Question about In Nomine

[Glamourweaver]

The rules in the Corporeal Players Guide for humans automatically succeding at many things Celestials & Ethereals have to roll for is particularly nice for this reason aswell. It makes human characters more useful Jacks-of-all-Trades on the Corporeal Plane as opposed to Celestials who are generally inept at anything outside their nitch.

[Fedifensor]

Well, if you ever do get approval to do a new edition, my requests would be as follows:

* Change Songs so that you're rolling for them to determine level of effect, instead of whether or not they work at all. I remember when my Seraph with Acid/6 failed three successive rolls to manifest the power - a BB gun would have been better than the power of the Lord, that day. Basically, if not opposed by other supernatural forces, activation of a Song should be automatic.

* Make skills cheaper, or everything else more expensive (with a corresponding adjustment in starting points), so you can have people who focus on skills. The last campaign I played in, most players only had 5 points of skills...but both servitors of Yves had the Ofanite of Destiny attunement in order to give them some reasonable ability with Knowledge skills. Some of those same players had 20+ points of Songs and several attunements - it just wasn't worthwhile to buy skills when other methods were available (especially with a Kyriotate of Destiny in the party).

* If you're going to do absolutes in the system, you need a Rock/Paper/Scissors sidebar to give some ideas on what happens when two 'absolute' abilities clash.

* If the system is inherently unbalanced, include a writeup on how to compensate weaker players for that imbalance.

[EDG]

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

* Change Songs so that you're rolling for them to determine level of effect, instead of whether or not they work at all. I remember when my Seraph with Acid/6 failed three successive rolls to manifest the power - a BB gun would have been better than the power of the Lord, that day. Basically, if not opposed by other supernatural forces, activation of a Song should be automatic.

I honestly don't understand this.

Songs and attunements are not the same thing. While both of them are benefits granted by your Superior, an attunement is effectively drawing upon your Choir/Band's nature or the nature of your Superior's Word (or both), and a Song is reaching out and tweaking the Symphony to get a given effect. In other words, an attunement is something special that the Symphony allows you to do, while a Song is something special that you have to convince the Symphony to do.

In other words, an attunement is an ability; a Song is a skill.

I and we are open to being convinced otherwise, but just saying "the rules are wrong" doesn't really do that. Persuade us that the rules need to be changed, rather than simply declaring it to be true.

[Fedifensor]

Originally Posted by EDG

Songs and attunements are not the same thing. While both of them are benefits granted by your Superior, an attunement is effectively drawing upon your Choir/Band's nature or the nature of your Superior's Word (or both), and a Song is reaching out and tweaking the Symphony to get a given effect. In other words, an attunement is something special that the Symphony allows you to do, while a Song is something special that you have to convince the Symphony to do.

In other words, an attunement is an ability; a Song is a skill.

I and we are open to being convinced otherwise, but just saying "the rules are wrong" doesn't really do that. Persuade us that the rules need to be changed, rather than simply declaring it to be true.

Okay, I'll see what I can do. My main problem with Songs is that when you treat them as a skill, it makes me think that Heaven is filled with inept singers, that have little connection to the Symphony.

In the last In Nomine game I played, I managed to flub using my Acid/6 three times in a row, with Corporeal Forces 2. Even though my skill in the Song is as high as it can go, my overall chance of succeeding is 21/36, or less than 60% of the time. Even with 3 Corporial Forces, I'd flub the roll 3 times out of 10. Furthermore, each attempt costs Essence, of which Celestials have a very limited supply. If I'm going to burn points out of a maximum 9 Essence (it usually floated around 4 or 5), I'd like to see the chance of the Song working be higher. And, as I believe Beth mentioned elsewhere, the current system rewards specializing to an extreme level - a Song at level 1 is worse then useless, because you're going to fail most of the time AND burn Essence in the process.

Now, if I do succeed in the above example with Acid/6, the Song is rather potent, because skill level of the Song determines both chance of success and level of effect (the example Song, Acid, gets Accuracy 6 and Power 6). It's like carrying around a machinegun covered in mud - very powerful if it works, but constantly prone to jamming.

I'd rather see level of effect based on the level of success, but make the Song go off in some fashion automatically (barring an Intervention or direct opposition). A master singer can have an off night...but even his weaker performances are things of beauty to the average person.

Honestly, even though Attunements are more expensive, most are a much better bargain than a Song. For example, a Malakim of Gabriel is much better off with his Attunement than a Numinous Corpus song, since the Attunement automatically works and doesn't require Essence to activate.

The flavor text in the short stories really doesn't reflect the failure rates of Songs. It's not like you read anything that says:

"Not like you drive an inconspicuous car, man," I said to the angel, pulling two cigarettes out of Adam's jacket - do all demons smoke? - and performing a Song of Shields. I flubbed the third note - big surprise, tried again, failed twice more, and ran, leaving Charlie to his wrestling match with the angel...

or...

And boy, did he give in - but he didn't give up. He blew what was surely the last of his Essence in one powerful Song that would have probably knocked the hell out of me. Too bad he was off-pitch...

Because the stories always seem to have Songs go off successfully, I think the failure rate for Songs is more due to a poor game mechanic rather than an intended part of the setting.

[William]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

(I was in an In Nomine Sailor Moon online tabletop for a wee while. It worked quite well! The Seraph was appalled at having a celestial form with, ugh, legs.)

*perk* Elaborate! Warstory! ^_^

(probably in a different thread, to be polite...)

-----
William
unabashed raving Mooniac

[milliken]

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

Because the stories always seem to have Songs go off successfully, I think the failure rate for Songs is more due to a poor game mechanic rather than an intended part of the setting.

I think this is more a reflection of the difference between fiction (which always works as the author dictates in order to make the story flow more smoothly) and roleplaying games (where there's usually a risk of failure to help build tension).

Personally, I agree that Songs seem to fail rather a lot, but I'm unconvinced that this is necessarily a problem -- after all, Songs are always an attempt to interfere with the natural flow of the Symphony. It's not greatly surprising that the Symphony tends to resist such changes.

I also note that we had the opposite problem with GURPS In Nomine -- celestial abilities, especially skills, would tend to work too often. Hence the somewhat hand-waving reasoning for making Songs harder to perform in the Corporeal and Ethereal realms, to at least give semi-reasonable chances for failure.

Frankly, Songs aren't the only things that fail a lot in In Nomine -- regular skills have similar problems. As a rule, this doesn't seem to be a problem in the games I've played in and GMed. If the game were about uber-powerful, infallible beings, then having a risk of failure would be a mismatch. But, except for Superiors, In Nomine celestials are hardly intended to be uber-powerful or infallible, just beings with supernatural powers that put them somewhat above mortal humans in some ways.
God doesn't play dice with the Symphony -- but He's above the rules. Everyone else, pretty much, does.

Making all celestial powers infallible would make In Nomine a *very* different game.

---Walter

[Archangel Beth]

Fiction is tricky to map to actual gaming. There's also no way, in fiction, to get the mild rue of "I burned Essence on the jump... but you know, that was way easier than I'd expected. Oh, well." (Or, the roll of 1 1 6 . . .)

Fiction also tends to lack Interventions. (And it feels rather like cheating to have one of them there! Though I've written one of those, too, as a backstory to something.)

Though in some of my personal fiction, I did have one character flub her resonance and buzz it for the rest of the story. Hard to remember when to do it, hard to do it when it feels right and is neither too contrived nor too much "I hear dice rolling."

Outside of fiction, the way to make a Numinous Corpus work when you have a low target number is to take extra time, or burn extra Essence. (My JoAT had a tendency to, when walking home from work, spend rather a while muttering to herself in a corner so that she could get her Claws/1 to actually get invoked...)


I'll file the "come out and revel in the imbalance" notions in my head for some future exhuming...

[EDG]

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

Okay, I'll see what I can do. My main problem with Songs is that when you treat them as a skill, it makes me think that Heaven is filled with inept singers, that have little connection to the Symphony.

Well, to be honest, in the example you cited... you kinda did have a weak connection to the Symphony. That's what having 2 Corporeal Forces means, when you're singing Songs. You had plenty of skill to do the manipulation - if you could just get hold of the thing.

It seems to me that your beef with the Song mechanics falls into two major categories: that the vignettes can't be reliably duplicated with actual game mechanics; and that Songs cost Essence even if the performance fails.

The first one we know about; part of it is just the nature of fiction, as Walter said. Unlike actual roleplaying, when characters in fiction use their abilities the success and failure rates are up to the author, not the dice.

The second one can be pretty easily modified or house-ruled. The thing is, in In Nomine, spending Essence actually has two functions: it fuels special abilities, and it represents giving something extra effort. In the case of Songs it's actually doing double duty; the Essence spent to fuel the ability is the extra effort required to enforce your will on the Symphony and make it do things it otherwise almost certainly wouldn't. You can easily say, however, that in your game the Essence for Song use is just used to fuel the ability, and that if the ability doesn't work at all, the Essence isn't spent; rather than the spark from the starter, it's the gasoline in the engine. If the engine doesn't turn over, that gas is still there to try the next time. (Mostly. It's a rough metaphor.)

Consider, honestly: would your reaction have been different if you'd failed those three Song rolls but didn't have to spend any of the Essence?

I don't mean any of this to come off as unsympathetic, because I am! Failing at a skill in which you've got the maximum skill levels is frustrating. I'm just wondering how much of that frustration is due to there being a significant penalty for failure - especially since you haven't mentioned being frustrated with skills, which use a very similar mechanic and have a similar failure rate for young celestials.

[Fedifensor]

Originally Posted by EDG

Well, to be honest, in the example you cited... you kinda did have a weak connection to the Symphony. That's what having 2 Corporeal Forces means, when you're singing Songs. You had plenty of skill to do the manipulation - if you could just get hold of the thing.

Well, it's been about 5 years since that game, but if I recall correctly every one of my rolls was 10 or higher - which means even if I had 3 Corporeal Forces (the average for a 9 Force angel), I'd have failed.

Considering the same game had 7 Force demons, which would be lucky to have 3 Corporeal Forces, I'm not sure what your baseline is. Is it expected that most characters buy up their Forces in the first few sessions? Or that the only compentent singers in Heaven are the 15 Force NPC's?

Consider, honestly: would your reaction have been different if you'd failed those three Song rolls but didn't have to spend any of the Essence?

Considering that this was the first major clash between the Vapulans and our group...my reaction would have been about the same. Those three rounds are what ended up getting our most combat-oriented character Vessel-killed, and forced the rest of us to flee the scene. That said, not using Essence for failed Songs would help a little. At least then I wouldn't have been out of Essence *and* fleeing from our foes.

I don't mean any of this to come off as unsympathetic, because I am! Failing at a skill in which you've got the maximum skill levels is frustrating. I'm just wondering how much of that frustration is due to there being a significant penalty for failure - especially since you haven't mentioned being frustrated with skills, which use a very similar mechanic and have a similar failure rate for young celestials.

The frustration comes from the fact that unless you make a character maxed out with both Song level and Forces in the appropriate area, the Song fails frequently enough to make people wonder what singing courses in Heaven are like. Taking extra time can help with the noncombat songs, but when you're fighting for your life, it ends up being very frustrating. I'm just glad I actually read up on the system before playing - I had initially planned to only take 3 points in my combat Song.

For skills...well, honestly, I never really got to use skills much. Our Kyriotate of Destiny was possessing people with the skills we needed at the time, and I worked around the horribly-inefficient skill system by taking the Ofanite of Yves attunement (with 5 Celestial Forces and a 5 Intelligence, I had no problem with most Knowledge checks).

Even the mortals in our group that focused on buying skills weren't all that skilled compared to your typical modern-day person. Granted, this is coming from the perspective of a person who's played 75+75 characters in the HERO system, where you actually have enough points to make a well-rounded, heroic character during character generation. My perspective is that if you're sent down from Heaven (or up from Hell) to complete missions of vital importance, you should be fairly capable. I don't get that feeling when I play a starting character for In Nomine.

[milliken]

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

The frustration comes from the fact that unless you make a character maxed out with both Song level and Forces in the appropriate area, the Song fails frequently enough to make people wonder what singing courses in Heaven are like.

You could say it isn't necessarily so much a failure in the singing process, as in twisting the Symphony around to what you want it to do, rather than what it (aka God) wants to do. In GURPS IN, this is represented by a serious skill penalty for Songs (though they're still not as hard to make work as in regular IN). For bucking the Big Guy, it's a wonder it works at all...

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

My perspective is that if you're sent down from Heaven (or up from Hell) to complete missions of vital importance, you should be fairly capable. I don't get that feeling when I play a starting character for In Nomine.

You're looking for a different background than In Nomine then, I think, and one closer to the classical Christian view of angels and demons. Part of this is due to IN descending from the highly satirical INS/MV, where all the characters are either insane or incompetent or both (including the Superiors). I don't think In Nomine was initially designed for the celestials to be all that competent; they're supposed to be flawed. The game has shifted a bit from that origin, but it's still entirely reasonable for the celestials to be somewhat clueless and shell-shocked when they leave Heaven/Hell and wind up in the highly complex and confusing corporeal realm. (That has more relevance to skills than Songs, of course.)

Both Heaven and Hell are short-handed in the War, and by far outnumbered by humans. As long as you don't implicitly assume that IN angels (and demons) are really the powerful beings of spirit of classical religion, I don't think the result is unreasonable. Anyone who's likely to do more good than harm gets sent Earthside.

The power levels of IN celestials become a lot clearer when you look at the GURPS conversion; yes, they have a lot of points, but most of them are in very narrow areas, and often with serious limitations. Have them encounter an equivalent-point GURPS mage, psi, or super, and they're quickly outclassed. Only compared to mundane (and unknowing) humans, do they really have major advantages. And the GURPS versions are generally more competent than the classical IN versions, mostly due to the differences in the system attribute baselines. So I suppose that, in that sense, IN is "broken". But it seems to work well enough, as long as the player expectations aren't too far off the core assumptions. (And as you pointed out, the stories are misleading in that regard.)

And yes, it's nowhere near play-balanced. Any game that treats ordinary mundane humans with no powers, and beings with major supernatural powers, as equally valid starting characters, with no compensation for the humans, is clearly not play balanced. And yes, the core rules really ought to talk about this more. Unfortunately, they are heavier on atmosphere than either clarity or organization.... More fun to read, maybe, but not particularly useful.

Overall, IN works best when players and GMs aren't too much into the mechanics of the game; I have to put aside my "gearhead" GURPSian mentality when playing IN, or I have problems sometimes. IN is really a *role*playing game, best suited to players who are interested in exploring the facets of their characters, and interacting with the world, rather than a more wargame-like system like GURPS or Hero, or even a mostly GM-directed storytelling game like some of the semi-unstructured systems.

---Walter