From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Tue Nov 17 15:17:18 1998 Return-Path: Received: from lists.io.com (majordom@lists.io.com [199.170.88.15]) by pyramid.sjgames.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id PAA12007 for ; Tue, 17 Nov 1998 15:17:17 -0600 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) id OAA20748 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Tue, 17 Nov 1998 14:59:43 -0600 Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 14:59:43 -0600 Message-Id: <199811172059.OAA20748@lists.io.com> X-Authentication-Warning: lists.io.com: majordom set sender to owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com using -f From: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com (in_nomine-digest) To: in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Subject: in_nomine-digest V1 #1017 Reply-To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com Sender: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Errors-To: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Precedence: bulk in_nomine-digest Tuesday, November 17 1998 Volume 01 : Number 1017 In this digest: Re: IN> Re: IN- ADV:CREDIT CARD ACCEPTANCE Who's got the word SPAM? Re: IN> Who's got the word SPAM? Re: IN> Night Music/Final Trumpet Questions. IN> Combat rules IN> Re: DefCon 666 IN> Forms and Songs Re: IN> Forms and Songs Re: IN> In Nomatinee Re: IN> Combat rules IN> Re: Who's got the word Spam? Re: IN> Matters of Skill ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 16 Nov 98 12:21 EST From: Walter Milliken Subject: Re: IN> Re: IN- ADV:CREDIT CARD ACCEPTANCE Who's got the word SPAM? >This is one of the things that bugs me with Words. As I remember it, they are >actually derivedfrom Celestial,and we only see their equivalents in human >tongues. In general, this is true. In this case, the demon is Demon of Spam. Mark it down to Lucifer's odd sense of humor.... (Most likely, the demon was known for preferentially consuming the stuff.) Like any other living language, celestial probably borrows from other languages, anyway, especially for things like tradenames that shortcut long, generic descriptions. How else would you say "Coke" in celestial? So it's perfectly reasonable that some celestials (especially demons) have titles that are language-specific. So in some sense, I suppose the Demon of Spam's title in demonic is more literally rendered as "the Demon of the English Word: 'Spam'". Which explains why the change worked. This whole discussion actually came up during the IPG playtest, I believe. - ---Walter ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 18:27:05 +0000 (GMT) From: Steve Jessop Subject: Re: IN> Who's got the word SPAM? On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Walter Milliken wrote: > Like any other living language, celestial probably borrows from other > languages, anyway, especially for things like tradenames that shortcut > long, generic descriptions. How else would you say "Coke" in celestial? > So it's perfectly reasonable that some celestials (especially demons) > have titles that are language-specific. I have a preferred paradigm, which is non-canonical but might be more helpful - the Celestial languages are not languages at all, but protocols for direct data transfer. That is, they are ways of conveying something you know through the Symphony to someone else. As consequences, you can't normally speak Celestial in human form (although celestial 'humming' can approximate if you like that idea). You cannot lie in Angelic because there is no way to transmit a concept which you are not genuinely thinking to be true. (Possibility therefore of Bals lying in Angelic? Dunno). So, you say 'Coke' in Angelic by thinking about Coke, and the recipient knows that you mean Coca-Cola (unless you mean Cocaine, of course. Or processed coal), because they share your mental image. In Demonic, you can share any concept you can think of, rather than just any you believe. So you can make things more ambiguous, and can say 'the English word coke', and they won't know which you mean. Demons profit, indeed rely on, this ambiguity. They can also say 'The moon is made of green cheese'. Finally, there has to be a mechanism for extending a literal Word to include its metaphorical aspects. For example, Laurence is not Archangel of one particular sword. Similarly, the Demon of Spam is in fact the demon of "A particular processed meat product, and everything directly associated with it". So as long as people call junk email spam, it feeds his word. Incidents of junk email between non-English speakers, or simply people who have never seen the spam sketch, might not feed his word at all. That's the price of expanding a word. I find that more satisfying than the demon of "the English word spam", firstly because "associated with spam" is far better defined than "the English language", and secondly because the demon is then better off making people associate things with spam than trying to insert typos into the OED. Steve. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 14:56:34 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Night Music/Final Trumpet Questions. At 2:56 PM -0500 11/15/98, Nana Yaw Ofori wrote: >How does someone using the Song of Possession tell which of Three-B's dogs >is trained to sniff drugs, and which one is trained to sniff bombs? It probably has to do with what the nose reacts to. >I'm probably going to hate myself for asking this one, but it's going to >plague me for the rest of all eternity if I don't... >Is the look of the lowest mouth on Magog's body accidental, something the >artist slipped through, or intentional? It's a Shedite... Who *wants* to know...? (And I certainly don't know -- I'm not the Art Director.) - --emccoy@nh.ultranet.com // arcangel@io.com In Nomine Line Editor GURPS, Roleplayers, In Nomine stuff; Art: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 13:40:12 -0700 From: Shawn Rutledge <105062@ef.ev.maricopa.edu> Subject: IN> Combat rules Okay, I have a question which I am sure you all will think is academic, but bear with me. I plan on running a campaign coming up very soon now, have a couple ideas all planned out, and all the books my local retailer had: The Players' Handbook, The Infernal Player's Guide, The Angelic Players Guide, and the Liber Reliquarum. But, I still don't really understand quite how to handle combat. You know the step by step of initiative, damage....stuff like that. If my local retailer carried it, I'd probably go down and look at the Game Master Pack...but they don't have it, and I hesitate to order it unless I know it will tell me what I need to know. So, my question is, Does the GM Screen/pack tell how to deal with combat in a more detailed manner? Or am I just going to have to beg one of you people who has been playing it longer to send me an email detailing it? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 15:23:32 EST From: Gruzzle@aol.com Subject: IN> Re: DefCon 666 As they now stand, atomic bombs only damage things in the corporeal. In order to harm a celestial, one needs to use a celestial attack. This does not mean there could never be a celestial atomic bomb.... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 13:20:42 PST From: "Steve Marco" Subject: IN> Forms and Songs Hello Everybody, We were playing around with an idea, let me know what you think... Numinous Corpus is a modification of the body or vessel. So is the Celestial Song of Form, I was wondering if the two could be used in conjunction, to make the Numinous Corpus permanant, or perhaps using the Celestial Song of Form to mimic the effects of Numinous Corpus. Thanks, The Seraphican: Steve Marco ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 18:17:12 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Forms and Songs At 1:20 PM -0800 11/16/98, Steve Marco wrote: >We were playing around with an idea, let me know what you think... >Numinous Corpus is a modification of the body or vessel. So is the >Celestial Song of Form, I was wondering if the two could be used in >conjunction, to make the Numinous Corpus permanant, or perhaps using the >Celestial Song of Form to mimic the effects of Numinous Corpus. Just remember that the Celestial Song of Form is *also* temporary -- check digit times celestial Forces in minutes, IIRC. If the GM wants to let characters take NC effects for a (often) much shorter duration, then that probably wouldn't be too unbalancing... I don't think using the two Songs in conjunction could make any permanent vessel alterations -- after all, they're both temporary. - --emccoy@nh.ultranet.com // arcangel@io.com In Nomine Line Editor GURPS, Roleplayers, In Nomine stuff; Art: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 03:25:05 +0000 From: Julian Breen Subject: Re: IN> In Nomatinee On Sunday 8 Nov, Nana Yaw Ofori wrote: > I've just >got one quibble. > >At 11:29 AM +0000 11/3/98, Julian Breen wrote: >>Davey is one of those rare mortals born with a sixth force. It was his >>Destiny to become a Dream Soldier of Heaven and his Fate was to be a >>stillborn breech birth. > >As Fates go, isn't this one a little harsh? Meeting your Fate seems to be a >one-way ticket to Hell, and this one involves no personal choice on Davey's >part. Good point. I was forgetting that meeting your Fate in IN does require you to make a conscious decision that thereby dooms you. To rectify matters I would simply offer that Davey's Fate *was* therefore to become a Soldier of Hell, and a no doubt short-lived one at that. He would just as likely end up getting killed by his own side as much as he would Heaven because of his unpredictability/unstability. Once his Forces have committed to the Inferno, they snuff him out. His stillborn status was something that Kronos noticed and passed on to Lilith, probably because he felt the risk that Davey would reach his Destiny rather than his Fate was too great. Kronos realises how important love and friendship actually _are_ to Davey, and how Heaven would nurture and tutour him should they get their hands on him. Having such a mortal on Heaven's side with such power over Ethereals would be greatly detrimental to Hell as they tend to traffic with Ethereals quite often. Kronos therefore decides that it's best to recycle this human's Forces into another incarnation as quickly as possible and worry about that one (perhaps) as and when it happens. When that ploy fails, Kronos eventually creates Chalcol - whom he one day _knows_ will ask him him for a chance at glory. - -- Julian ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 13:30:23 +0000 From: Sam Kington Subject: Re: IN> Combat rules Shawn Rutledge wrote: [snip] > So, my question is, Does the GM Screen/pack tell how to deal with > combat in a more detailed manner? Well, it's a GM screen, so has a bunch of tables on the back that deal with range modifiers, cover, weapon damage and so on - mainly because there aren't that many tables in the game that aren't to do with character creation or combat. It also has political relations between the Archangels and Princes, and a (brief) list of all the songs in the main book. Other than that, there's nothing more about combat. The booklet that comes with it has an OKish scenario (much better than some in the Final Trumpet, for instance) and details of Litheroy, Archangel of Revelation, and the Demon Prince of Secrets whose name I forget at the moment (appropriately enough). It's probably best if you mail the list with specific questions. Sam - -- INWO Homebrew: http://www.illuminated.co.uk/inwo/ More of my stuff: http://www.illuminated.co.uk/ Not my employer's opinion, no snappy quote ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 10:39:28 -0500 (EST) From: "Diane J. Donaldson" Subject: IN> Re: Who's got the word Spam? >This is one of the things that bugs me with Words. As I remember it, >they are actually derivedfrom Celestial,and we only see their equivalents >in human tongues. Somehow, I have ahard time seeing that the Word, "Low >quality processed canned spiced ham," as being very similar to the Word, >"Unsolicited Internet advertisement," in Celestial. In a case like >"Hardcore" from NightMusic, it makes sense since some of the _concept_ >behind the different uses of the Word in question. But cases where the >similarity is purely idiomatic (and "spam" is not theonly example that's >been used),I just don't see the alteration of the Word as making any >sense. > >J. Michael Neal I agree, this bothered me too. I don't believe "Spam" and "spam" are homonyms in Celestial at all? This seems too English-centric to me. djd ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 15:36:02 -0500 From: John Karakash - Lucent ASCC Subject: Re: IN> Matters of Skill R. Sean Borgstrom wrote: > Warning! > > This method, in general, makes competence and success > more likely. This applies to the PCs, their enemies, > and even to the lowly humans. (A mortal doctor with > Medicine/6 never fails, although celestials can manage > more spectacular successes.) Accordingly, failures > should be worse! Everyone fails on an inappropriate intervention. Plus there might be modifiers for tricky procedures. I haven't examine this method in depth, but I see no overwhelming reason to increase the penalties for failure. - -- ___________________________________________________ / \ | John Karakash - Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs | | (919)388-2665(COOL) MIB2300 | | | | The power to tax involves the power to destroy. | | -Chief Justice Marshall | \___________________________________________________/ ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1017 ******************************** The material here is (C) 1997 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.