Question about In Nomine

[Fedifensor]

Originally Posted by milliken

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.

Er, don't Superiors (including Dominic) *teach* Songs to their servitors? If they're so damaging to the Symphony, why doesn't Judgement ban their use entirely? While I agree that Songs are convincing the Symphony to do what you want, I never saw the Symphony as being diametrically opposed to such manipulations.

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.

Well, my perception of the setting comes not from my beliefs (I'm agnostic, so being true to the Bible doesn't concern me), but from what my characters have been assigned to do. Things like stopping demonic Tethers from forming, saving people from horrific Vapulan experiments, and turning people towards their Destiny all seem to be very important tasks, that should require the best and brightest of each side. Instead, I'd often rather have a Gulf War veteran with a pistol than an angelic being backing me up - I know the pistol's going to work (okay, maybe not versus Vapulans...).

I suppose if the setting is supposed to be satire and comedy, than the failure rate fits well. But I've never seen it that way - 'A Bright Dream' and 'A Dark Dream' paint a much more serious, darker world.

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.)

And yet, many angels and demons are several hundred years old. Even if a character just got upgraded from reliever to angel, they've probably got more years under their belt than your average college student. It would probably help to have guidelines tying character points to relative age, or some statements in the rules that new characters are just-created angels with no experience in the mortal realm.

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.

I have to ask - if they're not the powerful beings of spirit of classical religion, what are they? As Beth pointed out, the characters in the stories certainly seem a lot more competent than the rules make them out to be.

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.

Sounds like the Buffy RPG - the mortals there get compensated with extra plot points. In the last In Nomine campaign I played in, the GM compensated by making the mortal an integral part of the plotline, and was a lot more lenient about what she could buy with experience. By the time the campaign ended, she was a 7 Force human who had learned her first Ethereal song (and she still doesn't know HOW she learned it).

Unlike the Buffy RPG discrepancies between Heroes and White Hats, mortals do have a definate advantage over celestials - they can kill people without causing disturbances. It's a nice balancing factor that was covered very well in the opening vigenette for the core book.

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.

I believe that any good roleplaying game requires a certain suspension of disbelief. The rules, in my eyes, start breaking that philosophy when a starting character can't be combat-capable and have enough points left for enough for skills to tie their shoes and chew bubblegum, and Songs learned from Archangels fail half the time. From what you've said, it sounds like GURPS In Nomine may better fit what I'm looking for than the default rules...though I'm still of the belief that a rules-light system like Amber or Theatrix would be the best match for the concepts presented in the setting.

[alexondria]

Their's also in the main system the idea that if you really need something to work then you can spend extra essence on it- you said that most of your rolls were over 10 and you had 6 points in the song and 2 forces equalling 8 so a few extra points of essence could have put you over if it was a dire situation.

As for the skills I don't know if this was the way that it was intended or not but I allow my players to do anything that a normal person could do w/ out having to buy the skill- for example they don't have to have computer op to turn on and use a computer but if if doesn't work they'll need to call tech support or if they need to find something they would be limitted to yahoo and google and such. or you don't need drive to take your car and get groceries but you do need it to avoid that ofinim that you upset who is now chasing you in his car ect...

[alexondria]

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

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.

Also according to my math you had a little over a 72% chance of suceeding- it should be a 26 out of 36 not 21 out of 36 cause you have to roll = to or less not just less.- 3 corporeal forces would put you up to just over 83%

[milliken]

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

Er, don't Superiors (including Dominic) *teach* Songs to their servitors? If they're so damaging to the Symphony, why doesn't Judgement ban their use entirely? While I agree that Songs are convincing the Symphony to do what you want, I never saw the Symphony as being diametrically opposed to such manipulations.

Well, in some sense, anything that causes disturbance is operating in opposition to the normal progress of the Symphony. And Songs, like a number of other celestial activities, do disturb the Symphony.

And disturbance is, in the game, a Bad Thing in most Superiors eyes. Though it's also often a necessary thing. But even Superiors can't do anything to fix the Symphony's inherent inertia. Wouldn't their Servitors be able to do their jobs better if they were better at everything? Of course. But Superiors don't have infinite resources. *Something* keeps them from granting *every* servitor *every* attunement, Song, and distinction the Superior possesses.

Of course, theoretically, no one should be messing around on Earth at all -- the angels are only there because the demons are there, trying to pervert the place. Really.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

Well, my perception of the setting comes not from my beliefs (I'm agnostic, so being true to the Bible doesn't concern me), but from what my characters have been assigned to do. Things like stopping demonic Tethers from forming, saving people from horrific Vapulan experiments, and turning people towards their Destiny all seem to be very important tasks, that should require the best and brightest of each side. Instead, I'd often rather have a Gulf War veteran with a pistol than an angelic being backing me up - I know the pistol's going to work (okay, maybe not versus Vapulans...).

If you measure everything by corporeal combat capability, you may be right. Though it's not too hard to make a celestial who's *awfully* hard to put down. Or one who's really nasty with mundane weapons. But I see the combat as more ancillary to the game, though -- something that shouldn't be happening more than once in an adventure or so. For that, it's reasonable to be spending extra Essence on things, sometimes. If the GM is running characters into combat constantly, yes, there will probably be difficulties.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

I suppose if the setting is supposed to be satire and comedy, than the failure rate fits well. But I've never seen it that way - 'A Bright Dream' and 'A Dark Dream' paint a much more serious, darker world.

And those are the most notably askew stories to canon, in many ways. They do follow the INS/MV dark satire model fairly well, from what I know of it. No matter how cool the stories are, they do a very bad job of setting expectations for the game experience. They were notably *not* included in the GURPS adaptation of the game.... (Actually, I think all the vignettes in GURPS IN were new.) In fact, I suspect they were written well before the game settled into its final release form -- there are any number of serious flaws in the stories from a canon standpoint, not the least of which is a Mercurian who's clearly heading for a Fall. Nichole is *not* a good role-model for a Mercurian.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

And yet, many angels and demons are several hundred years old. Even if a character just got upgraded from reliever to angel, they've probably got more years under their belt than your average college student.

They are also very non-human, and extrapolating human learning rates to them may not be appropriate. On the other hand, they apparently learn fairly quickly from experience, so it's hard to say....

One reason an older celestial may have for limited skills is celestial combat -- lose a few Forces, and there go some of the associated memories or skills.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

It would probably help to have guidelines tying character points to relative age, or some statements in the rules that new characters are just-created angels with no experience in the mortal realm.

I think there are some discussions along these lines in the APG and IPG, but, no, not in the core rules. The core rules for character creation are one of the weakest sections, frankly.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

I have to ask - if they're not the powerful beings of spirit of classical religion, what are they?

Some approximation of such beings. But they're definitely *not* intended to be the angels and demons of popular religion -- just the source that the religions are distorted reflections of. In Nomine isn't really so much a satire on organized religion as the original French INS/MV was. But it still adopts the view that corporeal religions are *way* off in many ways.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

Unlike the Buffy RPG discrepancies between Heroes and White Hats, mortals do have a definate advantage over celestials - they can kill people without causing disturbances. It's a nice balancing factor that was covered very well in the opening vigenette for the core book.

But unless you have the streets constantly running with blood in your games, that's not all *that* great an advantage most of the time. The CPG does give mortals some other compensations, based on the notion that celestials really are from *way* out of town, and a lot of them just don't have the reflexes of living day-to-day life the way humans do -- sort of like learning a foreign language as an adult, you'll probably always have a really obvious accent.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

I believe that any good roleplaying game requires a certain suspension of disbelief. The rules, in my eyes, start breaking that philosophy when a starting character can't be combat-capable and have enough points left for enough for skills to tie their shoes and chew bubblegum, and Songs learned from Archangels fail half the time.

I don't think Songs were ever intended to be the *major* mode of combat, just a added feature. Most characters don't have enough Essence to take another celestial down just with Songs. But they can provide a lot of useful options, even if they don't always work. High tech weapons don't always work very well in the field, either, but we keep using them.

Originally Posted by Fedifensor

From what you've said, it sounds like GURPS In Nomine may better fit what I'm looking for than the default rules...though I'm still of the belief that a rules-light system like Amber or Theatrix would be the best match for the concepts presented in the setting.

Amber only if you think that the characters core powers should really be foolproof, if I remember what I've heard of the system right. Amber would be a decent system to model play at the Superior level, and I think I recall someone actually did that for a while.

I don't know Theatrix at all.

But, yes, In Nomine is really intended to be a rules-light setting. I don't equate "rules-light" with "my powers are infallible", though -- though the latter does tend to cut down on the dice-rolling....

---Walter

[alexondria]

I've actualy played Amber recently- It's a very interesting system- the way the skills work is the combatant with the highest skill wins- barring that the GM decides what ever they want- no dice at all- It works great w/ people that are good at telling stories but I don't think it would work so well w/ out someone that was just above average running the game.

[Archangel Beth]

One thing that can be done for more instantly powerful characters -- which actually shows up in GURPS IN, in the solo/small groups play box -- is to start with, say, 10 Forces. I tend to find 9 Forces a little cramping and requiring careful specialization (the Ethereal-heavy Vapulan's combat Song is Ethereal Attraction!), but 10 -- especially with the attendant extra character points -- can produce some JoAT-capable characters, or really terrifying specializations.

(I wish I'd been able to finish the amnesia game; all the characters there had 10-12 Forces, and I think one had a minor Word as well. Mind, they all had amnesia and a rather tough job to complete in spite of it, and some of their powers were knocked out of commission...)

My first character with 9 Forces wasn't terribly effective. My subsequent characters, I've learned how to focus the system to get more of what I want, such that I'm giggling to myself with a 7-Force Vapulan amongst 9-10 Force angels in a fluffy time-travel thing that a friend occasionally runs online. Her resonance is pathetic -- she has to dump Essence to get a prayer. Her Ethereal Attraction... is less pathetic, since she's a 1/4/2 build.

Essentially, if you don't have at least 3 Forces in a realm, it's a bad idea to try to do a Song there without prep -- but there are less-obvious "combat" Songs in other realms.

I wonder if a character creation discussion would sell on e23, or if it should be a freebie on the INC or FAQ instead.

[Fedifensor]

Originally Posted by milliken

If you measure everything by corporeal combat capability, you may be right. Though it's not too hard to make a celestial who's *awfully* hard to put down. Or one who's really nasty with mundane weapons.

Combat is simply the area that is easiest to measure. With Skills - well, barring extreme specialization or attunements like Ofanite of Yves, no one is good at skills coming out of the character creation process.

But I see the combat as more ancillary to the game, though -- something that shouldn't be happening more than once in an adventure or so. For that, it's reasonable to be spending extra Essence on things, sometimes.

My experience with In Nomine (which, I freely admit, is limited to one 6-month campaign) was that you're generally walking around with half of your maximum Essence, maybe 2/3rds if you're lucky. Which means 4 to 6 points for a 9 Force character...not much of a pool to use on dice rolls, especially if you have multiple Songs draining that pool.

And those are the most notably askew stories to canon, in many ways. They do follow the INS/MV dark satire model fairly well, from what I know of it. No matter how cool the stories are, they do a very bad job of setting expectations for the game experience.

Which is a pity, because those stories were a definate factor in getting me interested in the game...

I don't think Songs were ever intended to be the *major* mode of combat, just a added feature. Most characters don't have enough Essence to take another celestial down just with Songs. But they can provide a lot of useful options, even if they don't always work. High tech weapons don't always work very well in the field, either, but we keep using them.

Actually, I assumed they were, especially Numinous Corpus. If you can get the Song to work, they're very powerful in combat (well, with the exception of Wings). My view is that without Songs, celestials are just high-Force mortals with a Get Out Of Death Free card...

I don't know Theatrix at all.

Well, I've never played it myself, but David Edelstein (who was one of the players in the In Nomine game I played several years back) has a good summary on his website:

http://www.amadan.org/Theatrix/Theatrix-summary.html

[Fedifensor]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I wonder if a character creation discussion would sell on e23, or if it should be a freebie on the INC or FAQ instead.

I doubt I would pay money for a character creation discussion. Now, if it gave optional rules for character creation, that would be another story. Maybe you could give options for a Skill-heavy game (all skills cost half, Languages gives full comprehension of one language per point spent with no maximum, etc), removing the link between Forces and character points (giving a set amount regardless of the character's starting Forces), and/or equalizing the gap between mortal and Celestial characters (give X added character points to spend for each Force less than the campaign standard).

I think a discussion combined with multiple pages of optional character creation methods would be worth purchasing from e23. For bonus points, you could outline an option someone else mentioned - remove the Check Digit, turn the 2d6+1d6 into a straight 3d6, and use level of success/failure for the Check Digit.

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I tend to find 9 Forces a little cramping and requiring careful specialization (the Ethereal-heavy Vapulan's combat Song is Ethereal Attraction!)

Really? I find that 5 Forces is sufficient to create a fun, competent character. But I'm weird. :)

[Archangel Beth]

Oh, for a human, I can work pretty well with 5 Forces -- but I use the skill package from the CPG, you betcha.

I will keep discussion/optional rules material in mind, yah.