

So for each adventure you have a rough idea of what placescan be found, and of how to get there, but to fulfil your mission and get to,for instance, the abandoned sugar-mill, you will still need to wander aroundinvestigating etc.

“The Territory isunfriendly and unpredictable, but the goal is for navigation to be challenging,rather than impossible. To this end, clearly communicate to players that thegeneral locations of major landmarks don’t change relative to the primary riverchannel and causeways (e.g. the Fish Camp, Great Vine Barren, and RitualWellspring are all linked by the primary channel; the Old Stone Fort, FishCamp, and Sugar Mill are connected to each other with a triangle ofcauseways).”

So in effect a shifting linecrawl, using the river as aguide.

(One of the notable ways that the particular nature ofthe place, the environment, and surrounding and historic culture work their wayinto the game is how deeply and richly embedded they are into every aspect,from the locations themselves, to objects, abilities, characters, monstersetc.)

“Depth” The Swamp is either sinking into the Netherworld, or theNetherworld is merging with the Swamp and expanding. In game terms, ‘depth’makes reality more phantasmorgic, surreal, dreamlike and dangerous;

“Depth0

Sweltering days and balmy nights. Yousweat, and the air hangs thick and damp around you. The land smells of orangeblossom, wet grass, and, beneath the surface, the sickly sweet scent of decay.”

“Depth 9-12

Quiet as the grave. By day, the Sun is dim and brassy; by nightthe Moon is actinic and painfully bright; you can see clouds pass behind both,and the sky feels claustrophobically low. Vast figures pace the horizon. Hair,fabric, and flora waft and wave as if buoyed by an invisible tide. “

Depth can be accessed by diving into the Ritual Wellspring(one of the main Landmarks).

“Agreat blue heron lies rotting near the reeds, one glaucous eye toward the sky.It whispers out to the first person who gets near it. It wants mullet from theFish Camp. Each time it gets some, it’s flesh reknits a little more. Afterthree times it will rise up– its neck still broken and slack, and will offer aGhost Contract as a silent stalker.“

You can also dive out of your depth and back up to youroriginal. Depth also re-sets if you leave the adventure area and take a rest –you just come back in at whatever the current minimum depth is.

Some buildings and locations only exist at certain depths. Tofulfil some missions or solve some problems you will need to ‘dive’ toparticular depths and once there, find a specific familiar location, nowpresumably with much stranger and more dangerous things in it.

The land is slowly ‘sinking’ into deeper depths. Humansdying immediately increases minimum depth and leaving without completing goalsalso increases minimum depth. So the more adventures you have in the swamp, the‘deeper’ everything gets. You can also bring Depth back up by achieving somegoals or defeating some major foes. There is an end-point to all this – ifDepth hits 13 then the curse escapes the area and spreads across the world. Thegame is built around this ‘ticking clock’.

While ‘Depth’ in Sinjin it has some relation to DungeonLevels, Emmy Allens ‘depth’ in Stygian Library and Stygian Garden, Vandermeers‘Annihilation’ and the Ballard and Stugatsky stories that prefigures it, andpossibly some forms of madness in Call of Cthulhu, I don’t think I have seen orconceived of anything quite like this before. If you are into game design youare probably reading specifically for the combination of ‘depth’ and thesemi-shifting geography.

I found the particularities and details of Sinjin as, ormore, interesting but less scaleable since their deep interrelationship withthis specific environment and situation is part of the appeal.

So. You are investigating a shifting version of the sameplace again and again. In effect, going back in to the ‘same dungeon’ again andagain. While the ‘rooms’ shift around there are always the same rooms andgrowing contextual knowledge should help you both navigate between places and,in particular, make classic D&D style tactical use of the geographicparticulars of each location, which never change.

But how would it feel to investigate the same ‘places’ overand over again, with them becoming ever more hallucinogenic and strange andpopulated by ever stranger and less comprehensible forms of the dead and undead?

“The Territory isdifferent every time players enter it. There are a handful of key constants,but players can never quite count on things being the way that they rememberthem.”

This puts Sinjin in a complex relationship with the classicD&D-alike game actions of exploration and investigation.

Of course this is not D&D, nor intended to be so. It’sclearly a more drama-oriented ‘Gauntlety’ game. But many of these games thatpresent themselves as ghost stories, soap-operas or interpersonal dramas, stillhave a lot of exploration, investigation and combat, and the interpersonaldrama happens around those props. AW is built for the Soap Opera element in allof its parts but few of the ruleslights that draw from it are.

Would it be interesting or frustrating? Would the concept of‘depth’ add depth or feel repetitious? There are enough supernatural etcconnections and possible intrigues that might create a layered feel as youexplore again, for different reasons, knowing where you will find but not what.

Diaz-Objects in Game Design When I talk about a Diaz-esque ‘elegant’ piece of game/worlddesign, what I often mean is the use of natural language concepts and clearcomprehensible idea structures in ways that allow complex gameplay without alot of arguing or difficulties over how many points or whatever you have.

(I am of course assuming that most of these came from Diazbased on some familiarity with his previous work, though he is not the onlyauthor.)

Some Examples;

Deaths Whetstone is a good callThe main factions of Sinjin are guilds of Necromancers, eachof which is based around some item or tool they took from Death when Death died;a whetstone, inkwell and loom. Each of these is a creative tool that producesitems with certain limited magical effects; sharpened blades, documents andcloth.

They are tools which create or alter other objects, and theoriginals are presumably eternal or don’t decay or wear but the objects they createdo wear and can easily lose those qualities. To whit – sharp blades beingblunted (it’s that particular sharpness and not the blade itself that has themagic), paper being burnt, lost or, in a swamp, rotting or the ink washing out,and clothes tearing and being worn. Presumably the main objects could be stolenor lost, and their creative capacity is focused into one useful and tangiblemodality.

Basing the factions around items, specifically around toolswhich create other items, themselves limited in both effect and in the numberscreated, is a nice neat piece of game design. It unifies faction play with aneat in-game economy of access to magical items with highly specific uses whichwill themselves naturally degrade, and links that to the overarching theme orstory of the game in a way that feels natural, functional, intuitive and right.

As a counter example imagine a faction with a portal,another with a magic book and another with say a non-creative tool like aspoon. In each case the effects produced are vague, hard to intuit, they don’tnecessarily produce objects unless the game tells you, in which case anotherlayer of abstraction is required to describe exactly what the guilds cando, (‘death points’ or something) and probably direct control of the tool isrequired to produce those effects, which then cannot be traded, lost, stolen orcarried. (Unless you specifically describe that in the text; “you lose tendeath points” etc.)

Necromancy in SinjinTo put it very crudely, Necromancy in Sinjin is kindof ghost-Pokémon, or the indenture of specific incorporeal servants with specificskill and identity-locked abilities.

You can grab certain ghosts in certain situations andcommand them, but only in ways limited by their core nature or their prime orcentral function in life. There is also a material cost if you want to achievematerial ends. So necromancy doesn’t create something for nothing, but insteadis a transformer of one kind of generalised resource (ritual, sacrifice) intosomething more specific. It’s a Bank Account, or like having a clade ofinvisible servants with specific skills who can be called on to do thingsrelating to those specific skills. You can re-interpret what those skills mightmean or how they might be used but you don’t need to argue with someone overwhether you have +5 to your Necromancy roll or whatever.

You can also grab animal souls or murderers souls, and evena flock of crows.

Key Diaz-esque aspects of this are that;

• It’s all in natural language, no numbers.

• It uses directly comprehensible real-lifeconcepts (the soul of a Blacksmith, the soul of a flock of crows) withinherently obvious and clear limitations and abilities etc.

• It directly embodies all of this in theparacosm; i.e. you have to take an hour to burn herbs at sunset rather thanspending +10 Death points for a death surge.

• Its relatively self-limiting and encouragesthinking of new uses for the ‘tools’, (souls) you have and differentinteractions between them and the environment.

Expeditions, Treasure and RewardsYou start each game with a mission (taken from one of threegenerated by the DM), for one of the Guilds, for which they will offer aspecific treasure, all of which are magical tools, often with limited uses,which will help you doing stuff in the swamp.

The possible expeditions are; Establish, Scout, Rescue,Recover, Collect and Hunt. Only one of the six core mission concepts involvesnecessary violence, the others involve investigating and getting, or in somecases schlepping big heavy things to places.

The rewards or treasure you get for these have a nice AmericanArcana feel;

“BraggingCoat. A coat embroidered with boasts and depictions of great deads. Once perexpedition, you can attempt a single act of superhuman strength or aptitude(jumping a great distance, kicking down a barn wall, picking a lock with a pineneedle, telling a joke that makes a corpse laugh).”

They feel like elements from a ‘Silver John’ story, though Idon’t know if those tales were an influence, probably any independentinvestigation of American folklore would produce things ‘a bit like’ SilverJohn.

Having specific missions is a good idea because quitefrankly, Players are basic as shit and unless you actively point them at athing they a specifically meant to do, they will just wander blather and getlost in decision fatigue. Being able to pick from three different missions ofdifferent difficulty and lethality from three different factions is neat, as isstarting the game in media-res with the PCs already in-country.

Hopefully the combinations of missions will play a part inadding depth and texture to the repeated missions; if the Guild of Scrivenerspaid you to set up a camp in one mission or grab a hostage then the results ofthat should still be in play organically in future sessions.

As well as the core reward for completing each mission thereis a ‘Wandering Devil Merchant’ who wants to sell you various trinkets, andtreasure, or ‘salvage’ which can be discovered in places you are likely to findit according to DM judgement. This is mildly sketchy, and somewhatgamic, with a touch of ‘Death Points’, but the actual Salvage are all in-worldself-limiting Diaz-Objects;

“Black HeronSpyglass. Once per expedition, you can look through this spyglass to seeyourself at the location you’re observing. When you remove the spyglass fromyour eye, you will find yourself in that location.”

So there is that gypsy child again.

Monsters and EncountersThe creatures are universally interesting. Broken up into‘The Living’ ‘Lesser Dead’, and the ‘Greater Dead, which are mindbending ‘finalhorror’ semi-inexplicable nightmares. There are some stand-outs. The SabalSphinx, one of the ‘Lesser Dead’ has some very good ‘D&D-esque’ rules;

“62 SabalSphinx

A human and panthercorpse twisted and crushed together. One of its human hands holds a palm frondbefore its doubled face, and its four unmatched eyes peer out between thepinnate leaves. Its ruff erupts into palmetto, mimicking the leaves of itsnamesake. The killer and the killed, the eater and the eaten, existing indelightful amity forever and ever and ever.

Statistics

Traits: wise, strong, large, fast,resistant to mundane weaponry

Weakness: lazy, gluttonous, harmed bysalt, silver, and holy water

Tactics

Disappear into and emerge from any twopalm fronds in the Territory.

A Sphinx sequentially reveals its eyesto anyone who can see in the order that is most advantageous to it. Once it’sfull face is revealed it may use any of its abilities at will.Reveal righthuman eye: Charms a person it can see into fighting for it

Reveal left human eye: makes a personbleed from their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth

Reveal the right panther eye: Terrifiesa person it can see into fleeing

Reveal the left panther eye: Paralyzes aperson it can see

Full face revealed: Anyone who sees itis gouged with invisible force as if with panther claws.!”

The Living are less modernist monsters: alligators,cutthroats, packs of wild dogs and rival exorcists, honestly you could go along way with just these, especially the cutthroats and rivals, and if a partyis small or wounded, the wild dogs.

The modernism and abstraction of some of the monsters andGreater Dead makes them excellent art pieces and good elements for a fancyhorror movie, or for a written narrative, but perhaps a bit challenging toactually run.

Is this going to be another game/adventure where the flavourtext promises encounters with impossible entities but the most fun you have istrying to escape a pack of angry dogs? Nothing wrong with that if it’s the casebut…

DissonanceThere is a curious dissonance between the items, fictionalstructures, the imagined idea-space of the game, which is solid in conceptionand simple to relate, clear and interesting, and the decision-forming processof the rules of the game itself, which are very ‘Gauntlet-ey’ with lots of‘just discuss it with your players’ and ‘the DM will inform you if you are inimmediate danger of death’ which isn’t quite the same as a player choosing todo anything at all if they have only one HP left

Auto find soft salvage just for burning time looking inappropriate areas; not sure about this one.

Is this just another adaptation of the basic decisionconcept of Apocalypse World? Basically a quite soft conversational system. Samewith Harm & death, very McDowallian, big on simple roles and clearcommunication of risk.

A foldable coracle in opening equipment, but we don’t knowhow hard or difficult travel will be (yet), but the ‘Car Problem’ from UrbanRPGs might be a thing.

No list of names or likely surnames and no PC-relation chartinstead you just talk about it. Honestly random PC connection stuff issomething I like from Bakerish or McDowallian games.

This is probably because Sinjin itself is a synthesis ofrules and concepts from the two main creators with a chunk of the ‘engine’taken from here;

“Therules on pg 4-5, the For GM note on pg 10, and the Advancement rules on pg 14are adapted from from 24XX CC BY Jason Tocci.”

I have no idea who or what that is. Man I am out of theloop.

Art!Its competent. Not my preferred style. Moody black and whitephotography. Pen and ink drawings. The individual art is good taken on its ownterms! Just not my preference. (Obviously I like Scraps stuff).

‘Sinjin in colour’ would be a good call, especiallyconsidering the hallucinatory nature of reality as ‘depth’ increases .. and ofcourse, Florida should be bright! More Florida Man energy! More Jorodowski lessAnsel Adams!

The maps are competent and useful.

My JudgementI like all of the parts of this and I find its elegance ofconception and arrangement very pleasing.

I like the environment, which, in its details and processesseems drawn from life.

I like the worldbuilding through factions, items, foes andgreater organisations which are honed to the point of interaction.

There are mild elements I would not disapprove of butperhaps question;

“There are many detailswe have elided or only gestured at, most significantly the precise nature ofthe disaster that created the Territory and the way to mend the damage it hascaused. This can be an unresolvable mystery or the primary goal of theplayers.”

Hhnnn the disembodied spirit of Jason Cordova rises in theshadows cackling mysteriously. “Why the players decide!”

No! Get they behind me thou serpent!

If there is a chance the game could be an investigative oneabout a big central mystery then the policy of feeding off the players improv& feeding it back to them is one I don’t really like. Its ok in a soapopera like AW but fake investigations only really work if people can all intuitthey are fake investigating to tell the story of the investigation and this isnot fun for me. If a big mystery is part of the game there should be an ActualTruth and clues and layers of shit to finding out what it is.)

The Gypsy child feels slightly awkward to me. Wil theyfulfil their destiny & save the manor with their honest heart or end upbaked and syphilitic in an opium den? YOU decide of course! By purchasing andplaying Sinjin! Available HERE!!!!