50 Shades of Vampire: Demon the Descent crossovers

Finishing off some of the last ideas I came up in the process of creating a Vampire: the Requiem character, I have some crossover ideas. Specifically how I would make a Demon the Descent crossover.

Blood and Gears

A Demon: the Descent crossover

Themes

When combining games, I always find it best to start with themes that both games share. It helps to keep the game focused and generally drives the player characters of both groups together.

For Vampire and Demon, I think we need to dig deep into the generational struggles of Vampire and the rage against the machine of Demon. A theme of struggle against a cruel authority works well for both games.

In this scenario the elders of the city are in league, openly or in secrecy, with the Machine. Together they manipulate the mortal population, placing the right people in charge, pushing through the desired projects, and eliminating troublesome obstructions whether they be mortals, Demons, or Kindred. Our player characters should be the rebels working to overturn the establishment.

An interesting idea would be to add organizational occult matrices to the game. In other words, if people X, Y, and Z take key positions in city hall a magical effect is created.

Perhaps if a fourth candidate is financed enough to support a run for mayor and all the candidates' coffee is dosed with certain heavy metals, the elected mayor will achieve a landslide victory (with 88.8% of the vote) and be replaced by an angel upon being sworn in to office.

Covenants and Agendas

In any crossover game the politics of each different faction will be given less attention. So it helps to pick out a few that work well with the other side and focus on those.

An obvious new covenant to include are the Holy Engineers from The Danse Macabre. These vampires suffer from something called radio sickness, where they receive messages from the future for questions they haven't asked yet. These answers come from the God-Machine.

Following our theme above, they are clearly in bed with the enemy, a cult of monsters who serve the Machine and push its plans. We should probably use them to replace the Circle of the Crone and/or Lancea Sanctum in the city.

The Invictus, as our default vampire government, are probably already in league with the Engineers. Or maybe the Carthians with their "new" politics have teamed up with this symbol of technological progress to create a new regime. Either way both covenants remain viable for players as either the rebels seeking to topple the corrupt authorities or the men/women on the inside trying to clean up a broken system.

For the Demons, the same can be said for Integrators. The other Agendas should fit in fairly well with the various Vampire factions. Demons after all are natural rebels.

A few possible covenant/agenda team ups suggest themselves. Inquisitors and the Ordo Dracul could probe the secrets of the machine, sometimes at cross purposes. The Lancea Sanctum might join the Saboteurs destroy this false god. Any vampire is likely to be on good terms with a Tempter.

Another possible link comes from the source of the Theban sorcery. Are the rituals really the tools from God? Or the God-Machine? What if new rituals appear that summon Angels?

Bloodlines

Every time you've heard someone say they saw a ghost, or an angel. Every story you've ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens, is the system assimilating some program that's doing something they're not supposed to be doing.

But like so many back then they caused more problems than they solved.

Adding a bloodline tied to the God-Machine might be fun. Riffing off the Matrix Reloaded, perhaps the Machine has created a set of vampiric servants to supplement its Angels. And to tie this into Demon, maybe some of those servants have rebelled...

Background: Once the Machine sought to create servants which could propagate themselves, that would help it control the masses of humanity it needed for this stage of its plans. Rather than create something anew, it took a short cut and transformed existing supernatural beings: vampires.

These agents gained access to its resources, learned new powers, and helped correct flaws in its schemes before they toppled vital occult matrices.

But like many tools of the Machine, they too were flawed. Slowly they began to manipulate the system to their benefit. Some rebelled, some simply subverted places of power. Eventually the God-Machine had enough and ended the experiment.

But a few escaped the purge and carry on the fight to this day.

Nickname: Agents, Unplugged
Clan: Mehket
Bloodline Bane: All Agents suffer a permanent Glitch (see Demon: the Descent, p.184)
Bloodline Disciplines: Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Obfuscate
Bloodline Gift: All Agents can perceive Infrastructure as if they possessed Unseen Sense (God-Machine). They also have the ability to manifest something like a demonic form. Pick a Modification or Technology upon joining the bloodline. If the Agent spends 1 Vitae they can manifest the ability but must also make a roll of Humanity +4 or gain the Surveilled condition (Demon: the Descent p.120).

It rumored that some members of the bloodline learn to activate multiple abilities through some form of the Terrible Form Merit (Demon: the Descent p.122).

Other Threats

Recently rumors have begun circulating of a new bloodline, possibly derived from the Ventrue clan. They've shown evidence of the Celerity, Dominate, Obfuscate, and Resilience Disciplines and seem prone to Glitches related to odd behavior and madness. Are they more rebels or new, more loyal, servants of the Machine?