Even though I get that Demon: the Descent is a superior product when it comes to mechanics and character customization. I could never get behind the tech-gnostic theme behind it. It feels like you're playing aliens or the matrix more than actual demons. So, in my mind, the true successor of DtF has to be the Inferno supplement that came out for the nWoD. In it they explore the possibility that Demons, being liars at heart, may or may not know their true origin and might retell the story as they see fit. To me, the Earthbound make great antagonistic NPCs and so does Lucifer, but I don't think I would really add any Elohim to my vampire games.
Yeah I personally *really* like the concept of Fallen Angels, but you can't have the cake and eat it; If you're using Fallen Angels specifically related to Abrahamaic faiths, then don't try to mingle in other cultures who have their own evil spirits, it could easily have been fixed if the focus was pulled away from the Fall and the ties to Judeo-Christian stuff. I haven't played DtD so I can't comment on the God-Machine, but I agree that it definitely pulls in a very different direction.
@@Tomatowormprince And Sett, Anubis, Osiris, Horus... pretty much all of the Egyptian gods are either vampires or something unknown. Hermes is a Ascended Mage, so on and so forth. Mythra was a vampire. In WoD, most religions are just bullshit made up by one supernatural or another, throwing fallen angels into the mix is hardly any worse.
Playing Demon: the Descent but with the translation guide to give everything a Demon: the Fallen coat of paint will probably be the closest thing we get to an updated Demon the Fallen for a very long time.
I have a group of people that I typically play with. We bounce from game to game and while only two of us, myself and one other member of the group, run most of the games I'd trust any of us to run nearly any game well. Except Demon. I only know of and have only played games with one person who I believe could run a game of Demon well and it's the other frequent GM from that group. Demon grasps at a lot of concepts that I don't believe many of White Wolf's writers could do justice to, but he can and does largely because of his background as a theologian. He has a deep knowledge of the Jude-Christian religion as well as the mysticism and religious beliefs of many faiths. But more than that he understands story structure and human emotion, and thus can play on those subjects and how it relates to character development. All of this informs the ideas of faith and metaphysics embraced by Demon very well. I hope that if they ever try their hand at D5 they can find people like that to help build it.
That sounds like the kind of game I would definitely like to play. But yeah I think there's a lot of demand on the Players and ST which other splats might not have. I would *really* like to have a D5, but like you said it's really a kind of a mindfield to work with, and Demon is far from their more popular splats, it probably didn't sell even close to Vampire's numbers.
As someone who devotes a lot of personal time and study to real world concepts of magic and the occult across cultures I would think the important distinction between demon and angel is that demons are closer to the powers of the earth and the manifested world thus being able to offer things like power, riches, and other rewards in this life. Higher spirits of course find this lower world to be anathema to their nature and are basically only called upon (if at all) to help raise people up from this world to a level of sainthood. A concept like this appears in many cultures and beliefs. In Jewish mysticism there are the four worlds and the lowest of these, the world of action, has the most lie mixed with truth and thus the spirits on that level are the darkest because they're the most distorted from their true nature. Plus, I've seen the idea pushed around a lot that spiritual beings gain power from mortal worship, and I guess that makes sense here because this is the same universe as Mage basically. That said, in the past offerings were made to empower idols that had been implanted in idols using hekau, seed mantras or other versions of the concept of words of power. Food offerings such as animal sacrifice were used to empower that spirit's connection to the idol which would sort of act as a focal point for the power of that spirit and its influence on the surrounding world. This concept is discussed heavily in Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires by Aaron Leitch who I find really tends to know his stuff. If I were to redo Demon, I would scrap the idea that there is a concrete backstory at all per se. The backstory would be more abstract and metaphysical. As creation formed on denser and more concrete levels of reality the spiritual forces of the lowest layers closest to physical creation, the level of the greatest maya (illusion, Druj (evil/lie of mortality), hevel (smoke or vanity and vexation) and dead matter had their nature corrupted by proximity to this lowest level of creation. When these forces are called upon to provide material rewards they gain a sort of consciousness and identity but that identity is informed by their nature as lower forces on the level of dead matter which veils the true nature of the world so when they try to explain what they are and how they came to be in terms humans can understand they tend to tell stories about fallen angels who rebelled against the creator or monsters created by the great dragon Tiamat because concepts like falling, rebelling against spirit, and dragons are the closest analogies they have to convey their ephemeral nature relative to higher spirits. Actually, I would subdivide these lower spirits into those closer to beasts, death and the earth itself which are the demons proper and at the lower end can manifest personalities that are quite violent and "evil" vs those who represent the spirits of nations, of emotions like love and abstract concepts like war etc... these are the devils (dia bolos) those who divide or throw apart. This second class are not always what we would recognize as evil per se, often being held as gods, particularly by early agrarian cultures and societies. While not evil the devils often represent precisely the categories by which the world is divided into various nations and professions and identities. They too can often manifest as deceivers and particularly the spirits or devils over corrupt societies can become more evil than any demon and even lord over many hosts of demons. The players play as individuals who, either because of possession or invocation rituals have been more or less replaced by these spiritual entities of the lower-level, illusory reality. They often don't immediately understand who or what they are right away as the nature of their spirit attempts to reconcile itself with the newly acquired human mind which feebly attempts to translate spiritual natures and instincts into concrete thoughts and actions. For those possessed by demons they can often lean toward the bestial, violent, cruel and sadistic as the raging force of insensate matter is more a creature of urge and instinct. Those who have invoked a deity/devil can be more refined though their first instinct is to usually attempt to hide their new identity and convince friends and family that no change has taken place. They then tend to pursue goals according to their nature, for instance a spirit of hearth and home may try to get a couple on the brink of divorce to reconcile their relationship. They tend to come into conflict with emissaries of the divine who, attempting to "rescue" humanity ever since the "manifestation" of the lower reality after the "fall" where the demons and devils tend to want to get people to embrace their lower nature, their desire for earthly over heavenly rewards, and their baser urges. The since the player characters inhabit human bodies they are able to choose whether to embrace their demonic and diabolical nature and pursue earthly rewards or gain new insight from their experiences having a human mind and seek to reconcile the lower world with the higher and ascend to a more spiritual higher reward.
Maybe the mystery of Demon was in the unknown Whys of the demon lords? Haha but I am glad to hear about the Neighborhood Deity idea. That's how I've always run them in not-demon chronicles
Thank you! I really do see a lot of potential in that field! Since Faith is such a necessity, I would totally see them develop into something akin to American Gods.
I live in Nashville and by total chance and what I consider luck I met a developer of the game and his wife. I was lucky enough to play in a game of Demon that he ran. I still think about that game today and as a tabletop gamer it is one of the coolest things ever. I say all this to answer some of your thoughts about the game. Yes it was rushed at times and if I remember correctly he didn’t even know that the old WoD was ending at the launch of the game. Lots of plots had to be unfortunately cut. It was not meant to be only focused on Jewish and Christian faiths. That was just all they got to unfortunately. As for the powers in the game if memory serves me correctly again that section was being written by someone who flaked and had nothing at deadline so the developer through no fault of his own had days to write up all the powers and mechanics to them. I thought that it was amazing that he was able to do it as well as he did. Honestly though I was such a fanboy that I was just happy to be able to meet and play with them.
In my group we playa. Broad world of darkness campaign wher everyone can ply whatever they want. Like I’m playing a hunter while at the other members are a werewolf, a demon, 2 mages, and another hunter. The game works fairly well despite the power difference because everyone has an in character reason to work together. Granted we all ply very fast and loose with the rules and lore and all the games we run are all in the same timeline and world so it’s really fun with a lot of references to previous games
I'm just bitting into this setting, coming out of Werewolf the apocalypse, and I feel it works best (for me) after cutting out World origin story. I like werewolfs mythology rooted deeply in animalistic/naturalistic mysticism (Gaia, Luna, Helios, Wyrm, Wild, Weaver, Totem spirits etc.) and I feel you can easly put Earthbound and daemons into this frame as more or less powerful ancient spirits. There might have been war between them, some kind of "schism". Maybe their "Creator" as mystic for them as gods are for us. There might have been a "holy war" without the reall need for the creation myth to be true ;) I like the idea of all religions being influenced/tainted by demons and vampires - as in "spirituality is fine, organised religion is bad" kind of thing. I also feel that Demon the fallen might work great for solo game. Im on my way to test it ;)
Given the amorphous nature of the world of darkness setting (Mage just makes it flat out canon that anything people believe is true to an extent), whenever I storytell I just say the Fallen are one of the many, many entities called "demons" in the setting. Any Infernalist can draw upon any number of these disparate dark forces, from Fallen to Banes to eldritch forces to evil spirits and so on. I also generally make the Fallen come in two flavours; those driven insane by their imprisonment and those that are still the relatively noble (if often alien minded and sometimes amoral) creatures that sided with mankind against god (who is one of the many creatures that may or may not have made the world (and may or may not even exist at all) in the mists of prehistory).
So the term demon comes from the word deamon, its actually a catch all name for all supernatural spirits from gods like Zeus to Ginn to earth spirits and everything inbetween oddly the only spirit not grouped under the term Deamon are Angles.
I was hoping we would go over “the god machine” ive heard about in wod apparently gods on vacation at best or abandoned the experiment at worst either way we have an omnipotent mechanical being keeping the experiment going. I like the idea of new angels being more constructs and the glitches an omnipotent machine might create or allow
Are you thinking of Demon: The Descent, and not Demon: The Fallen? This video is about Demon: The Fallen. The God-Machine and demons as algorithms gone rogue are from Demon: The Descent. whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/God-Machine
I'm not religious, but I still feel a little uncomfortable about this game's story. As for the version for the Chronicles of Darkness... I dunno, it feels a little dense and complex for my simple mind to handle. So I guess these game lines are not meant for me. I wish you'd been the one writing this game though, your ideas sound a lot better...
The part about the explicit bad acts done to show off how bad people are and usually just to be edgy are also one of my biggest criticisms of Exalted 1st edition as well as Demon. All kinds of sexual deviance was rubbed in your face for either shock value or because the author was barely disguising their fetish. I am glad someone else saw the "Why would they work together‽" problem. Good criticisms of the game but also good pointing out the many positives the setting did get right. Quality video. Edit for spelling
It's really hard to put into words why I don't like rape specifically as a narrative element in a lot of writing. I think mainly because it's consistently used against women or, rare but still frequent, to demasculate men, and often it is as a replacement for death and it's never really about the victims, but rather how it's kind of like an attack on a "resource" instead of the theft of agency and power and personal ownership that rape actually is. tl;dr: Rape in fiction is often really lazy writing, or outright pornographic
I would not compare with Demon the Descent because this is much related with technology, the God-Machine and a more close ambience to Matrix, Alien, Ex-machina and we can think about a plot relation with Virtual Adepts and Technocracy. Demon the Fallen can be seen as an unfinished product but we have the golden rule to overcome this. The gaps of understanding can be properly filled with some discretion from the storyteller.
I really don’t think Descent is comparable at all to Fallen. Descent is the Matrix with some Abrahamic imagery and language, whereas Fallen is a game about being an actual demon.
The primary reason I'm comparing the two is because both are named Demon, and were released by *roughly* the same people (albeit OPP instead of WW for DtD); they also both deal with playing the beings who created and creat eh Universe; As for the details, I absolutely agree with you that they're completely different.
@@ThePrimogen They don't really even have that much in common. The god machine didn't have any involvement in creating the universe {but it did reboot it once or twice}.
This has been a very interesting series to me, as I only had a cursory knowledge of D:tF before this. It's a setting that certainly has its merits... and flaws. This video summing up your observations on the setting as a whole has been my favorite. I wouldn't mind that becoming a new series! The Primogen's thoughts on the assorted WoD lines.
Glad you enjoyed it, thank you so much for the feedback! I might do it for other splats as well, especially the smaller ones. I'm going to be covering Wraith next!
You've done a fantastic job on all of these videos, thanks for all the hard work man! I'm not necessarily against explicit lore, it's just that the lore was half baked. I think Demon works best as a supplement to the lore of the other games as well, I like using Demon lore for Dark Ages Vampire.
The group I was a part of managed to actually include angels in the chronicle we were doing as antagonists/uneasy allies via the ST having it to where a good number of Demon Hunters weren't mortals but Elohim who took on "mortal guises" to blend in with humanity. And the angels who showed up fell into 3 categories each led by a high-ranking archangel who each had their own set of mortal Demon Hunters as followers the angels and mortal followers who were pure antagonists aka the zealous extremists who would kill/unmake Demons even heroic Reconcilers like my character with very violent prejudice aka had orders that boiled down to unmake/destroy any Demon on sight regardless of faction/alignment were led by Michael, the angels, and mortal followers who were more anti-villains aka gave Demons a chance of being banished of their own free will or being forced back to the abyss with getting unmade/killed as a last resort were led by Uriel, and the angels, and mortal followers who reluctantly allied with heroic Demons were led by Raphael. And part of pulling this off was the ST having it to where the Demon Hunters who were archangels/angels/Elohim actually belonged to a house and had a Apocalyptic Form that represented a visage of their true angelic form and would automatically know what the Celestial Name, and True Name of each Demon is.
I could care less if it has Judeo-Christian theology. Vampire is rooted in this as well. The backround setting is simply told from the fallen angel point of view. This doesn't mean many or most pagan gods are not demons. The core book did decribe how being locked in a sensory deprivation chamber for 1000s of years drove them mad, and unlike the Earthbound, the Fallen, entered tinto mortals with all their memories and feelings managed their insanity. I like the idea that the Creator left the Telurian and took its divine spark with it, leaving the Telurian to degrade into Oblivion. A perfect WoD setting.
Yes, you did. 6:20 "The factions of Demon: The Fallen is another thing I really struggle with when thinking about the NEW world of darkness, sorry, Chronicles of Darkness"
I’m making the connection with the faction system of the CoD which was a recurring theme in those books. You won’t find factions in old World of Darkness content outside of Demon which was the last (technically second to last counting Orpheus) splat released before the shift to nWoD.
@@ThePrimogen It's not really true: Vampire has sects Mage has Conventions/Traditions/Crafts Wraith has Guilds Werewolf has Tribes Changeling has Houses and Courts These are all factions, and many of the are almost at each others throats even when technically allied. If anything, CofD streamlined its own and made them BETTER suited to play in the same party, in almost all lines.
