Demon the Fallen

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 3:19 pm

I have the urge to run a Demon the Fallen game, it was one of the later OWoD games, and so probably received about as much attention as a red headed step child. Basically it's a game about playing demons (duh), who explore the sites of old battles from the War of Heaven and have flashbacks that remind them of their former glory and power, look for Lucifer (yes, he went missing), fight Eldritch Horrors with Totally Awesome Superpowers Which Are Frequently Elemental(TM), and argue with other demons about where to go from here.

So, aside from it being OWoD, is anyone aware of any problems specific to Demon the Fallen? I'm talking about problematic demon powers and shit.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 8:50 pm

It came out after In Nomine.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 8:54 pm

TheFlatline wrote:It came out after In Nomine.

This is a problem?

koz · Post by **koz** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:02 pm

Korwin wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:It came out after In Nomine.
This is a problem?

In Nomine is better. They both have god-awful mechanics in places, but at least In Nomine does something cool with pseudo-Christian stuff. As ever, WW is big on weird flavour text, but not much else.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:10 pm

that's perfectly fine, fallen angels with Biblical names is about the most Christian crap I can deal with in my games

koz · Post by **koz** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:11 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:that's perfectly fine, fallen angels with Biblical names is about the most Christian crap I can deal with in my games

Demon might not really be up your alley, then. The Christianity in there is more than a little excessive. Like, nWoD levels of excessive.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:17 pm

I have always wanted to play/run Demon the Fallen or In Nomine. The closest I got to either was around Middle School, twelve or more years ago.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:18 pm

Actually, to me, demon is all about punching god's face. I'm totally ok with christian crap appearing in a game if it's as a target.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:57 am

The point of Demon is generally that you're trying to redeem yourselves in god's eye so that you can be proper angels again, conflicting with having a better demon form and better powers if you're all "evil" and tormented and stuff. IIRC, deciding to go punch god in the face is a fast track towards the "Humanity 0, you become a monster NPC" thing.

Basically, you're supposed to be crying like an abused spouse about how you know he really loves you and is doing it for your own good but you wish he wouldn't and if only you could be a better person you could earn his favour and everything would be happy. So, typical WW emo shit.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:36 am

Yeah, the typical WW stuff that has been tossed out of every working WoD game I've seen.

Seriously, I was looking over the book, and, yeah, it says it's themes are faith, temptation and "the heroic struggle for redemption."
To which I say "fuck that."

No, the themes for my game would be Dealing with Low Level Intrigue, Fighting Eldritch Horrors, Going Hardcore Captain Planet on the Earth to Clean Up the Mess People Have Made of It (thinking of reworking Torment, at least house base, to represent the corruption of a house's dominion), and Punching Out Abrahamic God.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:44 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Yeah, the typical WW stuff that has been tossed out of every working WoD game I've seen.

Seriously, I was looking over the book, and, yeah, it says it's themes are faith, temptation and "the heroic struggle for redemption."
To which I say "fuck that."

No, the themes for my game would be Dealing with Low Level Intrigue, Fighting Eldritch Horrors, Going Hardcore Captain Planet on the Earth to Clean Up the Mess People Have Made of It (thinking of reworking Torment, at least house base, to represent the corruption of a house's dominion), and Punching Out Abrahamic God.

Play In Nomine instead - you'll have much less crap to work against in that system if this is what you want to do.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:48 am

Look, I get what people are trying to do when they suggest a system different from what I make a thread to ask about. But here's the thing. The people I know in Meat Space who game don't even want to learn Tome. I work with what is known by people who I know. I'd love to try In Nomine, but it ain't happening with the people I know.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:03 am

Koumei wrote: IIRC, deciding to go punch god in the face is a fast track towards the "Humanity 0, you become a monster NPC" thing.

I never really got that about White Wolf games. I mean, you're playing a super-powered vampire or demon or whatever, humanity 0 should be when the fun really starts. It should be a goal to work towards, not something terrible to be avoided. It should be what separates the real monsters from the posers.

What's the point of being a vampire if you can't just cut loose and murder a bunch of people for shits and giggles? The number of people who want to play Brad Pit angsting and whining about how horrible it is to be immortal and have incredible superpowers is vastly smaller than the number of people who want to play Tom Cruise doing whatever the fuck he wants with no moral compunctions whatsoever, even if he was played by a vastly inferior actor in the unfortunately lame sequel.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:06 am

hyzmarca wrote:
Koumei wrote: IIRC, deciding to go punch god in the face is a fast track towards the "Humanity 0, you become a monster NPC" thing.

I never really got that about White Wolf games. I mean, you're playing a super-powered vampire or demon or whatever, humanity 0 should be when the fun really starts. It should be a goal to work towards, not something terrible to be avoided. It should be what separates the real monsters from the posers.

What's the point of being a vampire if you can't just cut loose and murder a bunch of people for shits and giggles? The number of people who want to play Brad Pit angsting and whining about how horrible it is to be immortal and have incredible superpowers is vastly smaller than the number of people who want to play Tom Cruise doing whatever the fuck he wants with no moral compunctions whatsoever, even if he was played by a vastly inferior actor in the unfortunately lame sequel.

It's because White Wolf are the universal patrons of wangst redemption. In their eyes, we're supposed to head towards God through playing monsters who, through being monsters, realize that loving Jesus is the right thing to do.

Which surprisingly describes the views of a far too large demographic, especially in the US, where unsurprisingly, their sales are strongest. Or maybe it's just me.

An alternative theory is that basically, it's meant to attract the 'edgy Christian rebels' crowd. Which is also disturbingly large.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:48 am

Unfortunately, the morality system of nWOD is one of the things that really turned me off from it. Back when everyone around me was singing it's praises I took one look at the morality system and notice that it's impossible to create morally-upstanding murder nuns. And when I pointed this out those who recommended nWOD to me became defensive and began making the ludicrous claim that nuns who regularly murder people are somehow immoral. Of course they aren't, they're murder-nuns, they're supposed to murder people. It's part of their vows. And then should be able to keep a morality score up around 9 or 10. For some reason they just didn't get it.

Anyway, Prak Anima, if your group knows and likes 3.5 you might want to consider Monte Cook's World of Darkness. It's basically nWOD ported over to 3.5 ruleset with some flavor changes.
It also has totally fucking evil punch god in the face, flay your children alive to psychologically torment you for shits and giggles demons as a PC race.

Explicitly, the example demon PC talks about how much he loves torturing humans, but prefers psychological torment to physical torture, which he considers crude and unworthy. He then gives torturing children in front of their parents as one of his favored tactics.

It's even got punching god in the face as an explicitly good thing (apparently the creators of the multiverse are farmers who eat the universes they make. The World of Darkness gave them indigestion).

It's even got this gem Sample demonic true forms (as described by human witnesses and rare surveillance footage) are “aborted dragon fetus,” “burning skeleton covered in spiders,” “vagina centipede,” “fanged octopus thing,” “pus blob with bleeding eyes all over” and “ﬂayed skin
ﬁlled with maggots.”

Who wouldn't want to play a pus blob with bleeding eyes all over? Or a vagina centipede?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:01 am

hyzmarca wrote:Unfortunately, the morality system of nWOD is one of the things that really turned me off from it. Back when everyone around me was singing it's praises I took one look at the morality system and notice that it's impossible to create morally-upstanding murder nuns. And when I pointed this out those who recommended nWOD to me became defensive and began making the ludicrous claim that nuns who regularly murder people are somehow immoral. Of course they aren't, they're murder-nuns, they're supposed to murder people. It's part of their vows. And then should be able to keep a morality score up around 9 or 10. For some reason they just didn't get it.

That's why, in oWOD, they had other "paths" of morality. If you decided to cling to your humanity, being a murder nun is counter-productive.

In oWOD (which is where Demon fits), the reason why Vampires struggled with humanity is that being dead, their humanity was a function of will and memory of what it felt like to be alive. You had a barely sentient beast/primal urge trying to take control of you and you fought it off trying to remember what it was like being human. So murder-nun doesn't work. However, if you had the conviction and the willpower to adhere to a completely alien moral path, murder-nun is totally doable (although destructive from a gameplay sense because nobody playing a murder-nun is going to exercise restraint)

And if you want to punch God in the face, In Nomine is your setting. The idea is that angels are utterly selfless, demons are utterly selfish. It's why they fight the war so hard. If they're wrong, they're wrong on the only decision that *ever* mattered. So you can have serial killer angels and philanthropic demons and shit. It's a lot more of a grey area than even WOD manages to pull off.

However, I hate playing a celestial in In Nomine. You start out being able to be run over by a semi at 100mph and survive (one game I had like a level 5 vessel, a cat, that we determined could be ground zero in a bomb blast and walk out with over half it's hitpoints left), but then the *first* level of the corporeal song of shielding makes you immune to all physical damage. To trade off, popping a miracle like that is like ringing a dinner bell. Every celestial in the city pretty much knows exactly where you are when you do it.

Playing a human was far more interesting and less game-breaking.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:18 am

TheFlatline wrote: That's why, in oWOD, they had other "paths" of morality. If you decided to cling to your humanity, being a murder nun is counter-productive.

I am aware of the alternate paths in oVampire. The problem is that the entire concept of the Beast gets in the way of playing Lestat:Vampire Rock Star who drains groupies dry on stage while thousands of adoring fans scream his praises live and millions more watch him on TV and doesn't feel the slightest bit bad about it.

Actually, no that I think about it the Masquerade kind of gets in the way of that, too.

Anyway, it isn't too hard to fix the morality system. The easiest thing to do is drop it altogether. That won't hurt the game, as morality has really limited mechanical effects.

TheFlatline wrote:(although destructive from a gameplay sense because nobody playing a murder-nun is going to exercise restraint)

Think less Chaotic Evil kill puppies of Satan murder nun and more highly devout Catholic Assassin who takes orders directly from the Pope murder-nun.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:53 am

Honestly, Demon is essentially a mix of Vampire, Werewolf and Mage. You've got the political intrigue and cult-building (and wangst) of Vampire, the "Flip out as kill shit" (and curse the loss of your humanity and wangst over being "Scary") of Werewolf, and the "Make reality your bitch" of Mage. All I want to do is take away the parts in parentheses, and add in the "Be a god." of Mage.

In fact, the way I see it, when the PC demons confront an Earthbound, I want at least one of them to have the motivation "His worshippers could be giving all their tasty, tasty faith points to me."

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:06 am

There are three ways to do things in relation to a gaming system:

-Aided by.
-Unsupported by.
-In spite of.

Chalk another vote for Monte Cook's WoD.

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:38 pm

Mister_Sinister wrote: Demon might not really be up your alley, then. The Christianity in there is more than a little excessive. Like, nWoD levels of excessive.

No matter how many times people repeat this argument its still stunning to me every time I see it in print. Its the deffinition of an argument from ignorance. Its like objecting to how much christianty there is in halloween. The entire argument is offensive to christians, humanists, and moral relativists alike. Not that offending christians is particularlly hard....

I wonder if people who are goth have ever considered that the mere existiance of vampires who are harmed by holy water and repelled by crosses (or any religious symbol) defacto implies a supreme being of some particular stripe. I also wonder if the NWOD books had their vamps take a slightly more antagonistic tone if people would still make this argument.

If NWOD had characters who spoke of "the poor carpenter and his brainwashed apprentices" would that work?

Also at OP: I have never played demon but I have heard that like all the other OWOD you can't mix it with anything else or shit falls apart. Demons can't be OWOD mages but can dice vamps except if the vamps use some of their real "you always lose" powers. Also some people think that the game in general is to OP but its white wolf so who the hell knows.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:05 pm

Here's the thing about Demon: the Fallen - it plays like Mummy: the Resurrection, which is to say you're a supernatural spiritual being stuck in the body and form of a mortal, the mechanics are nothing distinctive and the setting material is pretty sparse and unpalatable stuff that mainly appeals to players from other oWoD games. The mechanics aren't really robust enough to mix well - as fun as it would be to have a demon-possessed garou or vampire, that shit just doesn't fly, and you may be as old as creation but a mage (or even really competent hedge sorcerer) will still hand you your ass on a silver platter with a little sprig of mint if the GM feels like it. Ironically, the best antagonists for the setting aren't other demons - it's mortals that are trying to kill you and take your powers. Unfortunately, they don't get a lot of pagespace.

I MC'd a one-off game of Demon, and I made the player-characters strippers who had been bonded with their various demons. There were zombies and a couple guys started quoting from The Prophecy, and it more or less worked.

Re: the Christian angle
The damning thing about Demon is that it is neither tremendously creative or well-researched. It's a cursory overview of medieval Christian demonology made to fit over the bones of a slightly more-Christian-than-normal WoD background skeleton. So you have God, Lucifer, different categories of angels sorted into neat little tribes, the Underworld and wraiths, and other weird shit exists and is seldom addressed. People like to compare it against In Nomine or, Ghost help us, Kult because those games are more creative and go into greater depth about their respective mythologies and really embrace it. Demon...doesn't.

Also, I have no idea what the fuck souran is on about but I'm going to call him a dumbass on general principle.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:25 pm

I think he means that it's sorta lame that people get all whiny whenever something gets in the way of pretending that Christianity and Judeo-Christian mythology never existed. I can sort of sympathize with that insofar that I think being upset about fallen angels in D:TF would be rather akin to complaining about there being vampires in V:TM. Where I--and most people in this thread, from what I can tell--lose patience with that line of reasoning is when the Morality/Humanity scales featured in WW games comes into play. A lot of people can accept the idea that the supernatural exists or that a bunch of the theological underpinnings of Christianity could make for an interesting game. Hell, I believe that despite being a big ol' atheist. Where things get annoying, however, is when you're playing shit like nWoD Hunter and you realize that stealing sammiches and first aid supplies for your cell puts you on the path to being an amoral psychopath.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:35 pm

Today, sammiches and bandages. Tomorrow, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, amirite?

souran · Post by **souran** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:20 pm

I guess I should have been clearer. I think that the argument that NWOD is "to overly christian" is a bad argument made by people who no nothing about christianty and who have a larger religious and philisophical background that could at best be charitably called cihldish.

If your complaint would then extend to the idea that a game about a concept that is really "fringe christianty" like "the war in heaven" is itself also to christian you have a real issue. We can all agree that hte most intersting character in paradise lost is Lucifer. However, to argue that you don't like the chrstian overtones of paradise lost is cataclysmically stupid.

Arguing you don't like the christianty that shows up in demon is exactly this.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:30 pm

Whipstitch wrote:I think he means that it's sorta lame that people get all whiny whenever something gets in the way of pretending that Christianity and Judeo-Christian mythology never existed. I can sort of sympathize with that insofar that I think being upset about fallen angels in D:TF would be rather akin to complaining about there being vampires in V:TM. Where I--and most people in this thread, from what I can tell--lose patience with that line of reasoning is when the Morality/Humanity scales featured in WW games comes into play. A lot of people can accept the idea that the supernatural exists or that a bunch of the theological underpinnings of Christianity could make for an interesting game. Hell, I believe that despite being a big ol' atheist. Where things get annoying, however, is when you're playing shit like nWoD Hunter and you realize that stealing sammiches and first aid supplies for your cell puts you on the path to being an amoral psychopath.

The morality system in WoD is always suspect. In nWoD it's just really really awful. But the thing that really gets peoples' dick in a vice is the Virtues and Vices system of nWoD. They replaced Nature and Demeanor with a system that forces you to describe your character in terms of Catholic theology. Even if you're a Confucian or a Buddhist or something, you still have to describe the way your personality conforms to Catholic Catechism.

It's one thing to say "for the purposes of this game, Religion X is true". That is a perfectly interesting setup for a story, whether the religion is ancient or new, common or obscure. It is quite another thing to come out swinging with the old evangelical bludgeon that "you already believe in Religion X, you're just confused and don't know it yet". Because that's just offensive.

Telling people that everyone has to and does fit into the virtues and vices schema of the Catholic Church is offensive in a way that merely having Jesus be the literal son of god who is also god made flesh who died to convince himself to forgive you for a crime you didn't commit which he would otherwise feel compelled to punish you for eternally in his literally limitless mercy and justice would not be.

-Username17