From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Sun Sep 12 15:42:39 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 PAA29504 for ; Sun, 12 Sep 1999 15:42:38 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id PAA30768 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Sun, 12 Sep 1999 15:39:09 -0500 Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 15:39:09 -0500 Message-Id: <199909122039.PAA30768@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 #1327 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 Sunday, September 12 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1327 In this digest: IN> History and Honor Re: IN> Malakim Re: IN> Rules Questions. Re: IN> My theory on Hitler RE: IN> Malakim ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 12:25:51 -0400 From: rsean@blaze.cs.jhu.edu (R. Sean Borgstrom) Subject: IN> History and Honor Regarding Hitler and reasons angels shouldn't have eliminated him: I'm reminded of Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle, and particularly "Soldier, Ask Not" -- incidentally, a wonderful book, and a great outsider's manual to what faith is like :) He spends a great deal of time on the fictional science of ... um ... ontogenetics, I think he called it; a close cousin to Asimov's psychohistory. Ontogenetics was very much the meteorology of world events -- it broke the course of history down into a collection of loosely-defined historical forces, trends that carried individual events along behind them. A very rare person -- a Hitler or a Gandhi -- could step outside these trends and capitalize on them, take the helm as it were. A *very* rare person, the kind you only start getting once you have a bunch of human-livable worlds, could reshape them in his or her image. I find this a good tool for thinking about the War because it suggests that a pattern like that in "Timeshare" (as Earl Wajenberg described it) is not just possible but inevitable. Stopping the Holocaust just *isn't as simple* as removing Hitler; the underlying causes of events are much bigger, heavier, harder to handle, and harder to fight. It's possible that the main reason angels *didn't* kill Hitler is that they were too busy trying to stop the Holocaust and the World War. I suspect ontogenetics will always remain a fictional pseudoscience. However, _In Nomine_ has so much fictional pseudoscience already ... I imagine that Kronos thinks special individuals drive history, and Yves thinks that historical inevitability -- God's Plan -- does. They probably have much more *sophisticated* perceptions of history than this implies -- being infinitely smarter than humans, and given that both these perspectives are naive -- but that seems to me to be the basis of it. Just random thoughts. I haven't studied history in some time :) . . . On Malakite vessels: > Well, that depends on if you _charge_ 15 points for a replacement > vessel. In the forthcoming Game Master's Guide (plug, plug), there > is a discussion of when the GM wants to charge for new vessels, and > when it may be better for his game to give a replacement one free. > Malakim, in particular, are often expected to go through a lot of > vessels -- though not _stupidly_. One alternative, which went over well in my group, is to have the quality of the replacement vessels available to the Malakite (or any other angel) decrease based on the frequency and stupidity of his or her deaths. (Chair leg through the chest? You're down to Class F vessel replacement status, boyo. :) Pleasing your Superior bumps you back up to where you started. Then you can make new vessels free without making death meaningless :) ** Hitherby (aka R. Sean Borgstrom) Author, _Nobilis_ (Pharos Press, '99 -- now available from www.barnesandnoble.com) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 14:03:50 -0500 From: "Ben Glickler" Subject: Re: IN> Malakim > Oh, definitely potential there -- this is mostly the sort of thing > that would be laid down to keep the BIG guys from waltzing in. I mean, > even demonic guards probably would have a hard time if, say, David and > Laurence decided to express a little disagreement with would-be-world- > dictators. > Or to keep someone from sending in a very well equipped strike team -- > if it's just a few Virtues at a time... Heck, maybe they didn't want him dead, no matter how evil he is. After all, Hitler definitately fulfulled a few of the requirements for Armageddon. What's to say the militant evil-haters upstairs didn't want Armageddon in 1945? Ben ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 14:21:44 -0500 From: "Ben Glickler" Subject: Re: IN> Rules Questions. > Well, that depends on if you _charge_ 15 points for a replacement > vessel. In the forthcoming Game Master's Guide (plug, plug), there (buy, buy) > is a discussion of when the GM wants to charge for new vessels, and > when it may be better for his game to give a replacement one free. > Malakim, in particular, are often expected to go through a lot of > vessels -- though not _stupidly_. Well, I did give the Malakite her body back for free once, as a reward from Gabriel. She stumbled into a trap which Belial had staged, and couldn't keep control herself and lay low. When Belial's Calabite resonance caused her body to explode, I figured Gabriel would at least be pleased that her servant smacked Smokey a few times... well... once. Of course, this was as a reward. The other angels recieved separate rewards (Songs), whereas the Malakite just got her body back. > Yes, I know -- but it doesn't _always_ work that way. > The Liber Canticorum, p. 15, discusses this -- resistance vs. negation. Gotcha! It only took three mails to pound it into my skull. ;) I'll be a little more attentive to the subtle wording of the rules. > Malakim can _generally_ assume that any demon they find is at least 90% > likely to fall under their definition of "Things I should thwap or I'll > get dissonant." But it's quite true that some demons are less evil, and > more tolerable. Some may even be twistedly honorable themselves, or they Ayep. Baal, in particular, must really drive Malakim nutso. > I'd actually be a little stricter than that with their _given_ oaths. True, > the PC shouldn't be rules-lawyering his oaths, but neither should he be > saying, "I can get away with breaking this one because I'm really following > the spirit of it. Really." That way lies madness for the GM. True though this may be, it tend to fall under one of the suggestions in the main book -- if the player has to spend any amount of time arguing that he is not being dissonant, odds are, he is. And my players and I have very good faith in each other that we do what's best for the game. I imagine that with some groups, you'd have to smack a dissonant player now and then, so strict is good. [ tangent ] I saw a few of these posted on a few webpages, but I'm craving for more. What I am discussing is the Malakite resonance for finding noble and innoble deeds. It sure would be nice if we had a laundry-list of these, for each level of resonance. One of my Malakites, a destiny-head, uses his resonance on lots of folks, and the sixth time I tell him that the person has no interesting sins or virtues, it probably gets old to him. So, anyone want to bite the bullet and post a few suggestions? Ben ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 15:31:21 -0500 From: Seth Buntain Subject: Re: IN> My theory on Hitler At 7:09 PM -0500 9/10/99, Janet Anderson wrote: >My theory: Hitler was a Servitor of Malphas, and is now an *extremely* >powerful Word-bound demon (Duke?) with the Word of Genocide. Reading the >news these days, I foresee that he will be the next new Prince. Why Malphas? Hitler did far more to bring people together than to factionalize them overall. He united Germany under a single party, forced the Allies to get together to beat him, and so on. True, he did polarize the world into 'factions', but there where less factions overall in the end than there were before. Perhaps he was a _failed_ Demon of Factions... hence his death at the end by his own hand... >Janet Anderson - -- Seth Buntain Northwestern University enthar@nwu.edu "Magic is always the best solution, especially reliable magic." - -from the program 'fortune'. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 16:38:00 -0400 From: Adam Canning Subject: RE: IN> Malakim Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 14:55:16 -0400 From: "Chris Bergstresser" > The question of whether Hitler knew he was evil actually strikes right >to the heart of the modern challenge to morality, and it forms a basic >underpinning of the In Nomine game world. For me, angels are the >representatives of a single, universal morality (unfathomable though it may >be to mortals and celestials) while demons remain advocates for individual >relativism; the idea that each person determines what is ultimately right >for themselves. Saying Hitler *was* virtuous tips the scale in a way I do >not want my game to be tipped. > >- -- Chris then just point out to the players that it is a piece of celestial face saving in response to the fact that heavens various attempts to assassinate Hitler failed until they could get his various pieces of supernatural toyware [the spear of destiny, the Arc of the covenant, The IceCastle, etc. Then point out that they eventually succeeded after abstracting the above toys and whittling down Sonderkommando H, but Malphas had one of his senior and most trusted minions [for does not Malphas trust all of his minions most] take over being Hitler as a role. Adam ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1327 ******************************** The material here is (C) 1999 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.