What is your God-Machine

[Glitch]

@HelloRaptor said:

I did too. Not usre why it says 0, but if you mouse over the 0 in his post it shows my name. Maybe Glitch is trolling me. Or maybe I think up/downvote stuff is pretty dumb so don't use it enough to get it right. <_<

Nope, it's just simple math. Someone else downvoted it. If you click on the number, you'll see the list of all the downvotes/upvotes.

[HelloRaptor]

@tragedyjones said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

I would agree with Raptor if I ran an NWoD 2.0 tabletop I would scrap the whole god machine concept completely. Just not my cup of tea. Much like when I ran NWoD Mage table top I excised any mention of Atlantis.
Honestly I think the basic God Machine as driving plot force is why I am so meh about the second round of NWoD.
I don't think ist is a bad idea just one I find to be almost the platonic ideal of uninteresting.

It is only the driving force behind Demon, really. And to clarify, @HelloRaptor I only downvoted your for the Promethean hate. Hater.

Honestly man, I didn't even notice. And I just assume any downvotes I get are @Coin or @Glitch anyway, because reasons. >_>

@Thenomain

Except that it's literally a machine.

In reading her comment back over I'd guess she means that if she had her way she'd strip the 'it is literally a machine' from it? Maybe.

[Thenomain]

@HelloRaptor said:

@Thenomain

Except that it's literally a machine.

In reading her comment back over I'd guess she means that if she had her way she'd strip the 'it is literally a machine' from it? Maybe.

You've got to stop flipping between super-literal and being forgiving of context. But yes, I agree. I was offering a gentle tweaking that she is basically re-writing the idea.

---

I didn't expect God-Machine to be this polarizing, tho, as I think it's the best thing to happen to World of Darkness since Mark Rein-Hagen left. It's a convenient plot device without being a crutch or a hammer, it's a metaplot that is 100% ignorable at the table, it gently introduces people to the idea of The Other as a basis of horror.

I can understand not liking it, but there's a lot of 'rewrite it completely' going on that was momentarily surprising.

[2mspris]

I believe since "God-Machine" came into the WoD at the same time I was trudging (and yes, it was trudging) through all the gods/demons/things you think made things in the world are this specific set of Things That Must Not Be on TR (Spoilers! Yeah, game is ending, whatever.), I honestly rather like the idea of the God-Machine and was happy to go with it. In the broad scope, I get it. As for defining what it is where I would apply it to story, that is spoilers atm cause I'm applying it to an active game.

[Apollonius]

I had an idea back on HM long before GMC about an Architect of the Monolith who constructed a machine that corrupted the leylines and their raw life creating (and potentially reality creating) properties to sustain only vampiric life. But in the hands of someone else, sufficient nodes could reshape reality as they so desired.

On the Reach in the OD Academy, the Eye of Chiron was supposed to be part of a similar plot that was abandoned after Xanadu took over from Pompeii. The 'science' behind the artificial Crucible nest was it had arcane transformative powers.

On COFAB, this was meant to be something of a pieces race to reconstruct an altar whose owner could reshape reality. The earthquake was a consequence of someone trying to activate the machine as was the intention to do a thematic retcon to explain why COFAB only had Vampires and no other supernaturals (the person who triggered the machine had created a fissure in reality where no other supernatural could exist).

One Part 13 Ghosts Remake, One Part the Chase from Star Trek: Next Generation, One Part Mass Effect (in terms of the 'winning' faction of the GMC plot causing serious consequences including the possible end of the game), One Part Wrath of Khan/Genesis Device. Also, one part Star Trek Voyager: Year of Hell. I grew up watching a shit ton of Star Trek.

It was meant to explore the theme of hubris. I'm captivated by the biblical Tower of Babel. I liked my last iteration which was meant to force cooperation amongst unlikely factions and result in a situation where the game could have seriously ended if things went horribly wrong. But for various reasons, it did not go into fruition and I abandoned that narrative.

I am exploring in a pet project basically what would happen if human hubris resulted in the end of the world as we know it and the survivors trying to cope and possibly direct humanity's fate one way or another.

[Cow]

Life is directed motion.
The spirit is the spark of life.
Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.
Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.
Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.
Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.
Comprehension is the key to all things.
The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path.
The soul is the conscience of sentience.
A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.
The Soulless sentience (i.e. Artificial Intelligence) is the enemy of all.
The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.
The Machine Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.
Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the Machine Spirit.
To break with ritual is to break with faith.

Praise unto the glorious Emperor for granting us the Omnissiah and may he and the Machine Spirit guide us against the enemies of the Imperium!

**Wait, WoD? I thought this was a Warhammer 40k discussion? **

[Misadventure]

I would go with anything where the God Machine isn't a literal machine in any sense. Whether "God" is a limited entity like The Authority in The Golden Compass, or a usurper system, or an unaware Demiurge is a question of do you want this to be a direct factor in your game.

If The Machine is too literal, it's Leviathan from Hellraiser II.

The closest I've seen the literal idea presented, and even then it's probably still just symbolic, is the clock in The Hudsucker Proxy.

[Arkandel]

Unless the campaign is meant to resolve the matter of the God-Machine, its sheer size would probably still have it beyond the realm of understanding for PCs.

Such a behemothian structure would simply be unfathomable so that characters only ever perceive a small subset of the whole (the part which somehow affects them) but have no way of really knowing what the results of their actions are even if there are actions to be taken. It's just too complex, they're sort of like bugs in the dirt trying to figure out a lawnmower - it rearranges their entire reality when it works but what can they possibly figure out about the reason it exists or what lays past their sphere of awareness? Even if they somehow sabotage it so that it doesn't function any more it's just a tiny part of an incredibly larger whole.

Breaking down the 'machine' into manageable parts allows both for the mystery to be maintained and for the PCs to actually have some milestones to look forward to. It's not really the whole thing they're interacting with, it's one of who-knows-how-many subsystems within layers of subsystems.

[Misadventure]

I would really want to know what was going on with Angels, and what their experience of things were, so I could assess how they would manifest and behave.

For instance, in the Prophecy movie series, the angels were as subject to Faith and ignorance of the Divine Will as humans, despite that they may have actually heard or spoken with God. It made the focus on trusting that you had a role in the Divine Plan, and that this trust aka Faith was the most important aspect of your relationship with God. The rest was how to win the Angel War, which was a very literal thing with no seeming influence from Faith or anything save morale, numbers, and fighting ability.

[Arkandel]

True, but the fundamentals of storytelling don't change, it's all still about what story you want to tell. So you start with that ("I want high-adventure") and then create the plot in whatever way you use to make shit up.

What I like about GMC is that it's flexible. Hell, you don't even have to figure out 'what' it is yourself; if it's encompassing enough it can simply exist on a separate layer from the story and affect the characters as a connecting thread rather than a specific, well-defined entity. So the role of Angels can remain static as per the book and you can use them to seed your chronicle with bad guys, quest-givers, mysterious benefactors, whatever it is you need them to be but the G-M itself can simply... be.

In fact this is probably a more manageable approach since allowing PCs to alter a framework that keeps everything together creates meta-questions that might be outside the scope of most campaigns.

Furthermore it allows a Storyteller to personalize the opposition; for example I don't like it when the PCs are pinned against something faceless since it denies a level of intimacy in their struggle.For me it's better when the party is recruited and is set against someone instead so they can invest emotionally in the outcome. Fighting against a system isn't as satisfactory.

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said:

Except that it's literally a machine.

Is it? What's a machine? Is it the bits and pieces, or the absence of consciousness? What is Ultron?

The best plot devices are the ones that end up with questions for which there are no answers.

[Thenomain]

@Ganymede said:

@Thenomain said:

Except that it's literally a machine.

Is it? What's a machine? Is it the bits and pieces, or the absence of consciousness?

It's the bits and pieces, interconnected and able (usually committed) in working together.

What is Ultron?

Is that the Autobot leader? A robot then, I guess.

The best plot devices are the ones that end up with questions for which there are no answers.

The first printing of Geist had a very clear side- (bottom-) bar that said, "A Geist is a spirit that slipped into the lowest parts of the Underworld." This was a beautiful answer for me because it addresses just enough to provide a guideline but at the same time raise a thousand more questions, but they took it out of a later revision.

I find that having no answers at all is dull and uninspired and therefore uninspiring. Them removing "what is a Geist" to be not far afield from not answering "what is a Dwarf". Who cares here's some stats now stop bothering me kid? Or by answering by saying that "King" in Dwarf is the same as "Mine Supervisor" open up a thousand new possibilities?

I think I know what you're getting at here, but I wouldn't agree that unanswered plot devices are best, nor that saying the God-Machine is "literally a machine" spoils, well, anything, especially when you don't think any less of Ultron because of it.

[spasticgoat]

In my tabletop campaign, the definition used for the God-Machine is derived from the movie Cube.

"I mean, this is an accident, a forgotten, perpetual public works project."

Whatever the original function was intended to be, it's long forgotten and the original architects are not available. All anyone can do is guess and theorize, but nobody's got the singular answer to it. The players are as satisfied as they're likely to be and that's good enough for us.

[Coin]

@Thenomain said:

@Ganymede said:

@Thenomain said:

Except that it's literally a machine.

Is it? What's a machine? Is it the bits and pieces, or the absence of consciousness?

It's the bits and pieces, interconnected and able (usually committed) in working together.

What is Ultron?

Is that the Autobot leader? A robot then, I guess.

The best plot devices are the ones that end up with questions for which there are no answers.

The first printing of Geist had a very clear side- (bottom-) bar that said, "A Geist is a spirit that slipped into the lowest parts of the Underworld." This was a beautiful answer for me because it addresses just enough to provide a guideline but at the same time raise a thousand more questions, but they took it out of a later revision.

No, they didn't. It's still in the same place it was, in both versions. Page 21, "Shadows and Dust" sidebar.

[Thenomain]

@Coin said:

No, they didn't. It's still in the same place it was, in both versions. Page 21, "Shadows and Dust" sidebar.

I haven't kept both versions, but does the later one at least go from "this is so" to "well here's an idea but it's totes about you don't let us get in the way of your fun" wishy-washy nonsense?

My imagined example still stands, as I've described a more boring universe, even if it was of my own creation.

[Coin]

@Thenomain

Original:

Players familiar with other World of Darkness sources, like World of Darkness: Book of Spirits or Werewolf: The Forsaken, might recognize that geists share aspects of ghosts and of spirits, the ephemeral denizens of the Shadow who embody everything from plants and animals to abstract concepts like hope, fear, and hate. That’s intentional: for all intents and purposes, geists are ghosts that have found a way to “hybridize” themselves with spirits.

Exactly how they do this is a mystery: it could be that Sin-Eaters are right, and it requires a trip to the Underworld — Avernian Gates certainly exist that open into the Shadow as well as the physical realm, and it could be that ghosts must find their way to one of these gates to devour a spirit. Maybe the Underworld journey isn’t always necessary: spirits do enter the physical world sometimes, and a ghost in the right place at the right time could catch one unawares and absorb it. On the other hand, maybe it works the other way around: maybe a spirit of disease finds the resonance of a ghost that died of leukemia appealing and consumes it, thereby absorbing the fragmentary human consciousness into itself.

Whatever the “truth,” it’s largely irrelevant from the Sin-Eater’s point of view; the Bound have no means of interacting with the Shadow, and unless they’re extremely well-schooled in obscure occult lore, they probably don’t even know it exists, or that animistic spirits inhabit everything in the World of Darkness. They simply explain what they observe as best they can.

v 1.1:

Players familiar with other World of Darkness sources, like World of Darkness: Book of Spirits or Werewolf: The Forsaken, might recognize that geists share aspects of ghosts and of spirits, the ephemeral denizens of the Shadow who embody everything from plants and animals to abstract concepts like hope, fear, and hate. That’s intentional: for all intents and purposes, geists are ghosts that have found a way to “hybridize” themselves with spirits.

Exactly how they do this is a mystery: it could be that Sin-Eaters are right, and it requires a trip to the Underworld — Avernian Gates certainly exist that open into the Shadow as well as the physical realm, so it could be that ghosts must find their way to one of these gates to devour a spirit. Maybe the Underworld journey isn’t always necessary: spirits do enter the physical world sometimes, and a ghost in the right place at the right time could catch one unawares and absorb it. On the other hand, maybe it works the other way around: maybe a spirit of disease finds the resonance of a ghost that died of leukemia appealing and consumes it, thereby absorbing the fragmentary human consciousness into itself.

Whatever the “truth,” it’s largely irrelevant from the Sin-Eater’s point of view; the Bound have no means of interacting with the Shadow, and unless they’re extremely well-schooled in obscure occult lore, they probably don’t even know it exists, or that animistic spirits inhabit everything in the World of Darkness. They simply explain what they observe as best they can.

You decide!

[Thenomain]

I decide to code instead of read, because reading is hard.

[Apollonius]

I will say this. The almost eldritch nature of the Reapers in Mass Effect 1 got totally ruined by the Terminator baby in Mass Effect 2 and got shit on by the Star Child in Mass Effect 3.

Sometimes, mysteries are better left to be mysteries. Imagine how much cooler it would have been if the Reapers were never fully explained in the series and humanity + aliens somehow managed to defeat an undefeatable ancient foe, the culmination of millions of years of civilizations working together to build a device using Reaper technology against them.

I imagine God-Machine to be sort of like this. As @Arkandel mentioned, reveal bits and pieces but leave the scale unfathomable. Make sure there's logical consistency but leave the rest to mystery or... the idea that someone can come in, think it is something, and end up really ending the world by not realizing more sub layers to the plot.

[Derp]

@Coin said:

@Thenomain

Original:

Players familiar with other World of Darkness sources, like World of Darkness: Book of Spirits or Werewolf: The Forsaken, might recognize that geists share aspects of ghosts and of spirits, the ephemeral denizens of the Shadow who embody everything from plants and animals to abstract concepts like hope, fear, and hate. That’s intentional: for all intents and purposes, geists are ghosts that have found a way to “hybridize” themselves with spirits.

Exactly how they do this is a mystery: it could be that Sin-Eaters are right, and it requires a trip to the Underworld — Avernian Gates certainly exist that open into the Shadow as well as the physical realm, and it could be that ghosts must find their way to one of these gates to devour a spirit. Maybe the Underworld journey isn’t always necessary: spirits do enter the physical world sometimes, and a ghost in the right place at the right time could catch one unawares and absorb it. On the other hand, maybe it works the other way around: maybe a spirit of disease finds the resonance of a ghost that died of leukemia appealing and consumes it, thereby absorbing the fragmentary human consciousness into itself.

Whatever the “truth,” it’s largely irrelevant from the Sin-Eater’s point of view; the Bound have no means of interacting with the Shadow, and unless they’re extremely well-schooled in obscure occult lore, they probably don’t even know it exists, or that animistic spirits inhabit everything in the World of Darkness. They simply explain what they observe as best they can.

v 1.1:

Players familiar with other World of Darkness sources, like World of Darkness: Book of Spirits or Werewolf: The Forsaken, might recognize that geists share aspects of ghosts and of spirits, the ephemeral denizens of the Shadow who embody everything from plants and animals to abstract concepts like hope, fear, and hate. That’s intentional: for all intents and purposes, geists are ghosts that have found a way to “hybridize” themselves with spirits.

Exactly how they do this is a mystery: it could be that Sin-Eaters are right, and it requires a trip to the Underworld — Avernian Gates certainly exist that open into the Shadow as well as the physical realm, so it could be that ghosts must find their way to one of these gates to devour a spirit. Maybe the Underworld journey isn’t always necessary: spirits do enter the physical world sometimes, and a ghost in the right place at the right time could catch one unawares and absorb it. On the other hand, maybe it works the other way around: maybe a spirit of disease finds the resonance of a ghost that died of leukemia appealing and consumes it, thereby absorbing the fragmentary human consciousness into itself.

Whatever the “truth,” it’s largely irrelevant from the Sin-Eater’s point of view; the Bound have no means of interacting with the Shadow, and unless they’re extremely well-schooled in obscure occult lore, they probably don’t even know it exists, or that animistic spirits inhabit everything in the World of Darkness. They simply explain what they observe as best they can.

You decide!

Lol, they changed 'and' to 'so'. That's the only difference. I wonder how players will find a way to exploit that?

[HelloRaptor]

@Apollonius

I will say this. The almost eldritch nature of the Reapers in Mass Effect 1 got totally ruined by the Terminator baby in Mass Effect 2

Speak for yourself. That shit was boss.

and got shit on by the Star Child in Mass Effect 3.

Enh. While I was displeased with the sudden Choose Your Own Adventure simplicity of the ending and its choices (especially in the original cut), the sequence leading up to it with the kid didn't bother me. Though the Architect sequence in Matrix was fine with me too, so. >_>