Why I Like G vs E

As my much-put-upon players would tell you, I have an abiding love of monotheistic religion. Not in any sense of actual faith, but just liking the moral simplicity of its worldview, and stories set in said worldview*. One of the few praises I'll give to D&D is for having Good and Evil as unalterable, actual forces of the setting. Of course in the same breath I'll also condemn it for making determining them a matter of a spell or a paladin's concentration. In my view, the ideal is to let the characters know that there is a force of righteousness in the world, but never really letting them be sure that they're working for it.

G vs E was a show on the Sci-Fi network in the heady days of 1999. While it had a lot of issues, most notably a miniscule budget (They had enough to hire Emmanuel Lewis, but not enough to pay him to speak), Sci-Fi-standard sketchy writing and the kind of weird anti-PC backlash sensibility that plagued the end of the Clinton years, it also offered a kicky 70s-cop-show vibe and a lot of excellently plagarizable concepts. The basic storyline runs thus: The forces of Hell offer humans the usual power beyond their wildest imaginings. When one who has accepted such a bargain (called a Faustian, for obvious reasons) dies, then Hell claims their souls. Before being properly damned, these souls (called Morlocks, for less obvious reasons) are resurrected to offer Faustian bargains in turn. This pyramid-scheme arrangement means that actual demons long ago left the picture, leaving the business of tempting mortals to the Morlocks, who are immortal so long as they can keep gleaning new Faustians, which in turn become new Morlocks**. Against this constantly rising tide of evil, good offers its usual seemingly paltry defence: Mortals who die on the very borderline between Heaven and Hell are given a second chance to redeem themselves, and make up the motley crew called the Corps. Corps agents are mortal, have no magic or powers beyond the "standard Morlock killing knife"***, and are forbidden from "intimate contact" both with people from their prior lives**** and mortals generally. Angels are completely unknown (and perhaps unknowable), and divine intervention takes the always-popular form of deniable serendipity.

Corps agents in G vs E are often bastards for good, beating up Faustians, blackmailing them, and otherwise engaging in shady practices that would make them morally questionable if they weren't juxtaposed with the literal embodiment of evil. The show gets around these moral issues by ignoring them, which works well enough with the Starsky and Hutch vibe the show is going for - the source material wasn't exactly awash in moral ambiguity (Their go-to contact was a pimp, for chrissakes). Still, there's a lot to work with here - The Corps never has direct contact with the divine, running more or less on faith and handed-down assurances from previous generations of agents that they're doing the right thing. Contact with mortals is forbidden for complicating the afterlife and providing easy hooks for the other side, but this works about as well as any monastic prohibition ever does. The frustrated desires and lofty dreams of the Faustians are ultimately understandable, and even a Morlock is really just a Faustian that died. That last probably sums it up best: G vs E is an angels-vs-demons universe in which those roles are all played by humans, which makes it all the more understandable and relatable. I've had a lot of fun playing In Nomine, but it never quite feels right trying to play an extension of the divine will, or a force of malevolence dedicated to thwarting same. The concept feels like it could be much stronger than the actual execution, and that's an impetus to gaming if I ever felt one.


* Also I love drawing on the byzantine symbolism of Judeo-Christian mythology. Someday I'll finally be able to run that game with Cain, Abel and Seth as Atlantean immortals.
** The concept that you work for Hell specifically so that you delay going there is one of my favourite elements of Thomas McKay's The Collectors.
*** "Soaked in the blood of an innocent... Don't worry, it's nobody you know." The knives are one of those throwaway details that really raise questions about the essential goodness of Heaven in this scenario. Particularly seeing how common they are.
**** Of course, they're also unrecognizable, a la Dead Like Me. Oh man, one day I am gonna write such a blogpost about all the things that bug me about Dead Like Me.