The Gaming Den

[Prak_Anima]

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.
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[TheFlatline]

It came out after In Nomine.

[Korwin]

[Mister_Sinister]

[Prak_Anima]

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

[Schwarzkopf]

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.
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[Prak_Anima]

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.
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[Koumei]

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.
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[Prak_Anima]

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.
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[Mister_Sinister]

[Prak_Anima]

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.
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[hyzmarca]

[Mister_Sinister]

[hyzmarca]

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).

[TheFlatline]

[hyzmarca]

[Prak_Anima]

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."
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[Dogbert]

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.
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[souran]

[Ancient History]

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.
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[Whipstitch]

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_Anima]

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

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.

[FrankTrollman]