Sins of the Father RPG

80 Pages·2016·3.653 MB·English

by  Eloy Lasanta

Happy Birthday!
Now that we’ve gone through the trip to the mall, the
party with your friends, blowing out the candles and opening
most of your presents, your father and I have something to
share with you. Yes… it is another surprise, actually. You
see, a long, long time ago, before you were even a twinkle in
your father’s eye, our family held on to a deep secret, the
kind of secret that changes everything. Now that you’re 18,
you’re going to be a part of that secret.
Our family has no soul.
Well, that may be a bit melodramatic, but it’s true in
essence. We have souls, but they don’t really belong to us.
They belong to our Dark Lord, the entity that has provided
for us and given us so much over the years. Ever wonder
why we’re so well off? Ever wonder why our enemies al-
ways get their comeuppance? It is always watching over
us, and we pay for that with the souls of our children, as
we have forever.
Oh! Yes, that’s the surprise, we sold your soul even
before you were born. Wasn’t even sure if we were going to
have kids, so we rode the gravy train as long as could, but
then you came along and the Dark Lord yoinked your soul
away. People call us hellborn, but that’s just the kind of
words people use when they’re jealous, right?
Don’t be like that. It didn’t hurt, and it gives us the life
we have. Free from fear. Free from want. We have everything
we could ever ask for, and all we have to do is perform a
few sacrifices and serve our Dark Lord when it asks. And
that job just got easier now that you’re 18 and can help
with our duties.
We’re so happy we finally get to share this part of our
family history with you. You won’t regret it! Our Dark Lord
is the best, and I can't wait to introduce you to the rest
of our congregation.
Now… go out and buy us a goat. We have a special sac-
rifice to perform tonight.
ISBN: 978-1-944487-10-2
Created and Written by Eloy Lasanta
Edited by Carol Darnell, Cover by Jerry D. Grayson
Proofreading by Troy Latta
Art by Shaman’s Stockart, Rick Hershey (Copyright Mike Lafferty)
Layout and Typesetting by Eloy Lasanta
Playtested by Branden Eikstead, Jarad Fennell, Reyaht Grail, Fellina Grose, Ken
Krebs, Ozzy Leigh, Ryan Marsh, Jake Pettit, Nick Wilson
Copyright © 2016 Third Eye Games
All rights reserved under the Universal Copyright Convention. No part of this
book may be reproduced in part or whole, in any form or by any means, without per-
mission from the publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews or copies of the
character sheet.
Chapter One:
Happiness In Slavery
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Sins of the Father is an RPG where you play someone paying for a dark deal
made by your family long before you were born. It could have been your parents,
your grandparents, great-grand-parents or any number of generations ago, but
you’re feeling the weight of that choice today. Whether this is with the literal devil,
demons from another dimension, vampires who prey at night or a witch who lives
in the woods, your character and their family are beholden to this entity for the
gifts and purpose the family enjoys. This entity is referred to as the Dark Lord for
brevity’s sake, but is all-encompassing as a concept.
Each player utilizes a deck of cards to represent the power their character holds
over their own destiny. This adds an interesting mechanical output for the RPG, as
any draw of the card could spell a fortunate outcome or a terrible fate. Sins of the
Father, true to its name, also supports generational play. Once you decide the story
is done with one set of characters, a new game can begin as the children of the pre-
vious characters who then have to put up with the same thing (of course, also having
to deal with how well their parents did in their own service).
Who are the Hellborn?
The first hellborn to make deals with a Dark Lord was once just a regular per-
son with dreams and goals they saw no other way to achieve. Trading one’s soul or
the soul of a child they hadn’t even had yet seemed like a small price to pay at the
time. Others actually claim they are the spawn of whatever Dark Lord they serve,
binding them ever more to their masters through blood.
Of course, deals struck have a certain give-and-take nature. The hellborn devotes
their life to the Dark Lord and the eventuality of losing their soul is all but inevitable,
but they always get something in return. Regardless of what you’ve been told from
tales of wishes gone wrong or genies who like to pervert the wants of their masters,
Dark Lords are usually quite straightforward. They provide what their servants ask
for, and initially both parties are quite happy with the arrangement. It is human
nature, however, to ask for more and more, especially those prone to gluttonous be-
haviors or when the hellborn is given something so easily with no real repercussions
to their decisions. These urges cause some hellborn to dip deeper and deeper into
their Dark Lord’s well, hoping to get more out of the entity until they have next to
nothing left to exchange. If one ever wondered how an unborn child’s soul could be
placed on the table they need only look at this chain of events. It is seldom the first
thing traded, but the idea of future souls is quite intriguing to any Dark Lord.
Here is just a list of the various things generally asked of Dark Lords. This is by
no means exhaustive and some may even blur the lines between categories.
♦ Elimination: To some, seeing someone else die is important enough to trade
their own soul. Hellborn given to this request almost always hail from Wrath,
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giving into their base desire to have someone else pay with their life, even in
exchange for their own. To them, it is well worth the price.
♦ Expertise: Some people want the skill to pull off a certain job or function as
an expert. It is not unheard of for a struggling musician to wish to become the
best guitar or piano player in the world, for a weakling to wish to instantly know
martial arts at a black belt level or for a struggling CEO to beg for the knowledge
to save their struggling company. Dark Lords give what is asked for with almost
no expectations for what the outcome of such expertise will be. There is a saying:
"If a person asks for a hammer, they don’t necessarily want a hammer, but they
need the hammer to hang a picture." Sometimes, such expertise leads to the
downfall of the hellborn... a terrible fate of their own design.
♦ Fame: Some people just want to be known. Without being accompanied by
Expertise, this often ends up changing reality to suit their new fame. Most end up
reality stars, famous for literally being famous, or in some cases have a previous
career down the tubes suddenly reinvigorated. Dark Lords often stack up Holly-
wood’s fallen with promises of renewing their chances of getting into a blockbuster
movie. Of course, if squandered, asking for fame could lead to the world knowing
about the worst acts of the hellborn and not their best. Nothing that would hurt
the Dark Lord’s requests of them, but still enough to make their lives miserable.
♦ Love: Some believe that no magic has the power over true love… but there
is truly nothing outside the reach of a Dark Lord. In fact, filling the object of a
hellborn’s affection with love is often one of the easiest things the entity can do. It
simply involves a tweak of the heart from apathy into a deep, unending love. Trad-
ing your soul for (who you believe to be) the love of your life is a small price to ask.
♦ Parenthood: There are couples in the world who weep for the ability to
have a child. Few look at the fine print when signing away a soul for the pleasure
of raising a child, and often the child’s soul is the price. They take every second
to heart and enjoy the days leading up to the child’s eighteenth birthday, knowing
the Dark Lord's hold will soon take them.
♦ Reincarnation: Though rare, Dark Lords make deals to bring someone back
from the dead. This is obviously someone important to the hellborn, important
enough to trade the very essence of their soul away for more time. Sometimes
it’s a spouse, while other times it is a child. The once-dead person never returns
exactly the same, however, having seen what it is like in the afterlife but never
being able to articulate exactly what frightens them about their experience.
♦ Riches: The craving for riches is a simple request for a Dark Lord. The hell-
born may come into a huge inheritance, find a large amount of unclaimed cash,
win the lottery or have a bank error in their favor. This is usually the desire of
hellborn who have grown up in dire poverty and want a better life for themselves
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and their family, not realizing that a poor-but-free life is sometimes better than a
life of servitude no matter how rich you are in the process.
The term hellborn sounds like the characters comes from hell itself, but this
couldn’t be farther from the truth. It was a name derived from their connection to
their Dark Lords... though they can also be called minions, vassals, familiars and
any other name their specific Dark Lord wants to call them. Regardless of their
name, however, their fates often end the same way… they pass their curse to their
offspring as their debts are never scrubbed clean from a Dark Lord very careful
about the contracts it forges.
After the Deal is Struck
Once the deal is struck it is never-ending. A family who asks for Expertise
means their children and their children’s children will no doubt be prodigies with
similar skills. Riches never end, passing down the family line and contributing to
the affluence syndrome they experience. Even a reincarnated person stays alive
much longer than they should, going on to see their descendants spiral into cor-
ruption thanks to the decisions of one person long ago (possibly themselves).
While this is true the majority of the time, some hellborn are even able to craft
their own deals based on their own personal sins.
What choice do the hellborn have though? To renege on a contract with the
Dark Lord is to spell the end of their bloodline. Their family line ends, and every-
one who shares their blood dies if they deny the gifts given in the contract or try
to opt out of them. This is the world the hellborn are born into… passing on their
contract, their curse, to their children afterward. To say no, however, is to send
their family into the abyss and give up not only the gifts bestowed upon them but
everyone's souls as well. Most give in to one of the Seven Deadly Sins as the reason
they are agreeing to it in the end.
♦ Avarice: Otherwise known as Greed, hellborn who fall to their Avarice want
it all. For many, it boils down to money and the ability to have whatever they
want in a single-minded fashion. In fact, they often want more than they need
simply because they know it's possible. They sign deals with a Dark Lord if it
means they can get more of the object of their obsession.
♦ Envy: Otherwise known as jealousy, these hellborn have whatever gift they’ve re-
ceived from their Dark Lord but look to others and decide they want what the others
have too. They often dip more into the Debt well than others, because there is always
something else they want (and always someone to take it from). They will sign a Dark
Lord’s contract if it is means they can have something from someone else.
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♦ Gluttony: Otherwise known as over-indulgence, these hellborn consume and con-
sume and consume far beyond their actual capacity. This encompasses various foods,
drinks and resources. They also waste most of what they have in an effort to have it all,
and especially love it when what they have is kept from those who really need it. They’ll
easily sign a contract to get have another trough placed before them.
♦ Pride: Otherwise known as vanity, hellborn who given in to their Pride have
an inflated sense of themselves. Many hellborn with Pride sign a contract with
a Dark Lord thinking they deserve the power because of their higher status, or
worse, because they think they can outsmart the Dark Lord and take the power
without having to pay in the end. They are always wrong.
♦ Lust: Otherwise known as sexual desire, these hellborn are known for giving
into the pleasures of the flesh. They crave flirting, teasing, touching and the phys-
ical connections gained with another through physical intimacy and sex, though
lust rarely carries any real emotional component. Getting them to sign a Dark
Lord’s contract is as easy as promising a kiss at times.
♦ Sloth: Otherwise known as extreme laziness, these hellborn are known for
doing absolutely nothing. Their lives are often filled with people doing everything
for them, leaving them with no inclination to act, even in their own best inter-
ests. They sign contracts so that their every need is fulfilled without hard work.
♦ Wrath: Otherwise known as rage, some people simply give in to their base
instincts for destruction. The desire to see things destroyed or someone bleed is
a significant part of the human experience and hellborn who follow this path are
masters of ruination. They’ll often sign a Dark Lord’s contract for the death or
end of the target of their aggression.
We Are Everyday People
The world around the hellborn is otherwise as normal as could be. They always
stand out, whether their neighbors think of them as the weird people who live down
the street or the fact they have immense wealth and fame means others simply see
them as eccentric. In many ways, each hellborn has grown up around the sins of their
parents and the excess they’ve been afforded through the ongoing contracts. They are
often damaged by their exposure, however, and then they go on to repeat the cycle
when it's their turn up at bat. Sometimes this happens in unexpected ways, resulting
in one hellborn getting something completely different from the same contract.
They may have spent a life of luxury because their mother is a world traveler,
since she always wanted to be rich enough to travel where she wanted. Of course,
her selfishness left her kid home alone with the nanny and a TV to teach right from
wrong. No amount of wealth replaces the love of a mother, and the kid grows up
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to give into their Lust, just hoping
for some sort of connection with
another person even though they
are destined to never truly find
such a thing.
Likewise, a couple living on a
farm may have traded their souls
away for abundance, which ex-
tended both to the bountiful yields
from their crops and the num-
ber of children they were blessed
with. Each of those kids may draw
something different from their ex-
perience growing up under these
conditions, however. The oldest
kid may develop a penchant for
gluttony, knowing he is always the
first to eat and drink and denying
these things to his smaller siblings.
A middle child may simply become
angry at always being ignored, giv-
ing in to her Wrath. The youngest
may get shown constant attention
and love and gain an inflated sense
of self, leaning toward Pride.
Individual groups of hellborn are either people from different walks of life,
thrown together because they all owe allegiance to the same Dark Lord, or they
may hail from the same family background, sharing their bloodline’s fate. Each of
them may gain their own gifts from the Dark Lord completely different from the
others. Of course, if they come from the same family, any one of the characters
refusing their gifts condemns the others to death.
They must each fulfill their duty to the Dark Lord personally. Even if the hell-
born is rich, divine demands are not something to be left to employees or under-
lings. It requires a personal touch. Hellborn groups work well together at times,
but most often they do not, all spurred on by their own selfish wants and often
being quite happy to let their teammate suffer, as long as they succeed.
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