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[Stupid Loserman]

Killing humans is a breaking point towards the spirit. The spirit is the more predatory half of the werewolf, powerful but dangerous. The breaking point largely doesn't care about the "morality" of the killing, but hunting humans specifically for their flesh imposes a dice penalty to the breaking point roll. Page 104 lists the Harmony breaking points.

[Stupid Loserman]

Let's use concrete examples.

Say you take Boneless ●●, which makes your body pliable like that of an octopus. Two-dot Variation, must be entangled with at least a two-dot Scar. You take Deterioration ●●, a Controlled Scar. Since it's a Controlled Scar, the action to turn Boneless on for a scene requires a Scar Finesse roll. The specific effects of Deterioration add a Scar Resistance roll when you successfully activate Boneless. If you fail the Resistance roll, you suffer a debilitating Tilt.

Now let's say you add the Defensive Deviation to Boneless. This makes...

[Stupid Loserman]

In what way was this idea inspired by the Japanese imperial emperor, aside from the fact that there is, indeed, a Japanese imperial emperor? "Inspiration" implies there are traits that you found interesting and moved you to incorporate. But you haven't described any traits of this concept. At least as presented here, it's more like saying that all the vampires in England bow to a king of all English vampires, because there is an institution of monarchy in England, and I guess for the sake of making something different for different's sake.

I've probably said my piece at...

[Stupid Loserman]

A lot of written characters are shared, but the pronunciation is completely different. (This is even true for different Chinese dialects.) For example, 悪魔 is read in Japanese as "akuma," but while it is also a word in Chinese with a comparable meaning, the Mandarin Chinese word is something like (I am not a Chinese speaker) "èmó."

This, incidentally, is why even Kindred of the East's "native" term for its titular monsters is glaringly off. "Kuei-jin" is clearly based on the characters 鬼人, but a Japanese speaker would read these characters...

[Stupid Loserman]

Not to mention Japanese Lost probably would call loyalists a word that means "traitor" or something instead of "demon." As I said earlier, Kindred of the East is not a good model to imitate.

[Stupid Loserman]

Is this the position you're consciously taking to move the game into the idea space you're trying to move into, or is this the assumption you're starting from about the game that is influencing what idea space you see it moving into?

If the latter, this is the point of disagreement. If the former, I still disagree with this move in terms of whether it plays well to Changeling's themes, but it's at least a conscious decision to change matters towards a specific end, and I respect that much.

There's some room for interpretation, but this element of narrative design, in...

[Stupid Loserman]

I figured that's where it probably came from. It was a weird pull when Kindred of the East did it, and one of a lot of things Kindred of the East did that were, if not outright offensive or insensitive, then clumsy at best. It is not a good model to aspire to.

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do in this thread: brainstorm ideas for a fanbook you're writing? Pitch structural elements for a game you're going to play in? Just spitball cool ways you imagine the courts of the Lost might manifest in the countries of East Asia?

My advice would be to stay grounded,...

[Stupid Loserman]

Please, please, do not use the word "Cathayans" here. This is an archaic word used during a period when Europeans knew little about what was going on in central and eastern Asia, derived from the Khitan of northern China and misattributed to other territories of China. Referring to people from Japan or Korea as Cathayans is like referring to Peru as "the East Indies" or to the Spanish and the Irish as "vikings." Korea in particular has a history of resisting foreign invasions, including by the Khitan specifically. It is kind of rude to call them Chinese people....

[Stupid Loserman]

Demon is the first game to be created under the 2e rules. The IP owners at the time told Onyx Path they couldn't call it a second edition, which obviously changed later on, but the God-Machine Rules Update, most of which is reprinted in Demon, marks the rollout of the 2e ruleset. Demon uses Conditions, 2e weapon ratings instead of 1e weapon bonuses, Aspirations, freeform Virtue and Vice, flat experience costs per dot, all that jazz.

Demon is the last game to be created using the old 1e layout, that is to say Introduction > Setting Chapter > Character Creation > Special Rules...