And ye shall know the Truth ...

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by DBloch2012

It's at the very beginning of the book, in The Overture.

Ah, there it is. Read the next sentence, though -- it's recursive. The extent that God "made" the Symphony (vs. being the Symphony, vs. the ethereal heresy) is, if not fully Canon Doubt and Uncertainty, canonically... fuzzy. God's big. It's a hard thing to get a handle on, and gets described in many different ways.

Especially before I got the reins of Line Editing and started trying to get all the multitude of authors to mesh, rather than having about a dozen different viewpoints, including tidbits that go back all the way to the French INS/MV. (Fun Trivia! The SJ Games In Nomine went through at least 3 drafts and the final product was a major revision in and of itself!)

Originally Posted by Acolyte

I don't understand how any reading of the Seraphic resonance would allow the above. The ability to detect lies (and very, very rarely Truths) does not in any way obviate the Song of Tongues.

MunchkinSeraph could probably try to claim that Check Digit 3 should give useful information -- "And Herr NPC is telling us, in German, that he doesn't speak the language because he doesn't want strangers to find out his wife is a demon, right? right?"
( http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/i...eck_Digits.pdf )

Whether that would be too much data and make Language-meister Mercurian unhappy because the Seraph is playing whack-a-resonance and getting useful stuff... is up to the GM in question. Overall, I'd encourage a GM to err on the side of "if language issues are going to be plot-relevant, figure out how you want to handle that." A GM who is running a world-touring group where language-barriers are just going to bog things down may want to hand out extra points for languages or translation artifacts, as might a GM who knows that the character(s) will never go back to X country again. (I went with the latter when a character decided to hop over to Japan for a scene.) A GM who has a "talk to everyone" player character may want to make extra-sure that Seraphim don't step on that PC's toes. A GM who wants language barriers to be barriers ("you've been kidnapped by the Spanish-speaking gang; anyone put points into Spanish? then tough, you can't eavesdrop while they talk about their plans") should be thinking about that sort of thing as well.

Many angels, in In Nomine, can get a huge amount of information from their resonance; it can be very taxing to a GM to come up with a bunch of stuff, often on the fly. While it's fair to propose that a resonance might be able to pick up data from words the character doesn't understand, it's kinder to the GM to assume that language is a barrier as the default, for Seraphim. Now, Elohim and their resonance? Emotions are emotions. Carry on, bald little space aliens.

[Acolyte]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

MunchkinSeraph could probably try to claim that Check Digit 3 should give useful information -- "And Herr NPC is telling us, in German, that he doesn't speak the language because he doesn't want strangers to find out his wife is a demon, right? right?"
( http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/i...eck_Digits.pdf )

I retract "any reading" and replace with "any sensible reading". Crazy Munchkinseraph can argue himself blue, but that's clearly outside the intent of the CD.

Many angels, in In Nomine, can get a huge amount of information from their resonance; it can be very taxing to a GM to come up with a bunch of stuff, often on the fly. While it's fair to propose that a resonance might be able to pick up data from words the character doesn't understand, it's kinder to the GM to assume that language is a barrier as the default, for Seraphim. Now, Elohim and their resonance? Emotions are emotions. Carry on, bald little space aliens.

1) an IN GM with angel PCs has to prepare for the taxing nature of resonances--it's part of what makes the game unique in RPGs. I don't think anyone here would argue that GMing IN is easy, but most of us would say it's fun.
2) Even exceeding languages, Seraphic resonance doesn't approach the workload that Mercurian and Malakic resonances do. Trimming that little bit off the party Seraph's abilities isn't going to save a measurable amount of time when the Mercurian hits a major NPC with a CD 6, so the GM is still heavily worked, and the Seraph's player might feel cheated.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Acolyte

Trimming that little bit off the party Seraph's abilities isn't going to save a measurable amount of time when the Mercurian hits a major NPC with a CD 6, so the GM is still heavily worked, and the Seraph's player might feel cheated.

FYI, when I have a Mercurian hit CD 6, the first question I ask is "What do you want to know?" She's got the biography open in front of her, so I save us both some time by letting her skip to a chapter of interest.

If she wants it all, so be it. But if I can't come up with an NPC background on the fly, I probably need to take a break from GMing for a while. :)

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

FYI, when I have a Mercurian hit CD 6, the first question I ask is "What do you want to know?" She's got the biography open in front of her, so I save us both some time by letting her skip to a chapter of interest.

If she wants it all, so be it. But if I can't come up with an NPC background on the fly, I probably need to take a break from GMing for a while. :)

That's where PbP is so nice--if I don't have it in my little notebook, I can take a leisurely afternoon to think it up. Though I have several little notebooks, and know the Fate and Destiny of every significant character. If someone resonates Nameless Waiter...well, I have that leisurely afternoon to doubt the player's sanity. :)

Originally Posted by DBloch2012

God is integral to In Nomine. You can call Him whatever you want but He needs to be there. (Unless you use Yves for that role instead. >_>)

I like the scenario where there was a God...probably...but He hasn't sent any messages since Metatron was killed. And there's a theory, small but growing among the few angels who allow themselves such doubts, that God is dead, or silent, or a story their elders thought up. That they're really fighting for a principle and not the Lord, and that victory is not assured. They don't tell Laurence or the other Malakim for fear of breaking them with it, or being exiled for heresy.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

I like the scenario where there was a God...probably...but He hasn't sent any messages since Metatron was killed.

Leaving aside the recall of Uriel and the elevation of Laurence?

[Acolyte]

Could have been an inside job by the Seraphim Council, using the mask of God's ineffability to sidestep the issue that 1) Uriel and his followers were following their Words and remained unmarred by dissonance, but 2) were screwing up the War. In a more ominous look at things, Laurence is certainly a more tractable Commander than Uriel was. It also explains why "God" didn't choose a more capable angel: the Seraphim Council couldn't've controlled Khalid, Michael, or David as easily as they currently control Laurence.

Conspiracy theories!

[DBloch2012]

If God does not exist, then Lucifer should not be allowed to exist either. You could easily attribute his actions to a Balseraph Council that pretends he exists to back up their decisions, too.

I find it unfair that everyone picks on God as Canon Doubt and Uncertainty, but at the same time nobody gives a second thought to Lucifer's existence and what it means for the Symphony. Especially if you take God out of the picture.

[Matthias Wasser]

Lucifer is just another fallen Archangel - there's nothing more cosmically special about him(/her/it) than, say, Baal. If anybody is the nega-God or whatever it's Kronos.

[DBloch2012]

Um, no? Lucifer is the one who hands out the Infernal Words and picks the Superiors for his side. In that respect he is the counterpart for God, playing the same role, just on the other side. (Note: I am choosing to ignore the Seraphim Council in this regard for now.)

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by DBloch2012

Um, no? Lucifer is the one who hands out the Infernal Words and picks the Superiors for his side. In that respect he is the counterpart for God, playing the same role, just on the other side. (Note: I am choosing to ignore the Seraphim Council in this regard for now.)

Technically speaking, Lucifer is just a fallen Archangel -- but it's a big "just." On the one hand, yes, he is capable of bestowing Words and infernal Princedoms to his forces. On the other, this is also the being that was defeated by Michael in hand-to-hand combat and thrown to the farthest edge of the cosmos.

So, no, he's not a direct analogue to God, though he certainly would encourage his troops to see him that way. The arrogance of Lucifer (and the fearful hope of his followers) is the belief that it doesn't matter if he's equal to God so long as he's right.