Posts made by Wizz

Oh no, it was definitely a blast, and as first MU* experiences go it was great.
I've always kind of wondered how possible it would be to get something like that, pizza with all the toppings, off the ground again.

The Power Rangers cast was a lot of fun, but we did attract some weirdos, haha! I remember Goldar. That team channel went weird places, sometimes.

Heroes and Villains MUX - Astronema (character staff)

...This is embarrassing to remember, but I was the Silver Power Ranger at H&V. (Also, a Silver Surfer knock-off, aaaaand I think an alternate-universe grandkid of Peter Parker or something ridiculous like that.) Probably the first MU* I ever played. Holy shit that feels so long ago.

Bit of both, in my experience. The few games I played on had a high school, a college, and player-owned businesses and such, with players actively involved in all of them.

@Ganymede said:

But the God-Machine isn't destroyed. Like the Reapers (prior to Mass Effect's end), it is always a threat. And if the destruction of human society was part of the Plan, then the God-Machine is still there, the Angels are still hunting Demons, and Demons should still remain undercover to figure out what the fuck really happened. In short, just because there are fewer information networks and computers doesn't mean there aren't other ways to track and find people. At least, if you're the God-Machine.

@Bennie said:

Covers would be harder to maintain in any world win which the God-Machine had more Angels active, and more eyes on a smaller population. One use of Embeds on a zombie attack, rather than guns or pikes, could spell disaster for Covers. So the smaller the human population (and the fewer zombies around to hide amongst), the more difficult it is to pretend you aren't a Demon.

That's kind of my point exactly. In the game, for the God-Machine to be an actual threat, the risk of exposure is constant, even in cities of millions-- it doesn't take information networks, computers, whatever to track demons. Just partially changing form or even just using a power pulses your Primum, which is how Angels hunt. The lack of information networks and the comforts and facades of society wouldn't hurt the God-Machine, it'd hurt the Demons. There are fewer places, people, and structure to hide behind; to suggest that the God-Machine could orchestrate this elaborate collapse of society, force populations into small pockets, and then for whatever bumbling reason couldn't tighten the noose just sounds hand-wavey to me.

But at this point I think I've expressed my concern and it's not one you share.

To be a little bluntly honest, I think that with your desire to first play "Zombies AND Changelings" and now "Zombies AND Demons," what comes after the "AND" isn't quite as important as "Zombies" and I'd kind of like to understand why you don't just make a zombie game, or at least include an "AND" that doesn't mean you have to, to me, pretzel the setting and mechanics out of shape. I'd like to see "Demons AND Nazis," "Demons AND Cyberpunk Tokyo," "Demons AND the Renaissance," "Demons AND Noir." I think most anything would be a better fit than Descent and zombies-- but that's extremely personal preference speaking.

@surreality said:

@Coin said:

@surreality
Can you point a foreign pirate in the vague direction of where he may find this particular booty, lass?

I'm not sure where to find it now -- the roomie got a pile of promo discs of it to show at an anime room -- but I'll ask him when he's back home. He'll definitely know. Netflix has it, though they're apparently missing one of the discs.

Kinda late reply, but I found this pretty easily on YouTube. I've just started watching and it. Is so. GREAT.

But...but what if it falls off and you flush it on accident, @Luna?

@Spitfire said:

@tragedyjones said:

I will make my own goddamn Promethean sphere. Prepare the abuse of power threads. Also I will let my TS partners play Mages.

Nothing turns me on like a patchwork corpse.

There would be some downsides.

@darksabrz: Don't worry, Possessed wouldn't have given you a very useful frame of reference anyway, in my opinion, haha!

Descent expands on the setting provided in God-Machine Chronicles; the world is being manipulated, if not outright run, by an entity known as the God-Machine. It's basically everywhere and and in everything, but not omnipotent or omniscient; it primarily acts through human agents, called Stigmatics, and Angels-- beings designed with a specific purpose in mind, such as "deliver this hand-written note to the manager of the Piggly-Wiggly on December 14th, 2015" or "marry this woman and then kill her before her thirty-second birthday." The Angels don't know why they are to do the things they're supposed to do, they just know that it's part of the God-Machine's plan and sometimes part of an "occult matrix"-- small or large-scale events that combine to create a supernatural effect. They take human disguises in order to carry these missions out, but very rarely something goes wrong (they fail the mission or simply refuse to do it) and "fall," disconnecting themselves from the God-Machine and becoming Demons.

Demons are hunted constantly by the God-Machine, so they adapt human disguises to blend in and hide by literally taking on other people's lives, in part or in whole. Most Demons carry on their existence with the ultimate goal of reaching Hell-- absolute freedom to exist away from the God-Machine, though what this means is not objectively defined. Some want to reintegrate themselves with the God-Machine, others want to destroy it entirely, and others still just want temporal power. Shenanigans ensue.

Demon powers have a very sci-fi feel-- their true forms are usually mechanical, and it's implied they manipulate the universe through quantum mechanics.

@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.

I had a hard time wrapping my head around "Changelings with zombies" when you brought it up on WORA, but it was doable and you had some pretty strong justification for it.

I flat-out can't see Demon: The Descent, which is tag-lined as a "techgnostic thriller" and revolves around using the mass of humanity to hide from/war against the God-Machine in a post-apoc zombie setting. You just sacrifice so much of what makes Descent...Descent.

Demon: The Fallen, though? Actually kind of kick-ass.

If you liked Cowboy Bebop, Baccano! is great. Immortal alchemists running around during the Prohibition.

@tragedyjones said:

@Royal, @Coin, @Huzuruth

My girlfriend suggests "Promethean Buddy Comedy on the road". I think she thinks she was making fun of me,

...I need this in my life.

@Jennkryst said:

Mummy needs to be a thing.

OH GOD I have wanted to play Mummy so bad. It's so self-contained that it would practically have to be its own game, though. Maybe a minigame?

I know FATE's been mentioned a few times elsewhere, but I actually think it would be a fantastic fit for a Nightvale adaptation, what with the ability to alter the narrative with points and weird-ass Aspects and whatnot.

@Ganymede So territories would only have large-scale political effects rather than changing day-to-day existence? Fair enough. I feel like that's maybe a lot of work on both staff and players' sides-- given how many players are going to be involved versus your average MET group-- for a kind of nebulous reward, but that could be tweaked as needed.

Personally my mindset's similar to @Bennie's in that I actually like the resource scarcity and managing bloodpools and whatnot, I think it's extremely thematic and makes playing supernatural predators as dangerous as it should be, but. Diff'rent strokes.

@Ganymede said:

You can make a system of limited resources without making those resources integral to the existence of a PC. Those who want to play the politics game can fight over the resources, and those who don't can still exist.

How? You keep saying you don't like Arkandel's system and that there's another way to do it, but-- as I think's been pointed out before in a similar discussion on WORA-- if the resources aren't somehow meaningful (collect this Stuff! It's shiny!) the players who "want" to fight over them really wouldn't have any motivation to do so.

On the other hand, with meaningful resources, you're right-- there's no reason not to participate in the system, because players who do enjoy obvious advantages.

It might be largely my opinion but I think people who dislike the idea of competing over territory as a coded system are going to dislike any implementation of that system, optional or not.

@Luna said:

Also, he has a cheer for himself. WTF. Who does that?

...wut

Umm, this is my RL you guys

I KNOW EVERYTHIIIIIIIING :godmode: