[milliken]

Originally Posted by Doc

I guess my first question should be, have I bitten off more than I can chew here? Should I start off with something a little more light-weight, albeit less satisfying?

That depends on what you and your group want to do. Tabletop gaming is very different from computer "RPG"s. This is partly due to it being so very open-ended, and partly due to the differences between the environments. Things that are pretty easy to do on the computer (combat, 3-D graphics) tend to be hard to do in tabletop, and vice-versa (such as having human intelligence really guiding the game).

Most especially be careful about getting a lot of combat into a tabletop game. I can't think of any game system where combat is really quick and simple -- there's just too many possibilitities, and the GM and players can't crunch them at computer speeds.

Overall, In Nomine is a fairly good choice for a starting game system. It's pretty rules-light, and combat is simpler and more abstract than in a lot of other game systems. The main difficulty with running an In Nomine game is the sheer amount of background available. It helps to keep the initial game simple -- keep the number of Superiors involve with the characters as small as possible, and urge players to pick characters who won't be working at cross-purposes. (Mixed angel/demon groups can be problematic, but so can all-demon groups, or all angel groups with serious inter-Superior conflicts.)

To save the GM's sanity, you may also want to steer players away from the more difficult character types -- Malakim and Mercurians are usually considered the most troublesome (they tend to resonate everybody), closely followed by Kyriotates (who can be a split party even when playing solo -- and split parties are always a pain for GMs).

If the core In Nomine rules handled humans well, I'd suggest starting with an all-human (Soldiers) game, with all the celestials being NPCs. Humans start out clueless about nearly everything that matters in In Nomine, so lack of background understanding won't hurt play, and in fact will be useful -- you can lay out whatever facts you want the players to have about the background when they are recruited by celestials. Humans have two drawbacks in In Nomine, however -- they are fairly pitiful creatures by celestial standards (and the rules are biased towards playing celestials), and humans die very easily. The extended rules in the Corporeal Players Guide help a lot, but that's another book, and more rules to have to deal with. However, if you mostly want to roleplay in character, and don't want to do much combat, it could work out pretty well even with just the core rules.

Originally Posted by Doc

For instance which resources are essential and which can wait a while (I could only afford to pick up maybe 3 or four books in the near future).

At the risk of being thwacked by the Line Editor (who happens to be my spouse), I'd recommend starting with just the core rules, to keep things simple. The next books to pick up would probably be the Superiors books for those Superiors who are most important to your campaign (i.e., PC's bosses or major opponents). The Game Masters' Guide is very useful in setting up your campaign the way you want it to run, and has useful background material as well (such as the timeline). The Corporeal Players' Guide is especially useful if you want human PCs, otherwise you can leave it to later. The Angelic and Infernal Player's Guides are so-so; some of the material in them needs some substantial revision, and nothing in them is particularly essential to playing.

The various "Liber" books and You Are Here are all pretty good, but fairly specialized and not particularly crucial. However, Liber Servitorum (basically a pre-generated NPC book) and You Are Here (a book of locations) could be pretty useful to a novice GM.

In general, it's a good idea to pass on the "Rev Cycle" books: Night Music, The Marches, Heaven & Hell, Fall of the Malakim, and The Final Trumpet. Some material in these isn't yet available elsewhere, but it's also the most heavily-revised part of the line.

Overall, I'd suggest starting with just the core book, plus (after your players have settled on what types of characters they want, and their Superiors), whichever of the Superiors books seem most relevant.

Make sure you look over the stuff on the official In Nomine web site, and most especially the FAQ. There's also a link there to a huge pile of unofficial, but generally very good, material hosted at the IN web site (http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/articles/). Much of that has been written by various authors who've also written official material.

Originally Posted by Doc

Should I wait for a revised edition of the core rules?(I got the impression from one of the other threads in this forum that this may be coming in the forseeable future)

Sorry, no, to the best of my knowledge, it's quite the opposite. It would be nice to have them, and everyone wants them, mostly for organizational reasons (the original books are rather poorly organized, which is unusual for SJGames). But with the current state of the line, it's got almost zero chance of happening soon.

Originally Posted by Doc

I do realise how incredibly annoying this sort of post is, but really I couldn't think of a better way to get some tips on getting started.

A) it's not annoying, and B) it's a topic that comes up fairly often, at least on the IN mailing list.


---Walter