[Demon Desire] First Ideas

[ODDin]

About a week ago I picked up the album "The Shadow Cabinet" by Wuthering Heights. A few listens to the opening track, "Demon Desire", gave birth to an RPG. Mysterious are the ways of inspiration. But on to the game itself:

The setting is as follows: When people die, some (perhaps one of every 10,000) return to Earth as either Demons or Angels. They are given a new body, but it's a normal human body. Other Angels and Demons can see what they truly are, and there are a handful of humans who can also see that. Every Angel and Demon has a "Desire", which can also be viewed as his purpose. These Desires can be things like "seduce women and produce progeny", "protect person X from all harm", "kill homeless people", or much weirder things. Generally, Angels stand for preservation, stability, protection and passiveness. Demons stand for change, destruction, violence, birth and death, activeness. Of course, Desires do happen to be very alike for Angels and Demons sometimes, and nobody really knows who or what assigns these desires, and for what purpose.
Angels preserve their human soul, and in fact perfectly remember their mortal life and retain most of their personality, although their Desire becomes infused within their soul, becomes a part of their personality - that is, it's the same human being, only with a new very strong Desire to do something. Demons, however, have this soul as a source of power, more or less, but lose their human part (which means, their memories, their personality etc.) and turn into something else entirely (this something may have its own personality, and isn't a mindless beast or something like that; he's just not the human he once was). However, every once in a while, a Demon is created with his Human soul still present, but his Demon part (for now called "Beast", but I'm looking for something else, since I don't want to create the impession of savageness and mindlessness about this "Beast" part) is lurking within him, trying to free itself. Of course, the Human part doesn't feel a strong need to fulfill the Desire, although it is aware of this Desire. These are these unfortunate Demons that the players play.
The centre of the game is that they have a very strong power within them - the Beast - which can allow them to do things normal humans are incapable of. However, using puts them in the risk of losing a fragment of themselves, and eventually, becoming the Beast (an NPC, effectively).

Mechanically, the idea goes like this: I work with d10s and successes (like the Storyteller games, only that the number you need to get for a success varies according to the situation - like in The Riddle of Steel). Every chracter has a Human pool and a Beast pool. Together, these pools are always at 10 (although temporary modifiers may be applied). The game starts with Human 6 and Beast 4 (4-6 dice is the number regular humans have). On normal tasks, only the Human pool is rolled, but if the player wants to tap onto his hidden powers and use all the 10 dice, he needs to make a Human vs. Beast roll - that is, roll his Human pool against his Beast pool. If Beast wins, he's at the risk of getting one more die for Beast (and consequently, losing a die of Human). I think I'll work with notches: each failure gives you a notch. When you reach 3, you gain a Beast die, and go back to 0 notches.
Also, I had the following thought: for the Beast, 7 is always the number needed for success. For the Human, 0 notches mean 6, 1 notch means 7 and 2 notches mean 8 (3 notches = a die is lost). However, I don't want to end up in a situation where losing a Human die actually raises the chances of success (since you go down from 8 to 6 again, and the stastistics involved are rather annoying).
When the actions invlolve the Demon's Desire, things are a bit more complicated: he needs to succeed on a Human vs. Beast roll to act against his Desire, and when he acts to further his Desire, he always needs to roll Human vs. Beast, or else the Beast awakens for a certain, short, period (and the character temporarily becomes an NPC).
This allows for a fun death spiral, where the further you go, the more you actually need the Beast (since you have less Human dice), but the harder it is to resist it's grip on you.

Also, each character has a Power, which is a supernatural power of the Demon (stuff like darkvision, telepathy, walking through walls, etc.).  Its strength depends on the amount of dice in the Beast pool (yes, it's lifted straight off the Madness Talent in Don't Rest Your Head). Using this power also demands a Human vs. Beast roll, but with half the Human pool.

I have some more mechanics on some "skills" (not different pools, but rather they allow for a little extra when using the Human pool - additional dice, rerolls, things like that), some basic combat rules, but they are beside the point right now.

Of course, it's the GM's job to design the game so that using the Beast pool and the character's Powers will provide them with much needed advantages, and thus create a dilemma between putting yourself at risk of being overcome by the Beast or simply not doing what it is you need to do. Optimally, there are other Demons or agents thereof who attempt to force these new Demons to awaken the Beast within them - threatening their family and things that they value, perhaps. This allows for an actual dilemma of what are you willing to risk your actual eternal soul for, which is what I want the game to centre on, really.

Things I'm still not certain about:
1) Are there means for actually increasing your Human pool back? Perhaps by "rebuilding a soul", akin to what there is in Dead Inside, although I'm not sure I want to stress "soul corrupting / soul building" acts and deeds like DI does. Perhaps there are very rare rituals that can help out with that.

2) It can be very interesting if by losing Human dice, the character actually begins losing his "human" part - losing memories, losing parts of his soul, losing memories, things like that (slightly like in The Neverending Story, only a bit darker). I've had the following thought: at character creation, the player will write for himself 6 personality traits and six important memories/connections (likely areas of memory; for instance, "my mother" will include all memories of the mother and her impact on the person's life), and will write 6 personality traits for the Beast. Upon gaining a Beast die, one personality trait and one memory/connection are lost, while one personality trait of the Beast surfaces up to replace it. However, I'm not sure how playable this is, since losing memories is a tricky business, especially when we're talking about wide areas of memory, and not only "the family picnic we had when I was seven" - although these are also fun. In the example above, what happens to all the memories in which the mother was present? Are they erased? Are the still there, but without any emotional context? Are they twisted so as not to include the mother?


Thanks in advance for any feedback,
Michael Pevzner

[David B. Goode]

Hey Mike,

It sounds like an interesting game. I have a few questions:

1) Are the human-souled demons the only playable character in the game?

2) You mentioned powers. Do characters have one basic power (like darkvision) or do they have a suite of powers? Does the player choose the power or are they the same for everyone?

3) If this placed in a modern setting?

4) Is the point some sort of secret war between angels and demons with the players caught in the middle?

The general concept seems solid. It's a world with lots of possibilities for adventure. The mechanics seem interesting. I like the dichotomy of the character fighting inwardly in order to achieve his goals.

[ODDin]

1) Right now, yes, since they are the only ones with this inner conflict. Theoretically, other characters are also playable, with te rules the GM uses to play them: normal Demons don't remember anything about their Human past, and don't care either, and have 10 Beast dice; Angels remember their Human past, but are a kind of synthesis between their Human personality and their Angel Desire, and I guess they have 10 dice as well; and normal humans just walk around, doing their business - some interfere in the affair of Demons and Angels, some don't even know about them, and they have 4-6 Human dice. However, playing other characters will, I think, be very like playing any other game of modern Demons/Angels, so where the point of playing mine?

2) Each character has one Power, which is chosen by the player at character creation (or rather, invented, as I'm not intending to provide a strict list of available Powers). Two players may choose the same Power, of course.

3) By default, yes. However, as Demons and Angels were always present, I may elaborate on other possible settings as well, in the future (yay, place for supplements...).

4) Not "the point", no. The point is the the inner struggles of the characters. An entire game might be about the characters - members of a family who died in an accident - trying to save other members of their family from the mafia (who perhaps now has the help of other Demons, who only want cause our heroes to break and lose their Human entirely), all the while struggling with their Desires. Such a game may not include Angels whatsoever.
As for the war, there isn't really a "war" per se. Angels and Demons pursue their Desires, and very rarely is one's Desire to actually slay Demons/Angels (although this does happen). Conflicts between them do happen quite often, as their Desires usually contradict each other (as I've said, Demons' Desires are centred around change, destruction, birth and death, while those of Angels are centred around preserving, guarding, stability), but they only fight each other so long as it helps further their own Desire, or the Desire of a fellow Demon/Angel (Angels and Demons are usually willing to help their bretheren). So Angels and Demons don't like each other very much, but they don't slay each other on sight, or consider the oter side absolute anathema or something like that. Angels might even help Demons, or vice versa, if it helps further their own Desires.
As of yet, no one really sees a big, common goal for which either Demons or Angels are going with their Desires, including the Demons and Angels themselves, although most suspect that such a goal exists (and quite a few believe that Demons and Angles actually have the same goal).

I might change my mind on that issue later, and actually include a secret war between the two sides, but I think that such a war will divert the attention from the inner struggles of the characters, and turn it into a much more regular conspiracy-style game - which is fun, granted, but not my goal with this game.


Anyway, I'm happy you like it.

Also, I think I will use that rule about personality traits and connections I've suggested at the end of the last post. What will happen with the memories is that at first they'll lose their emotional context, and then will slowly begin to fade, with the character losing details at first and eventually whole memories. It doesn't necessarily mean that all memories regarding an important person will disappear, but they'll remain almost solely in memories regarding a different important thing. For instance, after losing your wife as an emotional connection, you'll only manage to remember you even had a wife when you think about the party of your mother's 60th birthday - where your wife was present - and think, "oh, right, I did have a wife, I remember her at that party...".
This might be tricky to role-play, with your personality traits changing one by one, but I think it's tricky in a good way. It also makes it difficult to design games - in the example with the family above, one will need to carefully think out in what order the connections are lost, so that the characters don't end up not caring about the main dilemma of the game.