In Nomine....does it have a "Pro-Heaven" bias?

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by alexondria

You can definitely do different themes.

Afterlife: In canon devoted pagans can end up in the ethereal realms of the god they followed.

My most successful game started with Fall of the Malakite and took a hard left out of canon. The rough theme of my game was a group of Angels and Demons that had to work together for trumped up reasons discovering that both Heaven and Hell had lost sight of what they were fighting for. Demons had started fighting the noble fight for freedom and free will. Angels had started fighting the noble fight for justice and compassion. Sadly at the current point in history they'd both lost sight of that and were just fighting to win. Demons were torturing souls for essence. Angels were allowing killing they should have stopped because it was for the greater good. The party actually ended up rallying the ethereals with Isis to force a new power structure for humanities benefit.

That's the subtext of my current PbP, that fighting for principle has devolved into mere war and the ethereals are taking advantage of that. My ethereals, however, are no better than who they're fighting. I've watched too much horror again...

Originally Posted by Moonsight

Now I want to ask, does every single Demon do this or do they have to the "backstabbing" mentality? Of course when playing Demon characters, are you forced to turn on humans or each other that trusted you?

Making Demons backstabby that would turn on you makes them shallow characters in my opinion.

They typically are NPCs in my games, so that's part of it. NPCs tend to be shallower than PCs as a rule.

The backstabby thing isn't an every time thing, it's an every demon eventually thing. Forced would be rare--say a Prince threatens to frappe a demon if he doesn't turn on an ally. The player wouldn't be forced, but I'd remind him that his character is always looking out for Number One, and if his 'friend' is in the way of his long-term benefit then said friend is getting a knife in the back. Demons to me don't make sacrifices without a definite payoff in mind.

Your darkness level may vary.

[Moonsight]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

The backstabby thing isn't an every time thing, it's an every demon eventually thing.

Hence it's a everytime thing no matter what which I find problematic eitherway.

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Forced would be rare--say a Prince threatens to frappe a demon if he doesn't turn on an ally. The player wouldn't be forced, but I'd remind him that his character is always looking out for Number One, and if his 'friend' is in the way of his long-term benefit then said friend is getting a knife in the back. Demons to me don't make sacrifices without a definite payoff in mind.

Yeah what if the Demon character I'm playing as doesn't want to be number one actually? But rather they rather 'help' humanity by turning them into Vampires and other supernatural creatures as a way to cheat death or sort of. Or some of them want solidarity with humans to overthrow God or something.

Well obviously I don't want to be a Angel or side with Heaven so my choices are very limited at this point.

[alexondria]

Originally Posted by Moonsight

Hence it's a everytime thing no matter what which I find problematic eitherway.



Yeah what if the Demon character I'm playing as doesn't want to be number one actually? But rather they rather 'help' humanity by turning them into Vampires and other supernatural creatures as a way to cheat death or sort of. Or some of them want solidarity with humans to overthrow God or something.

Well obviously I don't want to be a Angel or side with Heaven so my choices are very limited at this point.

I wouldn't say it's an every demon every time thing. From the prospective of someone that is working with a demon they would of course have the chance of getting stabbed in the back, but why would the demon stab them in the back and betray them if not doing that was more beneficial? Maybe the payout they're getting for this thing is good, maybe the person they are helping will owe them afterwards and they are counting on that. At one point my Angelic PCs got a demonic intervention. Lucifer actually helped them succeed. Do you have any idea how much that screws with PCs. To smell the brimstone- to know they've gotten the other sides attention, and then to be helped by it. It was a good 5 or 6 sessions they spent questioning and rethinking what they had been doing.

As for wanting to help well that still requires to a degree wanting to be on top- at least above the people that have differing views of how to help.

[William]

Moonsight, it sounds like what you want is to play In Nomine "Backwards" and possibly "Low Contrast," as has been mentioned in the thread a few times. Grab the Game Master's Guide and check out its guidance on how to do so. There are many ways to make Heaven less apparently appealing: say, play up the invasiveness of angelic resonances by adding Bedad, Skulker Prince of Privacy to the game, or (more canonically) make the demon with this Word a powerful Word-Bound Lilim under Lilith.

Make sure your players are interested in such a setting, of course. The "noble rebels" is a perfectly good plotline, as long as everyone is on the same page.

[Flyndaran]

This whole thread weirds me out. I read In Nomine as dark on its own with humanity acting as the most valuable resource. A resource akin to coal deposits where individual pieces don't matter at all. SOME on the angel side treat people like valued stuffed animals but never really on par with them. While demons treat humanity like other kinds of toys.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by William

There are many ways to make Heaven less apparently appealing: say, play up the invasiveness of angelic resonances by adding Bedad, Skulker Prince of Privacy to the game, or (more canonically) make the demon with this Word a powerful Word-Bound Lilim under Lilith.

I've long wanted, but still never had a chance to do a long term historical campaign where the central conflict was between the Archangel of Thrones and the former occupant of that word, Astaroth the Prince of Democracy.

There is no shortage of "virtues" that Heaven condemns whose proponents are in Hell, or things moderns don't much care for it will have Angels in charge of. The distribution of Judgment and Freedom in the canonical stuff seems tailored specifically to let you do this sort of thing.

[Whitelaughter]

Final thought: who would you associate these Attunements with?

- spend 3 essence so that a target human can make a Will roll to lose a level of Fear.

- allow a human to make a Will roll that if successful moves them to Blandine's march and grants them a bonus equal to the CD to resisting all demonic powers for the remainder of the night. They also give you their essence, despite not normally having that ability.

- allow two humans to share a dream.

Those are all Attunements of Nightmares. The rules bend over backwards to avoid...something...and as a result the nerfing makes abilities more useful to the other side than to your own. This is a problem that would need to be fixed in a 2nd edition.

[Drop Bear]

Most forms of In Nomine play as Pro-Heaven, from a Human Prospective, but can easily be less so from a Celestial or Ethereal prospective.


running things even out of the core book you could run it like this.
Humans are gods favored children, where the Angles are his disposable slaves set to work by the Uncle Toms that are the archangels since God doesn't feel the Angles are worth oppressing any more, that's how low he holds them. Demons are the runaways living out in the swamps, free but with a hard life, woe betide any Human that strays out there, some Deamons may kidnap humans or trick them out in to the swamps for some payback against the big guy in the white suit.

the game stays Pro-Heaven from a Human Prospective, but not so from the Celestial, throw in some ethereals to represent Indigenous peoples or pre-northern european settlers displaced from their lands and things can get very gray.

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Drop Bear

Most forms of In Nomine play as Pro-Heaven, from a Human Prospective, but can easily be less so from a Celestial or Ethereal prospective.


running things even out of the core book you could run it like this.
Humans are gods favored children, where the Angles are his disposable slaves set to work by the Uncle Toms that are the archangels since God doesn't feel the Angles are worth oppressing any more, that's how low he holds them. Demons are the runaways living out in the swamps, free but with a hard life, woe betide any Human that strays out there, some Deamons may kidnap humans or trick them out in to the swamps for some payback against the big guy in the white suit.

the game stays Pro-Heaven from a Human Prospective, but not so from the Celestial, throw in some ethereals to represent Indigenous peoples or pre-northern european settlers displaced from their lands and things can get very gray.

I like it, though I won't be using it for the current campaign. And I thought my way was dark!

[Drop Bear]

But perhaps that's just the story the Demons tell?

Even if the Demons are the not so bad guys, it's a common story of the Abused becoming the Abuser, happens in human history all the time, more so when petty power-mongers get at the head of an oppressed group, may haps the PC Demons can smell the BS & Hipocracy mingled among the Brimstone and that's why they want to get Earth Side Jobs, they don't want to be in Hell when the 2nd Revulsion starts.