"Reincarnation. Gods. Demons. Angels. Magic. Computers. It’s a strange world out there when people can find themselves connected with all of the above-and yet, here we are. What we can tell is this: All of them are now connected."
— 'Gone to Atziluth
What do you get when you put Exalted, The World of Darkness, Shin Megami Tensei, Persona and other works in a blender? Goddess Reborn Chronicles, apparently. Based on the Storyteller/Storytelling system from White Wolf, Goddess Reborn began life when two friends planning a Nocturne roleplay realized both were working on a tabletop version of Mega Ten and decided to combine their efforts. The main difference between the mainline series was the severity of apocalyptic damage to humanity and the earth. As development continued to show a world where demons and humans lived side-by-side, the translation became In Name Only, thus the oblique name. One creator did this to enable multi-group stories. Although it isn’t as dark as its parent series, its intention is to present both the main series and some of its shootoffs as a cohesive whole with inspirations from several other works.
This is an in-progress work. The creator, Anthiens will be taking questions and answering them in discussion as able.
Goddess Reborn Chronicle contains examples of:
- Anti Anti Christ: Signature Chaos character Isa is the reincarnation of Lilith. She just wants to explore the world and hang out with her friends and thinks the world is worth living in, if with some work.
- Apocalypse How: Class 1-2. A number of large cities are seen in the fiction as abandoned, due to war, magic, tech gone awry, all of the above or what is unknown. This is nowhere near as bad as some of the apocalypses in Mega Ten.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Rumored of Dr. Steven. The goals of Tensei as well as Veritas and Lucifer.
- Blessed with Suck: Cambions and Guardians can change someone into their template, if they want to or not. The former creates an inferior, unstable version of a cambion, loyal to them. Beelzebub approves. Out-of-character, this requires the player's permission.
- Body Horror: The Guardians and artificial Cambions can have this happen as a result of their transformation.
- Brought Down to Normal:
Stated as impossible for the three supernatural templates. Arguably, Vessels who now have human form, no matter how transcendent or powerful they were from the angel/demon's point of view. - Came Back Wrong: There are a number of Guardians and Cambions who this happens to, becoming a "vessel", also known as husks or abominations.
- Canon Foreigner: Veritas, a gnostic goddess who patrons the neutral faction.
- A Chat with Satan: Part of how Tensei are born. Isa did this with Lilith-and Lucifer, due to shenanigans.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Both Veritas and Lucifer have savior and Promethian elements to them that their followers hold as ideals.
- Cute Bruiser: Isa might have magic, but she likes fist fights over using spells and she can take a hit.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Chaos-aligned demons aren’t necessarily evil, even if they look like it.
- Eldritch Location: There are four worlds, we live in half of Assiah, where demons live in the other three. God (once) took up the entirety of the highest layer, Atziluth but lost ground to Veritas and Lucifer.
- The Fake Cutie: Nicky, who is actually Lucifer in human form. As for why she seems to be a Genki Girl may have something to do with part of him actually being a sweet, perky girl.
- Fallen Angel: All over the place, including the fallen angel.
- Fantastic Racism: A lot of people still hate and fear demons and their progeny.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: There's a wide breadth and depth of demons to interact and negotiate with.
- Female Angel, Male Demon: defied and zig-zagged. There's demons and angels who are male, female and neither. With Isa and Cave's past lives, it's inverted-she's the demon, he's the angel(ically aligned).
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Basically.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: In a sense. It's both stated that it's not known if demons predate humanity or not, but the 'not' evidence is stated by a Devil Buster.
- Hot-Blooded: Isa, though she's also as quick to forgive and forget.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Humans are equally capable of evil as any demon or angels. And inversely, demons are capable of as much good.
- I Am Who?: Isa, Cave and a good section of Tensei who connect to reincarnations as a part of the awakening of their Personas.
- Idiot Ball: Why mistreat the albino Guardian who is having doubts about her faith?
- I Hate Past Me: Isa is unimpressed by Lilith's exegesis and wants to stand on her own two feet, instead of letting herself make the same mistakes.
- Insistent Terminology: Demons is really a catch-all term, including angels, gods, fairies and more.
- Interspecies Romance: Not unknown. The results aren’t really welcomed a lot of places.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: The Tensei do this. They can get stuck there.
- Knight Templar: The Law Heroine starts out that way.
- Light Is Not Good: It being based on Shin Megami Tensei, par for the course.
- Louis Cypher: Unusually, she is known as Nicky.
- Magitek: The Demon Summoning Program and working teleporters are just the tip of the iceberg.
- Me's a Crowd: A potential thing for Tensei, Guardians and Cambions. If they're unlucky, they may lose their original self entirely.
- Nature Is Not Nice
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Dr. Steven, a recurring character of Shin Megami Tensei but here, his family name is Asra.
- Olympus Mons: Endgame possibilities include summoning facets of primordial beings like Lucifer and God.
- Order Versus Chaos: A big theme here, though neutral is a viable route. Each has upsides and down.
- Our Angels Are Different: They are deva, with varying levels of self awareness. They can also be melded to a human's soul, though it doesn't always work.
- Our Souls Are Different: The souls here are like the hun and po of Exalted or the ka and ba of Egyptian myth. Also includes:
- Our Demons Are Different: They are organized by clans. Recently, humans identified them by "classes" 1-5. There's rumor of class 6 beings, but they aren't quite summonable or require special code or equipment. They are also organized like Yozi, with five levels, instead of three circles.
- Our Gods Are Different: They have different origins, some exist due to humanity, one split off from his greater whole because he was disgusted by his other facets.
- Our Angels Are Different: Angels can also have pants-filling level of horrifying forms.
- Physical Gods: They can be bargained with and made minions of, even.
- Post-Cyberpunk: Though it clearly has cyberpunk styling (as befitting its source material), it rejects some of cyberpunk's pillar philosophies and focuses on both groups and individuals having different kinds of power, choice being the most important power of them all. However, it also accepts that sometimes people come from situations where choices are stripped away.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: For maximum playability, parts of the canon were changed so much, as to be unrecognizable.
- Some details of the Shin Megami Tensei series remains out of reach, due to not being available in English or Polish.
- Some details of the Shin Megami Tensei series remains out of reach, due to
- Rage Against the Heavens: Lucifer and Veritas both.
- Reincarnation: All over the place, it's even in the title.
- Refusal of the Call: Isa and her friend, Cave. Their past life selves are not amused.
- Sadly Mythtaken: God is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient. This is a very fortunate thing.
- Science Fantasy: Naturally, given its sources.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: With a reference to Evil Dead, to boot.
- Shout-Out: Several. A sidebar of failed attempts to make the Guardians include an orb filled with silvery fire that went missing. Others are out there and they are horrifying.
- Skilled, but Naive: Isa wants to believe the best of everyone. She is not however averse to beating the crap out of people who don't mean her well.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: It sits somewhere in the middle-while terrible things have happened, terrors roam the land, life isn't hopeless nor pointless and people have and can change the world-and can and have failed to do so.
- So Proud of You: Nicky to Isa, who is creeped out by such a thing.
- Stepford Smiler: Isa says she left home-at a ridiculously young age. "Granny Lakkie" says more bluntly that she sent away Isa to keep the young woman safe, as it was becoming dangerous. Isa misses her home and grandmother deeply, but she enjoys travelling so much, she's too busy to stop and be sad about it.
- Stop Worshipping Me: Claimed by Lucifer, actually insisted on by Veritas.
- Time Abyss: Claimed by a few entities and of others. Lilith, Lucifer, YHVH and a few others claim to have been around either since the cradle of mankind or to be from before the beginning. Veritas makes no such claims.
- Those Two Guys: Isa and Cave, the Chaos and Neutral heroes respectively.
- Took a Level in Badass: Tensei, Guardians and Cambions when they are awakened or transformed as such. Can overlap with Took a Level in Jerkass.
- Who You Gonna Call?: Devil Busters, a name that dates back to the Megami Tensei games.
