From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Tue Aug 31 09:36:19 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 JAA23757 for ; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 09:36:18 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id JAA22171 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Tue, 31 Aug 1999 09:29:27 -0500 Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 09:29:27 -0500 Message-Id: <199908311429.JAA22171@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 #1316 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, August 31 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1316 In this digest: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 Re: IN> Recent purchases Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 Re: IN> Recent purchases Re: IN> Recent purchases Re: IN> Deceased Owners of Artifacts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 01:35:25 PDT From: "David Streeter" Subject: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 > 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. As a non-creative and lazy GM, I must agree with Patrick. Lots of plot seeds is fine, but you can get that from the IN list. I would have preferred YAH to have character writeups and more maps. LOTS more maps. LOTS and LOTS more maps. Whether or not you run a cinematic campaign, it is still very handy to have maps. It helps you describe a location much better - a picture tells a thousand words, and the less you have to actually *read* during a session, the better. (Also, having to read out text from a book during a session breaks the mood somewhat). > >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. My problem with the book is that if it is aimed at "non-creative" GMs, it still leaves too much work to do. And now we have YAH, when will WEH come out?** SurturZ Habbalite of Factions, Angel of Constructive Criticism ** YAH-WEH, geddit? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 16:19:59 +0100 From: Sam Kington Subject: Re: IN> Recent purchases Douglas Muir wrote: [snipped a lot of things; this next bit is about You Are Here] > 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 disagree strongly. Character write-ups take an insane amount of space that would be better suited for other things. But then, I don't have detailed stats for any of my NPCs; I know roughly how tough they are, I have an idea of what Songs they'd have (or rather, which Songs I want them to use to advance the plot), and I don't need exact numbers for any of them. After all, it only matters whether the NPC has 2 or 3 Celestial Forces, and the Song at 5 or 6, if they roll between 7 and 9; if they roll above, they would have failed anyway, if they rolled below they would have succeeded no matter what. I've never use a pre-printed NPC' out of one of the books, and I certainly wouldn't stick to the strict stats if I did. But if you want detailed write-ups of NPCs, go get the Liber Servitorum. Sam - -- Home page: http://www.illuminated.co.uk/ INWO Homebrew: http://www.illuminated.co.uk/inwo/ Corruption empowers; absolute corruption empowers absolutely. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 09:16:16 -0400 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 At 1:35 AM -0700 8/30/99, David Streeter wrote: >> 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. > >As a non-creative and lazy GM, I must agree with Patrick. Lots of >plot seeds is fine, but you can get that from the IN list. I would >have preferred YAH to have character writeups and more maps. LOTS >more maps. LOTS and LOTS more maps. Whether or not you run a >cinematic campaign, it is still very handy to have maps. It helps >you describe a location much better - a picture tells a thousand >words, and the less you have to actually *read* during a session, >the better. (Also, having to read out text from a book during a >session breaks the mood somewhat). Man, I couldn't disagree more strongly. Read the description a couple of times, then describe it in your own words if you like (I never read out of books directly). But maps are something I can't stand. It's my campaign city, I'll put it where I want it. >> >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. > >My problem with the book is that if it is aimed at "non-creative" >GMs, it still leaves too much work to do. I think it's aimed at creative GMs who are interested in seed ideas for their campaigns. I *don't* think it's aimed at GMs who need a campaign setting. > >And now we have YAH, when will WEH come out?** When Ethereals Hop? Where Eli Humps? Whose El-Dorado is Hosed? - -- Eric Alfred Burns | | now with web site content! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 14:38:51 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 At 1:35 AM -0700 8/30/99, David Streeter wrote: >> 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. > >As a non-creative and lazy GM, I must agree with Patrick. Lots of plot seeds >is fine, but you can get that from the IN list. I would have preferred YAH >to have character writeups and more maps. LOTS more maps. LOTS and LOTS more >maps. *sniffle* I wanted more maps too, but that was an art decision overall, and it was decreed for whatever reason that maps were generally not necessary. (The Police Station got one, though. But it doesn't match the text entirely, darnit.) Then again, I've heard some folks bitterly deride maps and call them useless filler. (Me, I like maps. Ah, well.) >And now we have YAH, when will WEH come out?** I've been wondering that ever since I heard the acronym. If I ever get a good idea for a book with those initials... - --emccoy@nh.ultranet.com // arcangel@io.com In Nomine Line Editor GURPS, Roleplayers, In Nomine stuff; Art: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 19:56:56 -0500 From: Kris Overstreet Subject: Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 At 02:38 PM 8/30/99 -0400, you wrote: >>And now we have YAH, when will WEH come out?** > >I've been wondering that ever since I heard the acronym. If I ever get >a good idea for a book with those initials... Seems pretty easy to me. 'When Everything Happened.' The IN History Sourcebook. Redneck Kris Overstreet, too many websites.... http://www.detnet.com/redneck/ - Personal homepage http://www.wren-spot.com/wlp/ - Business webpage http://www.antarctic-press.com/ - Someone else's page ... not enough time ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 08:10:30 +1000 From: "Patrick O'Duffy" Subject: Re: IN> Re: in_nomine-digest V1 #1315 David Streeter wrote: > > 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. > > As a non-creative and lazy GM, I must agree with Patrick. Lots of plot seeds > is fine, but you can get that from the IN list. I would have preferred YAH > to have character writeups and more maps. LOTS more maps. LOTS and LOTS more > maps. Actually, I think you're agreeing with someone else - whoever it was that posted the original review. I just replied to it. And personally, I don't much care for maps. Unless the area in question is so unusual that you need a floorplan to fully understand it, I'd rather not have maps in sourcebooks. While I admit that after years of non-minature, non-map combat, I'm starting to think about using them again, I'd generally rather come up with my own than use someone else's. - -- 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: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 08:21:56 +1000 From: "Patrick O'Duffy" Subject: Re: IN> Recent purchases Sam Kington wrote: > Douglas Muir wrote: > > > 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 disagree strongly. Character write-ups take an insane amount of space > that would be better suited for other things. But then, I don't have > detailed stats for any of my NPCs; I know roughly how tough they are, I > have an idea of what Songs they'd have (or rather, which Songs I want > them to use to advance the plot), and I don't need exact numbers for any > of them. I don't mind lack of a detailed writeup, but some things are useful. At the very _least_, it'd be good to know how many Forces a character has - that tells you a lot about their competance and power, particularly when compared to PCs. If the character does something unusual, it'd be good to know how they accomplish it (say, what Songs they have, even if we don't know how skilled they are with said Songs; or that they're a dangerous martial artist, so I know to give them Fighting and Dodge). If they have a distinction or a Word, that should get mentioned. We Anything more than that is gravy, and in some cases might be too much, but that's kinda the bare minimum, and would give me enough to work with in bolting stats onto the character. - -- 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 22:18:14 -0400 From: Douglas Muir 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. No worries. [re the 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. AFAIK, these books are still generally available. Hence my grump at finding that the CPG contained rather a lot of material that duplicated stuff from them. Sure, I probably should have flipped through the CPG a little more before buying. OTOH, it was by David Edelstein, and I've come to think that Dave's stuff is pretty good; this was my first disappointment in that regard. > I prefer having all the information in one neat package, ala the IPG and >(muchly detested) APG. Shrug. I don't find it that much trouble. And -- another quibble about the CPG -- there wasn't really all that much new and interesting. New skills? Not too big a deal. Sorcerors? Feh... sorcerors are fairly useless as PCs; you beef up humans by giving them Songs, not spells. >>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. I wouldn't be surprised at all; there's definitely an Imp or two in the Registrar's Office here, and a Balseraph of Malphas in the administration. But that doesn't mean those places are going to be all that interesting for cinematic roleplaying. >>There're 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. Shrug. I find 'em handy; YMMV. At a minimum, I do think mentioning a few Songs or attunements would be helpful ("If alarmed, Bob will immediately throw a Song of Thunder, then run out the back door"). > 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). Strong disagreement. Plot seeds I can get from the Net, from this list, or by adapting from other systems. Or I can lean back in my chair and come up with them off the top of my pointy little head. It isn't hard. Ideas are cheap. Ideas worked out in some detail are what I want, and am willing to pay for. >>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 thinks outside the box" != "Hell is stupid". Three demons, all with 9+ Forces, plus enough effort to set them up, represents a fairly significant effort. You don't do that without an idea of where you're going. You may be going somewhere goofy and unpredictable. but that's different from just wandering aimlessly (a distinction, I grant you, that some players have trouble with). I just don't buy "let's take over this factory and then... uhhhh... well, we'll do something evil with it, as soon as we figure out what." That's not being unpredictable, it's just dumb. But my real argument with this one was that it was a joke without a punch line. This is obviously intended to be a fun/funny scenario, but we have no idea how. Dammit... this was paying good money for *half* an idea. This didn't just leave me flat, it actually annoyed me. >>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. I don't mind occasionally baffling my players ("You must prevent anyone from using this vending machine for the next six hours. No, you don't need to know why. Don't attract any attention, though.") But I don't like being baffled myself. And if my players encounter an angel running a small second-hand clothing store, they're going to wonder what she's doing there. >>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. Well, one, it's still generally available, and two, it's still pretty good. IMO. >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'. "LE"? Line Editor? But I agree that the "secret" part probably didn't help. Certainly the first three books are... uneven. > 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. Demur. This is true for "Fall of the Malakim", yes, but not at all for "Final Trumpet". In fact, FT seems to go out of its way to give the GM options. You can send the PCs to any of the seven continents; you can have them follow the cat, or try to find Max in Hell; Khalid may fall, or be redeemed; Magog may die, or not; the GM can stop things after four trumpets, or five, or six (and you're given a glimpse of the first five minutes of Armageddon, if you just can't resist pulling it off)... really, there are at least a dozen distinct ways to run this. There's even a final page with suggestions for making it lighter or darker. > 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. Certainly true for FOTM, but not for FT. Nor, I think, for the Revelations Cycle as a whole... "Night Music" gives the GM a reasonable number of options, as does "No Dinero". These adventures have some problems, but I don't think they're too bad about forcing the players (or the GM) in a particular direction. Doug M. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 10:25:30 -0400 From: John Karakash - Lucent ASCC Subject: Re: IN> Deceased Owners of Artifacts Jason Terlecki wrote: > > The owner of a certain artifact in our campaign was recently returned to the > Symphony (the very hard way) and we where wondering about her reliquaries > that was attuned to her only. It is possible to reattune (I did not see > this possibility in the Liber Reliquium, or missed it) to a new user. If > yes, would it possibly work if she had been still *alive*? Artifacts of dead people CAN be reattuned. The difficulty depends on the GM, however. Because artifacts can be a big wild card in a campaign, the level of difficulty of the reattunement is proportional to the power of the artifact, as a rule of thumb. However the GM can always make it easier (or even automatic against the wishes of the players!) if that suits the campaign. Currently-owned artifacts are harder or impossible to reattune depending on the whims of the GM. Superiors, usually, can reattune an artifact. Especially powerful ones still might be beyond their influence, however, or might be permanently damaged or destroyed by use of overwhelming force. The de-attunement or re-attunement of a tricky artifact can make for a nice adventure. - -- ___________________________________________________ / \ | 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 #1316 ******************************** The material here is (C) 1999 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.