Here are a few disjoined ideas. Hopefully with the help of this board this will coalesce into a coherent campaign. I'm looking for suggestions and opinions and criticism of all sorts. Also be sure to get in a vote for system!

Influences
In no particular order: Diablo, WFRP, Ravenloft (regular and Masque of Red Death), Kult, Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane and similarly horrific stories, Jack Shear's Tome of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque and Gothic Earth, and Jim Raggi's LotFP adventures set on Earth.

The Setting
16th or 17th Century Earth. France or Germany both look good. I want to say 16th because there's religious strife and plate armor and zweihanders, but 17th is sexy too, with rapiers and flintlocks and stuff.

The Basics
There are angels and there are demons and they have hated each other's guts since the dawn of time. There was a long, long truce of sorts, in which they tried to influence human affairs indirectly, but for some reason the truce is over.

The Secret
You know how in Diablo there are angels and demons, with the expected hierarchies, but no God or Lucifer? That's what I'm aiming for. Perhaps like Kult, God is missing and everyone's losing their shit over it. Hell, it could be the reason why Heaven and Hell are going to war with each other and the End is nigh.

Magic
I think it's pretty transparent what I'm going for here; you can have your alchemists and astrologers and Kabbalists and Pythagorean sacred geometers, but real power arises from consorting with inhuman things and fucking around with your God-given soul.

System

• The D&D option. Swords & Wizardry with bits and pieces from Jack Shear's Gothic Earth and Tome of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque, and of course highly tailored monster and spell lists (might as well use LotFP's for the latter).
  
  
• The BRP option. RQ6 and/or Legend, with the Mongoose Elric of Melniboné magic system, plus the new bits from Blood Magic.  Just substitute Law and Chaos for Heaven and Hell and we're all set. Or I might just pick up a PDF copy of Stormbringer (name your edition of choice below!) and run with it. Also strongly considering tacking on CoC Sanity, maybe reworked to be more like Kult's enlightenment/madness scale. And/or maybe substitute EoM/RQ6 Passions for Jack Shear's Gothic Earth Virtues and Vices?
  
  
• The WoD option. Might as well handle it as a Tier 1 (cell-level), historical Hunter: The Vigil game, with bits and pieces from the "core/mortal" line (Book of Spirits, Inferno, Slasher, Skinchangers) rather than the "supernatural" (Monster: The Something) lines. Offers the intriguing option of extending play into a modern-day sequel.
  

Funny, I did something like this a long time ago, with a setting that  basically assumed the bible told the story froim the winners standpoint.  Lucifer had been the first son of God, and had been kind of running things on earth, when Michael, Raphael and Gabriel staged a coup (Uriel stood off to the side).  They Locked God away, and Lucifer fought them, but eventually was driven off and 'down'.  

So the Troika run things under God's name, but' he's been locked away for millenia, and...well, I wrote a whole cosmology.

The game system really depends on what type of town/life vs adventure paradigm you choose.  I do NOT think D&D magic works in almost any game except for what it was written for (my feeling on most game/setting matches).  

If you want to have alchemy and other types of magic, I'd work with a system that allows the different power systems to work differently. Otherwise, the cleric is just going to overpower everyone, likely.

I did something like this in the 90s, where god ceased to exist and the angels went nuts and fell into various factions (no demonsin the setting but the effect was similar to what you describe). I set it in the 18th century but the whole thing with god and the angels ruined society so it was techically a post apoc setting. Worked quite well.

This all looks cool to me.

As it were, I'm a beta tester for Melan's new old-school D&D-semiclone game these days. It's certainly NOT dark fantasy, but it is set in a fictional version of app. 17th century Switzerland. The ruleset is not public yet, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind me sharing some thought based on my experiences with it.

- I hope I don't really need to say this, but no demihumans or shit like that. It should be all humans in (a fictionalised version of) a human world.

- Alignment. No ninefold D&D bullshit. Even if God and Satan are not actual figures in your setting, I understand that Christianity is generally right about the lay of things. If you want to measure some sort of alignment, base it on the two-pole set forth pretty clearly by that religion. Actions in accordance with the Seven Virtues move you in one direction, actions in accordance with the Deadly Sins (or just consorting with the forces of the Devil in general) in the other.

- How do science and the great Universities of the time fit into your setting, cosmically speaking? Are they the tools of the Devil? Of God? Are they somehow weakening both? Are they relevant in any way?

It needs a twist of the macabre for flavour...

Gothic settings are usually all about old families, literal and figurative blood, vengeance, dark secrets, that sort of thing, so if you could work something similar into your demonic/angelic factions rather than having everyone with wings standing around pointing at their favourite book whilst excoriating everyone else it would probably be a first, and a good first as well.

How this theme interacts with the mortal world then will make it dance like a strangely beautiful, morbid monkey.

Quote from: The Traveller;601914It needs a twist of the macabre for flavour...

Gothic settings are usually all about old families, literal and figurative blood, vengeance, dark secrets, that sort of thing, so if you could work something similar into your demonic/angelic factions rather than having everyone with wings standing around pointing at their favourite book whilst excoriating everyone else it would probably be a first, and a good first as well.

How this theme interacts with the mortal world then will make it dance like a strangely beautiful, morbid monkey.

Yes! Families!

I vote ~17th century style setting, where the flintlocks and rapiers are just coming in, but the older families are still decaying up on their mountains in their crumbling fortresses, with rusting armor and zewihanders. In the meantime, trade with exotic places across the sea is really beginning to ramp up, so old, established relationships are in upheval as with the new influx of cash/goods from over seas.

So devise a list a families, the territories they control, the territories they want, and the territories that are threatened. Then, tie each family lineage back to angels, or devils, and the latent powers from those lines begin to awaken as exotic relics start to show up from far away lands.

In the "status-quo" at the beginning of the game certain families would be at odds with one another for traditional land and trade related reasons, and they'd have their typical alliances, marriages, wars and intrigues. Then there would be a period of upheval as the families awaken to their past or true calling. This would cause significant shits, as well as cause really interesting problems in families that have a combination of angels and devils in their past.

Because it's centered around powerful families with vested interests, they'd all party together leading to grand parties and intrigue games. It could also be easily played as a land grab/territorial type game. If McGuffins from the orient awaken the old magics then there's good opportunities for find and hold the relics type games. And finally, hell and heaven could start overlapping with reality in the territories controlled by each of the two factions.

Also... Pythagorean Sacred Geometriers sounds like an amazingly fun class to play. "One second guys, gotta finish drawing these triangles on this brick wall with my piece of magic chalk so I can turn it into a golem!"

If you go with early 17th century, you have interesting material on the occult side to implement into your game: the Rosicrucians are still around but petering out (the real ones, that is, as opposed to later claimants), the Invisible College is coming into existence, and modern Freemasonry starts sometime in the 1630s/40s.

RPGPundit

Quote from: pandesmos;601927I vote ~17th century style setting, where the flintlocks and rapiers are just coming in, but the older families are still decaying up on their mountains in their crumbling fortresses, with rusting armor and zewihanders. In the meantime, trade with exotic places across the sea is really beginning to ramp up, so old, established relationships are in upheval as with the new influx of cash/goods from over seas.

You gentlemen make a compelling case! Pandesmos' mention of old families with old stuff remind me of Castle of Otranto's monstruously big suit of armor and what happened when... well, go read the book. And of course, Pundit's occult historical insight doesn't hurt either.

The next step is indeed proper setting creation. Since it's set on Earth, a reasonable part of the job is done, and the initial footwork is less about drawing maps and more about hitting Wikipedia and the Internet History Sourcebooks on early 1600s Europe.

After that, I'll be selecting a small region (or creating one, Ruritania-like) for the initial campaign. I already have a vague idea of the things I want to have: there should be a large countryside, with wild places and plenty of room for werewolves and pagan cults and the odd vampire or revenant, and the precise starting place will probably be a small settlement; but there should also be a city within travelling distance (a go-to place to consult sages, buy exotic materials, etc.). It'll probably be somewhere in France or the Holy Roman Empire, but I'm not decided yet.

Quote from: pandesmos;601927So devise a list a families, the territories they control, the territories they want, and the territories that are threatened. Then, tie each family lineage back to angels, or devils, and the latent powers from those lines begin to awaken as exotic relics start to show up from far away lands.

In the "status-quo" at the beginning of the game certain families would be at odds with one another for traditional land and trade related reasons, and they'd have their typical alliances, marriages, wars and intrigues. Then there would be a period of upheval as the families awaken to their past or true calling. This would cause significant shits, as well as cause really interesting problems in families that have a combination of angels and devils in their past.

Because it's centered around powerful families with vested interests, they'd all party together leading to grand parties and intrigue games. It could also be easily played as a land grab/territorial type game. If McGuffins from the orient awaken the old magics then there's good opportunities for find and hold the relics type games. And finally, hell and heaven could start overlapping with reality in the territories controlled by each of the two factions.

Also... Pythagorean Sacred Geometriers sounds like an amazingly fun class to play. "One second guys, gotta finish drawing these triangles on this brick wall with my piece of magic chalk so I can turn it into a golem!"

Not 100% sold on the angelic/demonic blood stuff, though having a Nephilim bloodline is an intriguing idea, and ancient familial pacts with demons are a must for a Stormbringer game (BTW I'm really set on the BRP rulesets now). The use of occult powers to tip off a balance of power is a masterstroke, though, and now I must seek some place in which warring families were at each other's throats.

Great stuff! I'm off to do some research. In the meantime feel free to contribute.