By Crom, someone explain what this is all about? Is it part of the World of Darkness?

I will second the confusion. I can't make heads or tails of WTF is that.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;657838By Crom, someone explain what this is all about? Is it part of the World of Darkness?

It's the nWoD "default campaign setting" now, bundled together with a system update appendix that's also available separately as a free PDF download. GMC still requires the old core so it's not a standalone product, but Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle will effectively be "Requiem Revised" and replace the current VtR book.

So what is a God Machine?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;657850So what is a God Machine?

God as a machine, pretty much: a metaphysical mechanism that's infiltrated Earth since time immemorial, incorporating aspects of the mundane world into its infrastructure and manipulating history towards some inscrutable purpose like a clockwork. It's basically a general-purpose explanation for random weirdness in the setting. The upcoming Demon line will no doubt go further into the details, since the new demons are after all rogue servitors of the Machine.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;657850So what is a God Machine?

The God-Machine chronicle builds upon the untitled fiction piece in the original (New) World of Darkness core rulebook (pp. 27-31). A good read actually, and I'm looking forward to see how they've made it gameable.

So is this a start to the new new world of Darkness? (Newer World of Darkness?)

GMC is a default campaign with a significant rules patch for nWoD. The rules patch can be downloaded for free.

The GMC is something that is detailed quite a bit but never fully explained, explicitly allowing each GM to come up with their own theory or keep it obscured as they want.

It's no wonder that RPGs are dying out. This stuff is fine for jaded old timers long since bored with vampires with katanas, but for potential newcomers it's completely opaque. In the 90s, the basic concepts of WoD could be understood by anyone in 5 seconds.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;657931It's no wonder that RPGs are dying out. This stuff is fine for jaded old timers long since bored with vampires with katanas, but for potential newcomers it's completely opaque. In the 90s, the basic concepts of WoD could be understood by anyone in 5 seconds.

FWIW I found GMC to be pretty much a revision of the Cthulhu mythos using what scares people today as its foundation, rather than what scared people in the 1920s.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;657931It's no wonder that RPGs are dying out. This stuff is fine for jaded old timers long since bored with vampires with katanas, but for potential newcomers it's completely opaque. In the 90s, the basic concepts of WoD could be understood by anyone in 5 seconds.

There is more than a kernel of truth to what you say. Nowadays Twilight and its imitators have put vampires, werewolves &c. back in the map, and White Wolf chose not to pursue those particular associations for reasons of their own (mainly, not further alienating an already schismatic fan base); probably a mistake, but hindsight is 20/20.

Still, a "simple" horror set-up like NWoD (core + Antagonists, or Hunter: The Vigil) or CoC (sans Mythos) makes for a great introductory game, especially when dealing with an audience prejudiced towards fantasy, classic SF or four-color supers. Of the big four RPG genres, I dare say horror has the most mainstream, non-geek appeal.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;657931It's no wonder that RPGs are dying out. This stuff is fine for jaded old timers long since bored with vampires with katanas, but for potential newcomers it's completely opaque. In the 90s, the basic concepts of WoD could be understood by anyone in 5 seconds.

No matter how Demon will complicate the God-Machine concept with an inside look into its workings, that can't possibly make the set-up harder to grasp than Mage: The Ascension from the Nineties.

...And now that the Demon demo is available on Drivethru, this is how it describes the Machine: "It's a literal machine, surrounding, infiltrating, and encompassing the world. Some demons suspect that the whole World of Darkness might be the God-Machine, others believe it's a function of the universe that serves itself rather than its original purpose. Still others believe it invaded a pre-existing world like a parasite. It isn't a metaphor, or a spirit, but a physical machine of metal, oil, and glass. Its primary sites, where its gears endlessly turn, are hidden from human eyes inside facilities folded into the space between floors of skyscrapers, hidden in hives of steel and belching smoke that humans simply ignore, or churning, red-hot, deep beneath the Earth's surface."

That actually has a somewhat more objective feel to it than GMC's approach which leaves much up to the GM's own planning, as might be expected since the demons are understandably on closer terms with this sort of thing than mortal investigator PCs. Still, it doesn't offer any fixed information on how or why this system came to exist in the setting. That could change when the full game is released, but frankly I suspect it may well keep the matter nebulous.

It's basically a grand-unified-theory for fucked-up weirdness that doesn't rely on the Mythos.  It's very much in tune with stuff like the horrific weirdness in Thomas Ligotti or Clive Barker, or the background craziness of Warren Ellis' Planetary.  Secret machines butchering souls, bizarre urban gods, all of that.  It's also in line with things like the Slender Man mythos and the like, or the random horror of V/H/S.  It doesn't in any way preclude readers from using more conventional horror, or exclude the normal vampires, werewolves and crew from the NWoD.

It directly ties into the new Demon game, which is insanely cool, if the demo I played at GenCon is any indication.  Demons are agents of the God Machine which have rebelled for their own reasons and now pursue their own aims.

The new Demon is pure heavy metal for what I've seen in the preview, and the God-Machine Chronicle doesn't seem to be too far behind. As someone who completely dislikes the New World of Darkness, these two books are the very first time I can say that I'm interested on it.

The way I understood it from what was said over the WW forum, is that you can play Demon with the rules from the QS plus the Demon book (without the WoD core), is that correct?