Choose whether to forgive a soul or condemn one in the creepy solo TTRPG Sin Eater

Hero Forge brand director Anica Cihla has been fascinated by the practice of sin-eating since she read about it at age 10 in an Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Two decades later, she tells Polygon she’s hoping to expose more people to the creepy historical concept with the solo RPG Sin Eater, which begins a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter today.

Sin eaters were prevalent in the United Kingdom from the 16th through 18th century, paid by families to consume bread and beer in the presence of a fresh corpse in order to ritually take on the deceased’s sins, and guarantee them passage to heaven. Cihla’s game combines that tradition with the ancient belief in balancing the four humors, for an emotional play experience rooted in ritual and the concept of forgiveness.

“As a sin eater, you are ostracized by your community,” Cihla told Polygon via Zoom. “You do this job that is horrible and eerie, but you can tally a life and choose to forgive or to condemn.”

Players roll d6s to determine the sins of the deceased, and they develop their own character, receiving prompts to explain how they are shaped by their profession and their relationship to their client. They then prepare an altar representing the corpse, using coins and items from their home. And they answer more questions as they attempt to forge a recipe for balancing the soul and finally consider the results of their work.

“I want it to be kind of therapeutic, with the huge caveat I think all tabletop games need to have, that this is not therapy,” Cihla said. “This game is designed to blur the lines between page and players, and I want to potentially give people some peace about things in their life that they may have had a hard time giving to themselves.”

Cihla says she loves gaming, but doesn’t love being around other people. That led her to the world of solo tabletop role-playing games, starting with Banana Chan’s Forgery, where the player determines the outcome of a story by coloring in a paint-by-numbers image. Apart from her childhood curiosity about sin eaters, her new game was inspired by Obsidian Entertainment’s historical-narrative-driven RPG Pentiment. Her book combines the illuminated manuscript style used in that game with the dark art of Mörk Borg, with Johan Nohr providing the cover image.

Sin Eater will be published by Hunters Entertainment, the indie press behind Alice Is Missing and Kids on Bikes. The Kickstarter offers the chance to buy the game book, ritual map, journal dice, and coins.