Tag Archives: Roleplaying Games

Glitch: A Beautiful Something

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My name is Cheese­fish, and against all logic it is one of the more mun­dane names I have come across.  I am wear­ing a sari and I have a fox on my head.  My hobby: squeez­ing chick­ens.  My mis­sion: to become the finest chef the world of Glitch has ever seen.

Glitch is a browser-based, entirely combat-free, mas­sively mul­ti­player online game. And for the last few days, it has been some­thing of an obses­sion. It is Maple Story, if Maple Story cut the com­bat (and the Korean-ness) and focussed solely on explo­ration and craft­ing mechan­ics. And it’s the explo­ration that makes it. As a 2D scrolling flash game, there are none of World of War­craft or Guild Wars’ sweep­ing vis­tas here, but it makes up for it in vari­ety. One moment you may be explor­ing a lush and utterly nor­mal for­est, but one stop on the ever-present inter­con­ti­nen­tal sub­way drops you off in a land of pas­tel where the hills have eyes.

Stranger places still await the intre­pid explorer. Keita Taka­hashi, cre­ator of Kata­mari Damacy, has had his hands on this game and it cer­tainly shows. (The other more recog­nis­able mem­bers of the team are, bizarrely, the founders of Flickr.) There have clearly been some… unique minds behind the design of this game, which become most appar­ent when acquir­ing raw mate­ri­als from the environment.

Need meat? You get it by nib­bling on pigs, but only after pet­ting them. Milk? From but­ter­flies of course, but they must be mas­saged first. Grain can be obtained by squeez­ing chick­ens, but eggs? Oh, right. Egg plants.

From the odd inter­ac­tions with fauna to the bizarre con­trap­tions you can use, the ever-humorous quest descrip­tions and the pet rock that does your learn­ing for you, there’s a strange sense of humour at work here and it works very well indeed.

Glitch is also an exam­ple of one of my most hated things — an Energy-based game that has no end. But here, it doesn’t feel mali­cious like the game-killing ‘games’ of Zynga and Play­fish. Energy is plen­ti­ful and refills com­pletely every few hours, and even with my character’s mediocre cook­ing skills, she can eas­ily whip up enough odd food and drinks to keep her energy and mood full. Skills are learned over min­utes, hours or days of real time, but again unlike Far­mVille and its kin, they’re not just a mech­a­nism to drag you back to the game. There doesn’t feel like an urgency to get them learned, and besides, you can man­age them from the web­site or the iOS app with­out hav­ing to touch the game itself.

So what the heck is Glitch? It doesn’t seem much like a game, as there’s no way to win and no rea­son to com­pete against any­one. It’s a world to explore, to cre­ate and add to, and appar­ently, to hold farm­ers’ mar­kets in.

It resem­bles noth­ing quite so much as a twenty-first cen­tury upgrade of the MUSH, the shared envi­ron­ments from the early ‘90s. If it allows any­thing like a MUSH’s abil­ity for play­ers to cre­ate and expand the world, it will be a won­der. But cre­at­ing with text is easy; doing so with graph­ics much more com­plex, and I can’t imag­ine the com­pany behind Glitch giv­ing up cre­ative con­trol so readily.

But even with­out that, even with­out an idea of what it is and what it’s going to be, it’s cer­tainly a beau­ti­ful some­thing.

Dreaming Awake Game 1

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I ran my first game set in the Dream­ing Awake set­ting at uni­ver­sity in 2005. Unfor­tu­nately, due to a num­ber of rea­sons, the game only reached its fifth session.

Sys­tem

The first Dream­ing Awake game used a sys­tem cre­ated from scratch specif­i­cally for it. Although it was briefly play-tested for bal­ance issues before­hand, it suf­fered from a few issues that only became appar­ent once it was prop­erly in play:

  • Shiny dwarfed every­thing. The first char­ac­ter to be awarded a Shiny point — for some­thing entirely social, as it hap­pens — sud­denly became a com­bat munchkin against any­thing non-Shiny, and the rest of the party couldn’t keep up.
  • Pow­ers weren’t obvi­ous enough. The “can I do this?” ques­tion was asked too often, and play­ers’ lack of con­fi­dence in their char­ac­ters’ power level made them make poor deci­sions. Play­ers (and thus char­ac­ters) couldn’t prop­erly gauge how much of a threat their ene­mies were, lead­ing to slow and cau­tious combat.
  • The com­bat sys­tem was too slow. Although I began cre­at­ing it with sim­plic­ity in mind, the never-ending quest to make it more ele­gant also made it more com­plex. It was not imme­di­ately obvi­ous to play­ers what stats they should be com­bin­ing at each point.

Infor­ma­tion regard­ing the sys­tem we used is doc­u­mented here for archae­o­log­i­cal purposes:

Set­ting

The fact that I am deeply in love with Dream­ing Awake as a set­ting should come as no sur­prise. I wanted the game to feel like an open-ended sand­box that grad­u­ally drags the char­ac­ters into the plot, giv­ing them chance to have fun with the set­ting, rather than run­ning a rail­roaded cam­paign. I prob­a­bly allowed too much free­dom here, and I learnt the fol­low­ing lessons (the hard way):

  • Play­ers need to see the results of their actions. A lot of the mechan­ics of fame in Dream­ing Awake involved tales of the play­ers’ actions spread­ing by word of mouth — but when that’s invis­i­ble to the play­ers, the results seem arbitrary.
  • …but not when the result is that they’ve made their task more dif­fi­cult. By their actions and word of mouth, the play­ers man­aged to effec­tively start the evac­u­a­tion of a whole coun­try in the face of an oncom­ing army. Regard­less of whether it was a good or a bad deci­sion, it was one that increased the play­ers’ fame, which Dream­ing Awake prizes greatly. As a “look how pow­er­ful your words are” scene, the char­ac­ters stum­bled upon one of many refugee camps that had formed — but rather than impress­ing on the play­ers the impor­tance of the char­ac­ters’ actions, it instead demor­alised them.
  • Plot hap­pen­ing in the back­ground is con­fus­ing. At one point, the char­ac­ters caught a glimpse of some­thing big hap­pen­ing in a far-off land. This was intended as a minor hook to sug­gest that other things are going on that the char­ac­ters are not involved with, and that per­haps they might want to be involved. But because it came across as “look, stuff hap­pens with­out you!”, the play­ers did not feel much desire to investigate.

Mage: Beyond the Fields We Know

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This page con­tains the intro­duc­tory mate­r­ial for the “Mage: Beyond the Fields We Know” game that is still wait­ing to be run at some point. It was orig­i­nally posted in this thread.

About the Game

For those of you new to the soci­ety, or absent dur­ing my Pimms-fuelled rants towards the end of last aca­d­e­mic year, here’s some info about the game.

This game is going to be at least a lit­tle novel, I hope, in that it’s going to push the bound­aries of in– and out-of char­ac­ter fur­ther together than most other games (with the inevitable excep­tion of Dream­ing Awake). The char­ac­ters will be Vir­tual Adepts in White Wolf’s “World of Dark­ness” set­ting (Mage: The Ascen­sion). Rather than just play­ing face-to-face, play­ers are encour­aged to invent as much of a seper­ate iden­tity for their char­ac­ter as they feel com­fort­able with. The game will mostly be run over IRC, so char­ac­ters are encour­aged to have at least a han­dle — blogs, prox­ies, shell accounts and so on are encour­aged for play­ers who want to delve deeply into the world.

The game is set around the end of the year 1999, as Mil­len­nium Bug fever tight­ens its grip on techies and con­spir­acy the­o­rists alike. As Vir­tual Adepts, the inter­net is in equal parts home and play­ground to you — and you know not only about its tech­ni­cal side, but also its more eso­teric side.

And you know that the Mil­len­nium Bug is more than just pro­gram­mers’ lack of fore­sight. Much more.

My scene-setting story frag­ment, “Catch­ing the Bug”, is here: http://onlydreaming.net/fiction/short-stories/catching-the-bug.

When and How?

This is where it gets a lit­tle trick­ier. This started off as merely an inter­est­ing idea — how far can I blur the bound­aries between the activ­i­ties of the Vir­tual Adept and of their player — and it remains to be seen whether the idea will trans­late well into practice.

I’ll do my best to run this game well, but please remem­ber it’s as weird for me as it is for you!

Firstly, the game will not run face-to-face. It’ll be run online, but I don’t mean over MSN or IRC say­ing “My char­ac­ter does this, I say that”.

I will set up one of my machines as a server, which play­ers — in the guise of their char­ac­ters — will be able to inter­act with. It’ll host an IRC chan­nel, all the play­ers will have user accounts and shell access to them, and so on.

Fur­ther­more, it’ll be run in real time. The game starts on 1st Decem­ber at mid­night, and con­tin­ues until the plot resolves or until about 4th January.

FAQ

Will I need real-life hack­ing skills to play in this game?
No.
Real-life skill imbal­ance is a prob­lem I’ve thought long and hard about, and I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that there will be fairly lit­tle *actual* hack­ing involved — instead, this will be role­played in a more nor­mal man­ner.
How­ever, the abil­ity to log in to your account, run things, move files around and so on will be required. I’ll post an out-of-character man­ual for how to do things, and teach peo­ple basic Lin­uxy things myself if nec­es­sary.
While real-life skills should not give any player’s char­ac­ter an advan­tage or dis­ad­van­tage, the more you know — and the more you play around with the sys­tem — the more fun it’ll be. Hopefully.

How many peo­ple can play?
Lots. I’m not set­ting a limit at this stage. If your character’s back­ground doesn’t sug­gest some goals, moti­va­tions, and so on, we can work some out. The aim is for there to be enough char­ac­ters with con­flict­ing goals that I don’t have to shep­herd around a “party”, but that the game vir­tu­ally plays itself while I play the NPCs and hideously abuse my root priv­iledges in the cause of keep­ing things interesting.

Will I need to be online per­ma­nently?
No. Your char­ac­ter, like you, will doubt­less have jobs, stud­ies and things to do. So long as you can get online enough to keep abreast of devel­op­ments and play the game for at least a while every few days, you shouldn’t fall behind.

What’s this server of yours?
Actu­ally, the machine I’ll use belongs to the lovely and won­der­ful aefari­den, The Artist For­merly Known As Areku. The machine I intended to use decided to rit­u­ally incin­er­ate itself, so I’m eter­nally grate­ful to Alex for the loan of a machine.
It’ll be run­ning a pretty heav­ily cut-down Gen­too Linux.
This machine will be on my home net­work, so I do ask that should any of the play­ers man­age to hack their way into acquir­ing inter­est­ing priv­iledges on the game machine, please don’t try to do nasty things to my other boxes.

Back­ground Info

Late Octo­ber, 1999.

The infor­ma­tion age has arrived. What began all those years ago as merely a way for uni­ver­si­ties to share data has become so much more. Uni­ver­si­ties, com­pa­nies, the gov­ern­ment, every man and his dog is get­ting online. Every­one can dial up and click-click-click through web pages.

But so few of them, just a tiny pre­cious few, truly see the inter­net for what it is.

You are one of those lucky few. Whether you grew up with the ‘net, got involved with it as an adult, or even helped develop it in the early days, you see beyond hyper­text and TCP/IP. As you sit trance-like in front of your blaz­ing mon­i­tor, as you pull on the gog­gles and load up the lat­est VR exper­i­ment, even as you make a call on your mobile phone, you can feel it all around you.

Infor­ma­tion. The new reality.

No longer is the world con­strained by such an abhor­rent con­cept as a sin­gu­lar real­ity — now, we can pick and choose our real­i­ties, and make new ones for our­selves. Any fool can make a web page these days, but we can make some­thing more. Worlds within worlds, the next real­i­ties, the shin­ing path down which we will lead human­ity away from their dying world.

Any­thing is pos­si­ble for us. Already, infor­ma­tion is begin­ning to supercede real­ity. More and more, peo­ple trust the machines, they trust the infor­ma­tion. We manip­u­late infor­ma­tion, cre­ate it and destroy it, and in so doing we rework reality.

We are Vir­tual Adepts.

We are the gods of cyberspace.

We are the future.

Early Novem­ber, 1999

Of course, we are all human and all fal­li­ble — at least for now. Even Alan Tur­ing, per­haps the most respected of all Adepts, had his moments. So did the inven­tors of the early micro­proces­sors and oper­at­ing sys­tems. They under­es­ti­mated how impor­tant com­put­ers would become, nor how long they’d last.

It’s a silly thing, really. Two dig­its instead of four. So sim­ple. So dumb. Of course, to us it never would have mat­tered. Such a sim­ple thing, far below the level at which we per­ceive the infor­ma­tion plane. But of course it wor­ried the mun­dane lot, and to their credit they’ve been work­ing long and hard to fix it. The prob­lem is, the pub­lic got hold of the idea and ran with it.

Our world, the inter­net, is not just our play­ground. It is defined by the data within it, and every­one can influ­ence that. While we have the most far-reaching and pow­er­ful ways of manip­u­lat­ing data, the meme is a mighty tool — espe­cially in the hands of those who do not under­stand it well.

Night­mare con­spir­a­cies and apoc­a­lyp­tic prophe­cies spread like wild­fire once the pub­lic got hold of the Mil­len­nium Bug meme. Word of it passed not only across mes­sage boards and chat chan­nels, but around the office water­cool­ers and in the news­pa­pers. Every­one knows, everyone’s talk­ing about it, and they’re mak­ing it real in ways they don’t understand.

Try as we might, and believe me we are try­ing to fight its effects, we are under siege. Every­one on the ‘net is talk­ing about how com­put­ers and the web are going to come to an end, and these beliefs are fill­ing up the infor­ma­tion sphere. Fill­ing up our reality.

That apoc­a­lyp­tic meme is mak­ing itself come true.

Whilst I vio­lently reject the Tech­no­cratic Union’s desire to con­trol the minds of the peo­ple, it is the minds of the peo­ple that are destroy­ing the future.

I do not know what can be done.

Mid Novem­ber, 1999

Already our world is grow­ing flaky. As com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments across the globe take their servers offline for “pre-emptive mea­sures” against the Bug, our real­ity is get­ting less and less reliable.

Word of the Mil­len­nium Bug has spread so far and wide that so many peo­ple know about it with­out under­stand­ing it. A lot of them don’t even realise that no real effect of the bug could hap­pen until Jan­u­ary 1st, and attribute their con­nec­tion prob­lems to the Bug already. More than once today I’ve seen peo­ple come out with lines like “It’s start­ing already”.

There’s a lot of pes­simists in the world today; a lot of peo­ple that only see the worst in a sit­u­a­tion. So that thought spreads like wild­fire. The “it’s start­ing early” meme latches on to its greater par­ent and spreads with it, and thus makes itself more true.

No longer can we say that noth­ing can hap­pen until the New Year. It *is* hap­pen­ing already.

Late Novem­ber, 1999

The inter­net is falling apart, and it seems as if there’s noth­ing we can do.

But there is.

I have an idea, and I have made an arrange­ment that not many of you will like. Should we fail to save the net, maybe I will be for­ever judged as the one who put the final nail in its cof­fin. But if we suc­ceed, I hope that his­tory is kind and for­gives this transgression.

I can say no more here, as I am afraid of what might hap­pen if the infor­ma­tion reaches the wrong ears.

All I will say is this. I can­not do this alone; I need vol­un­teers. Each of us has a stake in the internet’s sur­vival. Though many of us are no doubt try­ing to pre­vent the net’s down­fall in their own ways, I hope that enough of you will trust me enough to join my crusade.

If you are will­ing, head over to the Zephyr node. Wel­come to Project Decem­ber. And… thank you.

Ben­jamin Frost

Vir­tual Adept

So what can I play?

You are one of the gods of the inter­net. What­ever your back­ground, whether your skills devel­oped with your inten­tion or not, you see infor­ma­tion and cyber­space for what it truly is — a new real­ity based on infor­ma­tion alone. Whether you regard your abil­i­ties as mag­i­cal or not, you have them and they set you apart from nor­mal peo­ple. You may just do this in your spare time while hold­ing down a proper job, or you may have sunk so deep into cyber­space that you can hardly bear mun­dane real­ity anymore.

The major­ity of char­ac­ters will be Vir­tual Adepts, vision­ar­ies of the infor­ma­tion age, peo­ple for whom the inter­net is an excit­ing oppor­tu­nity to fur­ther human development.

A few char­ac­ters may, if they like, be mem­bers of a par­al­lel group within the Tech­noc­racy. For the tech­nocrats, the inter­net is one of many tools to mon­i­tor and con­trol the peo­ple for their own good. Just like the Vir­tual Adepts, though, they have a vested inter­est in keep­ing the net running.

Despite their com­mon goal, these two fac­tions are at what amounts to an ide­o­log­i­cal war with each other. There­fore, I’d ask that what­ever side you pick, you do not men­tion both your character’s han­dle and their ide­ol­ogy in any out-of-character dis­cus­sion. I want the char­ac­ters find­ing out about each other and their goals and mind­sets to be entirely in-character.

I will enforce > 80% Vir­tual Adept char­ac­ters, so if you cre­ate a Tech­no­crat char­ac­ter please don’t be offended if I ask you to change your char­ac­ter to a VA.

Your char­ac­ter can be any­where in the world, any nation­al­ity, any age or sex, any social stand­ing and wield any amount of real-world power. The inter­net is the great lev­eller — online, you are noth­ing but your han­dle and your ideas.

Your pow­ers may have devel­oped grad­u­ally with heavy net use, they might have been taught to you by a VA (although you wouldn’t have realised it at the time), or you — rarely — might even have been born with them.

It is hard — but not impos­si­ble — to find out about the Vir­tual Adepts (or the Tech­noc­racy) by mun­dane means. After your pow­ers came to you, though, it would have been sig­nif­i­cantly eas­ier, and it would be quite likely that one or other (or both) of the groups found you before you had a chance to find them.

Who is Ben­jamin Frost?

Whether by e-mail, a post on a secret BBS or by some more eso­teric means, you’ve come across this infor­ma­tion that Ben Frost is set­ting up some­thing called “Project Decem­ber”, an attempt to com­bat the Mil­len­nium Bug meme and save the inter­net and the infor­ma­tion it con­tains from an uncer­tain future.

Although Vir­tual Adepts do not have a for­mal hier­ar­chy, Ben is a renowned expert on vir­tual real­ity envi­ron­ments and net­work secu­rity. He is per­cieved by most as trust­wor­thy although a lit­tle dis­tant, mostly too wrapped up in his own minia­ture VR worlds to inter­act with the other Vir­tual Adepts much. He seems an unlikely wannabe sav­iour of the inter­net, but per­haps the insta­bil­ity of the entire net­work has affected even his own per­sonal playgrounds.

These days he prefers to be known by his real name, although he does on occa­sion go by one of his old han­dles, ‘Emp­tySky’. He is 34 years old, and is a pro­fes­sor of Vir­tual Inter­faces at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, New York.

The Tale of Indigo Something

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Deep in a for­est, in a land known as the Duchy of the But­ter­cup Flow­ers, there lived a man by the name of Indigo.  He lived a sim­ple life with his elderly mother and father and his six broth­ers and sis­ters, each named after a colour of the rain­bow for rea­sons their par­ents had never told.

Now I say that he was a man, but in truth he was one of the Fair Folk, the Gen­try, or any of the other names by which his kind go.  And that land in which he lived was not of the Earth we know, but of another much stranger place which few true men have ever seen.  But it will suf­fice to refer to him as a man, as he was cer­tainly of that appear­ance, and by our reck­on­ing would have been some thirty years of age at the time our tale begins.

Indigo and his fam­ily were very poor, for though the for­est pro­vided no short­age of food, they had lit­tle to sell or barter for fine things, and the chil­dren increas­ingly had to care for their parents.

His life con­tin­ued in this way for many a year, until one day, a great war broke out among the king­doms of the land.  News of this did not reach Indigo’s dis­tant home at that time, because trav­ellers so rarely ven­tured so deep into the woods.  But not long after, a recruit­ment gang came pass­ing from house to house, tak­ing every­one fit and healthy away to fight for their Duchy in the war.  Indigo’s older sis­ter Green and younger sis­ter Vio­let were allowed to remain behind to sup­port their par­ents, but Indigo and all his broth­ers were made to leave their fam­ily behind.


Indigo was not happy in the army, but he sent a good pro­por­tion of his wages home to his fam­ily every week, so he knew that they would be liv­ing a bet­ter life in his absence.

Now in this war the House of But­ter­cup had pledged their alle­giance to the White Roses, who were one side, and their ene­mies were the Red Roses and their allies.  Indigo knew that the Whites were win­ning and that the fight­ing was tak­ing place a long way from But­ter­cup lands, and so he patrolled the bor­ders of the Duchy with­out fear.  But news from the front became rarer and rarer as time went on, and every­body started to won­der if they were really safe at all.

Then, one day, came the news that they had all feared.  The offi­cers told the enlisted men that a Red Rose army had attacked the south of the But­ter­cup lands, and they were being sent there to fight.

Indigo and his broth­ers and thou­sands of other sol­diers marched day and night across the land in pur­suit of the Reds.  On the third day they came across a for­est that had been burned to the ground by the enemy, and Indigo and his broth­ers recog­nised it imme­di­ately despite it being black and charred.  They split from the army as it marched past, and they searched the for­est for a day and a night, but they could find no trace of their home amongst the black­ened trees.

Indigo, con­sumed with sad­ness and with anger, trav­elled directly back to the cap­i­tal city of the But­ter­cup Duchy.  There he pre­sented him­self before the Prince and told him how he had dis­cov­ered his family’s fate at the hands of the Red Roses.

“You are a brave man to tell me this,” the Prince said, “because you have deserted the army, and by law I should sen­tence you to hang.”

But Indigo was pre­pared for this.  He explained also to the Prince that he had acquired many skills from his days as a hunter, not least the abil­ity to move quickly and qui­etly with­out being seen, and knowl­edge of all the plants of the for­est and the effects they could have on a per­son.  Indigo could see the Prince think­ing of all the ways in which those skills could be used, and so Indigo bowed deeply and vol­un­teered him­self for any mis­sion the Prince had in mind, pro­vided that it would win him vengeance against the Red Roses.

Sat­is­fied with Indigo’s hon­esty, the Prince gave him a mis­sion of the utmost impor­tance.  The Prince explained that shortly, House Poppy, a Red nation, would be return­ing home after a long jour­ney, and that they would surely throw a ban­quet in hon­our of their allies.  There would not be a bet­ter chance to strike than this, with so many of the Reds gath­ered together in one place.

Indigo spent days in the forests around the cap­i­tal col­lect­ing roots and berries, then boiled them and drained the liq­uid into a tiny bot­tle.  His poi­son was strong enough that even a tiny drop could floor a grown man, so he took great care of it and packed it deeply into his back­pack as he set off for the Duchy of the Poppy flowers.

As he walked, he thought of how he would get into the cas­tle to use the poi­son.  He had been told that the cas­tle had high walls, small gates and could be heav­ily guarded.  He also knew that his tal­ent for sneak­ing around was good for forests, but prob­a­bly not so good for cities.  It looked to be a very dan­ger­ous mis­sion, but one night he stum­bled upon just the solution.

He had met a man named Albert that day on his trav­els, and Albert had invited Indigo into his home to spend the night.  Over din­ner, Indigo learned of Albert’s nature, which was that he could change his appear­ance at will into that of any ani­mal he chose.  Now this may seem extra­or­di­nary, but as I have said, the land in which this story takes place is not our Earth and its char­ac­ters are not quite like the peo­ple you know.  So this was not an astound­ing abil­ity by the stan­dards of their world, though it was a rare one, and Indigo knew just how it could be used to his advantage.

Albert him­self was not fond of the Red Rose nations, and was alarmed that the Pop­pies were return­ing.  So, par­tic­u­larly after Indigo paid him hand­somely with some of the money the Prince had given him, Albert agreed to help him.  Albert would dis­guise him­self as a horse and join House Poppy’s car­a­van, hop­ing that they would think him one of their own horses or at least that they would take on a stray one.  Once he had been taken to the sta­bles, he would then change back to his nor­mal shape, make his way into the kitchens dressed as a ser­vant, and when no-one was look­ing, empty Indigo’s bot­tle of poi­son into the food they were prepar­ing for the banquet.

The two men parted ways, and Indigo went to stay in a nearby town to await news of the poisoning.


Day after day, week after week, he waited.  But news never came.


After a long time, and with news that the Red forces were gath­er­ing again, Indigo knew that his mis­sion must have failed.  He feared for his life if the Prince found out or if the Reds attacked, and so in case he had not long to live, he went to make peace with his par­ents and sisters.

In the land in which they lived, what we would call ‘magic’ is a com­mon­place thing, and like­wise it was not so extra­or­di­nary that there were witches liv­ing there who could talk with the departed.  So Indigo went to see a witch in the town where he was stay­ing, and paid her a fee so that she would allow him to talk to those mem­bers of his fam­ily whom he had lost when the for­est burned.  The witch searched the place where souls go, and called out for them, but try as she might, she could not find them there.

“There is only one answer to this, sir,” said the witch, “and that is that these souls have not yet passed on.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Indigo.

“Your fam­ily are still alive, sir,” she said.  “For another three sil­ver coins I could help you find them…”

Indigo had nearly spent all of the Prince’s money, but so des­per­ate was he to find out if his par­ents and sis­ters still lived that he paid the witch at once.  She cast a spell of sight that allowed her to see any­one in the world, and showed Indigo her vision of his fam­ily liv­ing in the great city at the heart of the But­ter­cup duchy.


Indigo now had no money left for coaches or horses, but as soon as he returned to the inn he packed up all his belong­ings into a bag and started his long jour­ney on foot.  On the way out of the city he met a woman whose name was Sap­phire, named no doubt for her sparkling blue eyes.  She hap­pened to also be trav­el­ling to But­ter­cup lands, and as she too had no money, they set off walk­ing together.

For weeks they walked, through for­est and plain, over hills and down into val­leys.  Sap­phire told Indigo about her child­hood, her unhappy appren­tice­ship to a tai­lor, and how she was flee­ing to the But­ter­cup duchy to start a new life.  And in time, Indigo grew to trust Sap­phire more and more, until even­tu­ally he explained what the Prince had sent him to do, how it had failed, and how he learned that his fam­ily were still alive.


When at last they arrived in the city, they went straight to the house the witch had shown to Indigo.  Just as she had promised, there they found Indigo’s father and mother, as well as his two sis­ters Green and Vio­let, alive and well.  Indigo hugged and kissed them and cried for a long time, so relieved was he that they had sur­vived, and so dis­traught was he that his hatred of the Red Rose army had been in error.  Vio­let told Indigo her tale of how they had received warn­ing of the approach­ing army and fled the for­est, com­ing to live in the city instead, and how she and her sis­ter were now appren­ticed to a butcher and were mak­ing enough money to look after their parents.

Indigo and Sap­phire slept at their house that night, and rested well after so many nights on the road.  But at dawn, But­ter­cup sol­diers came and demanded to take Indigo to the cas­tle.  Sap­phire argued with them at length, but all it achieved was her being arrested as well, and them both being taken to the cas­tle together.

Indigo was sure that he would be pre­sented to the Prince, who would impose a harsh pun­ish­ment for his fail­ure.  But instead, it was the Duke whose throne they were made to bow in front of.

“You have been arrested under the Prince’s orders,” he boomed, “but as he has since sadly been lost in bat­tle with the Reds, it is me you now face.  What rea­son do you have for your failure?”

Indigo told the Duke the whole story, from the day he thought his fam­ily had been killed to the day he dis­cov­ered them alive again.  The Duke looked a lit­tle sad by the end of it, and Indigo realised that with the Prince pre­sumed dead, the Duke’s sit­u­a­tion was not entirely dif­fer­ent to his own.

“And you,” the Duke said, turn­ing to Sap­phire, “for what rea­son do you now stand before me?”

“I was sent to kill you,” said Sapphire.

The Duke stood sharply, the sol­diers lin­ing the room drew their swords, and Indigo stared at her, wide-eyed in disbelief.

“Give me one rea­son why my sol­diers should not cut you down right now!” the Duke shouted.

“Because this man changed my mind,” she said, point­ing to Indigo.  “Because I am just like him.  I blame the White Rose armies for what I think hap­pened to my fam­ily, but I don’t really know the truth.”

“You lied to me!” said Indigo.  “Was every­thing you told me on the jour­ney untrue?”

“Most of it.  And for that I truly am sorry.  Just like you, in my anger and despair I sought any task that would bring revenge, no mat­ter how dan­ger­ous it would be.  And so I was sent here, to kill the Duke But­ter­cup, with an invented life story to tell any­one who started ask­ing ques­tions.  But as we talked, I grew to realise how futile it all is.  My mis­sion, your mis­sion, and the war itself.  Regard­less of the Red and White Roses’ rea­sons for start­ing this war, what about us?  All their allies, all the indi­vid­u­als, the com­mon peo­ple – aren’t we all just doing this because of some petty need for revenge, or even for no rea­son at all?”

Duke But­ter­cup sat back down on his throne, and thought for sev­eral min­utes in silence.  Then, at last, he spoke.

“I believe I know the feel­ings of which you speak.  I, too, am griev­ing at the death of the Prince, and I am push­ing this land’s army fur­ther than it ever ought to have gone.  It is only vague promises and con­torted pol­i­tics that brought us into this war, and I owe my peo­ple more than that.”


Not long after­wards, the Duke But­ter­cup issued a procla­ma­tion that ended the duchy’s involve­ment in the war.  But­ter­cup became one of the few truly neu­tral duchies, and thrived for many years as a result.  Indigo’s broth­ers came home from the army and set­tled in the city with their fam­ily, found good jobs and could afford a doc­tor for their ail­ing par­ents.  Sap­phire told Indigo the truth about her past, and in time, Indigo grew to trust her once more.  They were last seen head­ing for the bor­ders of the Hyacinth duchy, Sapphire’s home, on their own quest to find out what became of her fam­ily after all.

And of course they all lived hap­pily ever after, because they are of a kind we refer to as the Fair Folk, and those Fair Folk are crea­tures of story, and that is how their sto­ries have always ended.

Using Miracles in Nobilis

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The Nobilis source­book is some­what con­fused on the sub­ject of mir­a­cles, and man­ages to con­tra­dict itself in places. This page is my attempt at a sum­mary of the rules as I under­stand them. In the cases where the text dis­agrees with the exam­ples given, I’ve gone with the examples.

Step 1: What do you want to do?

As always, the first step is fig­ur­ing out what you want your char­ac­ter to do. If it’s within the realms of nor­mal human pos­si­bil­ity, it just hap­pens auto­mat­i­cally unless it’s opposed by some other being of power.

Step 2: Is it a Gift?

If you want to do some­thing you pur­chased as a Gift at char­ac­ter cre­ation (or later, with Char­ac­ter Points earned), it just hap­pens auto­mat­i­cally (and for free) unless it’s opposed by some other being of power.

Step 3: Aspect, Domain, Realm or Spirit?

Each Mir­a­cle you use is tied to one of your four Attrib­utes, and thus one of your four Mir­a­cle Point pools. Which of the four depends on what kind of mir­a­cle you’re doing.

  • Aspect mir­a­cles are all about super-powering your phys­i­cal and men­tal abilities.
  • Domain mir­a­cles are the ones tied into your Estates, where you can affect what­ever you’re the Power of.
  • Realm mir­a­cles are those that affect your Chan­cel, and things within it.
  • Spirit doesn’t use mir­a­cles like the rest. Spirit can be used for claim­ing Anchors, detect­ing traces of mir­a­cles used by other Pow­ers, and for the rit­ual mag­ics of the Nobilis.

Step 4: How hard is the Miracle?

Each poten­tial mir­a­cle is assigned a level based on how dif­fi­cult it is. This will later deter­mine how costly the mir­a­cle is to use. Pick a descrip­tion that matches what you’re try­ing to do. There are fuller descrip­tions in the book, start­ing on page 86 for Aspect.

For Aspect (these are quite woolly):

  • 0: Peak human per­for­mance e.g. grace­ful jump; iden­ti­fy­ing Nobles as Nobles etc.
  • 1: High-level human, e.g. Olympic long jump.
  • 2: World record per­for­mance, e.g. world record jump.
  • 3: Improb­a­ble feats, phys­i­cally pos­si­ble but not some­thing a human could attempt, e.g. skeet-surfing.
  • 4: Very Improb­a­ble feats, e.g. run­ning on heads.
  • 5: Impos­si­ble for humans, catch­ing a bullet.
  • 6: Uni­ver­sally improb­a­ble, e.g. par­ry­ing Uzi fire.
  • 7: Impos­si­ble for any­one (local effects), e.g. lift­ing a hill.
  • 8: Impos­si­ble for any­one (non-local effects), e.g. lift­ing a mountain.
  • 9: Fabled, e.g. hid­ing a mountain.

For Domain, these are all of one of your Estates, e.g. a Greater Cre­ation of Storms:

  • 0: Estate-driven div­ina­tions, e.g. iden­tify threats to the con­cept of Storm.
  • 1: Ghost mir­a­cles, e.g. make a day slightly gloomier.
  • 2: Lesser Div­ina­tions, e.g. know when a storm will hit.
  • 3: Lesser Preser­va­tions, e.g. make it rain for days.
  • 4: Lesser Cre­ations, e.g. cre­ate a light­ning storm or drizzle.
  • 5: Lesser Destruc­tions, e.g. clear away rain­clouds, and Major Div­ina­tions, e.g. scry in a bowl of rainwater.
  • 6: Lesser Changes, e.g. make it hail blue­ber­ries, and Major Preser­va­tions, e.g. make an ongo­ing storm perpetual.
  • 7: Major Cre­ations, e.g. cre­ate a hur­ri­cane, tor­nado or monsoon.
  • 8: Major Destruc­tions, e.g. calm the sky above an entire ocean.
  • 9: Major Changes, e.g. make it rain every third day in a given Chancel.

For Realm, the descrip­tions (Lesser Preser­va­tion, etc.) are as above. Realm Mir­a­cles are not tied to your estates — you may Lesserly Pre­serve or Majorly Cre­ate any­thing — but the effect must take place in and be con­fined to your Chancel.

Spirit, as pre­vi­ously men­tioned, doesn’t really have Mir­a­cles in the same way that the oth­ers do. Per­form­ing the Rit­u­als of the Nobilis will be cov­ered on a sep­a­rate page.

Step 5: How much is it going to cost you?

Any Mir­a­cle of a level less than or equal to the num­ber of dots you have in that attribute is free. (This is referred to as a ‘Sim­ple’ Mir­a­cle.) For exam­ple, a Noble with 3 Aspect dots can per­form “Improb­a­ble feats” (or any­thing lesser) for free. A Noble with 4 Domain dots can per­form Lesser Cre­ations for free.

One level more than your num­ber of dots is con­sid­ered a ‘Nor­mal’ mir­a­cle, and will cost you 1 MP of the appro­pri­ate type. Two lev­els more is con­sid­ered ‘Hard’, for a cost of 2 MP. Three or four lev­els higher (‘Deep’) costs 4 MP, and 5–8 lev­els higher requires use of a ‘Word of Power’, cost­ing 8 MP and a wound.

For exam­ple: Elsa, the Power of Machin­ery, has 3 Domain dots and 6 Domain Mir­a­cle Points. She is onboard an aer­ial bat­tle­ship that has taken heavy dam­age, and she wishes to use a Mir­a­cle to keep it safely fly­ing. For such a huge ship this is a Major Preser­va­tion of Machin­ery, a level 6 Mir­a­cle. For a Noble with 3 Domain dots, this is a Hard Mir­a­cle, and will cost her 4 Domain Mir­a­cle Points. She’ll be left with two spare.

Step 6: Add penetration!

If you’re up against another Noble, an Excru­cian or even an Imper­a­tor, they will have an ‘Auc­tori­tas’ that pre­vents mir­a­cles from directly affect­ing them.

If your mir­a­cle is directly tar­get­ting an enemy, add 1 level of dif­fi­culty for each point of Pen­e­tra­tion you wish the mir­a­cle to have. The Pen­e­tra­tion value of your mir­a­cle must be greater than the target’s Auc­tori­tas for it to be effec­tive. For this rea­son, directly attack­ing other Pow­ers with Mir­a­cles is risky, expen­sive, and rarely a good idea.

Step 7: Role­play it!

Your Mir­a­cle trig­gers, have fun with it!

Elegiam Arcanum

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This is a one-short LARP game, due to be run at a party but equally suit­able for conventions.

The Plot

Once upon a time, the world was presided over by twenty-two pow­ers, each rep­re­sent­ing an aspect of life and of the cos­mos. Unseen but all-powerful, their mere exis­tence directed the actions of Man. But in their cre­ation of Tarot cards, humans unwit­tingly stum­bled upon the pat­tern of the Uni­verse; the nature of the twenty-two fold shards of God­hood. From that moment on, the pow­ers were imbued with human­ity. They were no longer abstract con­cepts, they had been given human attrib­utes. Human emotions.

Thus, the seeds of the Fall were sown. And now is the time of that Fall. The Bal­ance between the twenty-two is falling apart. War, famine and suf­fer­ing plague the Earth. The twenty-two pow­ers feel as read­ily as the humans do that the End is approaching.

And so they meet. Back in the old days, there would have been no such con­cept as “meet­ing” among the pow­ers, or even “speak­ing to”. But they have become so human now that they are bound to phys­i­cal forms, to one place and time. It hurts a lit­tle, but with the loss of potency has come a loss of mem­ory, too. The times before the Tarot were cre­ated are fond and dis­tant mem­o­ries now, rose-tinted with time.

The Char­ac­ters

Each of the 6–21 play­ers takes on a char­ac­ter that is the embod­i­ment of one of the Major Arcana cards of a Tarot deck. They are humanoid in form, though still pos­sessed of remark­able powers.

Approx­i­mately two-thirds of the char­ac­ters are the “good guys” (from a human’s point of view at least). They are appalled by the events of the Fall, gen­er­ally unsure as to what has caused it, and deter­mined to reverse it.

The rest are the “bad guys”. To them, humanity’s inven­tion of the Tarot has robbed them of the god­hood that is rightly theirs, and if tak­ing it back means the end of human­ity, so be it. Their opin­ion of the Fall may vary between unsure what caused it but not both­ered by it, to hav­ing delib­er­ately worked to insti­gate it.

At the begin­ning of the game, no char­ac­ter knows the alle­giance of any other, unless they have some rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion on the piece of paper they are given at the start of the game (see below).

The Cards

I’ll type up some sum­maries soon, but for now if you don’t know what each card of the Major Arcana rep­re­sents, check out Wikipedia.

The Game

For the “good guys”, the aim of the game is to elim­i­nate or con­vert the pow­ers that are respon­si­ble for the Fall so that they can begin to repair the Earth. The “bad guys” have the oppo­site goal — elim­i­nate, by killing or con­vinc­ing, all those trai­tors that have sided with humanity.

At the start of the game, in gen­eral, nobody knows the alle­giance of any­one else. Hav­ing been coerced into humanoid forms, char­ac­ters may not even recog­nise the Card that another char­ac­ter embod­ies. How­ever, each char­ac­ter is given a small piece of paper con­tain­ing between one and three pieces of infor­ma­tion that they believe are true. This can be infor­ma­tion about the Fall, about the cre­ation of the Tarot or their pre-Tarot exis­tence, or it could be inter-character infor­ma­tion, such as you have worked with the Moon and are sure she’s on your side, or you’ve heard a rumour that the High Priest­ess is a “bad guy”.

These are designed to throw up inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tions for role­play, and to get the char­ac­ters talk­ing to each other.

The Sys­tem

Each char­ac­ter has two abil­i­ties: “push” and “kill”. They each affect one other character.

Each char­ac­ter has three “shots” of “push”. One “shot” can be used to tem­porar­ily influ­ence another char­ac­ter accord­ing to the caster’s nature. For exam­ple, the Fool can “push” their nature onto another char­ac­ter, mak­ing them more naïve and reck­less for a few min­utes. The Sun could inspire just enough glory in a friend to make them tri­umph over an adver­sary, or just enough false courage in an enemy to lead them to their downfall.

The tar­get must be close enough to hear the caster. When using a Push, the caster must role­play this by point­ing at their tar­get, say­ing “push”, then the name of the tar­get, then describ­ing in a word or two what aspect of their nature they wish to push. The push is not notice­able to any­one, even the tar­get. The player tar­get­ted must role­play their changed men­tal state for two to three min­utes, but the char­ac­ter her­self is not aware of the effect unless some­one points out that she’s act­ing strange. She does not know who pushed her. A push being used is not notice­able to onlook­ers, so any­one over­hear­ing a push occur should ignore it (includ­ing the pointing!).

Each “good guy” has one shot of “kill”. This is role­played by touch­ing the tar­get and sim­ply say­ing “kill”. Its effect is obvi­ous, imme­di­ate and unpre­ventable. When a char­ac­ter dies, every other char­ac­ter is imme­di­ately aware of who died, but unless they saw the touch occur, they are not aware of who killed them. It is like the death of a sib­ling, that takes with it a part of you. Killing another power is never a deci­sion to take lightly.

If any char­ac­ters are out of the room when you die, announce your death (out-of-character) loudly enough that every­one — or at least the ref — can hear.

Each “bad guy”, their hearts turned bit­ter, has three shots of “kill”. How­ever dis­cre­tion is advised, as if a char­ac­ter is caught using more than one kill, any cover they were main­tain­ing is effec­tively blown.

I am aware that this is going to turn into a bizarre overblown ver­sion of the Were­wolf Game. We will see how this goes.

The Ref

The ref (GM, or other appro­pri­ate name) plays the part of Card XX: Judge­ment. Judge­ment is impar­tial, car­ing not if human­ity lives or dies, or even if other pow­ers live or die — only that they get what they deserve.
So that he may judge fairly, Judge­ment desires any and all infor­ma­tion from the player char­ac­ters. Char­ac­ters may talk to him at any time, in con­fi­dence. From time to time, Judge­ment may obtain extra infor­ma­tion that may help cer­tain char­ac­ters achieve their goal, but he will only give out these tips in exchange for infor­ma­tion given to him.
It is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant that char­ac­ters who switch alle­giance from one side to the other inform Judge­ment, as in his role as Ref he likes to know how many of each fac­tion are left in the game!

2009 Nobilis Game Intro

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29th July 2009 AD, 03:00
Check­point Delta, Green Zone, Baghdad


Knock, knock.

“Pri­vate Ack­er­mann here to relieve you, sir!” shouted a voice from below. Sergeant New­ton peered over the side of the guard tower and saw the Pri­vate star­ing up at him eagerly. Far too early in the morn­ing, New­ton thought. What on Earth does he drink to make him so chirpy?

“Come on up, Ackermann.”

“Yes sir!”

Ackermann’s foot­steps up the metal stairs were rhyth­mic and reg­u­lar, and the Sergeant halfway drifted into a doze by count­ing them as the Pri­vate walked. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight. New­ton opened his eyes just as Ackermann’s foot hit the top step.

“Ready to relieve you, sir!” said Ack­er­mann, saluting.

“As you were, Pri­vate,” sighed New­ton. “Did you bring the oil?”

“Yes sir!”

“Jolly good. She’s been creak­ing in the wind a bit,” New­ton said, pat­ting the 50-calibre machine gun that looked down over the walls, ready and wait­ing to meet what­ever threat might be await­ing it today.

It hadn’t been fired in two and a half years.

“I’ll sort her out, sir, don’t you worry.”

“Well, I’m gonna hit the sack then,” said Newton.

“Tak­ing com­mand of the watch­tower, sir!” He saluted again.

“Yeah. Thanks,” said New­ton, giv­ing a half-hearted salute back before mak­ing his way, unsteady and irreg­u­larly, down the steps again.

Three weeks to go, New­ton thought as he sloped back to the mess hall for a din­ner that he’d rather fall asleep in than eat. Three weeks until I get out of this place. War wasn’t fun, but at least it was some­thing. There was some­thing to care about, some­thing to make you feel alive. But man­ning the watch­tower, forc­ing your­self to be on alert for a threat that may never come, while all the while you baked in the shade and the whistling wind echoed in your ears… It was the bore­dom. Nobody ever trained you for the boredom.



329 BC
Shahryar’s Palace, on the banks of the Tigris


Dear­est Scheherazade, she read. She slumped down onto the bed as her eyes scanned the mood of the let­ter that had been left for her.

This great Empire of ours lies crum­bling now, a mere reflec­tion of the won­der we knew in our youth. And so it has come to the point that I must leave with it, lest I be stuck behind, for­ever a shadow of what I was. No, my love, do not ask where I have gone. One day, when my Empire is strong again, I may return to tell you the tale – or I may be gone for­ever. From this early point in our future, I can­not see what may become with any clarity.

Though my essence lay in Earthly power, prone to ebb and flow with tri­umph and defeat, yours does not. So many sto­ries you did learn and tell in days of old, and many more since I granted you your free­dom, and so many more will con­tinue to flow through your beau­ti­ful mind until the end of time. For sto­ries are immor­tal, only gath­er­ing pace with time, never dimin­ish­ing as the Empire has.

Thus, though what remains of the Empire must be left to our eldest son to admin­is­ter, this palace I leave solely to you. May you hear vis­i­tors from the far cor­ners of the Earth come to share their tales with you, and may you in turn share those sto­ries with oth­ers; edu­cate them, inspire them, trans­fix them as you did to me all those years ago.

Your hus­band,

Shahryar.


Scheherazade threw her­self back­wards onto the bed, let­ting the let­ter float slowly to the floor. She wept for days.



29th July 2009 AD, 04:13
Check­point Delta, Green Zone, Baghdad


The chanted song echoed out from the mosques through the streets of Bagh­dad, call­ing the faith­ful to prayer. Atop the watch­tower, Pri­vate Ack­er­mann scowled at the night. He was a light sleeper, and the pre-dawn prayers had woken him every day until he was assigned the early morn­ing watch. Then it was the evening prayers that stopped him get­ting to sleep at night. In self-defence he’d taken up heavy coffee-drinking and just blazed through it all, not sleep­ing at all some nights.

Crazy fuck­ing reli­gion, he thought. Nobody gets any rest in this city.


Prayers ended, and peo­ple started drift­ing out into the streets. A few min­utes later, a car drove by and parked next to the watch­tower on the other side of the wall. Ack­er­mann aimed the spot­light at the dri­ver as he stepped out.

“Hey you!” Ack­er­mann shouted. “You can’t park there! Read the signs!”

The dri­ver looked up, one arm giv­ing a kind of half-shrug while the other shielded his eyes against the spotlight.

“Fuck,” mut­tered Ack­er­mann. “Uh, Tawaquf! Ia, er… hunaka… Shit, I can’t– Shit, he’s running!”

Ack­er­mann grabbed his radio. “Cen­tral, Check­point Delta. Cen­tral, Check­point Delta. Sus­pi­cious activ­ity out­side the wall. Sus­pect has–”

But he would say no more. The force and the fire of the car’s explo­sion set off shaped charges along the wall, placed ear­lier that morn­ing as Sergeant New­ton had been blun­der­ing dream­ily about the top of the tower. The charges blew the wall to pieces, engulf­ing the watch­tower beyond it in a hell of burn­ing and twisted metal. Pri­vate Ackermann’s world turned blind­ing white, then there was the briefest sen­sa­tion of falling, and he lay still on the tarmac.



29th July 2009 AD, 04:16
Shahryar’s Palace (Mythic Earth)


“Scheherazade.”

The for­mer Queen rolled over in her sleep, and groaned.

“Scheherazade, wake up.”

She rolled back again and blinked her eyes open. In the flick­er­ing oil-light, all she could see was a shadow loom­ing over her.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, you fool. Shahryar.”

“Shahryar?” Scheherazade sat up and flung her arms around his neck. “But you… you said you were going away! How is it that you are back so soon?”

“Oh, my dear Scheherazade,” sighed the once-King of Per­sia. “I am afraid it is not soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been rather a long time since you fell asleep. Two thou­sand years.”

“Two thou­sand years?”

“I’m sorry. It’s com­pli­cated, and I don’t have much time to explain. We’re under attack, but our old Empire is long-gone. Only this palace remains, but it’s not quite on Earth anymore–”

“Not quite on Earth?”

“That’s com­pli­cated too. I’m send­ing some peo­ple to help you. Now get dressed, and head to the throne room as quickly as you can. I have to go–”

“You have to go again? Why can’t you just stay here and explain what’s going on?”

“I will, my love, before the week is out. I promise.” And with that, he vanished.

Scheherazade waved her hand though the space he had occu­pied, and met no resistance.

“Shahryar?” she called out. There there was no reply.


She dressed quickly, find­ing her clothes hang­ing just as they had the pre­vi­ous night. The room looked the same, smelt the same, every­thing felt the same. It couldn’t really have been two thou­sand years. That’s ridicu­lous. But then she thought of some of the thou­sand and one sto­ries she had told her hus­band all those years ago, and began to won­der. Isn’t it?


The ser­vants who passed her on her way to the throne room all looked the same, acted the same. Did they know how much time had passed, or had they awoken nor­mally that morning?


Scheherazade reached the throne room, and sat down gen­tly in her throne to the side of and slightly behind Shahryar’s. She had still never sat in her husband’s, even though he had sup­pos­edly given the palace to her two – or two thou­sand and two – years ago.

Well then, she thought. What am I sup­posed to do sit­ting here?

And then, as if some­one was pay­ing atten­tion to her thoughts, it hap­pened. Every­thing hap­pened, all at once, in her head or out­side, she could not tell.

The palace being built.

The king tak­ing his first wife, who cheated on him.

The king’s mad­ness, his search, his hun­dred nights of pas­sion, the hun­dred grisly morn­ings when the girls’ blood was shed.

Scheherazade offer­ing her­self to the king.

The thou­sand and one sto­ries, one com­pleted each night as she began the next.

Her free­dom, her life with the king, their children.

The king’s dis­ap­pear­ance, and Scheherazade’s life afterward.

The fall of the great Per­sian Empire, and the rise of Islam.

The Mon­gols and the Ottomans, the Arabs and the British.

The Iraq of King Faisal and the Iraq of Sad­dam Hussein.

The Gulf War and the War on Terror.

The Green Zone, and the bomb which blew apart its walls…


As sud­denly as it had started, it stopped again. Scheherazade sat quiv­er­ing in her throne, feel­ing every day of two thou­sand years old.

She slowly opened her eyes, dread­ing what she might see – but she saw her own palace, just as it always was. And in the cen­tre of the room, five fig­ures who looked just as con­fused as she was.

Scheherazade stood, hop­ing she didn’t come across as any­where near as shaken up as she felt.

“Greet­ings, strangers,” she said, “and wel­come to the Court of Scheherazade.”

Nobilis Chancel Creation

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This page explains the Chan­cel cre­ation process for the RPG Nobilis, to help those who don’t own a copy of the book. If you’re look­ing for char­ac­ter cre­ation instead, that’s here.

The char­ac­ters in a Fam­ily of Nobles share a Chan­cel between them. This is a por­tion of space set aside by the Imper­a­tor, and is said to require a human death on each of 100 con­sec­u­tive nights to cre­ate. Chancels can have any theme, from ver­dant gar­dens to high-technology lab­o­ra­to­ries, bright fairy­tale worlds to cities of Love­craft­ian hor­ror. It can be in a fixed loca­tion in the Pro­saic Earth, or there can be door­ways to it any­where, or maybe the play­ers can wish them­selves there from any­where in the world!

The play­ers cre­ate their Chan­cel together once they have cre­ated their char­ac­ters. Once they have decided on what their Chan­cel should be, they can then spend Chan­cel Points cre­at­ing it. The Chan­cel has as many points avail­able as the sum of all char­ac­ters’ Realm points. As in other aspects of Nobilis, you can also buy your Chan­cel defects which cost neg­a­tive points, free­ing up more points to spend in other areas.

The Chan­cel prop­er­ties in the rule­book are sum­marised below:

Acces­si­bil­ity

How easy it is to get in and out of the Chan­cel. With­out this prop­erty, the Chan­cel prob­a­bly has between 2 and 7 entrances within the same local area. By spend­ing points:

  • Con­ve­nient (2): The chan­cel con­nects to mul­ti­ple major urban areas through­out the world.
  • Mobile (6): Entrances and exits are mobile — they can be near char­ac­ters when desired, and move them­selves far away from enemies.
  • Ubiq­ui­tous (7): Entrances and exits are every­where. Con­ve­nient, but the char­ac­ters should also be pre­pared for more fre­quent attack.
  • Open (-2): Mor­tals and Chancelfolk can step across this large bound­ary freely, often with­out real­is­ing. The entrance is at least a mile in width.

Avara

Mirac­u­lous arti­facts (‘Allia’) or trou­ble­some objects (‘banes’) formed within the Chan­cel at its cre­ation through the glory of the Imper­a­tor or through the deaths that cre­ated the Chan­cel. Banes are objects that actively seek to cause the Imper­a­tor, the Chan­cel and its Nobles to suf­fer. Allia, if found and invoked by name, grant wishes — though their wishes do not last for­ever, and in nam­ing them, they are destroyed utterly.

  • Two Banes within the Chan­cel (-1)
  • Some Allia still exist (3)

Bor­der­guard

The Chancel’s power to actively resist hos­tile intru­sion. This grants it its own Realm mir­a­cles, which it can cast as nec­es­sary at the rate of one or two a minute. It has an infi­nite sup­ply of Mir­a­cle Points for this. The Bor­der­guard detects all hos­tile intrud­ers except those with an Auc­tori­tas stronger than the Borderguard’s Pen­e­tra­tion Value. It then attacks with Mir­a­cles up to the Borderguard’s Strength.
One buys the Borderguard’s Power and Pen­e­tra­tion Value sep­a­rately. Power is bought at 3 Chan­cel Points per level, Pen­e­tra­tion at 1 Chan­cel Point per level.
Note that Lesser Div­ina­tions are use­less to a Bor­der­guard — it auto­mat­i­cally sees things it needs to see. Accord­ingly, Lesser Div­ina­tion instead lets it notify author­i­ties (mili­tia, police, Nobles) of a threat.

Defender’s Bless­ing

Pre­vents hos­tile magic from harm­ing the Chan­cel or its inhab­i­tants. Each 2 Chan­cel Points gives the Chan­cel 1 point of Auc­tori­tas (i.e. dam­ag­ing mir­a­cles require 1 extra level of Pen­e­tra­tion to have an effect). When within a Chan­cel, char­ac­ters defend with whichever is the higher of their Auc­tori­tas or the Chancel’s.

Extra Land­lord

The Imper­a­tor has given Noble pow­ers to a non-Noble who has been charged with over­see­ing the Chan­cel instead of the char­ac­ters. On the plus side, their Realm score con­tributes points to the Chan­cel, but on the other hand, they may dis­agree with the char­ac­ters and may have been given lots of power to enforce their will.

  • Nice Radi­ant (Realm 1, 5 Realm Mir­a­cle Points) (-1)
  • Assertive Realm’s Heart (Realm 2, 7 RMPs) (-2)
  • Aggres­sive War­den (Realm 3, 9 RMPs) (-3)
  • Mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal True King/Queen (Realm 4, 12 RMPs, Auc­tori­tas 1) (-4)

Mag­i­cal Inhabitants

Indi­vid­ual Chancelfolk or part of the pop­u­la­tion as a whole pos­sess Earthly mag­ics. Faeries, Uni­corns and even high-technology con­structs fall under this cat­e­gory. Their magic is noth­ing com­pared to a Noble’s, but still potent enough in its own way. 1 Chan­cel Point allows these things to exist, extra points buy them extra attributes.

  • Some beings with Earthly mag­ics (1)
  • Many such beings (+1)
  • These beings can be used as Anchors (+2)
  • Some of them have Anchor-like resis­tance to Mir­a­cles (+2)
  • Some have Anchor-like resis­tance and Auc­tori­tas (+3)
  • Some have actual Mirac­u­lous pow­ers (+5)

Mana Mine

The Chan­cel is par­tic­u­larly real, more beau­ti­ful and strange and glo­ri­ous than the Earth around it, and it oozes Mana from its less well-formed places. It is hard — though quite pos­si­ble — for Nobles to har­vest Mir­a­cle Points from it. On the other hand, the Chan­cel could be unreal and chimeri­cal com­pared to the sur­round­ing Earth. These Chancels must be con­stantly fed by Noble mag­ics lest they drift away from Earth into the lands out­side Creation.

  • Realm requires 5 MP per ses­sion to main­tain (-2)
  • Realm requires 2 MP per ses­sion to main­tain (-1)
  • Chan­cel gen­er­ates MPs for har­vest each ses­sion (+1 per MP, max 5)

Mis­cel­la­neous Chan­cel Blessings

This neb­u­lous cat­e­gory offers pos­si­bil­i­ties for the Chan­cel hav­ing some par­tic­u­lar use amongst Nobles and Imper­a­tors, gain­ing their Fam­ily some amount of respect or pro­tec­tion — or noto­ri­ety. These cost between –4 and 8 Chan­cel Points, as agreed with the GM. Exam­ples from the book are:

  • Chancels that spread across the Earth and are used for transportation.
  • The Chan­cel where Lord Entropy holds his court.
  • Chancels that serve as a meet­ing place for the Light, Dark and other affiliations.
  • Neu­tral Chancels that serve as arbiters in Noble disputes.
  • Chancels that offer some form of ser­vice to Lord Entropy or the Coun­cil of Four.
  • Chancels that are a par­tic­u­lar tar­get of Excrucians.
  • Chan­cel is impor­tant, its Pow­ers respected every­where (+4)
  • Chan­cel pro­vides, or has pro­vided, an impor­tant ser­vice to Lord Entropy (+4)
  • Chan­cel is a pri­mary Excru­cian tar­get (-4)

Pop­u­lar­ity

Gen­er­ally, Chancelfolk are imbued with a slight loy­alty to the Imper­a­tor and his cho­sen Pow­ers. In some cases, how­ever, the Imper­a­tor has cho­sen to make them par­tic­u­larly loyal — or much less so. This is rep­re­sented in giv­ing the Pow­ers of the chan­cel auto­matic gifts as below:

  • All Pow­ers have “Devoted Pop­u­lace” for free, unless they already have the Gift “Hated” (6)
  • All pow­ers have “Hated” but gain no Mir­a­cle Points for it (-3)

Resources

Gen­eral prop­er­ties of the Chan­cel that per­vade it and influ­ence the inter­play between tech­nol­ogy and magic within.

  • Magic and mod­ern tech­nol­ogy nearly unknown in-Chancel (-1)
  • Deviant tech­nol­ogy — nor­mal things oper­ate by strange prin­ci­ples (-1)
  • Tech­nol­ogy bar­rier — the Chan­cel rejects tech­nol­ogy cre­ated out­side it (1)
  • Extrap­ola­tive tech­nol­ogy — high-tech with­out any major par­a­digm shifts from cur­rent Earth tech (2)
  • Weird Sci­ence — one area of sci­ence that has under­gone a major paradigm-shift advance over Earth tech, e.g. AI, time travel, biotech (+1 per area)
  • Thought-record tech­nol­ogy — an item can trans­fer your thoughts to e.g. com­puter (1)
  • Nor­mal (Earthly) magic — minor effects, very drain­ing on the caster (3)
  • Faery magic (Glam­our) (2)
  • Alchemy (requires Nor­mal or Faery magic) — find­ing power in Pro­saic things (1)
  • High Sum­mon­ing (requires Nor­mal or Faery magic) — call­ing things from beyond Cre­ation. Gen­er­ally unwise! (1)

Spirit Path­ways

Gate­ways that con­nect Chancels to each other, bypass­ing Earth entirely.

  • Two-way gate­way to a Chan­cel with allied Imper­a­tor / indif­fer­ent Pow­ers (1)
  • Two-way gate­way to a Chan­cel with allied Imper­a­tor / friendly Pow­ers (2)
  • Two-way gate­way to another Realm or time, requir­ing 4 Realm Mir­a­cle Points to use (0)
  • Reduced RMP cost to use gate­way (1 per MP, can’t make cost negative)
  • Users notice­ably weaker after using gate­way (wounded, lost MPs, reduced Attrib­utes while in the other Realm, etc.) (-1)
  • Hos­tile forces have a two-way gate­way to the play­ers’ Chan­cel (-4)

Nobilis Character Creation

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On this page, I will attempt to sum­marise char­ac­ter cre­ation for those with­out a Nobilis book or with­out the time to pick through it in search of the actual rules.

Yel­low boxes con­tain infor­ma­tion that is spe­cific to my Nobilis game, “Where Only Lilies Bloom”, rather than to the Nobilis set­ting in general.

Resources (none of which were cre­ated by me):

  • There is an editable PDF char­ac­ter sheet here if you’d like to fill it in as you go. Note that it lists the cost for Com­pre­hen­sive flex­i­bil­ity in a Gift as 1, it should be –1.
  • “So you’ve been enNo­bled…” (PDF) answers many of the ques­tions of first-time Nobilis players.

Char­ac­ter Concept

As always, your char­ac­ter con­cept is the most impor­tant thing, and ide­ally you should have a clear idea of who your char­ac­ter is before start­ing to stat him or her. A back­ground, as bul­let points, prose or even some­thing stranger still, is strongly encour­aged so that the GM can write bet­ter plot for your character.

In “Where Only Lilies Bloom”, your char­ac­ters are newly enno­bled. The story begins at pretty much the moment your Imper­a­tor cre­ates his or her Chan­cel on Earth and imbues the char­ac­ters with soul-shards. When com­ing up with a char­ac­ter con­cept and back­ground, please bear this in mind — you will start the story with no real idea what the Nobilis are or what they do, and until this point you will have had a rea­son­ably nor­mal life.

I say “rea­son­ably” because your char­ac­ters were picked to be given your Imperator’s soul-shards, so he or she prob­a­bly saw some promise in you. Per­haps your char­ac­ter is some­one with power, or some par­tic­u­lar tal­ent. Your char­ac­ter does not have to have orig­i­nally been human — ani­mals, myth­i­cal beings, fic­tional char­ac­ters and, yes, super-intelligent shades of the colour blue, are all pos­si­ble. But what­ever you were, you have now become some­thing more. Your back­ground does not nec­es­sar­ily have to fea­ture any fond­ness for what will become your Estate.

Estate

A Noble’s Estate is the con­cept over which they have power. It can be any­thing from jeal­ousy to beaches, dark­ness to icing sugar. Your role as a Noble is, in part, to sus­tain the exis­tence of this con­cept against those who would seek to remove it from the world.

Code

A Noble’s Code rep­re­sents their moral stand­point. They are summarised:

  • Heaven: Beauty is the high­est prin­ci­ple; Jus­tice is a form of beauty; Lesser beings should respect their betters.
  • Hell: Cor­rup­tion is the high­est prin­ci­ple; Suf­fer­ing is a form of cor­rup­tion; Power jus­ti­fies itself.
  • Light: Human­ity must live, and live for­ever; What must be done ought to be done cleanly; Humans must be pro­tected (par­tic­u­larly from themselves).
  • Dark: Humans should destroy them­selves (indi­vid­u­ally); Human­ity should destroy itself (except for a few toys); Ugli­ness to human eyes shows that one is worthy.
  • Wild: Free­dom is the high­est prin­ci­ple; San­ity and mun­dan­ity are pris­ons; Give in kind with a gift received.

You may also invent another code for your char­ac­ter to fol­low. Later, you will cre­ate your Imper­a­tor, who also has a Code. Your char­ac­ters do not nec­es­sar­ily have to fol­low the same code as each other, or their Imperator.

Attrib­utes

You have 25 CP to spend on Attrib­utes, extra Mir­a­cle Points, and Gifts. We’ll deal with Attrib­utes first. All attrib­utes start at 0, and can be raised at a rate of 3 CP for 1 dot. Higher ranks in each attribute mean that per­form­ing mir­a­cles asso­ci­ated with that attribute will become eas­ier. The four attrib­utes are:

Aspect

Your phys­i­cal and men­tal being.

  • 0: Of Mor­tal Form: You suck. You’re pretty much human.
  • 1: Metahu­man: For­mi­da­ble phys­i­cal and men­tal abilities.
  • 2: Leg­endary: Com­pa­ra­ble with the great heroes and villains.
  • 3: Inhu­man: Not only phys­i­cally per­fected, but empow­ered by magic.
  • 4: Celes­tial: Touched with the divine.
  • 5: Exem­plar: You fully inte­grate your divine essence and use it to its utmost extent.

Domain

Your power over your Estate. You can have mul­ti­ple sec­ondary estates if you choose, but they can­not exceed your Pri­mary in level. For each estate after your first, points cost an extra CP per level. For exam­ple, to be the Mar­quessa of Dreams and the Vis­count­ess of Cake would cost 3+3+3=9 CP for Dreams and 4+4=8 CP for Cake.

  • 0: Pawn: You have no power over your estate.
  • 1: Baronet: Power enough to work only small miracles.
  • 2: Viscount(ess): Mir­a­cles of com­fort and div­ina­tion come eas­ily. Estate starts to be reflected in your mor­tal appearance.
  • 3: Marquis/Marchessa: Power to sus­tain and defend your estate.
  • 4: Duke/Duchess: Your pow­ers seem god­like, able to shape the ener­gies of Creation.
  • 5: Regal: You are as a god, your mas­tery of your Estate is complete.

Realm

Your mys­tic and mun­dane power over your Chan­cel, in which a good pro­por­tion of the game takes place. The more points you allo­cate to Realm, the more Chan­cel points you get to put towards your Chan­cel when you cre­ate it.

  • 0: Cit­i­zen: You have no gift of rule over your Chancel.
  • 1: Radi­ant: Your reign extends mostly to ghosts, traces of light and fleet­ing visions.
  • 2: Realm’s Heart: You may know any­thing about your Chan­cel or its con­tents with a thought.
  • 3: War­den: You may make sub­tle and overt bar­ri­ers, and raise the Chancel’s militia.
  • 4: True King/Queen: You may hold off even an Imper­a­tor or unsharded Excru­cian within your Chan­cel. Per­son­ally respon­si­ble for much of how the Chan­cel works.
  • 5: Tem­pest: You can shape and reshape at the Chan­cel at will, and it responds instinc­tively to your needs.

Spirit

The strength of your Imperator’s soul-shard within you, your effect over human Anchors, your pro­tec­tion against other Nobles’ Mir­a­cles, and your abil­ity to dis­guise your own Miracles.

  • 0: Can­dle­flame: Your Noble essence has no great integrity; you are lim­ited to one Anchor.
  • 1: Hearth­fire: Your pres­ence can be felt, there is some syn­ergy between your human and Noble selves. You under­stand some­thing of divine souls. Two anchors.
  • 2: Incan­des­cent Flame: You under­stand the nature of divine essence, your soul burns with it. Three anchors.
  • 3: Sun­fire: Your Imperator’s soul-shard is inte­grated into you seam­lessly, and you have a deep spir­i­tual cen­tre and per­sonal bal­ance. Four anchors.
  • 4: Con­fla­gra­tion: Your base per­son­al­ity is aug­mented enor­mously by mirac­u­lous power. Your pres­ence has a pro­found effect on mor­tals, and some effect on Nobles. Strongly pro­tected against Nobles’ power. Five anchors.
  • 5: Inferno: A ter­ri­ble power is leashed inside your heart. You may wear (up to 6) anchors’ bod­ies as your own. Skill with rit­ual magic begins to match that of an Imper­a­tor, and only rarely can your use of mir­a­cles be traced back to you.

Mir­a­cles

Mir­a­cles are super­nat­ural “things you can (try to) do”. Each mir­a­cle your char­ac­ter attempts will be asso­ci­ated with a par­tic­u­lar Attribute, and the more dots you have in that Attribute, the eas­ier the mir­a­cle will be.

Mir­a­cle Points

A char­ac­ter has a num­ber of Mir­a­cle Points asso­ci­ated with each Attribute. These are expended when you per­form the more dif­fi­cult Mir­a­cles. You have Per­ma­nent and Tem­po­rary dots in each. (Much like the White Wolf games, Per­ma­nent dots are your max­i­mum, Tem­po­rary dots your cur­rent level.)

You have five (per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary) Mir­a­cle Points in each Attribute to start with. You can buy more at a cost of 1 CP per dot.

Gifts

Gifts are spe­cific skills and abil­i­ties that you can buy at char­ac­ter cre­ation. Rather than being adapt­able like Mir­a­cles, their effect is com­pletely fixed. How­ever, you will always be able to do them for free. They are up to you to design: they can rep­re­sent any­thing from tra­di­tional wiz­ardly spells to inte­gral parts of your character.

Their cost varies wildly accord­ing to how pow­er­ful a Gift you cre­ate. A gift will always cost at least 1 CP. Each Gift has a num­ber of mod­i­fiers to it which will increase its cost. In gen­eral, the more pow­er­ful an action the gift rep­re­sents, the more things it can effect, and so on, the more expen­sive it will be.

Each gift has the fol­low­ing attributes:

  • Attribute: Each gift is asso­ci­ated with one of the four Attrib­utes. Pick the most appro­pri­ate for what­ever abil­ity you have in mind.
  • Mir­a­cle Type: Mir­a­cles come in var­i­ous flavours and two strengths. The cost in CP to cre­ate a gift based is a fac­tor of both. For guid­ance on whether the Gift you have in mind is based on a Lesser or Major Mir­a­cle, see the exam­ples later. The types (and costs) are:
    • Lesser Div­ina­tion (2)
    • Lesser Preser­va­tion (3)
    • Lesser Cre­ation (4)
    • Lesser Destruc­tion (5)
    • Lesser Change (6)
    • Major Div­ina­tion (5)
    • Major Preser­va­tion (6)
    • Major Cre­ation (7)
    • Major Destruc­tion (8)
    • Major Change (9)
  • Pen­e­tra­tion: This rep­re­sents how pow­er­ful the Mir­a­cle is against those that have the power to resist it, such as Nobles, Anchors and Imper­a­tors. Pen­e­tra­tion is tested against the target’s Spirit. Pos­si­ble val­ues are between 0 and 7, and these add between 0 and 7 to the CP cost of the gift.
  • Invo­ca­tion: How the Gift is acti­vated. One option is Auto­matic, at a cost of 1 CP. You can reduce the CP cost of the gift by requir­ing a Mir­a­cle check to acti­vate the gift (i.e. it could fail). Mir­a­cle checks cost neg­a­tive CP to add, i.e. they will give you CP back to spend on other parts of the Gift. Options are based on how hard a Mir­a­cle check you have to pass to acti­vate the Gift: Sim­ple (-1 CP), Nor­mal (-2 CP) or Hard (-3 CP).
  • Area: The gift’s area of effect. Pos­si­ble val­ues are: Any­where / Global (1 CP), Local (-1 CP), One Per­son (-2 CP) or only your­self (-3 CP).
  • Flex­i­bil­ity: Say­ing that gifts are com­pletely inflex­i­ble mir­a­cles is some­what untrue. In fact, you can choose how flex­i­ble they are: Full (all imag­in­able uses are pos­si­ble) (1 CP), Com­pre­hen­sive (a wide vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions) (-1 CP), Lim­ited (-2 CP), or One Trick only (-3 CP).
  • Com­mon: Is the Gift com­mon in the set­ting? (Ask the GM if you’re not sure.) Com­mon gifts do not cost any extra, rare ones cost one extra CP.
  • Domains: Most Gifts affect only one Estate. To affect an entire fam­ily of Estates, the cost of the entire Gift is dou­bled. To affect every­thing, i.e. not tied to an Estate, the cost of the entire Gift is instead tripled. (To affect every­thing in a spe­cific Chan­cel is a gift of the Estate attribute, and need only be pur­chased at 1x cost.)

Exam­ple Gifts

Here are some exam­ple Gifts, and how they’re cal­cu­lated. There are many more start­ing on page 115 of the Great White Book, and of course you can invent your own.

Durant (Dif­fi­cult to injure)
Aspect, Lesser Preser­va­tion of Self (3), Auto­matic Invo­ca­tion (1), Self Only (-3), Lim­ited Util­ity (-2), Com­mon.
Cost: 1 CP.

Immor­tal
Aspect, Major Preser­va­tion of Self (6), Auto­matic Invo­ca­tion (1), Self Only (-3), Full Flex­i­bil­ity (1), Rare (1).
Cost: 6 CP.

Ele­men­tal (You may trans­form your body into a con­struct of your Estate)
Domain, Lesser Change of Form (6), Sim­ple Invo­ca­tion (-1), Self Only (-3), Lim­ited Util­ity (-2), Rare (1).
Cost: 1 CP.

Devoted Pop­u­lace (The denizens of your Chan­cel love you)
Realm, Major Cre­ation of Love (7), Hard Invo­ca­tion (-3), Global Range (1), One Trick (-3), Rare (1).
Cost: 3 CP.

Good Luck (Spend only 1 Spirit Mir­a­cle Point to guar­an­tee some­thing sig­nif­i­cant will go right)
Spirit, Major Cre­ation of For­tune (7), Nor­mal Invo­ca­tion (-2), Global Range (1), Lim­ited Util­ity (-2), Com­mon.
Cost: 4 CP.
(You could add Pen­e­tra­tion to this to ensure your good luck even against other Nobles.)

Do not feel pushed into cre­at­ing expen­sive Gifts at the expense of your base Attrib­utes — remem­ber that Attrib­utes are required for suc­cess­ful use of Mir­a­cles, and a Gift is only a very spe­cific kind of Mir­a­cle. Char­ac­ter Points are awarded as EXP, so you’ll have chance to buy more Gifts later.

Hand­i­caps

Hand­i­caps are char­ac­ter flaws that will give your char­ac­ter extra Mir­a­cle Points at var­i­ous points. The amount of MPs for any Hand­i­cap should be agreed with the GM dur­ing char­ac­ter gen­er­a­tion. They come in four flavours:

  • Lim­its: Hand­i­caps that remove some of the util­ity of the pow­ers your char­ac­ter has. You will receive extra mir­a­cle points at the start of a ses­sion. Exam­ples include ‘Dis­abled’ (Aspect limit) or ‘Hated’ (Realm limit).
    • One spe­cial, and com­plex, Limit is called Focus. This rep­re­sents a phys­i­cal item that holds some of your character’s power. You may put some of your 25 Char­ac­ter Points into attrib­utes and gifts that belong to your Focus rather than to your­self. While you posess the focus, those attrib­utes add to yours and those gifts become yours to use. But if sep­a­rated from your Focus, you lose them. In rec­om­pense for this risk, at the start of each ses­sion, you gain 1 extra Mir­a­cle Point for each 3 CP you have invested into your item (rounded down).
  • Restric­tions: Mis­cel­la­neous smaller lim­i­ta­tions, such as inabil­ity to cross run­ning water or step into a pen­ta­gram. Tem­po­rary Mir­a­cle Points are gained when­ever this causes a prob­lem for your character.
  • Virtues: Aspects of your being that both empower and limit you. Tem­po­rary Mir­a­cle Points are gained when­ever a virtue ‘forces’ the char­ac­ter into doing some­thing that the player knows is not objec­tively a good idea. This is gen­er­ally a lesser num­ber of MPs than with Restric­tions. Exam­ples include ‘Cruel’ and ‘Reckless’.
  • Affil­i­a­tion: This is the Code you selected at the begin­ning. Every time you go to great lengths to serve it, you will regain tem­po­rary Mir­a­cle Points.

In all cases, the player may dis­trib­ute the gained Mir­a­cle Points amongst their four pools.

Bonds

You have 20 Bond Points to allo­cate to any num­ber of things that your char­ac­ter holds dear, be they other Nobles of the group, their Imper­a­tor, Estates, Chan­cel, human friends and fam­ily, items, or even hob­bies. This helps to flesh out your char­ac­ter, and though they have no mechan­i­cal effect, they allow the GM to tai­lor plot to your character.

Anchors

Anchors are par­tic­u­lar humans whom you have bonded with using the Servant’s Rite. You may see through their eyes and even con­trol them, and you may trans­fer your Gifts to them and work mir­a­cles through them. They are a great respon­si­bil­ity which is not to be entered into lightly.

At the start of “Where Only Lilies Bloom”, you are recently Enno­bled and have not yet made any mor­tals into Anchors.

Wound Lev­els

Take your character’s Aspect, and add 4. Divide these evenly among the Deadly, Seri­ous and Sur­face wound cat­e­gories. If you have one left over, add it to Sur­face. If you have two left over, add one to Sur­face and one to Serious.

…And that’s it for your char­ac­ters! Tune in next time for Imper­a­tor and Chan­cel creation!

Exam­ple Character

Here’s a fairly bal­anced exam­ple char­ac­ter. She doesn’t have any gifts — this is fine, you can always buy them later. The num­bers in brack­ets show how many Char­ac­ter Points were spent on each area.

Elsa Lan­gridge, the Power of Machinery

Attribute Level Mir­a­cle Points
Aspect (6)
Domain (9) (1)
Realm (3)
Spirit (6)

Hand­i­caps:
Affil­i­a­tion: Code of the Light
Virtue: Tinkerer

Bonds:

Strength Sub­ject
7 Thorn
4 Fas­ci­na­tion with heavy machinery
4 Her Par­ents
3 Gen­der Equality
2 The Farm

Wound Lev­els:
2 Sur­face, 2 Seri­ous, 2 Deadly

To Run, or Not to Run, That is the Question

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Right, hav­ing pitched a role­play­ing game set­ting with the caveat that I wouldn’t run it, I appear to have acquired four poten­tial play­ers. So, here’s the deal.

With four or pos­si­bly five com­mit­ted play­ers, I will run an online game. It will be run on a wiki rather than on a forum like RPoL. I will deal with the entropy prob­lem the same way I did for In Love and War: game threads will not nec­es­sar­ily wait for you. If mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters are doing things in a thread, and one of them stops post­ing, it will be assumed that they’re not doing any­thing inter­est­ing. If you want to do some­thing and it’s really crit­i­cal that the world waits for you, let me know. The usual solu­tion is to split off into a 1 player + GM only thread.

The game is not nec­es­sar­ily Reawak­en­ing. I will put what I run up to a vote. (Leave com­ments wher­ever you hap­pen to be read­ing this.) Here is a list of games that I have come up with or been asked to run, but haven’t run yet.

  • Reawak­en­ing (Punk faeries)
  • Dream­ing Awake 2 — though very lit­tle could con­vince me to run this online rather than face-to-face.
  • Beyond the Fields we Know (oWoD Vir­tual Adepts) — this game is only really cool when played real­time over IRC, SSH etc. I don’t have the time to run this right now, really. If ram­pag­ing hordes of poten­tial play­ers appear, I may con­sider it, player count for it is about 20.
  • What Lies Beyond Broad­lands Road (Com­edy Changeling, prod­uct of too much alcohol)
  • War on Ter­ror: The RPG (Com­edy super-power game) — pre­genned char­ac­ters only, this is a two-hour con­ven­tion game really
  • In the Night Gar­den (Kids TV + Cthulhu) — I am too sober to run this
  • The Time War (Doc­tor Who + Feng Shui)
  • A cur­rently not-thought-out 7th Sea Explor­ers Soci­ety game
  • A cur­rently not-thought-out Nobilis game

Advance warn­ing: All these ideas require a bit more work before I’d con­sider them playable games, so when there’s con­sen­sus on what I’m run­ning, I’ll spend a few days work­ing on back­ground fluff, then we can start char­ac­ter gen.

Any ques­tions? =D