My Book Recommendations

[Archangel Beth]

Based from this thread. I thought it might be a good idea to have a sticky of What Books An IN Fan Might Want And Why.

Mostly because I fielded a question about it last night when I was far too distracted to re-generate all these answers again.

If other people want to chime in, I'm not locking the thread. I'd like this to be more a "reviews" thread than a conversational one, and will edit or delete posts as needed. (Or spin them off to a thread, etc.)
**

Originally Posted by Doc

I guess my first question should be, have I bitten off more than I can chew here? Should I start off with something a little more light-weight, albeit less satisfying?

Well, there's nothing saying you can't play In Nomine in a "light-weight" fashion - see also In Nomine: Anime.

Really I am wondering if anyone has any tips for someone starting out with In Nomine? For instance which resources are essential and which can wait a while (I could only afford to pick up maybe 3 or four books in the near future). Should I wait for a revised edition of the core rules?

Don't wait for a revised edition. I've not been told anything about a chance to revise it, and I should know. I have many notions on how to do it, (GURPS In Nomine could be considered an example), but I've not been given a "Hey, we need to do a second edition" sign yet.

So long as you grasp that the book isn't necessarily best-read from front to back, and it has a few quirks (mainly Songs) where information is spread out, you'll be fine. (How did I read it? I got up to the d666 mechanics, then I skipped ahead to the Choirs, Bands and Superiors sections, and finally went back and read the rest.)

What you want... I'll try to order these and explain what's in them and why you might want them.

*The Core Rules, either plain IN or GURPS version. Duh. O:> They are now available on e23, only.

*The Game Master's Guide. As a new GM, this could be very useful to you. You may also want Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, which SJGames published, which is system-neutral - it's a 32-pager, as I recall, and may couple with something else useful.

*If you like anime, and your gaming group does, In Nomine: Anime. It's a 32-page book, so relatively inexpensive. It may also be a good lead-in for "practice games."

*The Liber Canticorum (Book of Songs) or Liber Reliquarum (Book of Relics), for "spells" or "magic items." The Liber Reliquarum has an adventure in it which, in hind-sight, presumes a more conflict-prone Heaven than the default seems to have shaken out to be.

*The Angelic Player's Guide, Infernal Players Guide, Corporeal Player's Guide, or Ethereal Player's Guide - each of these are useful for what they focus on. Frankly, if you wanted to run a "small gods" campaign, you could get the core rules and the EPG and chuck 99% of the background. (See also a paragraph of http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=3268.) I am partial to the IPG and EPG because I had a lot to do with them, and the CPG is just plain useful if you want important humans. The APG, I didn't have my hands on the reins enough, in my arrogant opinion, but it still has a lot of useful stuff in there, like Kyriotates.

*The Superiors Books (War and Honor, Pleasures of the Flesh, Hope and Prophecy, and Rogues to Riches). if you can get your players to "cluster" around the four Superiors in a given Superiors book, I'd say that one should be your third choice. They have all the data from the core rules (with any errata fixed) to reduce book swapping, as well as additional Servitor Attunements and Distinctions. Not only do they discuss the Superior, but also what it's like to be a Servitor of that Superior. They also have adventure seeds that can be fleshed out. (See also http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG82-1005.)

*The Liber Servitorum (Book of NPCs and/or pregen PCs, basically), the Liber Castellorum (Tether-book; making and short samples), and You Are Here (a bunch of locations and the adventure seeds associated with them). None of these are in the top three you should have as a GM, unless you happen to flip through and be the sort of person who'd be incredibly inspired by them, but I'm rather fond of them. (The Servitorum also expands on Roles and Servants.)

* The Revelation Cycle. I believe you'll want to cherry-pick these. (I mean, eventually, you want it all, but...) Don't feel that you have to use the "official adventure." (My own campaign has cheerfully jumped the tracks, for instance, before the Rev Cycle's adventure even "got started.") So unless you want more on a topic (Night Music = Austin, Tx; Marches = Marches; Heaven & Hell =...; Fall of the Malakim = Los Angeles; Final Trumpet = a lot of Superior write-ups), these are unlikely to be top-three picks.

And to order them... Well, there's always www.warehouse23.com... O;>

EDIT: e23 now has In Nomine stuff. Note that most e23 material has GURPS 3rd edition (GURPS In Nomine) conversions. (Originally, such conversions were not going to be done because in a dead-trees book, that would eat up the space for In Nomine data. This is a less pressing concern with e23.)

The Liber Umbrarum expands ghosts. It also contains GURPS conversions for the basic ghost types from the CPG.

In Nomine Superiors: Lilith is the expanded expansion - the material from FotM, revised and expanded with data on both Free Lilim and contracted "employees" of Freedom.

In Nomine Superiors: Litheroy is the expansion for the minor Archangel (who first appeared in "Feast of Blades") and his Servitors.

In Nomine Superiors: Eli expands on the Archangel of Creation. It gives hints as to what he might be up to, and lots of data about his Servitors.

In Nomine Superiors: Asmodeus is the expanded expansion. Inludes a lot about actually playing the Game as a Servitor... There're also suggestions for something even more important (to quote one of the authors): how to make them go away.

In Nomine Superiors: Zadkiel is the expansion for the Archangel of Protection (first appearing in Heaven & Hell). She's rather changed, and mechanics have been clarified.

The e23 adventures:
Strange Bedfellows: has pre-generated characters (both IN and GIN), and is meant to be a simple adventure for 1-2 sessions. It's one way the "Strange Bedfellows" adventure seed in Superiors 1 could go. (Servitors of Judgment and War are sent, with the aid of Stone and Sword, to recover an Outcast Cherub of War. Mayhem and snark ensue.) A version of this appeared in Pyramid, but the e23 one is more polished.

The Rats' Revenge: a locked-room mystery, expanded with original notes that didn't make it into Pyramid, and with a few additions of my own that I thought of while running it myself. (My PCs did things out of order, of course, and wound up not doing the second part.)

A Very Nybbas Christmas: from the original paper version of Pyramid, updated a bit, and free.

Feast of Blades: the adventure that came with the out-of-print GM screen, updated to agree with the Superiors 4. This is the first appearance of Alaemon, Prince of Secrets, and Litheroy, Archangel of Revelation. It's also a fun little adventure, though the sorcerer NPC may not entirely agree with the CPG.

City on Fire: an adventure that appears nowhere else, and is definitely full of mayhem. I have neither played in, nor run, a game with it, though. Alas.

The Sorcerer's Impediments: a free "In Nomine Lite" adventure! It has sample characters, simplified rules, and a short plot. If you prefer your In Nomine "Hevvy," this sample Pyramid article gives suggestions (and an entirely new pre-gen character that was cut from the Lite version).

[zogo]

IMNSHO The most important book (after the core rules) is the Corporeal Players Guide. The place for the Lowdown on cool stuff like:
*Sorcery
*Other Human only advantages like Blessed
*More Detailed Rules for Undead
*Saints
*How each major Superior treats Human Soldiers

Even more importantly this book has the rules for things that are basically essential rather than just cool facets of the setting. Such as...
*Rules Change to make humans have less hitpoints on average than a Sedan
*Optional Rules to make humans less incompetent at human sorts of tasks
*Rules for Drugs, Poisons, and Diseases

Basically if you want to have any significant Human characters you need the CPG.

[Archangel Beth]

Quoting from another thread.

Originally Posted by h3rne

Hi! I'm a gate crasher from a foreign SJG forum... IN got flagged on Websnark just recently and it piqued my interest. I found this thread trying to work out whether to buy IN or go for 3e GIN.

Originally Posted by milliken

Generally I'd recommend the GURPS version if:

- your players already play and like GURPS a lot, and don't like other systems, especially ones where the rules are "squishy"
- you want detailed combat rules (or just detailed rules in general)
- you want to do historical stuff, and mine the various GURPS historical books for NPCs
- you want some semblance of play balance between the PCs
- you want to intermix humans with celestials a lot (human PCs are very disadvantaged in regular IN, not so much in GIN)
- you want to intermix IN with "regular" magic, psi, or other non-mundane genre stuff, or use it in a genre cross-over campaign

The regular IN is best if:
- your players are more interested in roleplaying and character over rules, and like "rules-light" systems
- players won't care if one character is much more powerful than another
- you'll gloss combat a lot (the IN combat rules aren't much faster than the GURPS ones, just less detailed)
- you plan to stick strictly within the IN background, and not introduce supernatural stuff from other backgrounds (though it's not all that hard to add "house rules" for things created within the IN framework)

Note that I actually like and use both systems (well, if I ever have time enough to actually play again), but prefer to play the IN background in In Nomine. I'd definitely use the GURPS version if I wanted to do a mix-and-match game -- Elizabeth did an In Nomine/Yrth game in GURPS IN, for example, and it worked fairly well. It would have been very hard to do in regular IN.

I strongly recommend the e23 version of the core rules over a hardcopy from eBay or the like -- this is in large part because the core rules started out badly organized, especially for character creation, but the addition of the PDF bookmarks and searching capability pretty much alleviates the problems with finding things quickly.

---Walter

[Orlin]

Originally Posted by zogo

Even more importantly this book [The Corporeal Player's Guide] has the rules for things that are basically essential rather than just cool facets of the setting. Such as...
*Rules Change to make humans have less hit-points on average than a Sedan

Can you help me reference this? I just purchased the CPG and have very nearly read it front-to-back, but I haven't found this rule. I bought it specifically on your recommendation (kudos!) and I'm not disappointed in the slightest.

One of the problems that frequently comes up in games is that average humans seem to be equipped to take quite a few bullets. Many times, if they're "extras" I just say "You hit him. He dies."

----------------------------------------------------

I obtained the books in this order:

1. Core Rulebook
2. Infernal players guide
3. Angelic players guide
4. Corporeal players guide
5. Liber Reliquarum
6. Liber Canticorum


In hindsight, I think I would have done it like this:

1. Core Rulebook
2. Liber Canticorum
3. Corporeal Player's Guide
4. Relevant Superiors Guide (depending on who the PC's choose.)

The Liber Reliquarum is a great buy if you need ideas for relics or would like to design your own using a specific format, but off the cusp, I think I'd recommend a book about Superiors, even before the IPG or the APG -- both are great books, but their best quality is that they expound on ways to role-play angels and demons by choir and band, and describe things like duties in heaven and on earth, typical roles, and mindsets.

Keep in mind, I'm not really the best qualified to offer up an answer because I only recently began playing In Nomine, but I felt like I should have contributed something.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Orlin

Can you help me reference this? I just purchased the CPG and have very nearly read it front-to-back, but I haven't found this rule.

That's because zogo was misremembering ... it's actually in the GM's Guide, pg. 120, in the chapter of "Optional and Variant Rules." The option narrows the range all the way around: a 9 Force angel may have 16 to 57 Body hits (instead of 2 to 144) while a 5-Force human will range between 7 and 28 hits (instead of 1 and 70). Basically, the ceiling drops a lot and the floor rises a little.

Glad you're getting a lot of use from the CPG, though. It's one of my favorites.

[robkelk]

(Moving this out of the old "Who's next?" thread and adding some links.)

Here's where one can find the most detailed information about each canonical Superior. The lists are sorted alphabetically by Archangel, then alphabetically by Demon Prince(ss).

Complete:

• Blandine (Dreams): Superiors 3
• David (Stone): Superiors 1
• Dominic (Judgment): Superiors 1
• Eli (Creation): Superiors: Eli
• Gabriel (Fire): Superiors 3
• Khalid (Faith): Superiors 3
• Laurence (The Sword): Superiors 1
• Litheroy (Revelation): Superiors: Litheroy
• Michael (War): Superiors 1
• Yves (Destiny): Superiors 3
• Zadkiel (Protection): Superiors: Zadkiel
• Alaemon (Secrets): Superiors 4
• Andrealphus (Lust): Superiors 2
• Asmodeus (The Game): Superiors: Asmodeus
• Fleurity (Drugs): Superiors 4
• Haagenti (Gluttony): Superiors 2
• Kobal (Dark Humor): Superiors 2
• Lilith (Freedom): Superiors: Lilith
• Mammon (Greed): Superiors 4
• Nybbas (The Media): Superiors 2
• Valefor (Theft): Superiors 4
• Vapula (Technology): Superiors 4

All are available at Warehouse 23.

Expanded but not complete writeups:

• Baal (The War): The Final Trumpet
• Beleth (Nightmares): The Marches
• Belial (Fire): The Marches
• Kronos (Fate): Heaven and Hell
• Malphas (Factions): The Final Trumpet
• Saminga (Death): Night Music

All are dead-tree books, also available in PDF. The writeups in these books supplement the core rulebook, rather than replacing those writeups.

Basic writeups:

• Christopher (Children): Night Music (a few notes by traumermarchen)
• Janus (The Wind): In Nomine
• Jean (Lightning): In Nomine
• Jordi (Animals): In Nomine (unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by R. Sean Borgstrom)
• Marc (Trade): In Nomine (unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by "Whitelaughter")
• Novalis (Flowers): In Nomine
• Furfur (Hardcore): Night Music
• Magog (Cruelty): The Final Trumpet

Incomplete notes - not enough for even a basic writeup:

• Uriel (Malakite Archangel of Purity; called to the Higher Heavens): Ethereal Player's Guide, pages 140-141, and Superiors 1, page 73 (unofficial writeup by David Edelstein, unofficial writeup by Rich Gant, unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen, and a heretical writeup by Ingeborg S. Nordén)
• Makatiel (Habbalite Prince of Disease; executed by Judgment and the Game): Liber Castellorum, pages 125-126 (unofficial writeup by "Omegonthesane", unofficial writeup by Morrigan, unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen)

Merely mentioned somewhere:

• Metatron (The Voice of God; killed by Lucifer) (unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen, unofficial, heretical writeup by Charles E. Smith)
• Oannes (Archangel of the Waters; killed by Belial) (unofficial writeups, as an Ofanite by Dave Taylor, as a Malakite by traumermarchen, and a heretical writeup as an Elohite by Ingeborg S. Nordén)
• Raphael (Elohite Archangel of Knowledge; killed by Legion) (unofficial writeup by David Edelstein, unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen, and a heretical writeup as a Mercurian by Ingeborg S. Nordén)
• the Archangel of Death (unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen, unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by Kelly Pedersen based on David Edelstein's unofficial writeup)
• the Archangel of Song (unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by Kelly Pedersen)
• Beelzebub (Djinn Prince of Corruption; killed by Uriel) (unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen, heretical writeup by Julian Breen)
• Gebbeleth (Balseraph Prince of Secrets; destroyed during Feast of Blades) (unofficial writeup by Eric Alfred Burns)
• Genubath (Calabite Prince of Rapine; presumed killed by Valefor) (unofficial writeup by David Edelstein, unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen)
• Legion (Shedite Prince of Corruption; killed by Raphael) (unofficial writeup by "Omegonthesane", and unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen)
• Mariel (Princess of Oblivion; eaten by Haagenti) (unofficial writeups, as a Habbalite by Douglas Muir, as a Djinn by Eric Alfred Burns, and another as a Djinn by Dave Taylor)
• Meserach (Djinn Prince of Sloth; eaten by Haagenti) (unofficial writeup by "Omegonthesane", unofficial expanded but not complete writeup by traumermarchen)
• Vephar (Calabite Prince of the Oceans; killed by Oannes) (unofficial writeup by Martin Arnold)

[Whitelaughter]

Okay, personal order of importance:

essential:
- Core or G:IN, depending on the rules system you're using
- The angelic and demonic player guides.
- Heaven & Hell! Good intros to The Game & Judgement, a description of 2/3rds of the game world and the only write up on Fate. I would argue the most important book you can have.

World:
the ethereal, corporeal and GMs guides; these describe the rest of world to you.

The Infernal write-ups: S2 & S4, Lilith, Asmodeus. These serve double value as they provide player info for demonic games and antagonists for everyone. And sooner or later, every group makes a deal with Lilith!

S1: Very valuable. Laurence is Heaven's C-in-C, so his influence will be felt in any game. More stuff on Dominic! Michael is every demon's greatest dread. All 4 sections of the book well written, David suddenly becomes quite useful.

Eli: Well written, and is a useful 'stand in' for the other Archangels. want to play a Windie but there's no expanded write up? Play a Creationist in service to The Wind!

Hide from your players until you're comfortable with the game:
Liber Canticorum & Liber Reliquarum.
Both books are stuffed full of cool stuff...that you may not want your players getting their hands on until later. Sure, you can always say no, but if they don't know it exiss, they can't beg for it, can they?
Once you've got your game running happily, *then* introduce these books! Start by rewarding them with resonance-Restricted Songs, and give them a head's up on the threat of spies learning Songs from them....

For later:
The rest of the Rev cycle; most of it has been replaced. Pity, as a lot of fun. Only place to get several Superior write-ups though.

I wouldn't worry too much about flavour. H&H will give you the IN feel, and the next most important thing is where you set your game: The Congo will give you a different feel to Gretna Green.

[EDIT]: I did a full (splatbook) write up of Marc back in 2003: http://www.mithril.com.au/marc.htm

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

The Rats' Revenge: a locked-room mystery, expanded with original notes that didn't make it into Pyramid, and with a few additions of my own that I thought of while running it myself. (My PCs went and did things out of order, of course, and wound up not doing the second part.).

Link doesn't work, and "locked room" games are ideal for Live ARP--that being my geekage. Any idea whether it can still be gotten?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Link doesn't work, and "locked room" games are ideal for Live ARP--that being my geekage. Any idea whether it can still be gotten?

http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-3344

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

Link doesn't work, and "locked room" games are ideal for Live ARP--that being my geekage. Any idea whether it can still be gotten?

The links have been fixed -- thanks for telling me!