Rehabbing WoD, but keeping it's spirit

[Omegonthesane]

But if you're going to have Demons at all, you're pretty much committed to having at least one alternate dimension that people can interact with. And you could very plausibly have as many as half a dozen without hitting peoples' complexity limits (assuming that none of the worlds are as stupidly complicated as Werewolf's Umbra, where every houseplant and lamppost could talk and had magic powers). I can certainly imagine people deciding to put more worlds into their World of Darkness Heartbreaker than I did - just not a lot more.

Not necessarily. Changeling: The Lost, Demon: The Fallen, and World of Darkness: Inferno more or less made those places into death traps. This frees up conceptual space, no?

You're going to have to define what you mean by "demon." Are we talking fallen angels seeking redemption/revenge, YHWH's prosecuting attorney out to tempt and punish sinners, or alien invaders that exalt in vice and sin? All of those result in very different stories.

If we're keeping the spirit of WoD, then we're going with fallen angels I think, what with the original WoD team openly fellating Christian mythology at every opportunity even before Justin Achilli decided that it was worth taking this to the point of defecating on the morality mechanics.

[BoxCrayonTales]

If we're keeping the spirit of WoD, then we're going with fallen angels I think, what with the original WoD team openly fellating Christian mythology at every opportunity even before Justin Achilli decided that it was worth taking this to the point of defecating on the morality mechanics.

At this point it is impossible to keep the spirit, because we don't know what it is, can't agree on it, and the original world of darkness sucked so badly that its imitators were objectively better written.

If Demon: The Fallen had gotten a new world of darkness reboot that translated the themes of the original and didn't replace them with bizarre Matrix/Lovecraft stuff, it probably would've been something like this. Demons escape from the pit and possess human bodies that make them sane, but can't remember their existence before they escaped the pit. Since objective evidence of the divine is nonexistent, the demons form their own religions to explain their existence. Some think YHWH/Brahma/whoever is evil and that Satan/Ahriman/whoever is good, some want to turn back to angels, some think YHWH/Demiurge/whoever created them to tempt and punish sinners, and so on. Pretty much the same thing humans do. Since they work at cross purposes, they come into conflict pretty often (not necessarily violent, but may degenerate into violence).

Note: RequiemNocte, a Spanish fansite, actually did write a demon fansplat with this idea. It was not crowdsourced, it was written by a handful of writers working together in private until they released the completed pdf, so it's probably of much better quality than the typical fansplat crap. It is also written entirely in Spanish and has never been translated.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Can someone tell me TGD the history of DtF and its relationship to the rest of WoD? Like, most people I know who are into that setting can't give a rat's ass about it but the people who are into DtF are really into it. My impression is that it feels like WoD's version of psionics.

... okay, sorry, that was a little huge.

[Username17]

Sadly because they nuked the forums from way back when I don't have a link, but the designers during the ramp up to nWOD said that they were bringing all character types to the same level of parity, and that meant hitting the werewolves with a nerf stick. They specifically said that the idea was that a starting vampire could feasibly take out a starting werewolf in a straight up fight, because "the community" made it clear that those kinds of disparities were not desired.

OK. I understand what you're misinterpreting now. The nWoD design team were just promising a balanced game where you could play mixed parties. It didn't and doesn't go any deeper than that. They objectively failed to deliver on that, but it was and remains a laudable goal.

The more important part of that whole fiasco is not the part where they claimed that Vampires and Werewolves were going to be able to play the same game at the same power level. The important part (as far as the neutering of the Lycanthropes goes), is the promise that they would "do something" about combat characters and the "katanas and mirrorshades" players from playing the game "wrong." And that was a promise made to the "Real Roleplayers" contingent. So they delivered a game where it was literally impossible for players to make characters that could avoid being stampeded to death by a kindergarten. This fixed the "problem" of there being characters who were "good at fighting," but only at the cost of leaving all the character concepts that were good at fighting without a home. And since that included all Werewolf concepts, that was that.

Not necessarily. Changeling: The Lost, Demon: The Fallen, and World of Darkness: Inferno more or less made those places into death traps. This frees up conceptual space, no?

It frees up some, but not a whole lot. Unless you also never meet creatures from there (like the Tempest), you're still going to be putting in creatures and factions and shit - and that's where most of your conceptual space goes. The fact that you never actually go to any of the cities in the Abyss saves you a tiny bit of description on place names and shit, but you still end up writing up everything from a goblin to infernal lords as well as factions that were negotiable evil all the way to factions that are kill on sight like the Nephandi.

The Umbra wasn't too much conceptual space because you could go there. The actual description of the place itself was just a couple paragraphs about misty shadowy dimness. The Umbra used up too much conceptual space because there were billions upon billions of summonable spirits in it and they all had powers and rankings and opinions and whatever the fuck and no one could keep track of it all. These spirits don't suddenly become manageable in number or scope just because you declare that characters can't physically walk into the Umbra anymore.

If you write up a bit about a couple of Abyssal cities and draw some nightmarish landscapes and shit, Hell is then more conceptual space than the Demons and Infernalists already take up, but only because everything you add takes up conceptual space. Having the portals be a thing you can walk into is really only a little bit more of a burden than having the portals show up in the first place. After all, anything you could meet on the other side is something that could potentially pop through a portal, and you already have to be able to describe how the abyss looks because people get to glimpse it from time to time.

-Username17

[Night Goat]

I don't see the problem with a setting taking up a lot of conceptual space. Dungeons & Dragons has a huge number of worlds and monsters, but that's a good thing. The DM never has to run out of places for the characters to go and creatures for them to encounter. The players don't have to know about all that stuff, and most of them don't. It might be better that they don't, because then they might actually be surprised by something instead of saying "oh, this is an X, here's how we beat it."

If you try to minimize conceptual space used, you end up with something like nWod where you never leave town and everyone you meet is going to be one of the 5 tribes/clans/whatever of one of the 5 types of supernatural thing. No one's requiring or even encouraging the players to read up on all the Umbral worlds and spirits. The ST doesn't have to do that unless he's running a game that focuses on the Umbra. And if he does, he probably doesn't mind - if he didn't want to read, he wouldn't have signed up for the job.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't see the problem with a setting taking up a lot of conceptual space. Dungeons & Dragons has a huge number of worlds and monsters, but that's a good thing. The DM never has to run out of places for the characters to go and creatures for them to encounter.

I'm not going to contest your assertion that this state of affairs is a good thing. I will say, though, Dungeons and Dragons is also a post-apocalyptic high fantasy game where you spend much of your time being thwarted by toll roads, seafaring guilds, and bad maps. Groups having their narrative causality wrecked from an overload of evil wizard guilds, Arabian Nights parodies, and steampunk gnomes is a pretty infrequent occurrence because the limitations of a typical campaign will only have people seeing a small part of it. The coolness of the city watch lassoing criminals from their flying carpets while you enjoy a coffee outside the university doesn't get diluted by a faux-Meiji Reformation squad of oni musketeers shooting up the cafe because while the campaign setting might have both groups it's likely that only one group will become important or even mentioned.

You can't do that kind of campaign-to-campaign segregation for WoD, because people have phones and television and Facebook and shit. Hell, the monster splats specifically congregate in huge urban areas. Multithemed online oWoD games had segregated splatbook spheres for a reason.

[BoxCrayonTales]

It frees up some, but not a whole lot. Unless you also never meet creatures from there (like the Tempest), you're still going to be putting in creatures and factions and shit - and that's where most of your conceptual space goes. The fact that you never actually go to any of the cities in the Abyss saves you a tiny bit of description on place names and shit, but you still end up writing up everything from a goblin to infernal lords as well as factions that were negotiable evil all the way to factions that are kill on sight like the Nephandi.

Then why detail any of that? Why not leave them as nebulous planes of indescribably horrible nightmares that monsters of the week crawl out of? This isn't D&D. We don't need to waste pages on hierarchies of Fairy Lords and Archdevils when none of that is going to be relevant to fighting monsters of the week or buying demonic investments. If a demon lord is involved, it is only in the capacity as the big bad evil guy the PCs have to keep from getting a foothold.

If you try to minimize conceptual space used, you end up with something like nWod where you never leave town and everyone you meet is going to be one of the 5 tribes/clans/whatever of one of the 5 types of supernatural thing.

A lot of good stories can be told while staying almost entirely within one town. Globe-trotting adventures aren't inherently better than street-level adventures (the latter allow for the GM to give the most attention to one recurring place rather than detail throwaway gas stops). Promethean tried forcing PCs on globe-trotting adventures as part of its theme of becoming human by making them unable to stay in the same place for a prolonged period, and critics complained it didn't focus on inner city politics. Way to completely miss the point of the game.

TV shows, for example, involving the supernatural hiding (or not) in the modern world generally fall into either the characters fighting monsters of the week that invade their hometown (Buffy, Once Upon a Time, Sleepy Hollow, Teen Wolf, Trueblood) or becoming traveling paranormal investigators who never stay in one place (Supernatural). Being a traveling investigator is really, really detrimental to accumulating temporal power.

[Night Goat]

I don't think the story has to be a globe-trotting adventure, but that should definitely be an option. And if you're going to have a monster of the week, it would probably be more interesting if it's something the players haven't seen before.

[hyzmarca]

It frees up some, but not a whole lot. Unless you also never meet creatures from there (like the Tempest), you're still going to be putting in creatures and factions and shit - and that's where most of your conceptual space goes. The fact that you never actually go to any of the cities in the Abyss saves you a tiny bit of description on place names and shit, but you still end up writing up everything from a goblin to infernal lords as well as factions that were negotiable evil all the way to factions that are kill on sight like the Nephandi.

Then why detail any of that? Why not leave them as nebulous planes of indescribably horrible nightmares that monsters of the week crawl out of? This isn't D&D. We don't need to waste pages on hierarchies of Fairy Lords and Archdevils when none of that is going to be relevant to fighting monsters of the week or buying demonic investments. If a demon lord is involved, it is only in the capacity as the big bad evil guy the PCs have to keep from getting a foothold.

Because if the victim of the week sold his soul to a demon and the demon didn't hold up his end of the bargain, then informing the demon's boss should be a viable way to deal with the situation.

To use Supernatural as an example, there was an episode where a demon was collecting early on his deals through murder and the solution was to bring Crowley in to lay down the law. That should be a viable strategy.


More to the point, your monsters of the week have motivations and you need to know what they are. Is Beelzeboss a nine-to-five demon who has a wife and kids back home in Dis or is he a superbad puppy-eater?

This matters.

If buying demonic investments is even a possibility then its even more important. You're going to want to know what demons want and you'll want to be able to play office politics to get the best deal possible.

And, of course, there comes a point where players will want to capture and interrogate the Monster of the Week, or just sit down and have a friendly conversation with it, so you'll need answers for their questions.

Basically, blank-slate monsters of the week stop working as soon as the PCs have any options other than hack and slash combat, and in an RPG the PCs always have options other than hack and slash combat. If the monster can talk then the PCs will talk to it. If they talk to it then you need to know what it'll say an dhow it'll respond to them.

There might also be a time when you want to make an alliance with the monsters from hell to fight the monsters from Albuquerque.

[Dean]

I don't see the problem with a setting taking up a lot of conceptual space. Dungeons & Dragons has a huge number of worlds and monsters, but that's a good thing.

I actively disagree. D&D has incredible bloat in it's planes. The Ethereal plane, Astral plane, and Plane of shadow should be condensed into one thing, there are 4 INFINITE elemental planes that no one goes to where even 1 elemental plane would probably be too many, there are two hells, an empty void plane, an all white plane that makes everything that goes there explode, and 14 other outer planes that altogether get less play than either of the two hells. D&D probably has a dozen redundant planes, each infinitely large, that aren't even worth spending a single adventure in. I mean honestly when's the last time you wrote an adventure meant to take place in a pool of infinite water, or saw an adventure path on the positive energy plane. D&D uses up huge quantities of conceptual space with no payback on lots of its planes. D&D's total planescape should be

The Astral: Covering the uses of the Positive energy plane, the Astral plane
The Celestial: Covering every positive aligned plane
The Material: The earth, would also just have places for Elementals to be. Like Water Elementals in the Ocean, or Earth Elementals in mountains and caves, they don't each need an infinite plane of their own
The Abyss: Covering both the hells, allowing the Demon war to be over knowable ground
The Void: Covering the uses of the Shadow plane, the negative energy plane, and the ethereal plane and some of the darker outer planes like Hades and Carceri

Places that do have traction like Carceri or the City of Brass should just be locations within those actual planes. There's no need for the volume of space, conceptual or physical, that D&D devotes to it's multiple planes.

[BoxCrayonTales]

To use Supernatural as an example, there was an episode where a demon was collecting early on his deals through murder and the solution was to bring Crowley in to lay down the law. That should be a viable strategy.

Supernatural sucks.

More to the point, your monsters of the week have motivations and you need to know what they are. Is Beelzeboss a nine-to-five demon who has a wife and kids back home in Dis or is he a superbad puppy-eater?

This is the basic problem with your entire argument. Once you start humanizing demons they lose their mystique and become jokes. They work best as plot devices and monsters that are extremely hazardous to interact with, not Average Joe down the street you can have tea with. Otherwise you might as well visit the town witch and ask her for magical solutions to your problems. Dealing with demons should not be interchangeable with asking anyone who can use magic to fix things.

[Mask_De_H]

More to the point, your monsters of the week have motivations and you need to know what they are. Is Beelzeboss a nine-to-five demon who has a wife and kids back home in Dis or is he a superbad puppy-eater?

This is the basic problem with your entire argument. Once you start humanizing demons they lose their mystique and become jokes. They work best as plot devices and monsters that are extremely hazardous to interact with, not Average Joe down the street you can have tea with. Otherwise you might as well visit the town witch and ask her for magical solutions to your problems. Dealing with demons should not be interchangeable with asking anyone who can use magic to fix things.

This is a personal feeling argument and not an actual empirical thing. If you want to do anything but stab demons in the face, they need to have motivations other than {undefined}. Even if they are plot devices, they're still going to be interacted with in ways that aren't one-dimensional. Your players are going to want to have tea with demons, or at least try to get something out of them. If your game can't handle that, then you've made 4e.

And dealing with demons so they can fix things is the basic idea of evocation, so I don't know where you're getting the idea that this is somehow verboten.

[BoxCrayonTales]

This is a personal feeling argument and not an actual empirical thing. If you want to do anything but stab demons in the face, they need to have motivations other than {undefined}. Even if they are plot devices, they're still going to be interacted with in ways that aren't one-dimensional. Your players are going to want to have tea with demons, or at least try to get something out of them. If your game can't handle that, then you've made 4e.

Demons have no more inherent complexity than animistic spirits do. Their motivations are always the same: feeding on depravity. When you summon and bargain with them, you are making a deal with a walking personification of pure evil to offer your soul and/or perform miscellaneous evil acts in exchange for temporal wealth and/or supernatural powers. Ultimately you get the short end of the stick. If there are other, more accessible and less dangerous ways to accomplish those things, why would anyone call up demons?

Demons are iconic, powerful, and dangerous. If we're going to have classical demons, we need to treat them like it. Otherwise, what is the point of calling them demons?

[Username17]

There is certainly a place for villains that are "very bad" and who are the object of your attacks on a "kill on sight" basis because they are so bad and that's all you need to know about them. But... why would you need more than one such group? If you have a second group of villains, they need to be meaningfully distinct from the first group or they are a waste of narrative.

So once you have the Nephandus, there's no point in also having the Baali unless they have some sort of goal other than "destroy the world." And likewise for Pentex. And the Path of Evil Revelations. And the Black Spiral Dancers. And the Dark Tremere. And so on. Every other faction of Infernalist needs to have some sort of goals and motives other than "they are very bad" or they are a waste of narrative space.

-Username17

[fectin]

Uh, [citation needed] on all of that.

Edited to clarify: pointing at Crayon, not Frank.

[BoxCrayonTales]

There is certainly a place for villains that are "very bad" and who are the object of your attacks on a "kill on sight" basis because they are so bad and that's all you need to know about them. But... why would you need more than one such group?

Important distinction: demons should be kill on sight. But all too often misguided individuals (e.g. the PCs) think it would be a good idea to call up demons and bargain with them. Despite the very real, extreme danger demons represent by their very existence, people still project human behavior onto them and ignore this. Demons take advantage of this to manipulate these individuals, feeding them whatever lies and half-truths ensure compliance.

Uh, [citation needed] on all of that.

Demons aren't real, so nobody can say what is true about them. I'm basing my depiction on the Bible, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Catholic Encyclopedia. The popular conception of demons is what I explained. Demons are evil entities that exist to indulge themselves to the debasement and ruination of mankind, tricking hapless mortals into handing over their souls for pointless gain and so on. They have no redeeming qualities, cannot be reasoned with, and bargaining with them is never a good idea.

But if you want a second opinion you can read this succinct article with numerous citations. http://www.inplainsite.org/html/what_are_demons.html

[Username17]

Demons aren't real, so nobody can say what is true about them. I'm basing my depiction on the Bible, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Uh... no. Classical demonology is actually super weird and basically none of it involves creatures that are "kill on sight." For fuck's sake, the Malleus isn't really about demons so much as it is about Witches. And it's full of blood libel and actually super creepy on a bunch of levels. Actual texts on Demons have shit like this:

Buer is a spirit that appears in the 16th century grimoire Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and its derivatives, where he is described as a Great President of Hell, having fifty legions of demons under his command. He appears when the Sun is in Sagittarius. He teaches Natural and Moral Philosophy, Logic, and the virtues of all herbs and plants, and is also capable of healing all infirmities (especially of men) and bestows good familiars.

Eligos is a demon that appears in the 17th century tome Ars Goetia. He is a Great Duke of Hell, ruling 60 legions of demons. He discovers hidden things and knows the future of wars and how soldiers should meet. He also attracts the favor of lords, knights and other important persons.

According to Collin de Plancy's [19th century] book on demonology, Adramelech became the President of the Senate of the demons. He is also the Chancellor of Hell and supervisor of Satan's wardrobe. Adramelech generally depicted with a human torso and head, and the limbs of a mule or peacock.

The whole point of demonology is that the demons are in fact really complicated in social orders and want all kinds of different stuff and are constantly trying to dick each other over for some reason or another. They aren't just face raping monsters, they are status conscious and can teach you about plants and shit.

If you insist on getting your information about Demons from books that are not in fact about Demons and then insisting that there's nothing interesting about Demons to know... then you've created a closed loop of ignorance and people should ignore your pronouncements on this topic.

-Username17

[Prak]

Demons have no more inherent complexity than animistic spirits do. Their motivations are always the same: feeding on depravity. When you summon and bargain with them, you are making a deal with a walking personification of pure evil to offer your soul and/or perform miscellaneous evil acts in exchange for temporal wealth and/or supernatural powers. Ultimately you get the short end of the stick. If there are other, more accessible and less dangerous ways to accomplish those things, why would anyone call up demons?

Demons are iconic, powerful, and dangerous. If we're going to have classical demons, we need to treat them like it. Otherwise, what is the point of calling them demons?

Um.










Wait, I think he actually did feed on depravity...

Demons aren't real, so nobody can say what is true about them. I'm basing my depiction on the Bible, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Oh, that makes way more sense. You're basing your ideas on demons on, like, the three worst books to use to talk about demons in fantasy gaming and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yeah, don't do that, that's not in any way helpful. Especially when your first one actually has it's own counter argument for this idea:

Basically, Satan's a troll.

and your second one was basically written to help an abusive pastor justify assaulting and raping women while making them feel guilty for trying to squirm out of the church's oppressive social control.

And as for that link for a second opinion.... christian apologetics has no fucking place ...well anywhere, but especially not in WoD. That way lies Justin Achilli's twattery. Also, I'm pretty sure, looking at your go to sources for demons, why you (wrongly) think Supernatural sucks.

[hyzmarca]

There is certainly a place for villains that are "very bad" and who are the object of your attacks on a "kill on sight" basis because they are so bad and that's all you need to know about them. But... why would you need more than one such group?

Important distinction: demons should be kill on sight. But all too often misguided individuals (e.g. the PCs) think it would be a good idea to call up demons and bargain with them. Despite the very real, extreme danger demons represent by their very existence, people still project human behavior onto them and ignore this. Demons take advantage of this to manipulate these individuals, feeding them whatever lies and half-truths ensure compliance.

Uh, [citation needed] on all of that.

Demons aren't real, so nobody can say what is true about them. I'm basing my depiction on the Bible, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Catholic Encyclopedia. The popular conception of demons is what I explained. Demons are evil entities that exist to indulge themselves to the debasement and ruination of mankind, tricking hapless mortals into handing over their souls for pointless gain and so on. They have no redeeming qualities, cannot be reasoned with, and bargaining with them is never a good idea.

But if you want a second opinion you can read this succinct article with numerous citations. http://www.inplainsite.org/html/what_are_demons.html

While linking to an article written by crazy people is illustrative about what some crazy people believe, it really does nothing to negate the the entire body of literature on the subject.

And there's a lot of literature on the subject. And there are thousands of years worth of traditions, many predating Christianity by quite a bit. But even limiting ourselves to Christian demons, there's a lot of literature. And a lot of different versions. I(ts diverse to the point where you can ascribe practically any motivations and goals to them without exceeding the concept.

And killfuck soulshitters are boring. Really boring.

And as for that link for a second opinion.... christian apologetics has no fucking place ...well anywhere, but especially not in WoD. That way lies Justin Achilli's twattery. Also, I'm pretty sure, looking at your go to sources for demons, why you (wrongly) think Supernatural sucks.

To be fair, Supernatural was a better when the scale was smaller. More saving peiple, hunting things, less fate of the world in the balance.

[Prak]

Hell, while I personally like Devil Went Down to Georgia because Johnny acts perfectly in line with Satanic philosophy, that song was ostensibly written by a christian, and the Devil's entire motivation is a soul quota.

The bible doesn't really ascribe any motivation to demons in general, but Job's life got flipped-turned-upside-down because Satan was listening to God prattle and thought "Really dude?" and wanted to prove a point.

The Malleus Maleficarum was written by a guy who was booted from his diocese because the Bishop got tired of him saying "No, really guys, witches totally exist and are a horrible threat!" and trying to make himself the grand inquisitor. Basically, he was Glenn Beck of his era, and he believed that witches should be rooted out through a trial which included interrogating and torturing the witnesses and immediately condemning any woman who did not cry at her trial. To the extent it says anything about demons, it is to explain that the Devil gives women magic powers.

To be fair, Supernatural was a better when the scale was smaller. More saving peiple, hunting things, less fate of the world in the balance.

Fair.

[Whipstitch]

I don't see the problem with a setting taking up a lot of conceptual space. Dungeons & Dragons has a huge number of worlds and monsters, but that's a good thing.

D&D is the exception that proves the rule. D&D is old as dirt and thus has tremendous cultural inertia in its favor yet it is also worth noting that virtually nobody plays D&D without first selecting or creating a campaign setting that ignores vast swaths of material lest the game become an utterly unmanageable clusterfuck.

[hyzmarca]

Can someone tell me TGD the history of DtF and its relationship to the rest of WoD? Like, most people I know who are into that setting can't give a rat's ass about it but the people who are into DtF are really into it. My impression is that it feels like WoD's version of psionics.

... okay, sorry, that was a little huge.

Demon the Fallen came out in November 2002. Notably, the first Time of Judgement books came out in August of 2003. Demon had exactly one core rulebook and one supplement, two if you count the World of Darkness: Time of Judgement book that it shared with four other splats (you shouldn't). When it came out they were pretty much planning to end the entire line and it shows.

Demon is predicated on the idea that the Apocalypse is happening soon (and by soon we mean two years on the outside) and that Demons are going to be major players in it. The cracking of their prison by the Sixth Maelstrom is one of the major signs that the end is near.

And the other books just pretty much completely ignore them.

Demon does have some good ideas (and some bad ones) but it was really released way too late in the oWoD's life to gain much traction.

[Prak]

Not entirely correct, Demon had a fair number of supplements for such a short-lived product:

• Saviors and Destroyers (about demon hunters who weren't necessarily imbued)
• Damned and Deceived (rules for demon thralls)
• Earthbound (the main villains for Demons in the consideration of the half of the development team that wanted DtF to be Ghostrider)
• Houses of the Fallen (A sort of tribe/clanbook except it covered all of the houses)
• Players Guide (merits and flaws, build your own apocalyptic form)
• Storyteller's Guide
• City of Angels (a chronicle book set in LA, product of the half of the dev team that wanted Demon to be Vampire 2: Darker and Edgier)
• Fear to Tread (Another chronicle book, a companion to City of Angels, RPG.net tells me)

Plus it had a novel trilogy that I thought was pretty enjoyable. The novel puts demons as pre-vampire, as the protag meets a vampire and has no clue what he is.

[BoxCrayonTales]

The whole point of demonology is that the demons are in fact really complicated in social orders and want all kinds of different stuff and are constantly trying to dick each other over for some reason or another. They aren't just face raping monsters, they are status conscious and can teach you about plants and shit.

I am aware of those sources. D&D based its depiction of devils and demons around them.

What you're saying we should do is more or less write a duplicate of D&D's Fiendish Codex that details dozens of demon lords and their domains and various other things tangential to them. We're writing all that because we expect it to come up in adventures often enough to justify it. We expect PCs to play politics with demons and survive.

If I wanted that, I would play D&D. If I wanted to play "summon ridiculous-looking demons to do random weird shit for me" I would play Nephilim, which has a summoning system designed to do just that.

If demons are showing up in an urban fantasy/horror and I want them to be the least bit coherent for my players without coming out of left field or completely overtaking the plot when that isn't intended, I have to jettison that all that extensive and contradictory history and focus on what I want the demons to actually do.

I don't treat them as "face raping monsters." What makes them dangerous is their intelligence. It is now clear to me the sources I mentioned before would not be well-received here. I offer alternatives: Sleepy Hollow (the FOX series), Blood Ties (the vampire detective series), and Dresden Files (book and short-lived series). Those are what I'm going for if I try depicting demons in an urban fantasy/horror game. That's the popular interpretation typical Euro-Americans think of. It's accessible, easy to understand, and can mined for plot hooks.

[Prak]

And if your game is about blowing away intelligent face-eating monsters, that works. WoD, however, posits that you play the intelligent face-eating monsters, and thus the better source material is things like Paradise Lost, Hellboy, and seriously Metalocalypse.