In Nomine vs. GURPS: In Nomine

[JMason]

First off I'll say that I'm a die-hard GURPS fan. I switched to GURPS when I was a kid and have never played another RPG since (though I've converted some to GURPS).

So when In Nomine first came out I was one of the ones wondering, why not just put the setting out as a GURPS book? I did eventually get a copy of G:IN, but I've yet to read it.

Now I've look at some of the e23 material for In Nomine and I'm starting to wonder, "why convert everything over to GURPS when it's (seems) so much simpler in the core game?".

So I'd like to hear some opinions of what people think. Should I learn a new system? Will I be limited some how?

Thanks.

[zorg]

It's hideously difficult to translate IN to Gurps, and it requires a lot of fudging. I wasn't too happy with the 3E conversion, either.

With 4E, a conversion would probably be easier, but several core aspects of IN translate very badly to Gurps. Especially forces and their relation to attributes and statistics. I'm thinking about doing a conversion, though I doubt I'll find the time.

Another problem is the wildly variable point total the different bands/choirs require. A Mercurian is - in Gurps terms - much cheaper than a Shedite (I refer to the racial template here; individuals may of course vary wildly). Either you ignore this point difference - which runs quite counter the most fundamental aspects of Gurps - or you have highly experienced and powerful Mercurians alongside comparatively weak and unskilled Kyrios/Shedites. Neither option is too attractive.

Third, it's simply extremely much work to convert everything. We're talking about something like two dozen Superiors with several attunements each - if you price each ability as an advantage, this is a massive effort we're considering here.

Lastly, this again ties in with the point balance problem. If you require points for attunements based on their Gurps cost, there will be extremely expensive attunements almost no one can use, and very cheap ones. AFAIK, in IN, these attunements all cost the same. So it would be inappropriate if some attunements became very rare in the conversion process.

In my current G4E:IN games, I simply ignore point totals and price each and every attunement at 10 CP, the racial template is for free and several other mechanics I simplify vastly or ignore them. But I'm not too happy about it.

Of course, if you do a conversion, please post it! I'll be more than happy to steal it... (if you do that, e23 will be on you instantly, I assume)

[Archangel Beth]

I actually think we did a good job with the GURPS IN conversion (mind, I'm biased), though I personally have IN running at a meta-level and just handwave Kyriotates that way.

GURPS IN sticks with the regular IN creation system in that you get your Superior and Choir/Band Attunement for "free" (the GM gifts you with the points), and then, GURPS-like, 100 points for everything else.

The core IN system of skills and Songs is actually pretty GURPSy in concept -- as you might expect. You have skills, which are computed as skill-level+characteristic; Songs, which are Song-level+realmForces; advantages and disadvantages, and points to buy stuff. The Forces and characteristics based on them are new, but not too hard. It uses binary success-failure based on the target number and 2d6, with the check die being the amount of success or failure; if your target number is over 12, then you add the amount over 12 to your check digit, to make it an even better success. Some people find this a fine, amusing mechanic; some hate how the degree of success is mostly (though not totally) divorced from the spectacularness of the success. (Or failure.)

111 is a crit success, and then some, for angels. It's a crit fail, and then some, for demons. 666 reverses it. (It does this in GURPS IN as well.)

I'd suggest reading GURPS IN and seeing if it makes sense for you. Among other reasons, it probably presents a better-organized layout of the setting. (And I believe that all the IN material on e23 includes GURPS IN conversions, too, so it's not like you'll have to make all the conversions yourself! Unless you switch to 4e, because we haven't gotten that sorted yet.)

If you're still interested in the core rules, grab the very simplified The Sorcerer's Impediments, and see if you like that. If you do, the core rules for IN are also on e23, and I certainly won't object to you picking it up!

As a note, the "Hevvy" versions of the character sheets, and GURPS conversions thereof, for TSI are on Pyramid this week. Subscribers can get it now; I hope that after a bit (2 weeks, for voting to close?), even non-subscribers will be able to view it.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I actually think we did a good job with the GURPS IN conversion (mind, I'm biased),...

Don't get me wrong - the conversion wasn't a bad job. It was an incredibly hard job, and I think it's very difficult not only to translate IN correctly, but elegantly. The write-ups were quite complicated (and I don't say this could have been avoided!) and not very accessible, imho.
There were some things I wasn't that happy with, but these were not major, game-destroying points (I didn't like the implementation of Soul Hits and Mind Hits. Since both are based on IQ in the end (Will starts as IQ), that makes IQ a very important statistic).
Though I think you'll agree that the concept of "forces" is far more important in IN than in G3:IN?

...though I personally have IN running at a meta-level and just handwave Kyriotates that way.

That's what I do, too. Actually, we're playing IN more or less without dice (except to make a dramatic point from time to time) and on the fly.

GURPS IN sticks with the regular IN creation system in that you get your Superior and Choir/Band Attunement for "free" (the GM gifts you with the points), and then, GURPS-like, 100 points for everything else.

But aren't attunements in IN all the same price, as opposed to G:IN? This has the - more or less unavoidable - consquence that some attunements are difficult to get for starting PCs in G:IN, though I assume they are standard for starting IN PCs.

And it makes several combinations of Servitor of X with Servitor Band attunement of X very prone to point optimization: Habbalah band attunement of Schnorz costs 50 CP, free if you're a Habbalah of Schnorz. Balseraph band attunement of Schnorz costs 5 CP. It's very expensive to be a Balseraph with the Habbalah attunement, but very cheap to be a Habbalah with the Balseraph attunement (I think that's why Balseraph of Saminga is a bad idea, point-wise).

Another point in case: the immunity to fire Belials servitors enjoy. This is extremely expensive to buy (though cheaper in 4E, I guess, with limited DR - perhaps even limited Absorption...). In IN, I should think almost every self-respecting Servitor of B has this attunement (since it's extremely embarassing to be a Demon of Fire and then get burnt at the camping fire). In G:IN, it's very rare to get this immunity, since it costs most of your starting 100 CP.

The core IN system of skills and Songs is actually pretty GURPSy in concept -- as you might expect. You have skills, which are computed as skill-level+characteristic; Songs, which are Song-level+realmForces; advantages and disadvantages, and points to buy stuff.

True, and this part indeed translates very well.

The Forces and characteristics based on them are new, but not too hard. It uses binary success-failure based on the target number and 2d6, with the check die being the amount of success or failure; if your target number is over 12, then you add the amount over 12 to your check digit, to make it an even better success. Some people find this a fine, amusing mechanic; some hate how the degree of success is mostly (though not totally) divorced from the spectacularness of the success. (Or failure.)

One easy way to Gurpsify this success mechanic is simply to take "success" as "number of points you made your roll by". This makes it easier to come up with spectacular successes, but hey - we're talking about demons and angels anyway...

111 is a crit success, and then some, for angels. It's a crit fail, and then some, for demons. 666 reverses it. (It does this in GURPS IN as well.)

This is a very nice touch indeed.

I'd suggest reading GURPS IN and seeing if it makes sense for you.

By all means! Especially since you seem to have the book anyway. I can think of no Gurps book which wasn't worth reading.

[Archangel Beth]

Admittedly, one feature of the conversion that I really, really like is that it works both ways. If you want to translate a GURPS character (say, from a GURPS historical book) into IN, you can... O:>

* The complexity is a bit much for my tastes, yeah. On the other hand, I tend to play IN more than GIN (though I GM'ed a Yrth-GIN game for a little while), and therefore either ignore the complex writeups or translate them on the fly to IN mechanics in my head. *shifty-eyed look* I don't know how a native GURPSer, who hadn't internalized the IN system, would do with that, and wouldn't mind feedback. O:>

* If all one wants are hits, Strong Will is useful... *grin* And cheaper, especially in 3rd edition GURPS -- after you get 3 IQ, it just gets cheaper and cheaper to buy up Will instead, for tanking purposes.

* Yes, Forces/Power Investiture (realm) are pretty well divorced from stats, in GIN. Not much way we could keep them coupled without adding complex, arcane limits, or breaking one of our mandates of not requiring extra characteristics (the Vampire: TM and Werewolf: TA conversions were mentioned here; both of those add a Brand New Thing that Everyone Has). I'm probably explaining that badly. I'm a bit short of sleep and there are a lot of distractions babbling across the room.

* It's true that Band/Choir Attunements are all 5 points, and Servitor Attunements 10 points, in IN, whereas GIN has them priced all over the map and with some really expensive ones. Over a wide spread, you're less likely to see certain combinations (or more likely to see certain Choir/Band/Superior combos, for the Cool attunements) -- but there's a leaning that way in IN as well, I think. IN has fewer personal points to play with at character creation (36, IIRC), which means that dropping a lot on extra Band/Choir and especially Servitor Attunements isn't as common as one might think. This is especially the case if the character is supposed to be very good at a Song or three (which is often handy). I find, when converting characters (since that's what I've done the most of), that the greater expense doesn't hurt as much because my stats are already "decent" and I don't have to drop as many points into skills, proportionally.

When I wrote The Sorcerer's Impediments, I included GURPS IN conversions (which are on Pyramid now) -- the two non-starting level characters, the sorcerer and the Calabite, became valid starting-level GURPS IN characters! I know I hadn't splurged a lot on them, but still, they converted so efficiently that they could be Hell-side PCs.

The proportional point differences are certainly an issue, and there are leanings that may be emphasized (such as Habbalite of Fire, say), but I don't think they're quite as overwhelming as they might be -- especially if the GM goes relatively "pointless" and awards attunements based on merit, without requiring points to be paid for them. (Is that in GURPS IN as a potential? I remember I had wanted it to be...)

* I don't think you can GURPSify the success mechanic without going to a 2d6 system (which makes the Interventions less elegant), or altering it into a very GURPS system entirely, based on 3d6 instead of d666. This might work for some, but I fear that I get all whimpery and "well, use GIN, then?" at the thought of it being near any of my games. O:>

* Yes, I figured that if one has GIN, it would be unethical of me to push the IN core rules as well until someone had decided whether or not GIN would satisfy their needs fairly well. (Which isn't to say that I don't want people picking up the core rules! I just don't want someone to pick up something which might wind up being "wasted" for that person.)

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

Admittedly, one feature of the conversion that I really, really like is that it works both ways. If you want to translate a GURPS character (say, from a GURPS historical book) into IN, you can... O:>

Since I never play straight IN, that nifty feature is sadly lost on me :)

...and therefore either ignore the complex writeups or translate them on the fly to IN mechanics in my head. *shifty-eyed look* I don't know how a native GURPSer, who hadn't internalized the IN system, would do with that, and wouldn't mind feedback. O:>

I mainly look at the intended result of the write-up and improvise from there. Usually with a roll of some kind, like "roll vs X, get a bonus equal to Y forces". I ignore the exact rules of the write-ups. The only time I use any rules is the big showdown fight, which is not that different from a normal Gurps showdown fight, except tha all fighters have attributes based at 14 and the Calabite can do much damage. btw, I ignore more or less the Calabim max range, too, most of the time. Or the Impudites need to roll for Essence theft. Or the Shedites hosts perception roll to notice his demonic guest. In my mind, IN should go fast and smooth, without slowing down for mechanics. So if the mechanic is more complicated than a Quick Contest, I usually skip it. However, we mostly play a quite humorous IN, to blow off steam and relax from the more serious RPing in Space or Fantasy... So the rules are somewhat unimportant, anyway.

I think I understood quite some things about the IN rules without ever having read the IN core rules; just from the odds and ends the supplements provide.

* Yes, Forces/Power Investiture (realm) are pretty well divorced from stats, in GIN. Not much way we could keep them coupled without adding complex, arcane limits, or breaking one of our mandates of not requiring extra characteristics (the Vampire: TM and Werewolf: TA conversions were mentioned here; both of those add a Brand New Thing that Everyone Has). I'm probably explaining that badly. I'm a bit short of sleep and there are a lot of distractions babbling across the room.

I understand you quite well, no problem! Since I'm used to my sisters mode of conversation (with two little ones constantly interrupting), I can cope...

And it's a good thing not to add more statistics/characteristics/number-thingys. That only complicates matters needlessly. Which is why I think the idea of Energy Reserve in Powers is extremely brilliant (all-purpose FP, ready to stand in as Blood Points, Essence Points or Rage Points or whatever you need).

The proportional point differences are certainly an issue, and there are leanings that may be emphasized (such as Habbalite of Fire, say), but I don't think they're quite as overwhelming as they might be -- especially if the GM goes relatively "pointless" and awards attunements based on merit, without requiring points to be paid for them. (Is that in GURPS IN as a potential? I remember I had wanted it to be...)

I remember the option, so it has to be there somewhere. :)
As I mentioned before, I have priced each and every attunement at 10 CP. Attunements granted in play don't cost points anyway if the Superior in question came up with the idea (as mission reward); if the PC really wants an attunement ("How to spend ones CP"), he has to petition the Superior and pay the points.

* Yes, I figured that if one has GIN, it would be unethical of me to push the IN core rules as well until someone had decided whether or not GIN would satisfy their needs fairly well. (Which isn't to say that I don't want people picking up the core rules! I just don't want someone to pick up something which might wind up being "wasted" for that person.)

Right. And G:IN is written good enough to be worth reading, even if you don't use it.

Happy new year!

[milliken]

Originally Posted by JMason

So I'd like to hear some opinions of what people think. Should I learn a new system? Will I be limited some how?

I'm a die-hard GURPS fan as well, and I wrote a lot of the G:IN conversion, but I tend to run In Nomine in its native system. Primarily this is due to IN being simpler, both in character design and mechanics. It works fine for its own purpose, but, like most single-game systems, lacks a lot of flexibility, and like most "role-playing"-oriented games, is light on mechanics details.

If you and your players really like knowing what all the rules are, or you want the flexibility to create wider character concepts and incorporate non-IN elements into the game (e.g. GURPS-style magic, superpowers, psi, etc....), then you'll want to use GURPS. GURPS is also better if you want to mix humans and celestials as PCs -- on In Nomine's celestial-centric attribute scale, humans are very weak compared to celestials; the gap is much narrower in GURPS In Nomine, with its human-centric scale. (Otherwise celestials would have just succeeded at everything all the time....)

If you and your players are comfortable with the GM "winging" most of the rule details, and are looking primarily to roleplay the characters and mindsets, and not for a lot of detailed combats, then IN is generally the easier system to use.

The thing to keep in mind is that In Nomine games tend to turn out to be a lot more about character and roleplaying of character than most typical GURPS campaigns. It's hard to use many of the supernatural powers much, due to the very slow recovery rate for Essence; characters tend to be limited to their Choir/Band resonance for the most part, and maybe an attunement. While In Nomine includes all the classical RPG aspects of investigation and combat, these tend to take a backseat to character. The need to keep all the supernatural stuff under wraps also keeps the fireball-slinging to a minimum (unless you have munchkin players, alas...).

Investigation tends to get shortcut in In Nomine, especially on the angelic side -- characters have rather powerful information-gaining abilities, much like having a campaign with telepaths and precogs.

Combat in IN is pretty similar to most RPGs -- it's a pain to deal with in general. The combat rules are lightweight, and I tend to keep combats infrequent in my games -- they're just too likely to pull in the corporeal powers-that-be, otherwise. Human opponents are basically mooks, the only real combat challenges are other celestials. (This changes radically in the GURPS version, where humans are more competent, and celestials much weaker in combat.)

One thing to keep in mind is that In Nomine is basically a superhero genre in disguise, one where the supers are covert. Like all supers systems I've seen, it has character-balance issues, unlike most, the IN core system simply shrugs off game-balance as an issue and accepts that it's not present, and goes on from there. I haven't really had problems with that in practice.

---Walter

[milliken]

Originally Posted by zorg

With 4E, a conversion would probably be easier, but several core aspects of IN translate very badly to Gurps. Especially forces and their relation to attributes and statistics.

It's very difficult, and the different attribute scales are also a major problem -- GURPS is human-normalized, and IN is celestial-normalized, which turns out to make for major, but somewhat subtle, problems.

Part of our instructions was that the rules had to be based directly on the GURPS mechanics, and new attributes were out of the question -- everything had to be done as advantages/disadvantages or skills. If GURPS In Nomine were done today, it would probably be a "Powered by GURPS" standalone product, rather than part of the GURPS mainstream.

Originally Posted by zorg

Third, it's simply extremely much work to convert everything. We're talking about something like two dozen Superiors with several attunements each -- if you price each ability as an advantage, this is a massive effort we're considering here.

Tell me about it.... Over 300+ powers.

Added to this is the fact that most of the IN powers turned out not to fit neatly into any 3e GURPS equivalents. I wound up having to invent new advantages to base a lot of them on. There was also a lot of trouble with multiple forms (celestial and vessels), which never worked well in 3e, but was essential to In Nomine. Elizabeth and I had a lot of discussions with the GURPS line editor, with the results we wound up with in GURPS In Nomine. I think these issues influenced a number of the changes to GURPS in 4e.

Originally Posted by zorg

In my current G4E:IN games, I simply ignore point totals and price each and every attunement at 10 CP, the racial template is for free and several other mechanics I simplify vastly or ignore them. But I'm not too happy about it.

That's basically my preferred method, and it mimics the core IN system model fairly well. Anything else tends to cause problems with pricing some Choirs/Bands out of sight.

Originally Posted by zorg

Don't get me wrong - the conversion wasn't a bad job. It was an incredibly hard job, and I think it's very difficult not only to translate IN correctly, but elegantly. The write-ups were quite complicated (and I don't say this could have been avoided!) and not very accessible, imho.

Unfortunately, the complexity of the powers in GURPS made it hard to make the writeups accessible, and we did eventually have to dump the detailed writeups of all the celestial powers into the online appendix.

Someday, when I get over my trauma from converting IN to GURPS 3e, and when I can get my hands on 4e Powers, I may take a shot at doing the 4e conversion, to see if it's any easier than it was for 3e. In my copious free time, of course....

---Walter

[zorg]

Originally Posted by milliken

Someday, when I get over my trauma from converting IN to GURPS 3e, and when I can get my hands on 4e Powers, I may take a shot at doing the 4e conversion, to see if it's any easier than it was for 3e. In my copious free time, of course....

---Walter

I'm sure it will be much easier. I'm also sure it will still be very difficult. Not to mention incredibly much work. But don't let me depress you! You have my best wishes...