@Ganymede said:
From what I read of D:tD, the "techgnostic thriller" part is over-hyped.
I'd pretty strongly disagree with you there, but as usual these are toolbox games and that means practically any element of them can be played up or played down as you'd like, and it's to taste, though again I'd stress that if you push that particular bit too far out of the way the setting breaks.
Essentially, demons are broken pieces of the code of existence. Their "fall" is "falling away from the Plan."
Yes and no. Demons manipulate the code of existence. They're rogue operators in a system, rather than intrinsically part of that system. Again, without that backdrop, there's not a lot that they actually do.
It doesn't mean that the collapse of civilization or technology means that demons have won, or have escaped the God-Machine. To the contrary, the annihilation of civilization by a virus (ha, ha!) may be precisely part of the God-Machine's programming. As an analogy, consider the activation of the Reapers in the Mass Effect trilogy.
As an aside, an alternative that I actually think would be kind of neat (if even more gutted than what you're suggesting) is that the demons did win, and this is what happened without the God-Machine's occult matrices holding society's oppressive-but-necessary framework together.
The last vestiges of humanity huddle in clusters around the only remaining (and slowly, slowly degrading) Infrastructures, as the last occult matrices are the only things keeping the zombies at bay, and demons are the reluctant caretakers and engineers keeping those wheels turning.
Cover would be irrelevant, now that demons have no real reason to hide, but Pacts could be somehow repurposed to use pieces of people's lives to generate Aether or power Infrastructure, so the mortal survivors are constantly giving bits of themselves up just to stay alive and empower their defenders.
The setting will be, as mentioned, like Revolution, Fallout, or The Last of Us: civilization as we know it has been wiped out, but there are still humans, there's still some organization, and there's still technology. Unlike The Last of Us, I envision a cure available for the infected, although that cure must be applied soon after infection.
I just feel like the God-Machine is so much less of a threat if it can't track down its own rogue agents in much smaller pockets of isolated humanity. There's an element of Descent that is so hypercharged from the norm for WoD, and that's "supernatural population control;" human civilization has to be a certain size in order to support supernatural predators like vampires, and there's only so much room for territories for werewolves, etc. Demons don't prey on humans in the normal sense of the word and don't worry about territory, but they have to be that much more careful to be sure they surround themselves with humanity because almost every supernatural thing they do risks Cover. It almost seems silly that with so much paranoia and espionage baked into the setting that in the small remaining populations, a large group of demons wouldn't stand out like a signal flare. Fewer Covers, more potential for witnesses, fewer places to "go to ground," etc.
