After a successful interrogation of a newly enrolled college student, the team head to the police to bail out a potential lead.
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y’know I was thinking about how back when you guys were starting out I kind of assumed only Jesus was interested in GMing at all, and how one by one over the past couple years everyone else has stepped up to the plate and completely knocked it outta the park. very glad you did.
that said, Demon seems SO HARD TO RUN. like any system where people get problemsolving superpowers. and with Embeds being free–just seems like it’s too easy to give anybody the runaround with a few choice combinations (without even having to get into Interlocks! and I haven’t even read Exploits yet, they must be terrifying). I’m always struggling with this conceptually in supernatural games, how to make players feel like abhuman monster beasts (in a cool way) without giving them superpowers that trump drama. Daniel seems to be handling it fine here, but I do wonder, long-term, if it won’t get a little boring, the way you can basically Devil’s Advocate or Freudian Slip any information you need out of anyone.
everyone having 0 Resources was fucking HILARIOUS, though. that whole subplot-thread was wonderful.
Hey crawlkill! Yeah, Demon is pretty damn challenging to run, it’s part of why I decided to go ahead and run a (modified) version of the main adventure from the back of the book as our first game, rather than make it all up from scratch, so I could get a feel for how the power levels would work within a story that already takes some of that into account in its design.
What I’m finding is that, while Demons are indeed incredibly powerful, they are hardly omnipotent. And they have certain very powerful shackles that a GM can use to rein in some of that power, the two most effective ones being, of course, the danger of damage to one’s Cover, and the sheer terror of the God Machine and its Angels. After all, no matter how powerful the Demons may be, the God Machine and its servants outclass them easily. Which means that the players have to be smart about the application of their power, and that in itself gives the GM ideas on how to set up challenges. In some games, convincing an NPC of something might be a challenge in and of itself. In Demon, with the right power it’s almost effortless to do the same thing, which means it’s not a challenge. You’ve got two options then: one, is simply making the adventure in such a way that the player’s ability is either neutralized or never needed. That’s the cheap and easy way, and tends to make players frustrated (because what’s the point of having something cool if you never get to use it?). Option 2, which is the one I try to aim for, is to make such a thing just a part of a bigger challenge. Design a problem where being able to convince that NPC isn’t the solution, but only one step in the full solution. That way the player still gets to use their cool ability, without making the game a cakewalk.
It’s definitely a subject I wanna talk more about, especially once we finish up this arc, how to run a fun and challenging game even when your PC’s are incredibly powerful. Might write it up as a blog entry, or we might discuss it in a GTRT soon. 🙂
I’d be happy to read it! I actually went back and relistened to the mortal GMC games in preparation for reading Demon (and am now listening to Unhallowed Metropolis again…fallen down the Fandihole)
Heh, falling down the Fandihole needs to be a thing.
Actually, so does “There’s No Judgement at the Affle House.” If it didn’t make me “that guy”, I’d totally wear that on a t-shirt.
I can’t put my finger on it but there is something about the setting tone that is intriguing to me. It is kinda in the way that Seattle feels when you guys are interacting with it, I notice it less during Shadowrun since it is future Seattle, but this time you got a solid sort of feel of what I imagine New Yorkers portraying a different sort or urban landscape. Not that I know New York at all, but I knew Seattle a little.
*different sort of urban landscape