CAIN, Non-Union Psionic Exorcism
HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS
Touchstones: Chainsaw man, SCP Foundation, Jujutsu Kaisen, Mob Psycho 100, all of which it wears proudly on its sleeve
Genre: Horror, Action
What is this game?: Cain is a game about being psionic exorcists tasked with purging humanity's sins
How's the gameplay?: Cain runs on a simple gameplay loop where players must go into investigations to find out more about Sins, powerful beings made out of psychic energy from deeply traumatized humans. The game uses a system similar to FITD, where you roll amounts of die equal to your skill in something, then add more dice equal to any advantages you have, then you make it so any result of 4 or more is a success, and you count up your successes to see if you succeeded in doing the thing! The game also has an economy, the Agency will provide you with most things for free, but you'll have to buy certain amenities and privileges. Your character will have an Agenda (determining how they act) and a series of Blasphemies (determining how their psionics manifest), character creation is as such pretty quick as you just pick between different blocks of skills that you can take up. As a final note, the game contains a system where players can "Spare" sins in order to spare their originator from copious amounts of mental scarring, so they may instead force the sin to collapse into itself, gaining a reduced reward, but keeping the victim safer.
What's the setting (If any) like?: CAIN is set in a world where a psychic warfare happens under the very noses of the common people between psionic exorcists, and Sins, creatures made out of humans under extreme duress, an organization known as Cain seeks to destroy and contain these creatures before they become problems, categorizing them and eliminating them before they grow in power, scale, and danger. There's also many neat details such as different psionic abilities the players may take on, past incidents, a categorization system for the Sins, and corporations that seek to counter Cain's efforts
What's the tone?: Dire, while you're saving people from trauma by defeating their sins, you're part of the meat grinder that is CAIN, being thrown at creatures beyond mortal ken to stop them from becoming a bigger issue, while retirees exist, its said 40% of exorcists die before they can reach Category 3
Length: 2-3 hours is recommended, the game is also deliberately tooled into shorter 10 session games
Number of Players: 4-6 is recommended
Malleability: Cain's setting is pretty baked into its mechanics, but you can definitely change some stuff around
Resources: Online sheets are available and look very good
CAIN's one of those games that you can just tell what its inspired by at first glance and it rocks for it, its a really nice little game, esp for something that's effectively a side project gearing up for the release of ICON