Playing at war in heaven/Ascended Demons and Fallen Angels

[Chamomile]

The solution to the sadomaso couple problem is trivial: Just assume that it doesn't count as hurting if they actually want it to happen. So, take a slightly more abstract definition of "hurt" which means "to take away from sum total pleasure."

The real place where the philosophy falls down is vengeance loops. If you offend a Satanist in any way while adhering to an even vaguely similar philosophy yourself, the smart move is to kill them immediately. Philosophies that allow you to say "oh, sorry about the beer man, let me buy you a new one" or, on the other end of it, "gosh that guy's a jerk for spilling my beer, but I think I won't start a blood feud over it" are objectively superior to ones that prohibit that kind of behavior.

[Mask_De_H]

Which is the SEIGI NO MIKATA example.

And if the masochist is gaining pleasure from getting beat, but that pleasure is robbing the sadist of the pleasure of hurting someone, then either: the sadist stops doing what they want at a loss of pleasure, thus denying the masochist pleasure and triggering a vengeance outcome, or the sadist is stuck beating on the masochist until it's not fun for the masochist, after which potential pleasure zeroes out for both sides.

What I'm trying to say is Prak's beliefs are stupid and zhe should feel stupid for having them.

[Thymos]

If your going demons eastern doesn't work because really... they aren't demons.

Modern Western doesn't work because a myriad of problems that have been laid out repeatedly.

Solution? Use Gnosticism. It's really influential in western religions anyways.

Also why the hell worry about moral compasses like DnD alignments? Just make sure the people running things are fallible individuals, don't worry about cosmic agendas beyond the fact that they are people who have one, but are still people.

[Username17]

My FATAL example wasn't to say that hipster satanism was as offensive as FATAL, but that if there's a market for rape apologia and dead baby jokes, there's a market for anything. The market may be very small, but it exists.

Anyway,

If your going demons eastern doesn't work because really... they aren't demons.

Wat.





How are these things "not demons?"

-Username17

[Koumei]

There are also people who want to play demons not because of any kind of philosophy or even a discussion of the existence of deities, they actually just want the skulls and flames iconography. If they're okay with succubi, Disgaea gets a pass, but if everything has to be Balors or scarier, then you can steal from East, West, North, South, whatever, and no-one gives a shit. Of course at that point you're really calling it Monster, not Demon.

[Thymos]

Disgaea isn't really old mythology.

Monkey faces monsters called demons, but in western mythology views of demons aren't really demons because there's no... satan or angels or shit to make them demons. This is rambling, but basically they're just standard monsters a lot of which would be great in a monster manual but nothing about them screams "demon".

[TheJerkStore]

Don't Asian demons occupy the same conceptual space that the fey did for the Celts? Powerful, occasionally terrifying monsters that were tricky and cunning and sometimes heroes had to slay them but could also be strange, but mercurial allies at times?

[Prak]

My FATAL example wasn't to say that hipster satanism was as offensive as FATAL, but that if there's a market for rape apologia and dead baby jokes, there's a market for anything. The market may be very small, but it exists.

Ok, fair.

Koumei basically has the right of it. The bit where you get to kick God/Michael straight up the ass is just a bonus to the admittedly small market I represent.

[satanism discussion moved to MPSIMS]

[Maxus]

You could argue that.

There are so many Japanese (in particular) boogeymen that it's surprising Mythological Japan had room for people.

No, seriously. There's a demon which sneaks into people's houses and eats food lying around. And does it completely unseen. There's also one which looks completely identical to a normal man, except it has an eyeball in place of an anus.

[DSMatticus]

Western demons are a different thing than eastern demons which are a different thing than eastern reinterpretations of western demons. You can call all of those things demons, but that doesn't really make them the same. Yokai was translated into English as demon because that was the closest western equivalent to "supernatural monster, usually wants to do bad things to you," not because there's any actual link to the western concept of demons. And then later on as widespread intercultural communication becomes a big thing, you get Japan stealing bits of western mythology to turn them into cute girls, but that's still a very distinct thing from traditional western mythology or even modern western mythology as interpreted by modern westners. Prak almost certainly wants to do that last one, but with subversive grimdark undertones that make angels at least as much the bad guys as demons, i.e. god's a dick.

If you were going to do what Prak wanted, you'd borrow a lot of old testament BS where god is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and a massive fucking dick. The in-universe answer to "why does he do the things he do?" is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda he beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given, because that's completely and totally outside the playspace and irrelevant to playing your character (who doesn't know). You don't want to set it up as "good guy vs bad guy except the demons are the good guys! WHAT A TWEEST," so you have to taint the legitimacy of the demonic revolt. That's not hard to do. The vast majority of human conflict is about which of two powerful groups will get to mistreat some other group which has no fucking hope of protecting itself from either.

The actual ideological divide between red team and blue team isn't about whether or not it's okay to be a dick to everyone, it's about the acceptable procedures and motivations for being a dick. Blue team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around god's dickish dictates. Red team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around power and self-interest. Individual members of blue team can totally doubt specific facets of the institution they are a part of. Individual members of red team can totally not be ruthless, selfish assholes at every opportunity. But the historical basis for the conflict is some of the angels wanted to play god-king too and god didn't want to share, and the current incentives within these institution match that.

The finishing touch is god gets fed up with everyone's shit and goes home or whatever. Shortly after the revolt, he bails. The in-universe answer is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda the angels beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given for exactly the same reasons as above. Also, heaven's not all it's cracked up to be because reasons. That's your status quo.

[Omegonthesane]

If you were going to do what Prak wanted, you'd borrow a lot of old testament BS where god is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and a massive fucking dick. The in-universe answer to "why does he do the things he do?" is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda he beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given, because that's completely and totally outside the playspace and irrelevant to playing your character (who doesn't know). You don't want to set it up as "good guy vs bad guy except the demons are the good guys! WHAT A TWEEST," so you have to taint the legitimacy of the demonic revolt. That's not hard to do. The vast majority of human conflict is about which of two powerful groups will get to mistreat some other group which has no fucking hope of protecting itself from either.

The actual ideological divide between red team and blue team isn't about whether or not it's okay to be a dick to everyone, it's about the acceptable procedures and motivations for being a dick. Blue team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around god's dickish dictates. Red team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around power and self-interest. Individual members of blue team can totally doubt specific facets of the institution they are a part of. Individual members of red team can totally not be ruthless, selfish assholes at every opportunity. But the historical basis for the conflict is some of the angels wanted to play god-king too and god didn't want to share, and the current incentives within these institution match that.

The finishing touch is god gets fed up with everyone's shit and goes home or whatever. Shortly after the revolt, he bails. The in-universe answer is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda the angels beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given for exactly the same reasons as above. Also, heaven's not all it's cracked up to be because reasons. That's your status quo.

The phrase "Dark Low-Contrast In Nomine" comes to mind as a set of data points which already exist which tick many of those boxes. Not all, as it assumes that there is any doubt that God is anything but a dick, but it's probably better than a blank page to start from.

[Prak]

Except that what I want is for the demons to generally be good guys who are "evil" because they disobeyed god, not because they consider rape and murder to be their national past time.

[Omegonthesane]

Except that what I want is for the demons to generally be good guys who are "evil" because they disobeyed god, not because they consider rape and murder to be their national past time.

Whose proposal are you criticising, here?

Big issue with In Nom for fitting your desires is that Shedim can only be "the good guys" if there is an endless succession of people they can be "corrupting" without getting anyone actually far enough in the deep end to turn the players against them. The other playable demons have no innate deal-breakers, although Djinn are a bit pathetic by default with their corrupted version of guardian-angel powers.

[Username17]

Disgaea isn't really old mythology.

Actually... it is. In each game, you try to become the overlord of one of many different hells, your currency is hell money that mortals have burnt for their ancestors, and you claw your way up by having your feudal minions reincarnate to higher forms while navigating the infernal bureaucracy and having adventures. That is exactly the far eastern concept of the afterlife. It's not "based on" the Chinese/Japanese mythology, it is the Chinese/Japanese mythology. There are a few jokes here and there, but mostly it's just the original mythology played extremely straight.

And that's why Eastern demonology is so dramatically superior to Western demonology as a thing to make an RPG out of. Eastern mythology can be turned into an entertaining RPG where the player characters have agency without any real alterations or inversions at all.

Monkey faces monsters called demons, but in western mythology views of demons aren't really demons because there's no... satan or angels or shit to make them demons. This is rambling, but basically they're just standard monsters a lot of which would be great in a monster manual but nothing about them screams "demon".

So your contention is that Eastern demons aren't really demons because they are different from Western demons? My suggestion is to eat less paint. Some paint, especially old paint, is actually really bad for you.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

what is it with the denners and beating their heads against language?

[TheFlatline]

If you were going to do what Prak wanted, you'd borrow a lot of old testament BS where god is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and a massive fucking dick. The in-universe answer to "why does he do the things he do?" is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda he beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given, because that's completely and totally outside the playspace and irrelevant to playing your character (who doesn't know). You don't want to set it up as "good guy vs bad guy except the demons are the good guys! WHAT A TWEEST," so you have to taint the legitimacy of the demonic revolt. That's not hard to do. The vast majority of human conflict is about which of two powerful groups will get to mistreat some other group which has no fucking hope of protecting itself from either.

The actual ideological divide between red team and blue team isn't about whether or not it's okay to be a dick to everyone, it's about the acceptable procedures and motivations for being a dick. Blue team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around god's dickish dictates. Red team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around power and self-interest. Individual members of blue team can totally doubt specific facets of the institution they are a part of. Individual members of red team can totally not be ruthless, selfish assholes at every opportunity. But the historical basis for the conflict is some of the angels wanted to play god-king too and god didn't want to share, and the current incentives within these institution match that.

The finishing touch is god gets fed up with everyone's shit and goes home or whatever. Shortly after the revolt, he bails. The in-universe answer is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda the angels beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given for exactly the same reasons as above. Also, heaven's not all it's cracked up to be because reasons. That's your status quo.

The phrase "Dark Low-Contrast In Nomine" comes to mind as a set of data points which already exist which tick many of those boxes. Not all, as it assumes that there is any doubt that God is anything but a dick, but it's probably better than a blank page to start from.

Exactly. In the... shit I forgot the series of "adventures" that SJGames did for In Nomine, in Austin there's actually a detente of sorts. It's like Rick's Cafe in Casablanca, only everyone is kind of tired of The War and slips off to Austin to rub elbows with the other side unofficially. The foot soldiers are tired, and many of them just plainly don't give a shit, and kind of miss their friends that have fallen, or end up identifying more with the foot soldiers on the other side than they do with their own bosses.

The whole "War" is based on interpretation in In Nomine. Demons, at least the original Fallen demons, still love God, and *want* to be loved by God. It's questionable if what they're doing is even considered "evil" on the polarity between "good" and "evil". It's evil if God's word is immutable law (which it isn't necessarily since it's known Lucifer & God would argue a lot, and Lucifer would win sometimes), but the whole rebellion/war is that God's word isn't necessarily immutable law.

But then again the whole point of that game is to blur the lines between Celestials and humanity and shoot for doubt and grey. The fucking tagline after all is "They are much like us."

[Omegonthesane]

If you were going to do what Prak wanted, you'd borrow a lot of old testament BS where god is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and a massive fucking dick. The in-universe answer to "why does he do the things he do?" is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda he beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given, because that's completely and totally outside the playspace and irrelevant to playing your character (who doesn't know). You don't want to set it up as "good guy vs bad guy except the demons are the good guys! WHAT A TWEEST," so you have to taint the legitimacy of the demonic revolt. That's not hard to do. The vast majority of human conflict is about which of two powerful groups will get to mistreat some other group which has no fucking hope of protecting itself from either.

The actual ideological divide between red team and blue team isn't about whether or not it's okay to be a dick to everyone, it's about the acceptable procedures and motivations for being a dick. Blue team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around god's dickish dictates. Red team's leadership wants to run an institution centered around power and self-interest. Individual members of blue team can totally doubt specific facets of the institution they are a part of. Individual members of red team can totally not be ruthless, selfish assholes at every opportunity. But the historical basis for the conflict is some of the angels wanted to play god-king too and god didn't want to share, and the current incentives within these institution match that.

The finishing touch is god gets fed up with everyone's shit and goes home or whatever. Shortly after the revolt, he bails. The in-universe answer is a bunch of god-is-good propaganda the angels beat into people. The out-universe answer is never given for exactly the same reasons as above. Also, heaven's not all it's cracked up to be because reasons. That's your status quo.

The phrase "Dark Low-Contrast In Nomine" comes to mind as a set of data points which already exist which tick many of those boxes. Not all, as it assumes that there is any doubt that God is anything but a dick, but it's probably better than a blank page to start from.

Exactly. In the... shit I forgot the series of "adventures" that SJGames did for In Nomine, in Austin there's actually a detente of sorts. It's like Rick's Cafe in Casablanca, only everyone is kind of tired of The War and slips off to Austin to rub elbows with the other side unofficially. The foot soldiers are tired, and many of them just plainly don't give a shit, and kind of miss their friends that have fallen, or end up identifying more with the foot soldiers on the other side than they do with their own bosses.

The whole "War" is based on interpretation in In Nomine. Demons, at least the original Fallen demons, still love God, and *want* to be loved by God. It's questionable if what they're doing is even considered "evil" on the polarity between "good" and "evil". It's evil if God's word is immutable law (which it isn't necessarily since it's known Lucifer & God would argue a lot, and Lucifer would win sometimes), but the whole rebellion/war is that God's word isn't necessarily immutable law.

But then again the whole point of that game is to blur the lines between Celestials and humanity and shoot for doubt and grey. The fucking tagline after all is "They are much like us."

The Revelations series - Night Music, Heaven and Hell, The Marches, Fall of the Malakim, and The Final Trumpet, in that order, as I recall.

The "they are very much like us" is why it annoys me that Beth went for a more black & white approach when she took over as line editor and gave so much short shrift to running settings where "archangels are often dicks, demon princes are often harmless by some reasonable metrics".

[TheFlatline]

Western demons are a different thing than eastern demons which are a different thing than eastern reinterpretations of western demons. You can call all of those things demons, but that doesn't really make them the same. Yokai was translated into English as demon because that was the closest western equivalent to "supernatural monster, usually wants to do bad things to you," not because there's any actual link to the western concept of demons. And then later on as widespread intercultural communication becomes a big thing, you get Japan stealing bits of western mythology to turn them into cute girls, but that's still a very distinct thing from traditional western mythology or even modern western mythology as interpreted by modern westners. Prak almost certainly wants to do that last one, but with subversive grimdark undertones that make angels at least as much the bad guys as demons, i.e. god's a dick.

Actually, the origins of "demons" in the western world really are supernatural spirits who may or may not do bad things to you. Plato attributed the brilliance of Socrates to a "daemon" after all.

From Wikipedia:
The Ancient Greek word δαίμων daimōn denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin genius or numen. Daimōn most likely came from the Greek verb daiesthai (to divide, distribute).[3] The Greek conception of a daimōns notably appears in the works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates. To distinguish the classical Greek concept from its later Christian interpretation, the former is anglicized as either daemon or daimon rather than demon.

If you dig further back, ancient Mesopotamia had their share of demons as well, and they didn't fit the Christian concept of demon.

I'd say that the Christian idea of demons is the anomaly, as even Judaism went beyond "DEMON=BAD". So did Islam with the djinn.

There is Christian myth that suggests too that Demons are actually doing God's work. They punish the wicked, tempt humanity, and in general give a clear cut choice between good and evil, the idea being that without evil there can be no pennance, no redemption, and therefore you can never come into the graces of God unless you choose to take that path. An interesting RPG might be where you play demons that are knowing agents of God, doing the job of providing a choice between good and evil. Sort of like how Luke wasn't a real Jedi in Star Wars until he was seduced by, and rejected the Dark Side in the movies.

[DSMatticus]

Actually, the origins of "demons" in the western world really are supernatural spirits who may or may not do bad things to you. Plato attributed the brilliance of Socrates to a "daemon" after all.

I don't really know what point you're trying to make, unless you're telling me I should be more careful with the word western because there's more to the west than Christianity. In which case, yes, I should be.

The idea of supernatural spirits (who may or may not do bad things to you) predates both Christianity and Judaism and has probably been invented (or lifted from another culture) by every culture that has ever existed on this planet. Christians chose to borrow a pre-existing Greek word to talk about their particular mythology. Today, when western society wants to talk about other cultures' ideas of supernatural spirits (who may or may not do bad things to you) like the Mesopotamians', we frequently end up using the word demon as the simplest translation. Those aren't relationships between the concepts. Those are relationships between sounds people make with their mouths or symbols people make on paper.

Now, preemptively, Christian (and Jewish, really) "demonology" or whatever is something of a Frankenstein monster, because they had a habit of just lifting supernatural entities from other belief systems entirely and then explaining their collective existence as part of their creation mythos. Christian mythology is, itself, a reinterpretation of a hodgepodge of a bunch of other religions. It's distinct, but by no means original. And that's almost certainly the one Prak wants to deal in, because of his hate hard-on for Christianity.

Except that what I want is for the demons to generally be good guys who are "evil" because they disobeyed god, not because they consider rape and murder to be their national past time.

"God is a dick, and when the demons told him he was a dick the angels started picking on them" will never be more than an antireligious circlejerk. There isn't enough there to be anything else.

[Prak]

Except that what I want is for the demons to generally be good guys who are "evil" because they disobeyed god, not because they consider rape and murder to be their national past time.

"God is a dick, and when the demons told him he was a dick the angels started picking on them" will never be more than an antireligious circlejerk. There isn't enough there to be anything else.

I'm sorry, there was actually quite a lot of game in Demon the Fallen, which was precisely that. The worst part of it was that it was Storyteller, but even that's an asset, in a way, because that is the second most well known system. So I should say that the worst part of it was that it's metaphysics confused people.

Demon the Fallen had a lot of theme. The whole "God was a dick, and tried to destroy us when we went against his word" thing was more of a framing device for a game about being supernatural veterans and refuges from a war before time who killed lovecraftian monstrosities, were Kill on Sight for another faction of supernaturals, and had to make pacts with mortals to maintain their power.

[Mask_De_H]

DSM, put the paint down and stop arguing semantics. We're not trying to pleasure Prak's hate-boner, we're trying to make a setting where you're demons doing thangs.

So succubi of questionable physical age and horsehead motherfuckers on fire is in, Judeo-Christian accuracy not so much.

[TheJerkStore]

what is it with the denners and beating their heads against language?

Because you can continue to argue when you are completely and utterly wrong about something if you start to argue semantics.

[JonSetanta]

what is it with the denners and beating their heads against language?

Autism. Fairly mild.

[Koumei]

My suggestion is to eat less paint. Some paint, especially old paint, is actually really bad for you.

Wait, this implies there is some non-zero amount of paint consumption that is recommended (or you would have said "stop eating paint"). In your medical opinion, how much paint would you suggest people eat, and are we talking "Some is really bad, the rest is neutral" or are there special paints that are actually good for you?

[ErichZahn]

Actually, some pigments are edible, and a few have value as food. You should start an MPSIMS thread about this. We'll be right over.