Do You Play It Straight Or Mixed Genre?

[Shiftkitty]

I'll spare you the lengthy background on my campaign world. Suffice to say it's consistent and my guys really like D&D 2e. After a couple of runs at In Nomine they started talking about how it might mix with swords & sorcery fantasy. I could have easily just gone with Epic Level D&D, but we all liked the Biblical aspect that we all grew up with. Sooooo...

I had a sorceror on a far distant world summon one of the PCs and trap him in a magic circle. Due to the magic field on the planet, the angel's senses were going haywire. He did, however, pick up the vibes of a distinctly diabolical influence. (Lucifer's boys were already screwing with this guy, who was innocent of the dangers he was toying with.) After a brief role-playing session while waiting for the the rest of the guys to show up with the beer & pizza, the PC (played by my husband) had been released after frightening the poor sorceror out of his wits. (Literally, the guy went insane.)

This disturbing revelation of mortals summoning Celestials and trapping them in magic circles called for immediate attention. This world of strange gods had to be investigated and secured from the ravages of Hell. (Why the existence of this planet is a surprise to the Host is something I haven't worked out yet.) Cue the PCs...

Angels suddenly appearing on a world the Diabolicals considered theirs caused Hell to send in a small squad to find these angels and deal with them. The locale was a typical pseudo-medieval fantasy city. The wizard's tower screamed of power, and the angels headed right for it to see what was powering the magic. Was it a naturally occuring phenomenon or was it diabolical in nature?

The demons got there first, intending to "deal with" the wizard who lived there and set a trap for the angels. However, just as the Lilim knocked on the tower door, the church bells rang, summoning divine protection for the town (according to old wives' tales). The wizard opened the door just as the demons' allergic reactions to divine influences of all sorts triggered the arrival of the angels.

Then Satan got hold of the dice. In summary, the wizard believed he was under an arcane attack and retreated into his tower, setting up his magical defenses. The Celestials, all very sensitive to magic, apparently got their senses screwed up as nobody could hit anything save the (rare!) Malakite of Novalis, Dera, who wrapped the Calabite up in a wall of ivy while the Ofanite of Janus swiped his swords, swords that had been used to kill a person earlier in the session. (Never saw so many bad rolls!) About that time, the local guards showed up to investigate the ruckus. Dera vanished into the wizard's small flower garden at the side of the tower while the demons swore that the angels were demons and they were demon hunters. (One good Balseraph can really screw up your evening!)

The angels gambled that they could talk some sense to the town leaders. They didn't have anything to hide, really, since the town guard didn't even flinch at the mention of demons. However, Dera could overhear from her hiding place that the local inquisition was about to go Old School Torquemada in an attempt to weed out all evil spirits infesting the town. It didn't sound promising. She tracked her companions to the holding cell, slipped past the guards, and informed them of the situation. Kane (the Ofanite) slipped out of his restraints quite easily and freed the others. Just as they got the cell door open and were starting their escape, the less-than-tolerant-of-evil-spirits-and-quite-fanatical-about-his-job Bishop Cadroc appeared with his equally zealous and intolerant guards.

Cliffhanger ending tonight!

Anyway, that's how I meshed D&D and In Nomine. Roles were unnecessary as people didn't generate much in the line of a paper trail, and the angels are certain that God's rules apply to all of creation, so they can't just hack and slash their way out, like they could in D&D. The last order they got was to keep it low key so as not to embroil the innocents of this world in a Heaven vs. Hell Steel Cage Deathmatch, and there's the problem of the local gods to deal with. It's a big bite from a gaming angle, but since everyone had fun, I think I meshed it well enough!

Anybody else take In Nomine out of the modern world?

[Jason]

All of my jaunts out of modern-day settings (and into other genres even within modern settings) have been through the Marches. We kind of ignore some of the rules for that when we need to; disabling Corporeal stats entirely kind of screws up some characters. This has allowed us try to track down giant-killing angels of Purity in Jötunheim, buy artifacts with geases in a faerie marketplace, trade stories around a campfire with an Aztec god, and unravel Illuminati conspiracies in an alternate-world Philadelphia. (All of those were pretty interesting except the campfire bit. Hard to get some players to wrap their brains around telling a story through a character who you're using to tell a story.)

[Archangel Beth]

I had a few sessions dumping GIN angels into Yrth (GURPS Banestorm, these days, isn't it?); Vapulans and Fate demons and sorcerers were conspiring with the "dark" elves in the Black Forest. Angels messed up the gate on the Earth side of things. Everyone -- several demons included -- got sucked through, whee!

Then, as one of the elves was trying to Banish the Ofanite of Lightning... He got a 111. Since it would kind of be annoying to the plot to let the crit success work...

The angel got a glimpse of its Heart. The elf got a glimpse of the elven Divine (I forget the term used, at the moment), and promptly decided that, despite looking like, ugh, humans... the angels were to be honored and respected and all that jazz. So the human-hating Dark Elves of the Black Forest became allies to the angels. (Very unexpected! On the other hand, kind of amusing...)

Unfortunately, it was hard to match everyone's schedules up (the amnesiac Grigori of Jordi was already randomly turning into animals now and then, depending on when the player could make it), so it never really got past that. O:(

The rest of the campaign would probably have been freaking out at the Church of Megalos, trying to avoid getting whacked, and Collecting The Set... er, hunting down and dragging back the demons and sorcerers who got loose. Ah, well. (Anyone else who wants to run with that... run with it. O:> )

[Shiftkitty]

That sounds pretty fun! I'm sorting out on my end how the Archangels are responding to this whole "magic" thing. Some are mistrustful of it, some want it squashed, some regard it as just another part of creation, no more or less evil than nuclear abilities (and no more or less deadly, as it can be used for great good or great evil).

Our running joke is that when the angels try to get answers or directions from higher up, they get put on hold a lot (especially if I want the players to sort it out), and the Demon of Hold Music hacked Heaven's system. They've heard six different arrangements of "The Girl From Ipanema" so far, the most tortuous being the Kenny G version...

[Archangel Beth]

With the Banestorm crossover, I didn't let 'em contact their Archangels at all. Totally different Marches, no ability to get back to their Hearts... CUT OFF, MUWHAHAHAH.

Okay, none of them were trying to invoke Yves by then... >_>

(My vague working concept was that God had many irons in the fire regarding sapient life and free will (not to mention the laws of magic/physics), and most of them were kind of unaware of each other... Yrth and Earth had gotten tied together sometime after the Earthly Fall, and God got... busier. Or something.)

I hadn't fully gelled what I wanted to do with Yrthly demons.

[Shiftkitty]

Many irons in the fire... swiped! I decided fairly early on that Jean's favorite song is "The Girl From Ipanema", so he's not doing anything about the Hold Music. In fact, he considers the Kenny G version pure artistry!

(Yeah, though the story lines are fairly serious and straightfoward, the background elements usually take their share of time going off the rails. One side story involves a Valkyrie who has the hots for Michael.)

[William]

One of these days some poor schmuck of an In Nomine angel is going to be in a Cabal game. And he will attempt to invoke Michael.

And it will work, the poor bastard.

[Shiftkitty]

Fairly new to this. Educate me, please? ('Cause it sounds delicious...)

[William]

In the Cabal setting, there are four layers of reality. There is Assiah, the material world. There is Yetzirah, the ethereal plane, home of thoughts and dreams, fey and magic. There is Briah, the Iconic plane, home of abstract concepts and physics based on semiotics. And, above Briah, past the Abyss, crossed by the Sword Bridge that cuts anything that tries to pass, is Atziluth, home of the Godhead alone, the Creator, the source of everything else in reality. Only the Grand Masters of the Cabal claim to have survived the trip there and back.

Visible from everywhere in Briah, in the North, South, East and West, are the intermediaries that channel and transform God's power into reckonable forms: Raphael, Archangel of the East, with her lightning wand; Uriel, Archangel of the North, with his disc of elemental earth; Gabriel, Archangel of the West, with the chalice of Water; and Michael, Archangel of the South, with the (The) flaming sword.

Successfully invoking this Michael is, roughly speaking, calling the southern quarter of the Universe to come examine your situation, weigh right and wrong, and solve the problem with the power of elemental fire and the abstract ideal of weaponry. In doing so, you should recall that you have flaws too.

[Shiftkitty]

Aha! Yeah, sounds like calling the boss is a bad idea then!