Descent vs Fallen

[Allan53]

First of all, I know D:tD isn't out yet, but the guide thing is available, so I have to figure at least some people have tried running it. Second, I haven't actually played either, so this is sheer speculation on my part.

But to my reading, I don't see the appeal of Demon: the Descent over Demon: the Fallen? I mean, Fallen had (to my way of thinking) a better backstory, a clearer organisation of types, and it seemed easier to grasp what was going on. Whereas Descent leaves so much vague that it's hard to say anything definitive. And I know, that's a lot of the nWoD mythos, but if you're going to base a gameline off it, you need to give us more than "you were a servant of this unknowable thing, and now you're not, and other servants are trying to kill you, but they can't find you because apparently they don't know your Cover that the unknowable thing gave you, which didn't tell them because mystery". It just seems... I don't want to use the term "wilfully ignorant", but I can't think of a better one, so pretend I found one.

I suppose a lot of my dislike comes from my general distaste for the GMC generally. I mean, I like the rules upgrade for the most part, especially the bit about how guns and armour interact, and the updated social rules. But the fluff tries to play the 'unknowable' card while basing a lot of the fluff off it, which leads to a...disconnect?

But, as I said, I haven't actually played it, so it's purely speculation on my part. Have I missed something terribly basic? Or am I just stupid? I want to like it, it's just I'm having trouble with it.

[Stupid Loserman]

They're very different games with very different appeal. I love the backstory of Fallen, but the game as its premise laid out, once played, didn't appeal to me, the focus on faith and cults and the Revelation and all that; and to be honest, the backstory didn't do me a lot of good in imagining what the Fallen actually act like in the current age, now that they're released. I like their reconciliation of their fallen angelic nature with the human souls with which they cohabit, but Descent has a similar vibe going on with the vibrancy of demonic feeling and the way some demons come to identify with and cherish their Cover for the sake of everyday life itself. (I'm a sucker for Matt McFarland's influence and his humanist streak.)

Descent does a good job, I think, of putting forward what's so different about it, the exploration of identity via being nonhuman entities with human feelings and human identities they can wear like suits, and a focus on spygames and cat and mouse games with angels and infrastructure, which has a pretty gameable feel to me. The "types" in Descent are very straightforward and I'm not sure what you find unclear about them; the Incarnations and the Agendas are pretty comparable to the Houses and the Factions of the Fallen, with Reconcilers lining up pretty neatly with Integrators, and Cryptics with Inquisitors, in particular. I see what you mean about the God-Machine mythos and its vagueness compared to the background of Fallen; I feel the God-Machine is best approached as an aesthetic, I get the general vibe of bizarre Fortean phenomena from its actions spread across the books and am free to run with that, and most games on the ground don't really need to know what the God-Machine is doing or why beyond individual projects. But I understand the preference for something more concretely defined; an aesthetic that clicks for one person might not come together for another.

The major appeal to Descent for me, though, is that it focuses less on the backstory not because it doesn't care, but because it cares more about the now, the everyday life and experience of demons in the Descent. Like a few of the New World of Darkness games, it's zoomed in on character focus; it's filled with multifarious examples of slivers of life in the Descent, and it's got kind of a celebration of human life from the outside, similar to Promethean and Changeling. Demons have a perspective on human life that's interesting to explore and that Fallen, I feel, didn't as actively get into, especially if you dove head-first into seeking to raise Faith and inspire people — that's an incentive to put yourself above the everyday. Demons live the everyday, they go to parks, they walk their dog, they flirt with neighbors. They have to, at some level, to maintain Cover effectively. That experience is what makes the demons relatable as characters to me, and I can tell more interesting stories about characters with friends and lives and investments outside their supernatural shadow-games. None of that is to say Fallen can't do these things, but Descent feels hand-crafted to encourage them.

[Octavo]

The games have some similarities, but the perspective from the playable characters is refreshingly different.

The Demons in Fallen are essentially convicts/veterans who have returned to human society after a long imprisonment or war and who have to deal with difficulties integrating into society while having to contend with their former prisonmates/warbuddies who are having an even harder time integrating due to the trauma they faced. They fought God and lost, and have to deal with a world ravaged by their war. Their old enemies are mysteriously absent, leaving the demons...frustrated.

The Demons in Descent have just barely fallen, they've just rejected God and they're on the run. They're coming to grips with what they've become and they're filled with vim and verve and all sorts of cleverness, which they leverage against their enemies. They thwart their God and tempt his angels into joining their cause. Instead of having escaped from Hell, they're trying to find it - or build it, if necessary.

Both sets of Demons are coming to grips with suddenly becoming human.

I like reading both games. Fallen is my absolute favorite reinterpretation of Paradise Lost. I think Descent is the game I'm going to play, though, mostly because the spy focus is so great.

[strider1276]

You could, of course, read the text of the book (available as a Google doc linked from the Kickstarter) and decide for yourself if you like it.

[Jhiriit]

To me, Descent is the superior game just because it is divorced form the very Christian(or at the least Abrahamic) bias that the old game contained. Though I loved the feel of rebellion against a superior force and integration (back) into human society, the way the back story was written and presented in Fallen (like the ultimate Truth about the WoD, turns out God did it all...) left a bad taste in my mouth and made it all but impossible to bring to the gaming table with my group. Not to mention the meat-suit thing, which was just "eewh".

Descent, on the other hand, has us all very enthusiastic. We will be able to play out the themes and characters inherit in the concept of demons, without dealing with the huge backstory dragging us into a morass of potential triggers and uncomfortable mindspace.

Not to mention the neat powers, spy thriller ambiance and the genius that is Cover, all things Fallen did not come close to having.

[Allan53]

You could, of course, read the text of the book (available as a Google doc linked from the Kickstarter) and decide for yourself if you like it.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to when I said "the guide thing". Not as clear as I could have been, I suppose. But that aside, reading and playing are two very different experiences, hence my curiosity.

[sikker]

A key factor in your grievance with Descent seems to be the unknowability of the God-Machine, comparing it to Fallen.

...but if anything is portrayed as more unknowable and with fewer answers than the God-Machine, it has got to be exactly the God from Fallen. With the God-Machine we have a pretty clear image of how it works, even if we are vague on the why and wherefore. With God from Fallen, we have zero idea of anything of any kind. "God works in mysterious ways" is the first and last answer of Fallen.

...And it works. Fallen is a terrific game, and the setting is marvelous

But so is Descent. Descent is building on lore that was introduced in the very first New World of Darkness book ever published. It is building on lore solidified in a subsequent anthology of fiction and the following new corebook for NWoD. The setting of Descent is probably the first NWoD gameline ever to focus primarily on corebook/bluebook lore (which is also why, I think, that the colorscheme of Demon: the Descent is the classic blue NWoD one). Every other gameline such as Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling and the works each introduce brand new setting elements and base themselves on that. Descent has a significant backcatalog of directly applicable WoD material from the start that none of the other gamelines really had.

That we don't know what the Purpose of the God-Machine really is, is about as "willfully ignorant" as the fact that we don't really know where Kindred came from or really how a Geist is formed. It is an aesthetic choice of NWoD to leave certain mysteries entirely mysterious, whilst offering several suggestions as to what the answers might be. Descent is no different, and I'm happy for that.

[Metrophelean]

I don't think the God-Machine is actually that unknowable. It has a purpose (survival at all costs; then growth, growth, growth!) and we understand its mechanisms for sustaining that purpose (occult matrices) well enough to be dangerous to it. We understand why our character do what they do (by agenda) and how they do it (incarnation). Our Covers keep us hidden because the fall has forced reality to accept them as people (which is why the God-Machine can't just zero in on us immediately).

We also have tons of excellent media to show us how our games can look and feel if we're so inclined. We have the Matrix with its agents and rebels and exiles. We have Burn Notice and Leverage for covers and well-coordinated, trust-less spy-posses working together. We have H.R. Giger and Katsuhiro Otomo and Tsutomu Nihei and Yves Tanguy and Cronenberg and Lynch to show us our demons and angels can look.

It's a great game, and I say this as a lover of Demon: the Fallen. They're entirely different titles, though. The comparison is way harder than Requiem/Masquerade, Apocalypse/Forsaken, or Ascension/Awakening -- and I think those titles all do a great job of making themselves different from each other. At their deepest root, Descent/Fallen are the same thing: servants of an unimaginably powerful entity rebelling against servitude. What Descent gets right that Fallen struggles with? Making headway. Because of the way Unchained operate, even the most meager among them can actually participate in the greater picture. They can actually harm their creator. In Fallen? You're lucky if he's even paying attention (which is admittedly part of the appeal).

In actual play, I've never had as much fun running a nWoD game as Descent. It's so flavorful. Machine-beings and conspiracies with an actual, viable purpose. Mysteries can be cool and bizarre and still make sense in a greater scheme. A focus on survival and cleverness and alternatives to confronation -- a successful angel-jacking will make your players feel like total asskickers without so much as rolling initiative (seriously, angel-jacking is amazing). Perfect memory, perfect liars, perfect linguists -- you have in your hands the ability to weave an awesome Ian Fleming-meets-Lovercraft thriller without involving anything but demons, angels and infrastructure. Your players will do it for you!

TL;DR Descent isn't Fallen, but I'd be sad if it was. I'd rather have two games I want to play than one that overshadows the other. They're both awesome! I wouldn't play one for the reasons I'd play the other.

[strider1276]

Yeah, that's what I was referring to when I said "the guide thing". Not as clear as I could have been, I suppose. But that aside, reading and playing are two very different experiences, hence my curiosity.

Ah! My apologies. I had thought you'd meant the Quickstart.

As for playing, if the opinion of Random Internet Dude is of any worth to you, when we playtested the game, we all had a blast. I think as a group it was our favorite time playing WoD. I was surprised by my players being very true to the concept of living their Covers. With only a few exceptions here and there, compromise rolls were rare. Combat was even rarer. Espionage, investigation, socialization - those were all quite frequent.

Does the game have to be played to that extent? Absolutely not. But we had a ridiculously fun time with the game, so hopefully others will as well.

Also, basically everything Metrophelean said.

[Frothy_Ham]

First of all, I know D:tD isn't out yet, but the guide thing is available, so I have to figure at least some people have tried running it. Second, I haven't actually played either, so this is sheer speculation on my part.

But to my reading, I don't see the appeal of Demon: the Descent over Demon: the Fallen? I mean, Fallen had (to my way of thinking) a better backstory, a clearer organisation of types, and it seemed easier to grasp what was going on. Whereas Descent leaves so much vague that it's hard to say anything definitive. And I know, that's a lot of the nWoD mythos, but if you're going to base a gameline off it, you need to give us more than "you were a servant of this unknowable thing, and now you're not, and other servants are trying to kill you, but they can't find you because apparently they don't know your Cover that the unknowable thing gave you, which didn't tell them because mystery". It just seems... I don't want to use the term "wilfully ignorant", but I can't think of a better one, so pretend I found one.

I suppose a lot of my dislike comes from my general distaste for the GMC generally. I mean, I like the rules upgrade for the most part, especially the bit about how guns and armour interact, and the updated social rules. But the fluff tries to play the 'unknowable' card while basing a lot of the fluff off it, which leads to a...disconnect?

But, as I said, I haven't actually played it, so it's purely speculation on my part. Have I missed something terribly basic? Or am I just stupid? I want to like it, it's just I'm having trouble with it.

I have almost the exact opposite opinion about D:tD, in fact I don't think I've ever been more excited for a WoD game in the many years I've been a fan of White Wolf and Onyx Path. I never really connected to D:tF, there were some cool ideas but I felt it relied too much on obvious and overused tropes. It was so right on the nose in terms of what demons are supposed to be. Game-play wise, I didn't feel like it brought enough new stuff to differentiate from the other cWoD games.

I also don't really care at all about the backstory or clearer definition of things like you do, another reason I've personally enjoyed nWoD over cWoD is due to the lack of metaplot and/or clearly defined settings. It's all so much more about creating a vibe or feeling than telling you exactly who you are and how you should think and where you are. An analogy I have is that a cWoD monster would come toward you in broad daylight, announcing it's name, it's purpose and what it was before trying to kill you whereas an nWoD monster hides from you in the shadows, never fully revealing it's form, only striking when you least expect it only to slink away with you never knowing what robbed you of your innocence or why. Sure, you could run that kind of story with the old rules, but it felt as if you had to go out of your way to find that.

I just really grok the hell out of the GMC and D:TD, everything they've given us has stirred up my creative juices like nothing before.

[Allan53]

A key factor in your grievance with Descent seems to be the unknowability of the God-Machine, comparing it to Fallen.

...but if anything is portrayed as more unknowable and with fewer answers than the God-Machine, it has got to be exactly the God from Fallen. With the God-Machine we have a pretty clear image of how it works, even if we are vague on the why and wherefore. With God from Fallen, we have zero idea of anything of any kind. "God works in mysterious ways" is the first and last answer of Fallen.
...
That we don't know what the Purpose of the God-Machine really is, is about as "willfully ignorant" as the fact that we don't really know where Kindred came from or really how a Geist is formed. It is an aesthetic choice of NWoD to leave certain mysteries entirely mysterious, whilst offering several suggestions as to what the answers might be. Descent is no different, and I'm happy for that.

I don't think the God-Machine is actually that unknowable. It has a purpose (survival at all costs; then growth, growth, growth!) and we understand its mechanisms for sustaining that purpose (occult matrices) well enough to be dangerous to it. We understand why our character do what they do (by agenda) and how they do it (incarnation). Our Covers keep us hidden because the fall has forced reality to accept them as people (which is why the God-Machine can't just zero in on us immediately).

Thought I'd quote both because I'm kind of replying to both, and I try to avoid double-posting when I can.

Sikker: I get what you're saying, and I don't want to sound dismissive, but from my reading the God angle in Fallen isn't really all that relevant to the game, since He's gone/the Fallen cannot perceive Him and His Angels. Even a Reconciler has to work from belief, which is extra hard for demons of course. And in the end, the story is about the Fallen and the people they are and interact with: God doesn't really play into that. Whereas in Descent, the God-Machine is everpresent. And (and this is also in response to your point, Metrophelean), the reason the "Cover protecting the demons" angle never really played for me was; wasn't that provided by the God-Machine, or one of It's lackeys or something? So, why can't It just communicate "Go kill Freddy Jones at 544 Nonesuch St" to its minions, who by definition follow without question? Or, if it can't be that specific, something like "Go kill everyone at 544 Nonesuch St"? So unless the Fall somehow wipes that from the God-Machines 'memory' (or whatever it has that serves the same function), which really raises more questions, it sounds more like it's letting you run around, which while a cool idea, seems...dicey at best, at least as a fundamental aspect to the game.

As I said, I haven't played either, so this is purely based on reading. And I don't want to come off like I'm dismissing your views, I'm just trying to understand.

[squidheadjax]

While I appreciate some of the differences from Fallen*, I too have little love for the God-Machine. It's a (physical/metaphysical) demiurge that (controls the world/has resources so limited I can't imagine how it keeps belching out angels) which has a (high-tech/steampunk/anachronistically-advanced) aesthetic and... I could keep listing the contradictions I'm perceiving from the portrayals of it and, well, I'm not the sort of person who sees that sort of thing as a mystery, I see it as an annoyingly inconsistent mishmash. I liked the God-Machine better when it was kinda off somewhere else and probably-maybe what the Qashmal served. At least it wasn't a big ol' bundle of 'but not really' then, a big pile of magical machinery that can reconfigure reality but can't activate a certain piece of itself until a human-built machine pops a thin layer of rock under an oil reservoir (geology not working that way is left aside, cuz reality-warping).

That said, I'm warming up to Descent, and demons, and angels, especially through the playtest blogs. Which leaves me with the question, how will I reconcile my distaste for the presentation of the God-Machine itself? I've seen some ideas on the forum for the GM that bring a hint of internal consistency to it, like a powerful machine built in the future that's trying to ensure its own creation by sending lesser creations back in time to tweak things, but I don't have a good overall idea yet.

The specific question of 'why doesn't the god-machine automatically know the Demon's cover?' is relatively easy to answer in the default context, though. The God-Machine doesn't seem to have much in the way of consistency and coordination, and haphazard self-correction at best. Angels are probably the only devices connected to it that have much memory storage, and they only get the information to fulfill their purpose. An Angel with a group assignment and Cover known to several Angels probably doesn't survive its Fall unless they all fall together. Or something.

*Particularly the lack of Abrahamic bent to the God, which managed to ping me with annoyance in both directions with the strong implication of 'yeah, that God' combined with the inconsistent percieved absence of said God in the modern world.

I just really grok the hell out of the GMC and D:TD, everything they've given us has stirred up my creative juices like nothing before.

I'd actually really like to have the GM explained to me by someone who groks it, because I'm so far from grokking it, I'm pretty sure I korg it.

[Wolfgar]

Descent is a spy game, Fallen is Vampire with demons. I like Vampire with Demons, but the games are strikingly similar.

[Allan53]

The specific question of 'why doesn't the god-machine automatically know the Demon's cover?' is relatively easy to answer in the default context, though. The God-Machine doesn't seem to have much in the way of consistency and coordination, and haphazard self-correction at best. Angels are probably the only devices connected to it that have much memory storage, and they only get the information to fulfill their purpose. An Angel with a group assignment and Cover known to several Angels probably doesn't survive its Fall unless they all fall together. Or something.

Except if the GM doesn't have a memory or approximate analogue, then how does it do any kind of long-term planning? And if it can't do that, then what's the idea of it doing all these grand schemes? If that were the case, I'd think it'd be way more likely to be the Angels screwing around, with the GM just being an energy source, or something. Which would be fine, but that'd be a very different kind of situation than what seems to be assumed.

I'm cool with it having unknowable plans, but plans requires memory. And if it has memory, then there's little reason it can't pass on certain information to its Angels. And if there is no plan, then what's the thing with matrices and suchforth? Unknowable is one thing; to my exceptionally limited understanding that's starting to border on just downright contradictory.

[Satchel]

Except if the GM doesn't have a memory or approximate analogue, then how does it do any kind of long-term planning? And if it can't do that, then what's the idea of it doing all these grand schemes? If that were the case, I'd think it'd be way more likely to be the Angels screwing around, with the GM just being an energy source, or something. Which would be fine, but that'd be a very different kind of situation than what seems to be assumed.

I'm cool with it having unknowable plans, but plans requires memory. And if it has memory, then there's little reason it can't pass on certain information to its Angels. And if there is no plan, then what's the thing with matrices and suchforth? Unknowable is one thing; to my exceptionally limited understanding that's starting to border on just downright contradictory.

The God-Machine can be hacked, is the thing — interfacing with the right Infrastructure can literally change the God-Machine's mind — and jailbreaking your Cover is one of the first things newly Unchained demons are noted to do if they intend to live on their own terms for any length of time.