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- Topics
- Corruption at Wizards
- Chainmail left to rust
- Online retail branch hacked off and sold
- GURPS makes it online
- No mystery behind Maryann Siembieda’s departure from Palladium
- The World of Darkness threatens us with Demon: the Fallen
- Just when you thought it was safe to turn off your computer
White Wolf have announced a new edition to their World of Darkness line. We’ve had vampires, werewolves, mummies, ghosts, fairies, mages, other types of mages and the natural progression of the line is to Demon! By early accounts Demon seems to be a game with lurid splats.
White Wolf’s press release is immediately below and a teaser release from the developers can be found below that.
Time to Raise Some Hell
White Wolf Conjuring Up DEMON RPG
Vampires, werewolves, mages… Not to mention ghosts, fairies, monster hunters and mummies. Traditionalists might think White Wolf has said all that can be said about the horror genre. To which White Wolf says, “Tradition be damned!”
The company best known for its World of Darkness titles like Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse has been hard at work on another dark gem, and this time, it is goin all the way to hell with Demon: The Fallen.
“Demons were the servants of the Creator, born at the dawn of time and charged with the governance of Creation,” said Demon: The Fallen developer Mike Lee. “They could love men and women, watch over them night and day, labor endlessly to make their world a paradise – but always invisibly, always apart.
“Known then as the ‘Elohim,’ these beings kept the planets in their courses, gave order to the seasons and maintained the vast cycle of earthly life. For all their power and glory, however, there was one thing the Elohim were forbidden, and that was to reveal themselves to humankind. For a third of the host of heaven, this unrequited love was more than even an angel could bear. As a result, these Elohim abandoned their innocence and waged a war of cosmic proportions against the Creator. And they lost, were cast into the Abyss and became nightmarish demons.
“And now, untold ages later,” Lee continued, “the gates of the Abyss have been broken and demons walk the Earth once more.” For players, Demon: The Fallen represents an opportunity to take on the role of a demon reborn in the body of a human who has lost his soul. While demons retain their infernal powers, motivations and allegiances, they now see everything through the persepctive of the mortals for whom they were cast down – mortals of which many of whom no longer believe.
“The stage is set for an epic struggle for the souls of mankind,” Lee said. “Though this time, the battle is not between the armies of heaven and hell. One faction of demons seeks to re-ignite the war against heaven, another seeks to enslave mankind, and yet another wants to return the Earth to the state of paradise it has long lost. “The characters in Demon must decide for themselves what to believe and, in so doing, decide the fate of the human race. The Demon core rulebook is due out in December 2002.
Designer Comments
1) Splats. Yes, there are splats. (You knew there’d be splats, right?) Splats based partially on the Seven Deadly Sins and partly on the Seven Days of Creation. Your splat has nothing to do with your politics. You can be a fallen Guardian Angel who believes that the Humans Are Our Future, or you can be one whose carefully considered philosophy boils down to “Wreck Everything”.
2) Bracing for backlash. Well, honestly, I think that fanatic hate-filled “Christians” (if you can really give that title to someone who’s hate-filled) are going to find Islam a much more fruitful target for their misguided rants these days. I’ve tried to deal with the themes of religion in a thoughtful, respectful and insightful way without resorting to glib cop-outs and easy answers. The game goes to dark places, but I think it implicitly asks why they’re dark.
3) Luridness. Well duh. If you do a book about demons escaping from Hell and walking the Earth, it SHOULD be lurid. A dry, intellectual, understated game about the clash of Evil and Good is a game with a very narrow demographic indeed.
4) Theme. Here’s a quote from the development document.
“Though there are numerous themes that may be evoked by the different factions among the fallen, there are two overarching concepts that drive Demon: self-determination and devotion to a cause, even one that seems doomed from the start.”
