Chronicles of Darkness | What Is The God-Machine?

[@mattkeith1180]

Well now all I want to do is play Demon and I don’t have a way to. This was a great video and you have a voice perfect for videos like this.

[@KaiserAfini]

I think one way to look at it is like the perfect preserver of existence. Its patient, methodical, efficient, impartial, holistically inscrutable, well informed, has multiple contingencies and far reaching. Its unnerving because its an incredible calculating engine (although not omniscient or omnipotent), fully devoid of empathy. It can be thwarted, but it will require matching move by move its machinations, to eventually make a wound. A few times you might want to aid its designs, being generally helpful yet brutal in execution, pitching the party and other mortals in the crossfire of a war between it and an Idigam, forcing them to redirect their focus so as to not get stomped by a clash of eldritch horrors.

[@avzen]

It’s great the way you explore the theme and your approach make me have very different and great “little encounters” that could be the background of many interlinked stories.

[@Shiftready]

I love the way this guy compiles info from the WOD material. 🎉

[@bigsarge2085]

Yes, perfectly done! Very informative and intriguing.

[@ekorren]

Thank you! :)

[@Rosequeen13]

i think i finally "get" the god-machine as a storytelling device... it's only taken four years :P

[@knottheory79220]

Video's great, but the audio needs some work, have to jack the volume up really far to make out the words.

[@ekorren]

Yeah, it came out feeling more muted than in the editing software. Will be more mindful of the audio levels for the next one.

[@Shiftready]

Thank you so much! Well done! 🎉

[@asdrubaelvect8038]

This seems like a really cool game. I'd very much like to try it at some point. It's just too bad not a single group is playing it within a hundred mile radius. Plenty of fifth edition no worries there. And if you're tired of 5th edition there's Homebrew 5th edition, which is like 5th edition but different.

[@ekorren]

There's always people willing to play. Fewer who are willing to put in the work to run it, though. Funnily enough, I do have a video on how to get your friends to try other games :)

[@asdrubaelvect8038]

@@ekorren that is a good point of course if I really want to play I just run it my damn self. Except you know first time running a new system that goes poorly just going to mean we're going to be regulated to more fifth edition or at least that's my excuse haha. I did actually watch your other video. I'm subbed that's how I got the notification for this so quickly

[@bob_kat7160]

How would players fight it though? It seems almost impossible to win. Maybe I just don’t get it. 😅

[@ekorren]

You're not supposed to fight it directly and win. You can challenge its projects, but it's more of a GM tool to structure scenarios with.

[@bob_kat7160]

@@ekorren ah I see. So you don’t really fight it but fight against what it does?

[@hortencya302]

Hmm....I think the vampire games says god created the vampires(not sure since I know very little about the lore of this universe) can this have been a bug in the god machine's code. I mean they are a type of humans that are faulty and spread by infecting non faulty human beings just how a virus or critical bugs can end up spreading to more and more files in a system.

[@Fallenscion]

TLDR: You're thinking of a different edition's lore. The World of Darkness lore is split broadly between Old WOD (OWOD / Now just World of Darkness) and New WOD (NWOD / CofD / Now just Chronicles of Darkness). OWOD lore is extremely Abrahamic/Eurocentric - with a whole lot of biblical references as core lore all over the place. The GodMachine, in contrast, is CofD - which tries a lot harder to not directly tie itself to any real religions in the lore itself. OWOD vampires were direct descendants of Cain, as in, Cain & Abel. CofD vampires are completely unknown in their origin; it's up to you, as the storyteller, to decide.

[@juliankohler5086]

The reason why this video seems underappreciated is... Most of the people who interacted with it have never existed and will never exist again.