The following systems are adapted and reprinted from the
God-Machine Chronicle. They are included here to facilitate
play of stigmatic and human characters in a Demon chronicle.
inteGrity
The Morality system described in the World of Darkness Rule-
book provides a workable system for measuring the effects of char-
acters’ behavior upon their psyches, but it has a few problems. Most of those problems stem from terminology. The system doesn’t measure morality so much as behavior, and the consequences (in- creased willingness to transgress the “hierarchy of sins” and, poten- tially, derangements) are more akin to post-traumatic stress disorder than the actual effects of the crimes on the list.
The Morality system is designed to evoke the Gothic/Vic- torian ethos in which a person’s sanity was thought to be a function of their morality. It was also designed to be mutable enough to change and provoke a moral or spiritual framework for the various supernatural beings. When a mortal becomes a vampire, therefore, “Morality” becomes “Humanity” and mea- sures how much of the Man has fallen to the ravenous Beast. If a mortal undergoes the First Change and becomes a werewolf, the trait changes to “Harmony” and reflects whether the char- acter is living with a lycanthrope’s spiritual duty. A human being stolen by the Fae tracks Clarity, measuring how well he can trust his own senses and to what extent he has become like the Gentry, and so on. In this respect, the Morality system works quite well. Unfortunately, in emulating the Victorian ethos, we wind up implying that one can commit murder and become schizophrenic. This isn’t the case. The system suffers from inconsistent and inappropriate terminology and from trying to signify too much within the game.
In addition, when considering a game like Demon: The
Descent, in which human characters are likely to have had
some exposure to the supernatural in the form of the God-Ma- chine (or the Fallen former servants thereof), the Morality system is less useful. It makes no attempt at discussing what happens to a person’s psyche when he encounters something as infinitely terrifying as the God-Machine.
To revise it, though, we need to consider what a Morality system should mean to a World of Darkness game. The un- derlying thematic push here is that what a person does has an effect on their mental state, which is probably fair. How- ever, better representations for that effect than derangements are possible, especially with the rules revisions in this book. And besides, Morality has never really measured Morality — it
measures functionality within society. It measures how well a character copes with what she has seen or done.
With all of that in mind, the following rules replace the Morality and degeneration rules found in the World of Dark-
ness Rulebook. They do not apply to demon characters (de-
mons track Cover instead), but stigmatic characters do have Integrity ratings and breaking points.
BreakinG points
A character stands to lose Integrity when she experiences a
breaking point. The notion of breaking points replaces the no-
tion of “sins” and therefore removes the need for a “hierarchy of sins.” If the action would cause a character psychological stress, it’s worth considering whether the action constitutes a breaking point. Note, too, that the character may experience breaking points that do not stem from his own actions. Wit- nessing the gruesome realities of the World of Darkness, su- pernatural or otherwise, can do it.
When a character performs certain actions or endures cer- tain experiences, he might reach a breaking point. A breaking point simply means that what a character has done or seen has outstripped his ability to rationalize or handle it.
A breaking point can fall into one of the following cate- gories:
• The character performs an action that either violates his personal moral code or that is considered unacceptable in society.
• The character witnesses something traumatic, terrifying, or that rattles his understanding of the world.
• The character is the victim of a supernatural attack, whether physical, emotional, or mental.
Breaking points are somewhat subjective, obviously. A ho- micide detective with 30 years of experience in seeing dead bodies and hearing confessions of killers has a somewhat high- er tolerance for human depravity than a sheltered 20-some- thing in a middle-class liberal arts college. During character creation, it is advisable for the Storyteller to come up with sev- eral hypothetical situations, so that the player can determine if, in her judgment, those situations would be breaking points. Note that a breaking point is not necessarily something that the character considers wrong. A character might kill someone in a clear-cut, unambiguous case of self-defense, but the experience is probably still a breaking point, even if the player (and the character!) feels the act was entirely justified. Actions take a toll on the psyche, regardless of whether the actions were righteous.
During character creation, the player should answer the following five questions. The questions are similar to the compromise questions for demon characters, found on p. 113 of Demon: The Descent). Each question provides a break- ing point for the character. If, during the character creation process, additional breaking points become apparent to the
player, add them to the list. There’s no limit to how many breaking points a character can have. The list isn’t a strict list anyway; the Storyteller can stipulate that a given occurrence is a breaking point regardless of whether or not it appears on the players’ list. However, the better-defined your character’s outlook is, the better your Storyteller’s understanding will be of what constitutes a breaking point for that character. • What is the worst thing your character has ever done? This
doesn’t have to be anything dastardly. If the worst thing your character ever did was steal money from his mother’s purse and lie to cover it up, that’s fine. What’s important here is to consider something that your character did that made him hate himself. The superlative “worst” is some- thing that the character would apply. Choose a breaking point based on the answer to this question.
• What is the worst thing your character can imagine himself do-
ing? We imagine ourselves in various scenarios to test our
own self-image against a hypothetical situation. When children do it, it’s called imaginative play, but it fills the same niche. What can you can character reasonably see himself doing, but still know that it would be wrong? Can your character imagine killing someone in self-defense? Torturing someone for information? How about robbing a store with a gun?
• What is the worst thing your character can imagine someone else doing? Of course, we all know that people are capa- ble of some hideous atrocities. What tops your charac- ter’s list? Serial murder? Rape? Torture? Spree killing? If your character is extremely sheltered or misanthropic, he might have a skewed view here; he might hang on to some lofty, cerebral notion of “dishonor” or “betrayal” as the nadir of human behavior.
• What has the character forgotten? In the World of Darkness, it’s next to impossible to grow up without any exposure to the supernatural. Decide what your character saw and for- got. Did she see a vampire take the form of mist and van- ish? A man turn into a wolf? Maybe she caught a glimpse of the God-Machine through a door that should never have been propped open? Describe this scene in as much detail as you can. This is a breaking point that has already occurred, but it helps set a benchmark for what your char- acter would have to see in order to experience one now.
Stigmatic characters should replace this question with:
How much does the character remember? Since all stigmatics have
been touched by the God-Machine in some way, it’s worth- while to consider whether or not the character remembers anything specific about how that contact happened. If the answer is “nothing,” that’s fine, but it does mean that when supernatural events start to surround that character, she’s as- sured of some breaking points.
• What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to the
character? No one goes through life with no trauma. Your
character might have been mugged, beaten as a child, in a serious car accident, been kidnapped by a parent during a di-
vorce, survived a life-threatening disease, attempted suicide, been attacked by a supernatural (or natural!) creature, or any number of other traumatic experiences. Again, the goal here isn’t to make a traumatized character. It’s to set a bar.
e
xamplesBelow are three examples of defining breaking points for starting characters:
Matt’s Demon chronicle has expanded and the Un- chained characters have formed an Agency that manipulates human and stigmatic characters into performing supporting roles without their knowledge. His players have decided they would like to play some of these dupes, and then design their demons’ operation around what happened during the “sup- porting cast” game. The three of them make characters for this story. Two players, Hal and Beth, make human characters, while Alice makes a stigmatic.
• Hal’s character, Ryan Berenczek, is a former bouncer, fired after he got too rough with a patron. Hal sets about answering the questions to build Ryan’s breaking points.
What is the worst thing Ryan has ever done? Hal is tempted to
use the incident at the bar to answer this question, but he figures beating a guy up in a bar fight isn’t the worst thing Ryan has ever done. He decides that Ryan hit someone with his car one rainy night. He saw the guy fly over his windshield and land in the street. Ryan doesn’t know if the guy is OK or not and has never attempted to find out. Hal talks with the Storyteller over how to phrase this as a breaking point, and they eventually decide on “causing injury or death through carelessness.” Note that this isn’t to say that deliberately hurting someone wouldn’t be a break- ing point to Ryan, simply that doing so carelessly definitely is.
What is the worst thing Ryan can imagine himself doing? Ryan is
accustomed to violence. He can see himself killing someone in a fight. He knows how, and he thinks about it sometimes, but the thought scares him. “Killing deliberately” is the breaking point, here.
What is the worst thing Ryan can imagine someone else doing?
Working as a bouncer, Ryan heard stories about people drug- ging drinks, but he never actually witnessed it. The thought of slipping someone a roofie makes Ryan livid. It just seems cowardly and sneaky and wrong. Hal phrases this as “drugging someone for purposes of rape.”
What has Ryan forgotten? Matt has asked the players to come
up with answers to this question that call back to the Demon chronicle’s events. Hal smirks, remembering when one of the characters used the Animate Exploit on the statue of a lion outside a church. He decides that Ryan was getting off a bus, drunk, when that lion returned to its post. “Witnessing the city move” is the breaking point.
What is the most traumatic thing that ever happened to Ryan?
Hal decides that Ryan has always had money problems, and a few months ago, he got hooked up with a crew that was going to rob an armored car. The barfight that cost Ryan his job
happened the night before the planned heist, and Ryan didn’t show up — he was in the hospital, under police questioning. Every person on the heist was killed. Hal considers “partici- pating in a felony” as a breaking point, but decides that’s going to come up too often. He chooses “picking up a gun” instead. • Beth, making a character for the same chronicle, wants
to be someone with a background in espionage, but she doesn’t want to make a slick young super-spy. She decides that her character is elderly and worked counter-intelli- gence during the Korean War. She names her character Earl Givler.
What is the worst thing Earl has ever done? Earl has shot other
soldiers in the line of duty, but that was a long time ago; Beth reasons that time and perspective have dulled the impact of that violence. She decides that Earl lost his temper with his son when the boy was five and smacked him across the face. The force of the blow ruptured his eardrum, and while the damage healed, Earl never quite got over it. “Harming a child” is the breaking point.
What is the worst thing Earl could imagine himself doing? The
recent torture scandals in the US government brought back some unpleasant memories for Earl. He never actually tor- tured anyone, but there was talk it was happening, and he believes, in his private moments of reflection, that he would have done it if it was necessary. Beth writes down “inflicting torture” as a breaking point.
What is the worst thing Earl can imagine someone else doing?
Earl has seen some pretty horrible things in his life, but his uncle was a World War II vet and brought home stories of con- centration camps and death trains. Beth asks if “mass murder” is too extreme of a breaking point. Matt allows it, though he makes it clear that witnessing such a crime would be the break- ing point, not committing it.
What has Earl forgotten? Since Matt has requested that this
refer back to the previous events of the Demon chronicle, Beth decides that Earl lives in an apartment building that overlooks an alleyway. Hal’s demon character invoked a soul pact and took someone’s life as a Cover in that alley, and Earl was looking out the window. All he saw was a biomechani- cal monster touch a person on the shoulder, and that person evaporated into black ash. Earl assumes he dreamed the whole thing. “Seeing a person destroyed” is the breaking point (and Matt makes a note that “destroyed” is different than “killed”).
What is the most traumatic thing Earl has ever experienced? Earl
witnessed an execution in the war. It was an enemy soldier who killed one of Earl’s compatriots after being captured. Earl saw the man forced down to his knees and shot. Although Earl has shot people in combat, seeing someone die helpless, even someone who deserved it (as Earl still believes the man did), haunted him for a long time. Beth takes “killing a help- less person” as the breaking point.
• Alice wants to play a stigmatic and asks if she can take any supernatural Merits. Matt agrees to let her take Omen Sensitivity, and Alice names her psychic character Starla Moon (it’s a stage name; Starla is a performer).