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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



JcDent posted:

How do you replenish your supply of "a lot"?
I think it's just something you, as a demon, can... do. Like sure, if you give a bunch of people Resources 5 out of a clear blue sky, it might attract the God-Machine's attention... but the important part there is "the God-Machine's attention," not "a bunch of people now have Resources 5." I think there was some changeling pact that was ruled completely legal where someone has to bake you cookies once a year as a show of affection and in return gets those Resources.

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The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

It costs Willpower I think to make your end of the Pact 'happen'.

lofi
Apr 2, 2018




You're all super selling me on Demon here, but what do PCs do beyond "hide from the Man"?

Flavivirus
Dec 13, 2011

The next stage of evolution.

lofi posted:

You're all super selling me on Demon here, but what do PCs do beyond "hide from the Man"?

Demon doesn't have social splats like Vampire and Mage; instead you're defined by how you want to fight back against the God-Machine. You might be working to disrupt infrastructure wherever possible, or work to understand and unpick it; you might be trying to lead a life of pleasure and hedonism, you might even be trying to become an angel again but on your terms. And a big part of the game is working out how much you can trust the other PCs, when their end goals might be wildly different to yours.

e: I mean, when I read it, I literally ripped off Person of Interest and had the group's Suborned Infrastructure occasionally spit out a name of someone the God-Machine was interested in, somewhere in Manhattan, and it was up to the group to investigate how exactly. We moved on from that framing structure quite quickly but it was a nice starting point.

Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Sep 27, 2019

Rubix Squid
Apr 17, 2014

The Lone Badger posted:

It costs Willpower I think to make your end of the Pact 'happen'.

The willpower cost depends on how lopsided or imbalanced, in terms of benefits, the pact is and if it is a soul pact, it costs an entire willpower dot.


lofi posted:

You're all super selling me on Demon here, but what do PCs do beyond "hide from the Man"?

Investigate the Man's plans, disrupt them, take his stuff , subvert it to your purposes, and if you're feeling big blow up the stuff that's too hot to take.

For example the God-Machine has some temporal fractures running in Seattle alternate history scenarios on a loop so maybe if you played your cards right you could steal one, cut it off from the Machine, and declare it yours.

Alternatively, to pull an example from own DtD game, it could be using the Japanese whaling industry to collect the materials it needs to produce the very special kind of paint that it puts on the Tokyo tower to complete an occult matrix designed to steal a fraction of a second from everyone who sees the tower - live or through video or photo - for the purpose of rewinding time. If that wasn't crazy you enough, you could ramp it up to a more apocalyptic scale where the God-Machine is using cyborg squid (the part of one which the Ring found in the gut of a whale from the aforementioned example) to excavate the subterranean Infrastructure from several million years ago that now resides far beneath the Marianas Trench so that it can reactive even older Infrastructure on the moon to make its light deadly so that the Earth can be reset to a clean slate for whatever it wants next.

Rubix Squid fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Sep 27, 2019

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

One of my favorite Demon PCs was an Inquisitor/Integrator. Inquisitors want to gather as much information as possible for their own safety, and Integrators want to return to the God-Machine on their own terms. His goal was to try and understand and model the mind of the God-Machine, such as it was, so that he could reprogram it into a more positive deity. Other PCs just wanted to blow everything up; we were able to work together because on a small timescale our goals aligned - pruning key Infrastructure aided both goals by allowing my PC to see how the Machine would react to the loss of that particular bit of itself (and thus produce a more accurate model) and the Saboteurs got to blow up part of the Machine.

Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Sep 27, 2019

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Demon parties are absolutely supposed to be gripped by cold war spy paranoia. It's a feature, not a bug.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
Everyone is supposed to be concerned and afraid all the time. It's pretty dope.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Night Horrors: Enemy Action
Part 3: I, Lucifer


Requisite Cannibalism Monster Of The Book Achieved

Marcus Allen Bartley was born full of hate and hunger. At first, devouring the flesh was just an instinct, but with each bite, flashes of his mind returned to him. Nights on the prowl, the screams of victims, the rending of skin and bone - it was grace. As he ate his victims, he took their memories to fill the void within him, making him feel whole. And eventually, he felt the Machine's voice, he followed it, and in a hidden place, he saw the vessel strapped to the table. He broke the machines, he slaughtered the workers defending them, and he took the figure on the table. He dragged it back, heard it cry and weep in fear, and eventually he ate it and was reborn. The man on the table became part of him, giving him direction. He still has trouble thinking, but he knows he is more now. Everything slipped away again, though, and he became unsure of who he was, if he was even an independent mind. It confused him, and he knew eating would fix it.

He began with humans. Easiest, given how plentiful they are, how easy to catch - and yet, they knew so little and refused to sell him their lives. So he learned to hunt better, how to keep them locked away in his abandoned house on the city's edge, in the darkness. He listened to them in his pit and learned what they wanted most. If he ate them too fast, he gained nothing - only the littlest bits that they didn't care about. If he learned what they really wanted, though - then he could feast. Thus, he learned to bargain with his captives. He broke them before offering them a chance at freedom, if they could just escape the home and make it out by morning. He gave them hope, and thus he made the pact. One hour to flee and find safety, or to get as far from him as they could, and then he'd begin the hunt. If they made it to morning they were free. If he caught them, they became part of him, and he would fill his void with their essence.

Marcus wrote notes with each hunt, writing shakily in cheap notebooks. He didn't want to lose his thoughts again. One day, he'd eat enough that he'd be able to read his words and they wouldn't be able to leave him. Three times, he lost the game. The cops came for him, but he was stronger and faster. They took his books, destroyed his home, but he became stronger and his legend spread. Each time he would find a new lair and begin the hunt again. He ate more than 30 before he found one of his own kind. It confused him - she was like him, but...complete. She gave him guidance, told him secrets, told him the Machine was hunting him. He had to keep secret to avoid it, and she would show him how to hurt it. Since then, Marcus no longer hunts randomly. He chooses as his victims the most promising servants of the God-Machine. His skill at trapping them in his lair, tearing their secrets away and then devouring them with his little game has brought his new allies wealths of information, and they watch for potential victims for his hunts.

When he is not hunting or tormenting his victims, Marcus crouches in a corner, either writing or reading his books aloud. He still loses many of his thoughts to his void within. Sometimes, however, they form something coherent, and Marcus looks away and comes up with a new way to hurt the Machine. Each success makes his foes retreat back, but even his allies find his methods revolting and question if, perhaps, it was a good idea to let him live. Everyone that meets Marcus goes away changed. He spends most of his time crouching, his hair matted and his skin pale and sickly. His eyes are a sharp blue, in sunken sockets. His clothes are tattered and mismatched, stolen from victims or dumpsters. He stinks of garbage and decay, and when he isn't talking, he sucks his fingertips to get at the meat trapped under his nails, which are yellow and cracked. He mutters to himself constantly, and his broken mind keeps him from studying his Cipher's secrets - the entire idea is beyond him. Even so, his notes are clues from his rare moments of lucidity.

When he is talking to people, he seems to come alive. He craves contact and conversation, listening intently to every word. He finds the complete thoughts involved beautiful, and he does his best to respond in kind. He refers to the God-Machine as "It," and he hates it. He loves to talk about hunting its pets and children, the angels he has killed and eaten, and how much he hates it. His hatred of the Machine is rivaled only by his hunger and his need to be complete again. His demonic form is even more unsettling - a huge, hunched beast with jet-black skin, glowing green eyes and body seeped in black ichor. He has huge steel horns from a wolf-like head, and his teeth are impossibly large steel fangs even for his massive maw. His arms are long and powerful, dragging on the ground, and his huge hands end in metallic claws, bristling with tubes that pump the same ichor he leaks. People usually flee in fear from this form, and Marcus loves the chase.

Marcus guards his notebooks viciously. Within them are his thoughts, unfiltered, and his flashes of memory taken from victims. Within the chaos of barely legible words is a certain strain of sense. If followed, this line details not only his hate of the Machine but of all the supernatural beings he has ever seen and worked with. Yes, he is their ally of convenience, but they are all filthy perversions of a thoughtless god, forever stained by its filthy touch. It is clear that Marcus is going to up his game and add demons to his target list at some point - some point soon. He wants to know what devouring them will get him, and if it will give him the strength to end the Machine forever.

While Marcus currently attempts to keep his hunts focused on agents, witting or otherwise, of the Machine, his hungers drive him to go out and eat more frequently. Every few weeks he takes a victim, though he doesn't put them in his pit and play with them unless he sees something truly amazing in them that he wants to add to himself. He's careful about where he disposes of the remnants of his meals, but he makes mistakes, and the body parts are starting to turn up. The cops claim they got the Southside Ghoul - but that just means people think a copycat's showing up. Some demons believe he has a captive angel that he feeds on but keeps alive; they are incorrect. Marcus has only found angels when working with his allies, and has never had the chance to send one to his pit. However, what he actually does in his lair is shocking and revolting even to demons. Some believe that his babbling contains prophecy, or that his madness is contagious. Anyone that can listen long enough could get some idea of his current plans, but in truth he mostly is just repeating the same thoughts over and over so he doesn't lose them entirely, and most are just ideas desperately trying to find some connection. Still, there's always a few people at demonic gatherings that try to eavesdrop on him. Some of them end up vanishing.

Marcus is not very smart, but he's shockingly cunning and a physical powerhouse in terms of raw strength, if not speed. He's a skilled fighter, particularly when grappling, and very good at hunting, survival on the streets and torturing people. His demonic form enhances his combat abilities greatly, making him much harder to trap or stop as well as making him terrifying and giving him night vision. His magic powers largely revolve around improving his ability to ambush people, keeping people from interfering in his work and causing chaos. The most major glitch that Marcus suffers is from is due to the botched occult matrix that created him - he lacks the perfect memory of other demons, and in fact has trouble forming memories at all. Eating human flesh slows his memory loss for one night. He has yet to eat the flesh of an angel or other supernatural being, and wants to know what would happen.


Thank you, Ms Mayor.

The Mayor has always been the mayor. Not that she thinks much about her past - she has no time for nostalgia. She's busy working to make the future. Officially, the city has had fourteen mayors since its foundation in the early 1900s, and this is true in the sense that there have been fourteen different names holding the title of mayor. The Mayor was all of them, though she is quick to note that she was legitimately elected each time. She's changed party affilitation and political philosophy several times to better her election odds, but she doesn't cheat. She founded the city, in fact - picked a village she liked and expanded it into something to be proud of. She guided the early citizens, discovered the abandoned Infrastructure in the region, and she and her allies have protected it against countless angelic incursions. Of course, every member of her ring but her has been killed or captured in defense of the area, but she speaks reverentially of their sacrifice, sometimes even bringing it up unprompted. Not often, of course - too busy.

The Mayor runs a cult that forms the bureaucratic backbone of her Agency (read: demonic power structure dedicated to a particular goal) that operates under the name City Hall. Her servants believe her a divine incarnation of law and order and a protector of their idyllic lifestyle. It's true enough. The Mayor is very good at being a mayor. She was the only one of her ring to truly understand the potential and the meaning behind the Infrastructure they found. She repurposed it. Around the city, ten obelisks form the vertices of an immense pentagram, the lines formed by streets, bridges, trails and other paths. The obelisks are not heavily decorated but for some faded script in a language even demons can't read. They are hidden in mundane structures controlled by City Hall, though they have been moved to these locations - they weren't the original sites. The Mayor long ago rebuilt the old hollows they were built in, replacing them with affordable housing during one of her terms as a progressive.

This repurposed Infrastructure creates an occult matrix that generates a massive, invisible shield of Essence around the entire city, blocking out other Infrastructure and preventing entry by angels - or anything else directly powered by the God-Machine. Demons can get in and out, for some reason, but the Machine can't. Why it would have made a device able to do this to it is an open question; the Mayor claims the current output was unintended but she and her ring were able to jury-rig it to its present form. She either doesn't know or won't say what it originally did. Demons still have to use Covers within the city - some have tried to live more openly, but the Mayor has no tolerance for it. Safety from angels also doesn't mean being entirely unobserved, too - a collection of angels linger outside the field, taking note of everyone that enters and waiting for demons to get complacement. They don't seem to mind the shield's presence, and may or may not even notice it at all. From time to time, one of them will attempt to cross it, obliterating themselves against it for no clear reason. City Hall says it's like a bird slamming into a plate glass window, but some say it is more like a moth being drawn to a flame. The Mayor is fully aware of all of these kamikaze strikes either way, just as she seems to have a constant awareness of new demons entering her domain. For now, the city remains a mythic rumor - a whispered Hell among demons that most dismiss as fantasy. Just how the Mayor wants it - and will keep it, even if she has to be nasty.

The Mayor never explains how the city's status is possible in any clear way. Usually she says it all works by virtue of her being a symbolic head of the city, and that she controls the occult matrix by taking the place of the God-Machine. Sometimes she claims she wills the shield into existence via some vague ability that the obelisks assist with, and that her fate is tied to this connection. She must be mayor, the universe places her as mayor, because of the connection, rather than vice versa. And sometimes, she admits that she has no loving idea how any of it works, but that it'd be extremely dangerous for her to lose her office. Some, of course, disagree. Specifically, Mr. Kelvin. Mr. Kelvin is an Integrator-Saboteur (a rare combination indeed) that wants to unseat her. Sometimes he says he's the lone survivor of the city's original ring, sometimes that he was an early immigrant trapped in the city by too many compromises, sometimes that he was a hunter angel that Fell while pursuing the Mayor.

No matter what, Mr. Kelvin's plan is clear: drop the wall. Cutting the city off from the Machine is not a solution, it's ignoring the problem. The shield is simply a cage, exchanging one oppressor for another, slightly nicer one. Kelvin argues that demons must fix the Machine and cannot accomplish their goals without doing so - especially in the Mayor's personal vision of Hell. Mr. Kelvin's Agency is the only real competitor to City Hall, made of a collection of small Integrator rings. They call themselves the Absolutists, and they've tried to depose the Mayor before by various means. So far, they've had only limited success - they have a few mortal dupes on the city council to help block her political agendas, but her constant shifting of party position makes it hard to keep up each election cycle. Mystically, they have taken control of a single obelisk, which is built into the abandoned factory they're based out of. Some say they want to destroy it, but in fact they want to understand it...and then destroy it. So far, however, it has resisted all efforts at both.

The Mayor comes off as easygoing, friendly and cheerful. She approaches all new demons personally with a gift basket welcoming them to the city and an explanation of the rules she maintains. She's charming and good at talking without really saying anything. She enjoys the attention and respect of being a politician and she's proud to serve the city community, taking her mundane job very seriously. Due to her constant political shifts, she can empathize with nearly any political stance. However, she runs her Agency with an iron fist. She will hurl even minor threats to the angels outside the city - Kelvin may have escaped that so far, but she's sworn he'll get his. She tolerates only total loyalty. Her human cultists are her lackeys, and all other demons are potential threats watching for weakness.

Her current Cover is Mayor Anita Vogel, a black woman in her late 30s who wears her hair very short and is always fashionable. She's the first female Cover the Mayor has actually had, and the Mayor finds being a woman refreshing after near a century of being men. Anita is known as a tough negotiator and amazing debater. She was popular DA for years before running for office, and her closeness with the last mayor made her an easy candidate to pick. She is actually the Mayor's only current Cover - the all-consuming nature of her job means she barely has the time to maintain the one, let alone any othe identities. She does have numerous soul pacts on file in case of emergencies, but she only takes new Covers normally when her current form is nearing retirement or slips in the polls. Her demonic form resembles a Renaissance angel painting, but with glass skin and circuit board wings. She rarely uses it, and indeed barely discusses her nature as a demon at all. Even her closest allies and confidants have no idea if she's made any Cipher progress. She seems to have some kind of Infrastructure-related powers, but they're unclear at best and may not even be demonic.

In her heart, the Mayor wants to retire. Being in charge for a lifetime is good - but forever? No. She refuses to acknowledge this desire, of course - she's too proud to think anyone could replace her. Still, she is getting really bored. She'll have to decide soon what she's going to do, and she's not sure what alternatives she has. In some of her darker moments, she wants to see it all burn. It doesn't help that she's actually falling in love with Anita Vogel's husband. All of her past Covers were heterosexual men, either single or widowed. She's ruthless, sure, but found she didn't have it in her to subject women to loveless marriages. Her time as Anita marks the first time she's ever had a relationship with a man that went beyond a burn Cover and a one night stand, and now she's growing to understand why some demons Fall out of love. She's also thinking about the tactical options of having a family, given the power that Offspring (half-demon children) can wield.

As for secrets of the city's Infrastructure...well, it's weird. Besides the forcefield being extremely weird itself, it doesn't produce Aether as a waste byproduct. The wall around the city is almost pure Essence, but there's no runoff from any of the obelisks. Aether is actually quite rare within the city in general, and the Mayor and City Hall control most of the more "normal" suborned Infrastructure that produces it. Those few demons that have delved deeper into this mystery have vanished without trace, but they did manage to learn that the obelisks and pentagram are only part of a much larger pattern in the surrounding region, similar to ancient sacred geometry. Taken together, the entire symbol forms a glyph that points towards the position of the star Sirius in the night sky. Which is an interesting reference, because back before the God-Machine Chronicle codified the Machine some, one of its only references was in a Vampire book that contained the Holy Engineers, a vampiric cult that worshipped the God-Machine as an enigmatic deity-figure which sent them retrocausal prophesies. It would send them the answers to questions via television and radio signals, and then they would have to figure out what the question is before the Radio Sickness, a sort of debilitating disease-paradox, killed them. Then they would have to broadcast this question into space by pointing a radio tower towards the star Sirius.

Some demons believe that the Mayor and Mr. Kelvin are the same demon, playing both sides so she always has a scapegoat for problems. It is false, but the Mayor is the actual source of this rumor. She is careful to never directly challenge Kelvin, preferring to undermine his credibility by using rumors - it's always been her most effective weapon. It is also rumored that they were both comrades at one point, members of the same ring, but one or both betrayed the other. This might be true; they certainly understand each others' thought patterns very well, and they despise each other on a personal level. However, they're not impractical about it. They never meet personally, but do share information via certain channels on areas of mutual interest - largely, quashing other threats to the status quo. They both prefer having only one enemy to focus on. The Absolutists claim that the Mayor or the Machine is using the city as an experiment, and even if the Mayor's not doing any wide-scale research, she's certainly taking notes. The problems demons have in leaving the city safely has given her a lot of time to learn about the social dynamics of demons in enclosed spaces, and she has run social experiments on her citizens before, usually ending with someone having to flee the city and risk the angels. The more she learns, the tighter her control of the city.

Then there's this rumor. I have no idea what it's doing.



The Mayor is superhumanly intelligent, insanely strong-willed and manipulative, and very charismatic. She's no physical powerhouse, though she's an excellent shot. She knows a ton about law, the occult, politics and how to be social. She's insanely persuasive and good at lying or fast-talking people. Her demonic form only increases her ability to read people by giving her telepathy, even more brainpower and better survivability in the form of extreme toughness and armor plating. Her powers are focused around social control, knowledge access, denying people access to their social skills and, uh, shooting people dead. She has a permanent glitch that causes her left eye to twitch involuntarily when she is in the presence of large holy symbols (read: parts of buildings, statues, that kind of thing) for more than a few minutes.

Next time: Poisonous Friend, Mr. Martini

Young Freud
Nov 25, 2006

Bieeanshee posted:

A catch in the tabletop game, or the SSI game? Because I played the unholy Hell out of Countdown.

Really just the Gold Box SSI games: one of the best pieces of equipment your party members can get are ECM modules. They don't really say what they do, they just seem like some flavor thing in the SSI games. In the tabletop, they, along with chaff grenades, are meant to reduce the effectiveness of rocket weapons' targeting, like it increases THAC0 of any armor attached to it when rocket pistols and rifles are used against it (I will be corrected, probably). It makes sense in how the game could keep you on your toes tactically: lasers were accurate but damage effected by anti-laser aerosol grenades; rocket small arms were powerful but disrupted by chaff and ECM; projectile weapons like bolters and needlers weren't affected by either, but had lower damage.

But, they don't do this in the SSI games, probably because the engine couldn't do variable THAC0 for various weapons. Instead, anyone with an ECM module cannot be targeted by a rocket pistol or rifle!

So, what would happen is you'd run into classes of enemies like RAM Marines (pay attention, this will be important later) who would be armed exclusively with rocket guns who would be forced into melee combat, so you could deal with large groups of enemies by funneling them into a chokepoint, like an airlock, set up a melee line, and start grenading, use heavy weapons and sniping the mass behind the first line of enemies. Occasionally, you'd have an officer or specialist armed with something else that could pose a threat to your team, but you'd try to get that guy in the first turn and then mop up the rest. No NPC was ever equipped with an ECM module, so these fights tended to be one-sided, although the Combat Robots had them built-in, which could cause some trouble, but you would be likely using a splash damage weapon like grenades and rocket launchers against them.

Now, that's just an exploit, but not the biggest exploit: remember those RAM Marines? You only found them on boarding assaults on RAM ships. So, you could deal with the biggest RAM warship by getting into boarding like faking surrender, murder their RAM Marine contingent, then either capture the bridge or engines and salvage the captured ship. Along with all the looted gear from the enemies in tactical combay, you could get serious credits to outfit your team and ship.

Snorb
Nov 19, 2010

Young Freud posted:

Really just the Gold Box SSI games: one of the best pieces of equipment your party members can get are ECM modules. They don't really say what they do, they just seem like some flavor thing in the SSI games. In the tabletop, they, along with chaff grenades, are meant to reduce the effectiveness of rocket weapons' targeting, like it increases THAC0 of any armor attached to it when rocket pistols and rifles are used against it (I will be corrected, probably). It makes sense in how the game could keep you on your toes tactically: lasers were accurate but damage effected by anti-laser aerosol grenades; rocket small arms were powerful but disrupted by chaff and ECM; projectile weapons like bolters and needlers weren't affected by either, but had lower damage.

But, they don't do this in the SSI games, probably because the engine couldn't do variable THAC0 for various weapons. Instead, anyone with an ECM module cannot be targeted by a rocket pistol or rifle!

So, what would happen is you'd run into classes of enemies like RAM Marines (pay attention, this will be important later) who would be armed exclusively with rocket guns who would be forced into melee combat, so you could deal with large groups of enemies by funneling them into a chokepoint, like an airlock, set up a melee line, and start grenading, use heavy weapons and sniping the mass behind the first line of enemies. Occasionally, you'd have an officer or specialist armed with something else that could pose a threat to your team, but you'd try to get that guy in the first turn and then mop up the rest. No NPC was ever equipped with an ECM module, so these fights tended to be one-sided, although the Combat Robots had them built-in, which could cause some trouble, but you would be likely using a splash damage weapon like grenades and rocket launchers against them.

Now, that's just an exploit, but not the biggest exploit: remember those RAM Marines? You only found them on boarding assaults on RAM ships. So, you could deal with the biggest RAM warship by getting into boarding like faking surrender, murder their RAM Marine contingent, then either capture the bridge or engines and salvage the captured ship. Along with all the looted gear from the enemies in tactical combat, you could get serious credits to outfit your team and ship.

Close enough for Gold Box; in the pen and paper, ECM Modules give you a 50% chance to avoid taking damage from characters with rocket pistols/rifles (this check is, annoyingly, made after the attack roll.) The Battle Armor With Fields is supposed to give you a 75% chance to negate rockets and a 25% chance to negate lasers, but the Genesis version just gives you immunity to rockets (but considering Battle Armor With Fields is still the best armor in the game, it's worth equipping on everyone.) There are dumbfire shells sold to cancel chaff/EM fields, but you take a -2 to-hit penalty when you use them.

This is why the Needle Pistol was the best gun in the Genesis version of Countdown to Doomsday. Chaff grenades negate rockets, aerosol grenades negate lasers, heat guns have a really lovely effective range (and I think some gennies are immune to heat damage), but nothing is immune to getting shot with hair-thin ferrous needles!

Also, my exploit strategy was a little different. I just went to the spaceport on Aurora, started bar fights with RAM soldiers, killed them and looted them of their gear, sold it to the equipment store, and repeated until I had six suits of Battle Armor w/ Fields. (Then I went to New Elysium to repeat the process and get Venusian Laser Pistols, and to Tycho to do this until I could afford the best melee weapon in the game.)

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



I'm pretty sure that weird rumor about a demon making a deal with the devil is referencing non-Demon demons, things from the Lower Depths (In Awakening cosmological terms) that love human vice. They have impressive powers, can be summoned, and are kind of a generic monster for various lines - I think they have a connection to the Maeljin, the Werewolf Satans.

So the implication might be that the 'occult matrix' of obelisks wasn't a God-Machine construct at all, but something from the Lower Depths, having more in common with Mage occultism than standard techgnosticism. The Mayor made a deal, 'signed on the dotted line' - it's an intentional irony, a Demon purchasing what seems like a Hell (i.e. heaven, for Demons) but realizing that ironically what they want more than anything else is to be free of this job.

At least, that's how I'd run with that plot hook: There are non-God-Machine things out there, and the Mayor made a deal with one for a Hell of her very own. That could be a fun twist at the end of a chronicle where the Mayor is an antagonist/ally, that the city in question is in fact powered by SATAN MAGIC rather than Demon techno-occultism, and the normal rules of Angels and the God-Machine went out the window precisely because there's something else there.

e: Plus it's a nice layering of the spy drama/occult secrets dynamic, where Demons are (in this specific case) revealed to be operating under conditions beyond what they themselves naturally understand, just like mortals dealing with a Demon don't know the half of it.

Omnicrom
Aug 3, 2007
Snorlax Afficionado


JcDent posted:

How do you replenish your supply of "a lot"?

Demon has a little bit in the book where they mention a) Demons aren't really sure why they can make pacts, they just can, and being that they're Demons this inspires lots of paranoia but it's also extremely important so everyone still makes pacts, and b) that the stuff they produce doesn't really come from "nowhere", if you give someone resources it doesn't mean that the money or whatever just spontaneously generates, rather something happens so that the pact recipient gets the money instead of someone else. The example they give, if I'm remembering right, has the resources might be given to a professor in the form of a grant that otherwise would have gone to someone else's project. You don't create something, you just (somehow, maybe) rebalance fate or causality or whatever so it slides an existing payout or opportunity towards whoever makes the pact.

Demon is really cool.

Chernobyl Peace Prize
May 7, 2007

Or later, later's fine.
But now would be good.

Man, the Mayor rules. Exactly what you love to see out of a Night Horrors entry: enough plot hooks to flesh out an entire campaign, without necessarily forcing direct confrontation, while at the same time having ample opportunities for that (in all the angels around the perimeter if nothing else). Also the "just take the next person to be elected to the office as your new Cover" idea is super-good. The self-made Manchurian candidate.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

nDemons feel like Exalted Sidereals but not written and designed by idiot dumbfucks.

megane
Jun 20, 2008



There's an excellent horror movie plot there. A young lawyer makes a dark pact while she's in law school. She becomes a successful attorney, makes a fortune, enters politics. She swallows her doubts: her success comes from hard work and charisma, obviously, not some silly "contract" she might have drunkenly signed back in her wild college days. That old guy is surely dead by now, anyway, right? Finally, after decades of work, she runs for mayor and wins.

And when she comes home from the party, she finds the demon sitting in her living room.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Pretty much the only thing that keeps Demons from purely being horrible body snatchers that at best has sympathies for humanity is the God Machine being inscrutable and having no qualms causing horrific disasters in the purpose of whatever it does that demons at the very least want to coopt for power.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

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Also that, as a demon, you don't need to make soul pacts. You can just create entire Covers out of bits and pieces of other people until you have a functional human being. It even has advantages to do so, because it is "home built" it is much harder for the God Machine to notice it.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Josef bugman posted:

Also that, as a demon, you don't need to make soul pacts. You can just create entire Covers out of bits and pieces of other people until you have a functional human being. It even has advantages to do so, because it is "home built" it is much harder for the God Machine to notice it.

Yeah, this just takes way longer and is more expensive to do. Ethically sourcing your personhood is tough.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

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Mors Rattus posted:

Yeah, this just takes way longer and is more expensive to do. Ethically sourcing your personhood is tough.

It shouldn't take that much longer, surely. I suspect it depends on the kind of person you are wanting to use as cover for a bit.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Josef bugman posted:

It shouldn't take that much longer, surely. I suspect it depends on the kind of person you are wanting to use as cover for a bit.

Building up a lot of Cover XP actually is a significantly lengthier prospect than one-shot soul theft. Even with the aid of contracts, it is going to take you several gameplay arcs.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Can demons "source" parts of covers from supernaturals as well, or only mortals?

That Old Tree
Jun 23, 2012

nah


PurpleXVI posted:

Can demons "source" parts of covers from supernaturals as well, or only mortals?

They can, but only stuff that amounts to "mortal" details. They can't incorporate having Supernal magic or Disciplines or whatever. If they try to soul pact a supernatural, they get all those mortal details but the magical stuff shorts their circuits. So then they have like a 1,000-year old persona that is definitely not a vampire.

ChaseSP
Mar 25, 2013



Also a supernatural will probably catch on, especially a Mage whose given thing are being obsessive over any slight thing that looks weird and off and then you got a bunch of egotistical nerds all in your buisness.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

That Old Tree posted:

They can, but only stuff that amounts to "mortal" details. They can't incorporate having Supernal magic or Disciplines or whatever. If they try to soul pact a supernatural, they get all those mortal details but the magical stuff shorts their circuits. So then they have like a 1,000-year old persona that is definitely not a vampire.

But what if they eat the chunk of a vampire's mortal existence that, say, includes their Embracing? Does that unvampire the vampire and/or cause any weird causal bullshit to melt down?

Personally I'm just trying to think of the most annoying thing you could do with Cover constructions. Like make a Cover personality consisting exclusively of things that happened within the same 24 hours(but obviously to different people, stapling it together from birth to current time), just to give any Angels looking into it a screaming headache.

megane
Jun 20, 2008



PurpleXVI posted:

Personally I'm just trying to think of the most annoying thing you could do with Cover constructions. Like make a Cover personality consisting exclusively of things that happened within the same 24 hours(but obviously to different people, stapling it together from birth to current time), just to give any Angels looking into it a screaming headache.

This sounds like exactly the sort of thing a demon might do. Encourage some poor data-analysis angel to fall by driving it nuts trying to figure out your bullshit.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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The vampire is still a vampire but was never embraced, they just died and were a vampire. Causality has broken locally and an angel or wizard or other concerned party might start to investigate why.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Also your new cover will unravel if poked lightly so don’t use it

Aoi
Sep 12, 2017

Perpetually a Pain.

Nessus posted:

I think it's just something you, as a demon, can... do. Like sure, if you give a bunch of people Resources 5 out of a clear blue sky, it might attract the God-Machine's attention... but the important part there is "the God-Machine's attention," not "a bunch of people now have Resources 5." I think there was some changeling pact that was ruled completely legal where someone has to bake you cookies once a year as a show of affection and in return gets those Resources.

I maintain that the extreme neutering of the Changeling pact system in 2e (in my opinion largely as a reaction to the Demon pact system pinching that bit of game design territory) was one of the edition's greatest mistakes, and hugely detrimental to the thematic underpinnings of the game line. Making a life-changing bargain you didn't understand with some weirdo you didn't understand is, like, at the heart of huge swathes of the "fairy tales" that Changeling draws upon as the base (and then expands upon enormously) of its concept as a game.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Concept: Demon artist who constructs elaborately unusable Covers as art installations on the nature of humanity and demonic existence, while maintaining a perfectly acceptable Cover they live in.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 17, 2013



PoontifexMacksimus posted:

What was the -phobia in Persona?
Someone in the development pipeline no only really like homophobic and/or transphobic jokes, but also has a powerful aversion to having positive gay characters. In particular Persona 4 had a fairly normal gay love interest who was far enough along in development to have recorded romance lines in English. All references to that character being gay when then cut with no explanation give, despite all of the information for it still being on the game disc, just inaccessible.

That Old Tree
Jun 23, 2012

nah


EimiYoshikawa posted:

I maintain that the extreme neutering of the Changeling pact system in 2e (in my opinion largely as a reaction to the Demon pact system pinching that bit of game design territory) was one of the edition's greatest mistakes, and hugely detrimental to the thematic underpinnings of the game line. Making a life-changing bargain you didn't understand with some weirdo you didn't understand is, like, at the heart of huge swathes of the "fairy tales" that Changeling draws upon as the base (and then expands upon enormously) of its concept as a game.

I think it was a reaction to the original system being not great and a little exploitable, plus the current one more bring underexplained/underdeveloped and not necessarily neutered.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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That Old Tree posted:

I think it was a reaction to the original system being not great and a little exploitable, plus the current one more bring underexplained/underdeveloped and not necessarily neutered.

Yeah, it was insanely easy to break things with the old Pledges, though I think they went overkill on making new Pledges hard to use and less handy. It's a lot harder to break the Pact system because while demons can hand out absolutely insane bullshit, that insane bullshit isn't really PC-facing. Okay, great, you made an npc fabulously wealthy and a perfect public speaker.

Gantolandon
Aug 19, 2012

PurpleXVI posted:

But what if they eat the chunk of a vampire's mortal existence that, say, includes their Embracing? Does that unvampire the vampire and/or cause any weird causal bullshit to melt down?

Personally I'm just trying to think of the most annoying thing you could do with Cover constructions. Like make a Cover personality consisting exclusively of things that happened within the same 24 hours(but obviously to different people, stapling it together from birth to current time), just to give any Angels looking into it a screaming headache.

The problem is that every time someone spots an inconsistency in your Cover, it frays a bit. If it's timeline is obviously borked, it won't stay on you very long. And pray you don't encounter an Acanthus mage, or kill the fucker on sight.

I Am Just a Box
Jul 20, 2011
I belong here. I contain only inanimate objects. Nothing is amiss.

PurpleXVI posted:

nDemons feel like Exalted Sidereals but not written and designed by idiot dumbfucks.

nDemons have Avoidance Kata. The famous Sidereal Dodge Charm that retroactively makes you have left a couple minutes ago? That's an Exploit demons can buy.

EimiYoshikawa posted:

I maintain that the extreme neutering of the Changeling pact system in 2e (in my opinion largely as a reaction to the Demon pact system pinching that bit of game design territory) was one of the edition's greatest mistakes, and hugely detrimental to the thematic underpinnings of the game line. Making a life-changing bargain you didn't understand with some weirdo you didn't understand is, like, at the heart of huge swathes of the "fairy tales" that Changeling draws upon as the base (and then expands upon enormously) of its concept as a game.

Speaking as a massive Demon fan: I don't at all disagree. The pact benefits system honestly doesn't fit Demon as well as Changeling. It's presented as if you have every practical reason to lowball your pactee's benefits for your own convenience, even to give them fewer benefits than their end of the deal has power to easily justify, but there's very little mechanical reason not to be lavishly generous. There are few enough options for the demon's end of the deal that the structure of the Changeling pledge system doesn't make a good match for them. It's structured to be more customizable than demon pacts are.

I think the idea that Changeling 2e nerfed pledges because Demon had "claimed" that piece of game design is a bit paranoid. I don't think the developers are afraid to borrow game systems that fit across game lines (see Demon borrowing pledges in the first place, Werewolf spirit rules expanding to ghosts and angels in 2e, the shared organizational basis for the rules of Geist's krewes, Deviant's conspiracies, and the in-progress Mummy 2e's cults). I think it's more likely that the Demon writers were less concerned with mechanics being "overpowered" than Changeling 2e's writers were, so the decisions were made separately.

They definitely overcorrected with pledges, which not only can't do nearly as much as they could in 1e, but specifically just aren't good at doing a lot of the stuff they're still supposed to do (oaths and bargains). Sealings are conceptually very cool, but again, toothless in execution.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Wait someone called Jenna Moran an idiot dumbfuck, what the hell, she's great. Do not blaspheme the name, etc.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Gantolandon posted:

The problem is that every time someone spots an inconsistency in your Cover, it frays a bit. If it's timeline is obviously borked, it won't stay on you very long. And pray you don't encounter an Acanthus mage, or kill the fucker on sight.

If you can't give an Angel a migraine, what's the point of having superpowers, though?

Aoi
Sep 12, 2017

Perpetually a Pain.

I Am Just a Box posted:

I think the idea that Changeling 2e nerfed pledges because Demon had "claimed" that piece of game design is a bit paranoid. I don't think the developers are afraid to borrow game systems that fit across game lines (see Demon borrowing pledges in the first place, Werewolf spirit rules expanding to ghosts and angels in 2e, the shared organizational basis for the rules of Geist's krewes, Deviant's conspiracies, and the in-progress Mummy 2e's cults). I think it's more likely that the Demon writers were less concerned with mechanics being "overpowered" than Changeling 2e's writers were, so the decisions were made separately.

For the record, I think Demon is a good game, and well deserving of the love people have for it. I don't think there's some conspiracy at work here, or that Demon "stole Pledges" from Changeling, but it does seem like there was some influence, subconscious or otherwise, in Demon having Pacts be so central to its cover mechanic, as well as its whole thematic of stealing lives by bribing people for them and the, uh, shall we say, "extreme overcorrection" of Pledges in 2e. I obviously can't read the minds of the developers/writers for CtL 2e, I'm just saying that it "seems" like suddenly Demon more or less had CtL 1e's Pledge system in its Pacts, and then 2e CtL's Pledges were a shadow of their former selves. It's entirely possible that it's a complete coincidence!

It just kind of sucks, as a CtL fan, given how many great stories I heard people tell about when they played 1e and their use of the Pledge system was behind some of the most memorable moments in their games, and now it's basically gutted, "balance" or no.

Given that Oneiromancy was hosed up as well, (whether accidentally, in an attempt at making it more granular (but at the same time literally just cutting and pasting the "hedge pursuit" rules over it rather than getting a system of its own) or otherwise), in the aftermath of Beast trying to make dream invasions one of their things too, McFarland's "borrowing" elements from Changeling is a good way to annoy me, at the very least, even if I'm not exactly out there writing huge conspiracy screeds about it all. Or maybe I am. Either way, I'll pipe down now, sorry.

Aoi fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Sep 27, 2019

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Again, I think the loss in Changeling has more to do with the thing being player-facing. Demon lets you arbitrarily hand massive amounts of merit and skill dots to NPCs. Pledges in 1e let you do the same to yourself and other PCs.

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Rubix Squid
Apr 17, 2014
If you have enough powerful friends a cover like that would be good for angel baiting.

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