From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Mon Aug 30 01:34:19 1999 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 BAA03745 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 01:34:19 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id BAA30170 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 01:28:25 -0500 Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 01:28:25 -0500 Message-Id: <199908300628.BAA30170@lists.io.com> From: owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com (in_nomine-digest) To: in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Subject: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 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 Monday, August 30 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1315 In this digest: Re: IN> Test Re: IN> Test IN> Re: IN- Test IN> Recent purchases IN> ADV: Boost--Windows--reliability IN> .WANTED ENTREPRENEURS.. Re: IN> Recent purchases Re: IN> Recent purchases ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 00:31:30 +0100 From: Pak Chan Subject: Re: IN> Test At 14:12 28/08/99 -0400, you wrote: >Is the mailing list still functionnal? >or am I not receiving anything? > >Jason >would be angel of cookies Got this, but nothing else on the list. What's up with it? /= R o l e p l a y e r s o f t h e w o r l d . . . C o n q u e r ! =\ == Will roleplay for nothing. == \= Will GM for saki and promises of sushi. =/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 20:20:54 -0400 From: Chad and Erin Wilson Subject: Re: IN> Test It looks to me like a quiet weekend. People are busy gaming. Come monday, people will start mailing again. - -w ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 21:12:46 CDT From: "Wade Hursman" Subject: IN> Re: IN- Test I think it's just a slow weekend...actually, been a slow week it seems. Oh well. Such is life. Hey, how's the character generator coming along? Wade Habbalah of Technology, Demon of Telemarketers ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 00:46:22 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Subject: IN> Recent purchases Just went out and blew some $$ on IN stuff. Here are my impressions. Corporeal Players Guide -- Eh. This was OK, but too much of it just reprints and revises material already available elsewhere -- in _Night Music_, _The Marches_, and even the basic IN rulebook. Oh, it's not a ripoff -- there's some new material, and it's handy to have all this stuff in one cover -- but I didn't think it was quite worth the cover price. I also felt that it lacked guidelines on *how* to run human characters in a standard IN campaign. The closest thing is a few short paragraphs, along the lines of "the following Songs are useful in keeping humans alive (list)... the following relics are also useful...". Not too inspiring. Not recommended, unless you're a completist; you can get by just as well with _Night Music_ and _Marches_. You Are Here -- This was... okay. Not wonderful, but okay. It's a big book of places, some of which are potential adventure hooks, and some of which just... are. It's subdivided into "places connected to Heaven", "places connected to Hell", "disputed places", and so forth. There are some nice bits. Some of the new locations in Heaven and Hell were particularly worth a visit; the Museum of the Dreams of Murderers was deeply creepy, and the Clockwork Calculator of the Names of God, Coffee Central, and the Wall of Names were pretty cool. Arachnidae and the Dry River were also pretty nifty (that last one seems to have been inspired by U.K. Leguin... yes?). Oh, and the Shal-Mari Metro made me thump my head; of *course* Hell has a subway system, why didn't I think of that? But the nice bits were separated by a lot of places that were just... there. Most of the Earthly locations were at best neat one-liners (The Eighth Virtue), and at worst just, well, places, with nothing particular of interest really. I mean, the Duck Pond? Opps Apps? The Kindergarten? Yeah, some of these places are potential adventure hooks... but they're not adventure hooks any better, or any more detailed, than I could come up with myself given just a few moments. There's no detailed character breakdowns, no maps, just an idea and a brief description. This isn't *bad*, but I didn't really feel like paying sixteen bucks for stuff that I could very easily do myself. There were also a couple of adventure hooks that didn't seem very well thought out. The plastic dinosaurs one boils down to "three demons take over a plastic dinosaur factory; they're going to do something evil with it, but they don't know what." This could be a great fun adventure -- just the thing to add a light interlude in an otherwise gothic campaign -- but it's left dangling; neither we nor the demons have any idea what comes next. Annoying. And implausible, too... would Hell really devote that much effort to taking over a business without some sort of clear plan in mind? Also, a lot of these hooks seemed to spin off of the idea that angels and demons can be found anywhere and everywhere... running a kite store, working in a parking garage, what have you. IMC Celestials are somewhat thin on the ground; unless they have a good reason to be somewhere, their Superiors aren't going to leave them in menial Roles for too long (although I'll grand that a demonic parking lot attendant could do a great deal of harm spread very wide and thin). This may be my own particular hangup, though. As usual, production values are high. I was mildly annoyed that there were no character writeups. Hey, guys -- that's the most time-consuming single part of GMing IMC; you never know when you're going to need a detailed breakdown of that NPC's skills/stats/Songs, and you can only wing it for so long. Detailing these characters is one big task you can take off our hands. I give "You Are Here" one thumb up; flip through it in the store first, but if you like it, go for it. The Final Trumpet -- Whoa. This one was *good*. I imagine there was plenty of discussion of this when it first came out, but I wasn't around then, so I'll just toss in my $.02 now. If you're serious about running IN, you *should* go out and get this supplement. Even if you have no desire to run Armageddon, it lays out just how you can, and gives you a cool storyline, great NPCs, and a dozen little "color" episodes to do it with. Cinematic but believable, carefully paced but with plenty of room for the PCs to wander, this adventure has the PCs chasing a cat one moment and watching a knock-down drag-out fight between an Archangel and a Demon Prince the next. Big, fast, scary, cool, and with the occasional absurd yet appropriate funny bit, this is probably the single best IN adventure of them all. You don't need the rest of the Revelations cycle to run this, btw, though it's handy. Oh, and the preceding volume -- _Fall of the Malakim_ -- upgrades from "bad" to "okay" if it's run as a prologue to this one; FOTM has all sorts of forced plays and dangly bits that suddenly make a lot more sense in this larger context. Highly recommended. Doug M. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 06:08:17 -0600 From: pilife81@odeon.polytechnique.fr (juiksiw) Subject: IN> ADV: Boost--Windows--reliability To-be-removed: email grove34@bigfoot.com with the subject "delete" - ----------------------------------------------------------- Dear Windows User, Now you can boost the reliability of ordinary Windows 3.x, 95 and 98 to nearly the level of Windows NT, Microsoft's professional and industrial version of Windows. The new WinFix(tm) 4.2 is a very effective way to improve the reliability of Windows, because it makes Windows fault-tolerant and self-repairing. And WinFix is very safe, because it operates completely independent of Windows. WinFix is the safest, most effective way to keep you working, by keeping your PC working non-stop. 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For information call 1-800-242-0363 Ext. 2358 - ----------------------------------------------------- We adhere to RESPONSIBLE Email Ethics This is a 1 Time Mailing, no need to be removed Our software will automatically block you from future mailings. *-* *-* # ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:04:49 +1000 From: "Patrick O'Duffy" Subject: Re: IN> Recent purchases Douglas Muir wrote: > Corporeal Players Guide -- Eh. This was OK, but too much of it just > reprints and revises material already available elsewhere -- in _Night > Music_, _The Marches_, and even the basic IN rulebook. Oh, it's not a > ripoff -- there's some new material, and it's handy to have all this stuff > in one cover -- but I didn't think it was quite worth the cover price. I found it to be more coherent and better written than the corresponding material in Marches and NM. For people who _don't_ have those books, I think this is a much better buy (assuming the Marches material gets a revamp in the future.) > I also felt that it lacked guidelines on *how* to run human characters in a > standard IN campaign. The closest thing is a few short paragraphs, along > the lines of "the following Songs are useful in keeping humans alive > (list)... the following relics are also useful...". Not too inspiring. Mild agreement on that point. Mind you, we largely _know_ what humans are like, so there's some justification for glossing over such details. > You Are Here -- This was... okay. Not wonderful, but okay. I haven't got this, but I admit to not being too interested in it (based on what I read in playtest). A lot of the locations are good - some of them I certainly wouldn't have thought of myself - but too many others are pretty ordinary. This is probably more useful to those running a campaign, or starting one from scratch. For someone like me who only runs IN as the occasional self-contained arc, it's a bit superfluous. (Agreement that there are some very good ideas in here, though. Maybe I'm just too cheap to pay for the books I don't get free.) > Also, a lot of these hooks seemed to spin off of the idea that angels and > demons can be found anywhere and everywhere... running a kite store, > working in a parking garage, what have you. IMC Celestials are somewhat > thin on the ground; unless they have a good reason to be somewhere, their > Superiors aren't going to leave them in menial Roles for too long (although > I'll grand that a demonic parking lot attendant could do a great deal of > harm spread very wide and thin). This may be my own particular hangup, > though. I think that's one of the things that varies with each GM's vision of the world. It's very hard to get a definite canonical view of just how prevalent Celestials & other wacky characters are, and how extensively they interact with the world. > As usual, production values are high. I was mildly annoyed that there were > no character writeups. Hey, guys -- that's the most time-consuming single > part of GMing IMC; you never know when you're going to need a detailed > breakdown of that NPC's skills/stats/Songs, and you can only wing it for so > long. Detailing these characters is one big task you can take off our > hands. On the other hand, this means you can tailor power levels and character focus as appropriate to your game. It often bugs me when the NPC stats in a game supplement don't match the 'power level' for NPCs that I prefer. > The Final Trumpet -- Whoa. This one was *good*. Glad to hear it. This is the only Revelations book I don't have, and I admit to being skittish towards buying it after I was disappointed by FotM. > You don't need the rest of the Revelations cycle to run this, btw, though > it's handy. Oh, and the preceding volume -- _Fall of the Malakim_ -- > upgrades from "bad" to "okay" if it's run as a prologue to this one; FOTM > has all sorts of forced plays and dangly bits that suddenly make a lot more > sense in this larger context. _That's_ a relief. Oh, and many thanks for posting your reviews here. Good reviews that address salient points with a bit of depth are hard to find, and IN doesn't get much coverage on RPG.net (where I usually get my review fix). (In fact, you should consider rewriting these so that they're longer and more indepth, and send them in to RPG.net. Strong reviews = better sales = successful product line.) - -- Patrick O'Duffy, Brisbane, Australia Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs & misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage. HUNTER S. THOMPSON, "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 01:31:37 -0500 From: Shadowstar Subject: Re: IN> Recent purchases I'll break this down bit by bit, and make my own commentary. Don't take this as something flamitory or misconstrued, just my own $0.02 on the issue. At 12:46 AM -0400 8/29/99, Douglas Muir wrote: >Corporeal Players Guide: >Not recommended, unless you're a completist; you can get by just as well >with _Night Music_ and _Marches_. 'Cept there's one small flaw with this plan. The Revelations Cycle looks like it's not going to be reprinted anytime soon. Granted some of the information is great, but most of it is going to be replaced with forthcoming books (in particular the Superiors "Cycle"). I prefer having all the information in one neat package, ala the IPG and (muchly detested) APG. My only nitpick about this book is that it doesn't have a Chargen table at the back of it like the two previous PG books. >You Are Here: >But the nice bits were separated by a lot of places that were just... >there. Most of the Earthly locations were at best neat one-liners (The >Eighth Virtue), and at worst just, well, places, with nothing particular of >interest really. I mean, the Duck Pond? Opps Apps? The Kindergarten? Duck Pond was one of the places that got attacked as being too mundane during playtest. But then, the War between Good and Evil isn't always fought on the plains of Meggedo. Take a close look at your hometown sometime, and see where you'd place the battlegrounds. Then ask someone to do the same (not telling them what you have chosen). You may be surprised that you missed something utterly mudane at first. It all depends on how you apply it. The other two you mentioned though have a lot more potential use, though. >Yeah, some of these places are potential adventure hooks... but they're not >adventure hooks any better, or any more detailed, than I could come up with >myself given just a few moments. That's your perogative. I also know that not everyone can be as creative. . . It gets worse if your play group decides to royally mess you up and walk the most obscure tangents they can find. >There's no detailed character breakdowns, no maps, just an idea and a brief >description. So you can custom tailor it to suit your campaign level. Not everyone is going to be an 18 force proto-Superior. . . An idea with 'fill-in-the-blanks' still means you have to be creative, but not as MUCH since a lot of the info helps you. In Nomine is also a principly cinamatic game. You don't need stats and numbers. They are only there so you don't have whiner-gamers pulling the 'you didn't really shoot me' crap. It -also- means that there's more ROOM to put MORE stuff into the book. I'd rather have a book with a TON of plot-seeds than a book with maybe one or two adventures that might not even be workable with your campaign (the Revelations Cycle comes to mind). >This isn't *bad*, but I didn't really feel like paying sixteen bucks for >stuff that I could very easily do myself. That's your opinion. As I said before, not everyone is as creative as you may think. . . >There were also a couple of adventure hooks that didn't seem very well >thought out. The plastic dinosaurs one boils down to "three demons take >over a plastic dinosaur factory; they're going to do something evil with >it, but they don't know what." This could be a great fun adventure -- just >the thing to add a light interlude in an otherwise gothic campaign -- but >it's left dangling; neither we nor the demons have any idea what comes >next. Annoying. And implausible, too... would Hell really devote that >much effort to taking over a business without some sort of clear plan in >mind? Yes. Lucifer himself states that Hell will not fight on a unified front, because Heaven can more easily predict Hell's plans. Stop thinking inside the box. Hell will do things that will counteract other things Hell is doing. It's unpredictable, and keeps Heaven guessing. Hell doesn't play fairly. So why should GM's??? *evil grin* >Also, a lot of these hooks seemed to spin off of the idea that angels and >demons can be found anywhere and everywhere... running a kite store, >working in a parking garage, what have you. So? You're not _forced_ to use every single example!!! The idea behind this book is to provide you with a multitude of locations that you can use when your put on the spot and don't feel like being overly creative. An average GM will most likely use only a few of the examples. Only an Insane GM would use them _all_ (unless you're Maya, and have already used them for Fiat. . . *whistles innocently*) >IMC Celestials are somewhat thin on the ground; In your campaign. Not everyone is going to be playing in your game, so it's up to the individual. >unless they have a good reason to be somewhere, their Superiors aren't going >to leave them in menial Roles for too long. As I said before, the War will be fought in places you may not have even considered. God works in mysterious ways, and the Devil does too. >As usual, production values are high. I was mildly annoyed that there were >no character writeups. Hey, guys -- that's the most time-consuming single >part of GMing IMC; you never know when you're going to need a detailed >breakdown of that NPC's skills/stats/Songs, and you can only wing it for so >long. Detailing these characters is one big task you can take off our >hands. Didn't I mention that doing that would require -trimming- a lot of the stuff out? MORE fill-in-the-blanks == Good. LESS to-draw-from == Bad. >I give "You Are Here" one thumb up; flip through it in the store first, but >if you like it, go for it. *phew* After all that, I'll have to agree. YAH isn't for everyone. Unless you're the completest or someone who'se having trouble coming up with good ideas. . . You may be better off being creative. HOWEVER, I'd still recommend this book. >The Final Trumpet -- Whoa. This one was *good*. >Highly recommended. Now remember what I said about being the Angel of Delusions? This applies here. As I pointed out concerning the CPG reprinting stuff from the Cycle already, FT suffers from the same fate. The problem with the first 3 books was the transition between LE's, and the lack of general playtest support due to them being kept 'secret'. The last two books of the cycle read too much like a bad attempt to force fiction down our throats (something that currently isn't allowed due to the liscense agreement with Croc), and less like a well thought out Campaign. The Cycle would have done better if it contained consistancy, and allowed a lot more leeway in regards to the GM not being forced to follow the 'script' of the plot. In their defense: Since Elizabeth took control as LE, I've seen much improvement in the IN line. . . It still has a long way to go, but then I'm the type of person who can draw MORE from it and ignore most of the 'flaws'. Be seeing you, - - Tafka J. = shadowstar@centuryinter.net # Balseraph of Fate, Marquis of Delusions of Grandeur * http://www.best.com/~lyceum/shdwstar/in-nomine ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 ******************************** The material here is (C) 1999 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.