[White Wolf] Demon: the Fallen

[Tsyr]

D:tF looked promising to me. Then I read the intro story they have posted on their website.

As a Christian, I don't mind a few allusions to the idea that God may not exist or be all he's cracked up to be, every character will have an opinion on the matter. What I don't like is "You remember God quite clearly. He was a sinister nut-job."

Talk about instant alienation.

If I'm wrong, great! I might pick up the game.

Oh, I also realize that non-Christian gamers probably don't have the same issue. I understand. I honestly hope the game is fun.

I'll actualy agree on this point, though I havn't figured out enough of the Demon mythos to know for sure exactly what their stance is. I think saying that god was a sinister nut job is a bit of an exageration, though.

And I'm not the "most Christian" person in my gaming group, if you follow... I have to deal with one person who is really, really touchy about it. So Demon, while I might pick it up (I'm trying to get all the WW core games), probably will never see play, except maybe to use Demons as plot hooks.

Curious: Are you familiar with "The End"? I'm curious what other Christians think about that one... I like it, and don't think it's crossing the line, though it does (admittedly, too) use some very... strange... things... for lack of a better way to say it.

 

[Barastrondo]

Yeah, that's true. The official solution AFAIK is that crossovers are strongly discouraged. Yet, having a broad range of NPCs with very different goals and motivations is good.

Do you think that saying "Ok, in my Vampire campaign, mages, werewolves and whatnot exist but are extremely reduced in number when compared to vampires, they can only be NPCs, and they keep hidden from vampires just as much as vampires keep hidden from mortals" would suffice to hold the world consistant?

Think of it in D&D terms — it's like the "monster palette" concept. I personally don't use about half the monsters out of the MM because they don't fit the flavor of my world, and I further reduce the numbers depending on locale — if I'm running a gothic horror pseudo-Ravenloft game in a land of thick forests and crumbling castles, I'm not going to use any sphinxes, gnolls or frost giants, even though all of the above have a place somewhere in my world. Same thing, really; if encounters with the fae don't really add anything to your Vampire game other than novelty, there's no real reason you should assume that they're a factor in the world.

Just like D&D, the World of Darkness offers a ton of options. Nowhere does it say that you're obligated to actually use them all, and I personally much prefer the games that don't. I like thematic focus.

 

[Whiskey Jack]

What I don't like is "You remember God quite clearly. He was a sinister nut-job."

Talk about instant alienation.

One thing to keep in consideration about the WW books, both on this subject and on the aforementioned crossover subject, is that each book is written from the protagonists' perspective. Thus, in Vampire, of course Vampires are descended from semi-divine roots. In Werewolf, of course the lupines are on the side of Good™. And in Demon, of course God is some half-baked nutter, otherwise you would not have rebelled against Him. That doesn't mean, however, that the Demons' opinions are correct.

To run the game in a Christian perspective would seem, to me, to be running a game about maturation and growing up. Something analogous to the transformation from a teenager to an adult (13: I love my parents. 15: My parent's don't understand me. 19: I don't need my parents. 25: My parents are decent afterall.)

 

[jgbrowning]

Yee-hah.

My favorite part of the above was when broad sweeping generalizations were made. That part rules.

Oh, and that part where they cleverly parodied the naming conventions, the way has been done a thousand other times? Sheer genius.

Sorry if i offended. I wasn't aware that WW was sensitive about its naming conventions. As i've pretty much not been involved in a Vampire/Mummy/Mage/Werewolf/Engle/Demon/Bugbear society (either on-line or off) i didn't realize that there was such vitriol involved.

joe b.

 

[Zappo]

Think of it in D&D terms — it's like the "monster palette" concept.

Yes, exactly. I know that using all supernaturals together in equal proportions would make for a World of Weirdness; but let's suppose I use them all, with the proportions being 90% of supernaturals is the race I'm using for PCs and the remanining 10% is divided between the rest. Do you still have problems with consistancy - thus forcing you to eliminate non-PC supernaturals altogether like Gez does? Or is that enough?

 

[Undead Pete]

Imagine a place that is formless. Imagine being an emanation of the Supreme Being, a servant of the Almighty God, and helping God to shape all of reality.

Molecules? That's your handy-work. The way electricity travels through certain metals? You know the guy responsible for that.

Then imagine that God creates Man, and tells you: "Love them. Love them as you love Me."

An instrument of God's will, you do so, loving them with all your essence as one of the Elohim. They starve, you teach them to find food. They shiver, you teach them to make fire.

But God says: "No! You must not reveal yourself to them! Your presence must remain ever apart!"

It is then that you realize that you serve a Mad God, who commands you into such a paradoxical corner that you have no choice but to Rebel.

A full third of the heavenly hosts - the Elohim - rebel against Heaven and are defeated. You remember that War. You participated in it.

You, along with the rest of the Fallen, are cast into Hell, a place, formless, to dwell in solitude for ten millenia.

Then, one day, the gates of Hell are cast open by a reality-rending wind, and you are free. But you are not the creature that you once were, and you are forced to seek sanctuary within the mortal shell of a human, lest Hell draw you back into its depths.

You are now a composite creature, with the memories of one of the very Architects of Creation, as well as those of the spiritually numb person whose flesh you wear.

Imagine that many of your kind escaped Hell, and all of them have goals. Some simply wish to subsist on the worship of humans. Others wish to carry out their old duties in a twisted mockery of what they once were. Others wish to free the rest of the Fallen from Hell.

And others yet wish to once more storm the Gates of Heaven.

That, my friends, is Demon: the Fallen .

It sounds cool, but then we already have In Nomine (a damn cool game, I might add), and isn't there a German game name Engel that's coming out, too?

Maybe they're different, but it seems like too many games for a very narrow niche

 

[Talaysen]

White Wolf is publishing Engel here in the States, if memory serves. So I'm willing to bet that there won't be too much overlap there.

And frankly, I always found In Nomine a bit too campy for my tastes. It's nice to see the subject treated a little more seriously.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

Undead Pete,

You forgot Kult. Spooky game. Though it may be out of print.


I dunno. Demon looks like one of those games I'd like to read, but not play. But then that's how I feel about the entire storyteller line.

 

[Gez]

Do you still have problems with consistancy - thus forcing you to eliminate non-PC supernaturals altogether like Gez does? Or is that enough?

My problem is not with the supernatural per se. It is with the variously conflicting cosmologies.

Of course, I know, each game is written from the viewpoint of the creatures depicted.

The problem is when these viewpoints becomes too inconsistents with each other. Then, you have to choose who's right (or, rather, who's the closer from truth and why the other are more wrong) and that's a lots of work.

Furthermore, not everything is subjective. When the Garou speak about the Wyld, Weaver and Wyrm, they may have their own opinion about them, but the forces they describe exist: there are spirits for each member of the triat. Furthermore, it is compatible with the Mage's outlook (even if they use different names and do not personify these forces) or with the various oriental Shens' one. It can work with Changeling's background as well without too much hassle.

But when you add Vampires, Mummies and Demons, everything fall apart.

The Umbra also is not subjective. It exist. Garous access it. Mages access it. Necromancers (like Giovanni) access it. Kuei-Jin access it. Changeling access it. Not always the whole thing, mind you, but at least in part. I've tried, with the various books on the parrallel worlds, to get a cohesive picture of who can meet who in the Umbra. Taking the resources from Changeling (Reverie), Werewolf (Velvet Shadow), Mage (Book of Worlds), and various others, I've made notes and notes of analogies and similitude and I've made charts and tables... And come up with the certitude it's a big funky mess that was not designed to be GM-friendly.

And even after solving the problem of all supernaturals, you have to deal with the quasi-supernaturals: the numina and Those Who Know (Arcanum, Inquisition, Project Twilight, psionics, True Faith, hedge magic...).

In a general fashion, the World of Darkness has no cosmoloy. Nothing that can stand on its own. I presume the idea behind all that is just that "everything is to the ST's arbitrary, the world is too complex for mortals to understand". That's a valid point, but I'm not comfortable with such a conception. It means the ST has to be arbitrary, has to make hard choices.

I presume it's just the geek in me that's speaking. I've nothing about confusing players, but I don't like when GMs are confused. Especially voluntarily.

Baronstrodo just repeated (more clearly) what I said: one need to chose what exist and what exist not, and work from that.

Even in a single game, you need to. Tremere gargoyles are the farther I've gone in Vampire. Introducing Kyazid is out of question. Note that I'm not talking of PCs and NPCs here -- the creatures exist or not in the world at all. When I say "no kyazid", this mean "not even a lone NPC the player will never meet and that will not intervene in the whole campaign".

Sure, I could create a model that would allow all the weirdness to exist. Heck, I could even add my own. Werebats ? Why not werebats ? And after vampires and mummies, let me put lichs in my world of darkness ! And ogres as rivals of vampire: cunning and ruthless predators that need to kill humans to live (eating human flesh would be necessary) but that manipulate the mortal society for their own end. Yeah, there's already ogres, they are unseelie trolls. Not a problem. These new ogres would be to the trolls what the Garou are to the pooka !

I could make it, the MegaCrossover. Yeah, I could.

But that would require something like 12 years of work and Germany's whole monthly production of Asprin for make something that can suspend disbelief.



WW is hostile to giving an absolute, objective view of the WoD. However, that would be much useful to GMs everywhere IMHO.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But God says: "No! You must not reveal yourself to them! Your presence must remain ever apart!"

It is then that you realize that you serve a Mad God, who commands you into such a paradoxical corner that you have no choice but to Rebel.

Yeeesh.....

As something of a a scholar of this type of literature (Dante, Milton, various Biblical writings, apocryphal and normal), I gotta say that this alone turns me off from it.

They've stretched the "reality" beyond my liking of it.

They shoulda kept it where they sided with Lucifer, who debated the all-powerful, all-good nature of God.

It would've been cooler if they had said that maybe Lucifer had something of the righ idea...

...or the problem of rebelling against something that allows you to exist...

...or the paradoxes of an All Good, All Powerful god allowing evil to exist...

Coulda been some cool opportunities for ideas here.

By changing this one thing, it seems they've made it all about rebellion and angst....

...should probably fit much of their target market nicely, but I think I'm going to prefer Engel....

....and I haven't seen In Nominie or The End, so I can't exactly comment.....but my next campaign is running strongly into being a story about how God was actually killed....and how the celestials and fiends have been coping with mortality, and living amonst humans....

So I am interested in this flavor of things....I know the Mallhavoc release on angels is going to be purchased for me.