Playing at war in heaven/Ascended Demons and Fallen Angels

[Grek]

Yeah, the problem isn't that you're not allowed to use a figure that resembles the Christian God as the main antagonist to the demon faction, it's that the "God is all knowing; Lucifer's rebellion is all part of the Divine Plan" plot point ruins all plots that are not devoted to wanking about how awesome the Jehovah expy is.

[Prak]

Angels, and thus fallen angels, are effectively gods. They are higher powers. The fact that the bible says there's only one god does not change the story archetype.

Grek: So what? Why the fuck does it matter that at the theoretical endgame God just stands there and says "Keikaku?"

[Omegonthesane]

Yeah, the problem isn't that you're not allowed to use a figure that resembles the Christian God as the main antagonist to the demon faction, it's that the "God is all knowing; Lucifer's rebellion is all part of the Divine Plan" plot point ruins all plots that are not devoted to wanking about how awesome the Jehovah expy is.

You can have the Really Quite Powerful Fuckhead of a Creator God without making him unstoppable or other such bullshit.

((Warning: the above game had Satan and Lucifer as separate entities, the latter being mostly a traditional portrayal while the former is basically YHVH's beatstick from Jewish mythology))

Grek: So what? Why the fuck does it matter that at the theoretical endgame God just stands there and says "Keikaku?"

It means you did not successfully rebel against God's actual will. If you only want to be rebelling against God's apparent will as expressed in such a way as to make you successfully rebel against His apparent will, regardless of whether or not that's "Keikaku", then I don't see the problem either.

[Prak]

Really it's more of a "who gives a shit about God's will? I care about rebelling against the oppression he attempts to perpetrate." If I expressed that poorly before, I apologize.

[Username17]

Which religion has the giant-ghost demons? I can't name that one, but I now want to.

Since no one jumped in, the answer is Christianity. The children of angels and humans are Nephilim - giants with six fingers on each hand. And when they were killed in the great flood, they were reduced to evil spirits who walk the Earth and march in the hosts of hell as demons. Don't worry, the number of Christians who can successfully "name that religion" is pretty small. Lay Christianity bears little resemblance to official Christian theology. While over three quarters of Americans identify as Christians, the numbers drop pretty fast if you ask whether people believe in actual tenets of Christianity. Twelve percent of Christians don't believe in Angels. Six in ten American Christians don't think Satan or the Holy Spirit really exist. They don't even bother polling about obscure shit like Nephilim and Ophanim, because American Christians don't even know what those are.

Why the fuck does it matter that at the theoretical endgame God just stands there and says "Keikaku?"

Because that makes the whole thing pointless. You're talking about a game where the battles are scripted professional wrestling. It's dumb.

the protagonists rebel against the oppressively draconian higher power which created them

As Voss pointed out, that's basically this. "Dad's a dick, so we're rebelling" is simply not very compelling. It's just teenage rebellion. If you want things to be at all sympathetic or interesting, you need a better reason for rebellion than "dad is such a fascist conformer, man!" And Christianity really doesn't give you one. I mean sure, Jehova is a fascist and a dick, and I could see rebelling against him, but there isn't any way to present that which doesn't sound like petulant teenage rebellion.

This is again a place where Eastern mythologies step in. The mandate of heaven is cyclical in Chinese mythos. And the Celestial Sphere is imagined as a bureaucracy, rather than as a single dude who created everything. We can all imagine bureaucracies becoming corrupt and inefficient and needing to be overhauled or overthrown. "Heaven is no longer doing its job, and we need to fight it" is a rallying cry that makes sense and sounds adult - in a way that "I hate my dad" really does not.

-Username17

[Prak]

"Heaven is run by an oppressive monarch who proclaims to love his subjects and yet maintains a secret police, a torture palace, and demands that his subjects live one specific way and propitiate him daily."

There, is that more adult?

Also, what would you think a game where you played Thor, Tyr, Baldur and Uller and went around fighting giants? A game where you played Zeus, Ares, Hades and Athena fighting Titans?

[TheFlatline]

4 pages of wanting to portray God as a dick and not one reference to His Dark Materials? I'm actually disappointed. We haven't even touched the "God is a senile imbecile" concept yet.

[Omegonthesane]

4 pages of wanting to portray God as a dick and not one reference to His Dark Materials? I'm actually disappointed. We haven't even touched the "God is a senile imbecile" concept yet.

That only really showed in HDM in conjunction with "and God's 2IC is an equally large or even considerably larger Richard with equal or greater ambitions to do evil shit", but is consistent with In Nomine's evidence of "God hasn't been seen in any verifiable way for millennia" or the early-game plot of ShinMegaTen 2 where the four Seraphs haven't actually seen YHVH for ages and are trying to do what they think is His will. (To the point of creating a fake YHVH with their belief and prayers. Oops.)

[TheFlatline]

True, and you see it here and there.

The main idea from IN and SMT2 is that God is an absentee landlord and that Angels/celestials, while endlessly wise, are not infallible, and this whole fucking mess is due to entities trying to extrapolate a limited amount of communication into a comprehensive dogmatic system of beliefs (sort of like Jesus/Christianity now that I come to think of it). The problems start when you try to stretch those ideas and teachings or commandments to shit that was never mentioned or anticipated.

Still, HDM is worth looking at as a specific inverse of Paradise Lost. And while I generally agree with Frank there's more gold to be mined as a full-blown RPG product by staying away from the Judeo-Christian concepts of the "war" between heaven & hell without some serious operation and deviation, I think there's an immense amount of material that *could* be mined for a really excellent campaign.

I mean, look at the themes in this thread without even going to puppy-eating: sibling rivalry (between humanity and celestials, and even angels and demons), daddy issues (wanting to be the chosen of God), free will vs deliberate design, servitude, the extrapolation of philosophy into dogma on either side. That's not even mining Narnia, HDM, SMT2, Paradise Lost, or any of the fiction surrounding the concept and playing with that intentionally.

Those are a lot of deep, pretty heavy themes, and properly pulled off it could be an incredibly emotional game to play in with the right gamers who got the concepts and really worked with the premise to explore some of these issues. And you could do those without resorting to eating babies, or even necessarily that God is a dick.

I've always felt that if there's a God who created heavens and the earth, it's beyond all comprehension, because it necessarily would have to exist outside the universe. And created entities have trouble with concepts such as irrational existence outside of creation. I mean, we study the root of -1, and give it the symbol i, and a *lot* of math is based on the concept of irrational numbers like i, but we can't physically represent the root of -1. We have to abstract it and treat the concept as sort of a black box that we shuffle around in mathematics to make irrational problems sort of rational again, except for that black box of irrationality.

If you don't need to go down the route of "God is an asshole", you can take the offramp at "God is incomprehensible. Unless it dumbs itself down a LOT and takes the time to talk to us in a way that we both recognize as divine and in a way that we can understand, we're probably never going to grok God, and even then, we only grok what we're told" and lose almost nothing in the translation. In fact, you can gain an awful lot of ambiguity and grey area and still retain the angelic asshole brigade.

PS: The idea of creating a false god reminds me of Voltaire's "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Which brings up an entirely *new* line of possibilities.

[Username17]

"Heaven is run by an oppressive monarch who proclaims to love his subjects and yet maintains a secret police, a torture palace, and demands that his subjects live one specific way and propitiate him daily."

There, is that more adult?

Only slightly. The problem with fighting "the creator" is that among those who haven't committed suicide it is generally considered to be not particularly controversial that "existence" beats "non-existence." So the creator of the universe gets an intuitive free pass on almost any conceivable shitty thing about the way the universe is, because the alternative is apparently to not have a universe. Saying that revolution is required because the universe as-is "sucks" really comes off as petulant teenage rebellion.

You really need some sort of rallying cry for revolt that's better than "Dad's a jerk! The world sucks!"

Also, what would you think a game where you played Thor, Tyr, Baldur and Uller and went around fighting giants? A game where you played Zeus, Ares, Hades and Athena fighting Titans?

See, that would be much better because the rebellion has a more viscerally understandable rallying cry: infanticide. The Rimtursar tried to wipe out the Aesir. Chronos ate his children. The whole "existence is better than non-existence" thing excuses nothing if the creator is already trying to kill you.

You really need some sort of event that justifies fighting a war in Heaven, on Earth, and in all the Underworlds to upset the order of the spheres. The Olympians and Aesir had that. And while "We've entered the Medieval Era and have now unlocked Commerce civics" is probably a genuinely justifiable reason to have a period of anarchy, your five minute pitch is going to need something less technical.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

"Heaven is run by an oppressive monarch who proclaims to love his subjects and yet maintains a secret police, a torture palace, and demands that his subjects live one specific way and propitiate him daily."

There, is that more adult?

Only slightly. The problem with fighting "the creator" is that among those who haven't committed suicide it is generally considered to be not particularly controversial that "existence" beats "non-existence." So the creator of the universe gets an intuitive free pass on almost any conceivable shitty thing about the way the universe is, because the alternative is apparently to not have a universe. Saying that revolution is required because the universe as-is "sucks" really comes off as petulant teenage rebellion.

You really need some sort of rallying cry for revolt that's better than "Dad's a jerk! The world sucks!"

I feel that your logic is missing a few steps.

If you could have created reality better, and you did not, and you are provably capable of improving reality and choose not to without a fully explored and justified reason, then you are acting in the wrong, as surely as a parent molesting their infant.

So, less "Dad's a jerk! The world sucks!" and more "Dad's molested and otherwise abused the kids too long, I'm going to stop him".

[Grek]

The "Demons hate God for making the world be so evil" trope works a whole lot better Heaven existed first and Earth/Hell was created later as a punishment. "He cast us into a lake of fire!" is a good enough rallying cry as any.

[Omegonthesane]

The "Demons hate God for making the world be so evil" trope works a whole lot better Heaven existed first and Earth/Hell was created later as a punishment. "He cast us into a lake of fire!" is a good enough rallying cry as any.

It's pretty definitional in most takes on Christian mythology that Heaven existed before either Hell or Earth, as it's where the Creator is for all eternity.

[Username17]

If you could have created reality better, and you did not, and you are provably capable of improving reality and choose not to without a fully explored and justified reason, then you are acting in the wrong, as surely as a parent molesting their infant.

So, less "Dad's a jerk! The world sucks!" and more "Dad's molested and otherwise abused the kids too long, I'm going to stop him".

Any parent could have been better. You're not a rocket brain scientist, and your parents probably could have encouraged you more or spent more time with you or something. The fact that a parent could have been better doesn't mean that their actual job was Bad.

Further, when it comes to "universes" we actually only have a sample size of one. And we can only see a very tiny sliver of the one we happen to be in. The Panglossian claim that this is the best of all possible worlds is no more or less persuasive than the pessimistic proposition that this is the worst. The claim that the universe could have been created any better is on very thin ice. To demonstrate that to be the case, you'd need to demonstrate a better universe. And since we lack a statistical sample of the only one we have broad enough to tell with certainty how good this universe is (assuming we even had a metric for such things, which we do not), demonstrating that another universe was meaningfully superior would be beyond our means at the moment. Possibly beyond our means ever.

But even if we showed that another universe was better and that the current universe was by extension worse than it could have been, that still doesn't demonstrate that our current universe is "bad." To do that, we'd have to establish a proper set of minimum standards for what a universe should be about. Then, we would be able to say with any confidence at all that the current universe was substandard (still assuming of course that despite present impossibility; we were able to observe a statistically sufficient portion of the universe).

Really, to show that the dude running the universe is doing a bad enough job to be "substandard" with the amount of information it is even vaguely conceivable that we could have, you'd have to have an event where the dude on the throne started doing a worse job. Which of course is why I suggest talking about a sclerotic and corrupt celestial bureaucracy that is neglecting their duties. Because that's a thing where you could establish standards of conduct ("Doing their job like they used to") and that the current practices are not up to that standard.

Alternately, you could just go the Chronos/Evangelion route, where the creator just decides that it's time for you to go and your only choices are to fight or die.


-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

If you could have created reality better, and you did not, and you are provably capable of improving reality and choose not to without a fully explored and justified reason, then you are acting in the wrong, as surely as a parent molesting their infant.

So, less "Dad's a jerk! The world sucks!" and more "Dad's molested and otherwise abused the kids too long, I'm going to stop him".

Any parent could have been better. You're not a rocket brain scientist, and your parents probably could have encouraged you more or spent more time with you or something. The fact that a parent could have been better doesn't mean that their actual job was Bad.

Further, when it comes to "universes" we actually only have a sample size of one. And we can only see a very tiny sliver of the one we happen to be in. The Panglossian claim that this is the best of all possible worlds is no more or less persuasive than the pessimistic proposition that this is the worst. The claim that the universe could have been created any better is on very thin ice. To demonstrate that to be the case, you'd need to demonstrate a better universe. And since we lack a statistical sample of the only one we have broad enough to tell with certainty how good this universe is (assuming we even had a metric for such things, which we do not), demonstrating that another universe was meaningfully superior would be beyond our means at the moment. Possibly beyond our means ever.

But even if we showed that another universe was better and that the current universe was by extension worse than it could have been, that still doesn't demonstrate that our current universe is "bad." To do that, we'd have to establish a proper set of minimum standards for what a universe should be about. Then, we would be able to say with any confidence at all that the current universe was substandard (still assuming of course that despite present impossibility; we were able to observe a statistically sufficient portion of the universe).

Really, to show that the dude running the universe is doing a bad enough job to be "substandard" with the amount of information it is even vaguely conceivable that we could have, you'd have to have an event where the dude on the throne started doing a worse job. Which of course is why I suggest talking about a sclerotic and corrupt celestial bureaucracy that is neglecting their duties. Because that's a thing where you could establish standards of conduct ("Doing their job like they used to") and that the current practices are not up to that standard.

Alternately, you could just go the Chronos/Evangelion route, where the creator just decides that it's time for you to go and your only choices are to fight or die.

-Username17

Technically, I haven't explicitly stated information that contradicts me being a scientist researching rocket brains. But, that's not the point.

The case given by the actual Christian myths is that God is doing a completely perfect job, and threatens Hell upon anyone who questions any part of his thesis. If His idea of a "perfect job" includes suppressing those who disagree anything like as brutally as "eternal torture" then even if you aren't among the damned to start with, it is reasonable to oppose Him with military force.

But, then, I'm in the camp that feels that nonexistence for absolutely everyone is morally superior to eternal torture for even a single person, no matter how evil that person's deeds before they started being eternally tortured. This was in fact part of what turned me away from Christianity. So I may be a bit biased. But seriously - if YHVH is promising Hell for the X% and Heaven for the 100-X%, and Azathoth is promising to eat everybody's souls, I'm backing Azathoth for all positive nonzero X.

[Avoraciopoctules]

That's a pretty interesting point. I know that one of my main beefs with Call of Cthulhu and related games was the fact that it seemed plausible to have totally rational cultists, but this is the first time I've seen a really eloquent justification for team Azathoth.

[TheFlatline]

Only slightly. The problem with fighting "the creator" is that among those who haven't committed suicide it is generally considered to be not particularly controversial that "existence" beats "non-existence."

"I want to get off this fucking merry-go-round" is actually a Thing in literature. Off the top of my head one of the main protagonists in Wheel of Time intentionally turned to The Dark One as a calculated move, since light has to win every conflict, but dark has to only win once. Then he lost and was chucked into limbo for 4000 years and decided really, that just *ending* everything is preferable to continued existence.

[RadiantPhoenix]

among those who haven't committed suicide it is generally considered to be not particularly controversial that "existence" beats "non-existence."

Isn't Buddhism an exception?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Which of course is why I suggest talking about a sclerotic and corrupt celestial bureaucracy that is neglecting their duties. Because that's a thing where you could establish standards of conduct ("Doing their job like they used to") and that the current practices are not up to that standard.

I don't find this compelling either. If you get mild brain damage from heatstroke as a parent and do uniformly worse raising your children from then-on, that still doesn't in of itself justify rebellion. You might just go from 'father of the year' to 'pretty okay dad'. Or even if you end up as a below-average dad, that doesn't justify a call to Social Services. If your regiment goes from being the best-ranked one year to 'meets expectations' the next, that doesn't justify the XO flipping out and court martialling the officers.

It's not the amount you fall, but where you end up.

[Lago PARANOIA]

While we're on the subject, is there anything particularly wrong with teenage rebellion fantasies other than that they're sophomoric, self-centered, and poorly thought-out? Not just in a moral or sociopolitical sense, but even a basic marketing sense?

When you think about TTRPGs people actually unironically play, most of them are at their core embarrassing wish fulfillment fantasies that don't really stand up to scrutiny. How many times have you seen people crack jokes about the basic 'rummage in musty dungeons, kill maybe sapient creatures, use the spoils to enrich yourself, do it all over again' trope that underpins D&D? How many lame parodies or pastiches of (cyber)punk have you had to endure where the cool of the protagonists is stripped away and they're presented as disaffected nerds and/or pretentious terrorists? How many jokes and hatchet jobs have been done on the basic plot and morals of Star Wars? And hell, we won't even get into White Wolf crap.

Frankly, as far as cringeworthy premises to center a game around go, 'no, fuck YOU angel dad' is pretty far down the list compared to things they've actually made TTRPGs about. I mean, fuck, Dark Age of Comics and all.

[Koumei]

among those who haven't committed suicide it is generally considered to be not particularly controversial that "existence" beats "non-existence."

Isn't Buddhism an exception?

Now, I stared into the abyss and I have to say, there is a damn threshold where existence actually loses out to non-existence. Medication didn't change my outlook, it changed the level I was at. For plenty of people, if they've tried the alternatives I support their choice for non-existence. "Nothing, you're dead" isn't as awesome as sex, drugs or rock and roll, but it kicks the shit out of suffering.

That said, in Buddhism, you get reincarnated, and you haven't actually learned your lesson from it because you don't get to keep any memories or knowledge, so basically you'll get reincarnated into something else that will try to not exist - it's a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Obviously if you're in Disgaea, then reincarnation is always a great idea and something you should do as soon as you have the chance.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Yeah, my understanding is that in Buddhism the whole point of the religion is to successfully reach nonexistence. (because ordinary suicide doesn't cut it)

[Koumei]

I think you need to reincarnate about 9999 levels worth of existence, into a Genius of the sixth tier of your class with something like 200 bonus points. But that might just be Disgaea, not Buddhism. It's hard to remember which is which, they both have plant people.

[ErichZahn]

4 pages of wanting to portray God as a dick and not one reference to His Dark Materials? I'm actually disappointed. We haven't even touched the "God is a senile imbecile" concept yet.

Or the age old question...

[Username17]

Nirvana isn't the same as non-existence. It's permanent and without want, but it's contented. You're free from karma, and you couldn't have achieved it had you never been born in the first place. It's not equivalent to being destroyed utterly and permanently. It's specifically superior to having not been created.

While there are certainly people who draw a line that says such and such an insult takes the universe too far in the bad direction and it's time to blow everything up - those people are not generally considered sympathetic. When someone says that in a movie, you know they are the villain. Indeed, you know they are probably not even a terribly deep or interesting villain.

Most real world revolutions come because of a combinations of advances in political and economic theory that lead people to believe they can run this dog and pony show better than it is currently being run, and a series of gaffs by the current administration that lead people to conclude that the leaders aren't to be trusted with the reigns of power. There are four (or five, if you hate French Catholics) intolerable acts, and it also required the rights of man and such to get the US Revolution started. Martin Luther nailed ninety five demands to the church door. And so on. South Carolina's declaration of causes of secession is basically "We want to keep slaves, bitches!" but they still manage to drag it out with rants about various trivial insults over the previous 95 years.

For an RPG, it just isn't practical to throw down a genuinely valid set of reasons for a revolution. You pretty much have to cartoon it. Which means among other things that you need some short and simple set of intolerable acts that happened right before the declaration of war.

-Username17