From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Wed Dec 27 10:15:49 2000 Return-Path: Received: from lists.io.com (majordom@lists.io.com [199.170.88.15]) by pyramid.sjgames.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA07112 for ; Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:15:48 -0600 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id KAA04519 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:15:47 -0600 Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:15:47 -0600 Message-Id: <200012271615.KAA04519@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 #1993 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 Wednesday, December 27 2000 Volume 01 : Number 1993 In this digest: Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine Re: IN> Clever Game Stunts (Re: GURPS In-Nomine) Re: IN> Point balance? The Enemies alone wipe _that_ out... Re: IN> Angels in hell Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine IN> Character creation suggestions Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) Re: IN> Grigori Servitor (Wheeee!!!) Re: IN> [Choir] The Abelim Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) IN> MacGuffin (was Re: Cel. Song of Machines) IN> That weird pen-artifact... Re: IN> lilim... Re: IN> lilim... Re: IN> Unicorns in In Nomine Re: IN> Grigori Servitor (Wheeee!!!) Re: IN> Clever Game Stunts (Re: GURPS In-Nomine) Re: IN> Angels in hell Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 06:29:03 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine > > Well, our first character death was when Eric ran a little >something > > and the Malakite (who got hit with a blinding Song) discovered that he >was > > in front of a speeding truck. Oops. > > > > But he brought back reinforcements and saved the day! And gave me the >idea > > for Malakanaries! > > > >A game which also included *my* favorite use of attunement/song/power. >Namely, the Celestial Song of... hm. Machines? (In Maine without books, so >I'm flying by memory.) It makes a corporeal device a Celestial artifact, >temporarily. So, the Renegade Lilim slapped her hand on the Gigantic >Macguffin, Sang the Song... and the player smiled at me and said "Celestial >Artifacts have no weight on the Celestial Realm. I go Celestial and carry >the device to the roof." > >There are disadvantages for running games with the people who wrote them. > Still, I was too impressed by the hurling of the Macguffin onto the >demons below to really disallow it. (Next time, I'll just *plan* for it.) ha ha ha I've never really have encouraged the rules bitch in my game to read the Liber Reliquarum. With Good Reason. His major stunt last quarter was to boost his Celestial Forces, then have an artifact built for him. A Celestial Shotgun who's special supernatural feature was that it never runs out of ammo. Then he specified that it didn't need to exist on the Corporeal plane. Basically, it's so that he can go Celestial after tricking a foe to follow him (or following a foe) and kick the crap out of them. In the last adventure, he went celestial after the Shedite's host was killed, proceeded to kick the crap out of it, then follow it back to Sheol and kick the crap out of it some more. He managed to reduce it back to imp status before he was finished. Then he snapped back to Earth to find the (mortal?) Psi/Child of the Grigori mysteriously . . . no longer dead. And fully healed. Heh heh heh . . . :) Oh, BTW, this character is a Lilim of Destiny. The kick the crap out of you Lilim of Destiny, apparently. - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 06:41:36 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> Clever Game Stunts (Re: GURPS In-Nomine) > > At 12:01 PM -0500 12/25/00, Whistling in the Dark wrote: > >> On 12/25/00 10:46 AM, "Elizabeth McCoy" >alleged: > > > > To give credit (?) where it is due, the player in question _had_ worked > > out this trick ahead of time as a way of filching items which were too > > big for her normal weight limit -- that's why she had the Song in the > > first place. It was _planned_ obnoxiousness. > > > >Oh, I am nothing but impressed with the entire affair. It takes real effort >to be that much of a pain in the neck to Baalites. > >(Of course, I now expect the character to drop something suitably >appropriate on Baalites in the next section. A semi, say. Or a Cray. Or the >mysterious Honda Insight that's been following them....) LOL! that's awesome "You follow me in your stupid japanese death trap? I make it celestial artifact and drop it on your head!!" .... > > We just _do_ things like that. Surely we told you about the Dancing > > Anvil, no? > > > >...eep? Corporeal Song of Machines? - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 06:47:03 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> Point balance? The Enemies alone wipe _that_ out... >From: Maurice Lane >Reply-To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com >Subject: IN> Point balance? The Enemies alone wipe _that_ out... >Bloody trains. :) > > >Moe > > >Xavier >Ofanite of the Wind >Angel of Lost Paperwork Very cool, Moe. Very, very cool. - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 01:06:19 -0600 From: "Tafka J." Subject: Re: IN> Angels in hell At 10:46 AM -0500 12/25/00, Elizabeth McCoy wrote: > Remember that, house rules to the contrary, angels cannot lie when they > are in celestial form. They're either speaking angelic, which CANNOT > be used to lie, or they're speaking Helltongue, which inflicts dissonnance > if they lie. Does this mean that 'canonically': An angel can speak in Helltongue without dissonance, so long as they speak only the truth like a Seraph would? (I've seen its use in non-canon applications, but the above makes it sound like a canon rulling has been made. Or I could just be delerious.) Be seeing you, - - Tafka J. = Balseraph of Fate, Marquis of Delusions of Grandeur # http://www.thrifty.net/~tafkaj/in-nomine/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 07:32:44 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine >[Discord and reaction penalties for angels] since angels > >>with Discord normally should also take the Inquisition as an Enemy, and > >>that tends to dominate the cost of the reaction penalty component. > > > >Wow, that's sweeeeet. I'll probably first have the disad points sunk >into a > >Secret(Discordant) and then convert that into Enemy(Inquistion) when the > >Discord is reported. > >That sounds perfectly reasonable. Gee, thanks, Walter. :P ... > >>For GURPS IN, celestials should start with both at 14, probably, like >all > >>their other stats. That will raise the point cost of celestial form > >>appropriately, but won't change character generation, if you use the > >>"canon" character point model, rather than the usual "everyone gets X > >>points" > >>model. > > > >Hrm. Makes for weird "character balance" won't it? > >Which is also true in IN proper -- the game *setting* nearly demands >that character balance be thrown out. Well, at least the way Derek >implemented things. Uh, yes. >Frankly, the notion that all PCs should be "equal" in some sense is >pretty silly, when you think about it -- if a character is designed >(using either a general system like GURPS, or even a class/template-based >one like IN or D&D) in a way that doesn't fit into the GM's campaign, >the character isn't going to be "equal", except in some abstract sense. > >This is most easily visible in point-based systems like GURPS or Hero, >where you can trivially design a character who is "balanced" with >typical PCs, but is essentially totally useless in a campaign. >But it can happen with genre-specific template/class systems. Think >about a D&D ranger in a campaign that's entirely dungeon-crawls, or >a D&D thief in a campaign that's mostly wilderness adventures. Or a 20 lvl Fighter vs a 20th lvl Magic User. >Character balance is a myth. > >Well, not entirely -- it exists to some extent *if* you assume that >players will min-max their characters as much as possible, and will >tailor them to the GM's expected campaign. Or if they don't, they >expect to play secondary roles in the game, and won't find that >annoying. Huh, I don't think I've ever had /everyone/ in my campaign min/max. maybe we'll have to try it sometime. :) > >Yeah, enemies having multiple vessels really annoy the players. But, >then, > >I always say that they can get one if they want one and they say, no way, > >vessels are too expensive. Such is life. :l > >I don't think I'd create a combat-oriented character without at least >a couple vessels. While it's true that high-level vessels are expensive >in IN, low-level ones aren't too bad, especially if they lack Roles. >(And if the vessel goes around killing people all the time, a Role can >be more of a hindrance than a help.) Very true. Fortunately, we seem to pick low-public times and places for our battles. And the cops never really seem to arrive in time. :) >In GURPS:IN, it might be harder to have multiple vessels, but I tried >fairly hard to make the ratio of vessel cost to "customization points" >(100, usually) be roughly the same as the typical IN vessel to the IN >total customization points. Well, I look forward to trying it out. :) - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 07:40:21 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: IN> Character creation suggestions Hey, all, I finally posted a list of comments I think may be useful for character creation, especially In Nomine. Check it outL http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo/chargen.html and feel free to check out the rest of my site, it's got some intesting In Nomine and INS/MV stuff there. (IMHO) - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 07:48:26 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine >It's actually a cumulative -3 reaction per level of Discord. So 3 levels >of Discord gives a -9(!) reaction modifier for angels. As I recall, this >is a more or less direct translation of the equivalent rule in IN proper. D'oh. I confused -1 penalty for -5 pts of Discord for -1 penalty for every 5 levels of Discord. Yikes that's a reaction penalty! .... [INSMV to GURPS directly] > >My mind flinches. In truth, I'm not sure there would have _been_ Choirs > >and Bands, considering what a pain it was to convert them. Or if there > >were, they would have been given more traditional GURPS powers from > >Supers, Psi, and Compendium. > >Choirs and Bands would probably have been templates, and would probably >have been more point-balanced. As it is, Kyriotates are by far and away >the most expensive Choir/Band, and this is consistent with my experience >with IN -- Kyrios are usually a *lot* more effective in the game than >most other Choirs/Bands. Yeah. And they're so annoyingly good at it that I complete disallow them IMCs. >This was one of the things that drove me to change the normal GURPS >rule "all PCs start with the same point value": with Kyrios in the game, >that would either have made them an NPC-only Choir, or all the other >characters would have gotten *way* too many customization points, and >the result wouldn't have acted like normal canon IN at all. We were >trying to reproduce the IN feel as much as possible (at SJ's direction), >and this essentially ran contrary to normal GURPS character design >procedures. Uh, yeah, wee bit. OTOH, I've always wanted to slap Kyrios with a lot of Dissonance because IMO, leaving a person without memory of a large chunk of time in which they supposedly interacted in the world, and not leaving them a run down of what they were seen doing, is a disservice and leaves them in a worse condition than when the Angel arrived. - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 07:59:49 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) > > (In Maine without books, so > >I'm flying by memory.) heh, I'm tempted to ask about the weather up there, but . . . oh that reminds me. Hrm. Crocell . . . DP of Cold (from INSMV). >Actually, the character is primarily a thief (likely made with a lot >of Valefor Forces, with the intent that she'd probably bind to him, but >she chose to be Free -- it happens). Her main use of the Song is to steal >large corporeal objects by essentially "teleporting" them out of their >vault/building/etc. The Song is *way* more effective for that than the >Swipe attunement, a lot cheaper, and lets you carry a lot more than >the normal weight limit for merely grabbing something and going celestial >(putting it into potentiality with your vessel). yeah >A *nasty* little Song; it has other abuses, which this character generally >isn't interested in. (At least until there's some clear need for them....) Other abuses? Dare I ask? > >Actually, I griped about that Song during the Songbook playtest, but it >went in as written, more or less, I think. I don't think it even got >a flaming feather, as some of the ones that I wrote did.... > >Besides, I'm just good at coming up with totally weird gimmicks >sometimes. I don't have to write the game. You don't want to know >some of my old D&D war stories, or GURPS Space ones. Maybe some >players need a "Flaming Feather", too.... I know one of mine does. :) Heh, he's fun. > > Still, I was too impressed by the hurling of the Macguffin onto the > >demons below to really disallow it. (Next time, I'll just *plan* for it.) > >Using it to drop the Macguffin was an inspiration of the moment, I >hadn't thought of that application until I was looking around for >something nasty for the Lilim to do to the Baalites (whom she was >mightily ticked at, at the time). When she pulled a Macguffin. BTW, what IS a Macguffin? >Just remember to put me up for the Brian award this year.... the Brian award? - -Perry perrylloyd@hotmail.com pl312993@oak.cats.ohiou.edu http://www.geocities.com/llloyd.geo "And that's the hardest thing for a human being to do - be wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?" - --from A Matter For Men by David Gerrold _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 08:05:14 From: "Perry Lloyd" Subject: Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) > > A *nasty* little Song; it has other abuses, which this character >generally > > isn't interested in. (At least until there's some clear need for >them....) > > > >She has a broad definition of "clear need," of course.... Don't we all? :) .... >It's not that you or Elizabeth wrote the Song -- you mentioned at the time >you didn't -- but you *know* this system, to the point of intuition. It'd >be >like having David Edelstein for a player, or David Pulver playing in your >BESM or GURPS Technomancer game. Ack, not in GURPS Technomancer, he'd have all the spells up his frickin sleeve and know /just how/ to use them. Though . . . an G:IN Technomancer campaign might interesting . . . Vapula and Jean go head to head as magic becomes a science. heh heh heh > > Besides, I'm just good at coming up with totally weird gimmicks > > sometimes. I don't have to write the game. You don't want to know > > some of my old D&D war stories, or GURPS Space ones. Maybe some > > players need a "Flaming Feather", too.... > > > >So, you have a Malakite of Creation attunement. I must remember this.... Exactly. Can anyone here remember a +6 Clipboard? EDG? Oh. let's just cut off the Seneshal's /arm/ with my . . . +6 CLIPBOARD OF LIMB REMOVAL!!! > > Just remember to put me up for the Brian award this year.... > > > >The what? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 04:03:59 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Subject: Re: IN> Grigori Servitor (Wheeee!!!) Moe, this is good stuff. Interesting points: >Note that Eggur has boosted his Attributes to the >maximum possible without taking an extra Force. It's never been clear to me whether angels can _only_ get new Forces with the help of a Superior, or whether they can occasionally just grow 'em on their own. >If celestials could have heart attacks, Eggur would >have gotten one when he emerged from Limbo to discover >that the rest of his Choir - _the_ _entire_ _rest_ >_of_ _his_ _Choir_ - had gotten themselves tossed out >of Heaven while he was incommunicado. Now /this/ is one of those -- thump! -- "why didn't I *think* of that" ideas. Of course a few Grigs were in Limbo when their Choir got judged and expelled. This raises some interesting questions about heavenly justice. >Actually, once Eggur started to calm down, it all made >a certain amount of sense. The Malakim had never >approved of the Grigori in the first place: they had >rightfully seen the creation of the Watchers as a >subtle rebuke. David's wholesale assault on the >Grigori's descendants was typical of the breed: when >in a political grudge match, go for your enemy's >family, and claim that it's God's will. Snerk. >That entire >Choir had something seriously, fundamentally wrong >with them. Again, snerk. I really like this. >His current Role >as a struggling storekeeper is typical: nobody looks >for a Grigori without family ties, Hm? Why not? I'd look for them far, far from the haunts of men and angels, myself. (Hm, wonder if any got away to the Marches.) Doug M. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 04:17:31 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Subject: Re: IN> [Choir] The Abelim I'm not sure about the time-travel aspect, but otherwise I like these guys quite a bit, especially their appearance and attunements. And this -- >roleplaying an Abel properly for any length of time >would be quite difficult and likely depressing as hell. - -- was worth a chuckle. Doug M. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 08:44:45 -0500 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) On 12/27/00 2:59 AM, "Perry Lloyd" alleged: > >>> (In Maine without books, so >>> I'm flying by memory.) > > heh, I'm tempted to ask about the weather up there, but . . . oh that > reminds me. Hrm. Crocell . . . DP of Cold (from INSMV). > It was a balmy two degrees the day after Christmas. I'm back in New Hampshire now, and that's 'warmer.' Of course, we have a wind off the lake.... > When she pulled a Macguffin. > > BTW, what IS a Macguffin? > I don't remember the origin of the term, but the Macguffin is "That Upon Which The Plot Depends." It can be completely worthless in all practical senses, but the Plot demands an object that drives the characters to do those wacky things they do. The Maltese Falcon, from the movie and book of the same name, is the traditional example of a Macguffin. Everyone wanted it, but the Falcon itself wasn't innately interesting. It could have as easily been the Maltese Condor, the Maltese Siamese, the Maltese Cheeseburger, or what have you. In this case, the group discovered a Big Thing they needed, and it led to a firefight thanks to some dim Djinn and a Heavenly Intervention. (One of two for that firefight.) - -- Eric A. Burns - in-sabre@annotations.com - http://www.annotations.com "Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." - --Antonie de Saint-Exupery, "The Little Prince" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 08:25:17 -0600 From: "Charles Glasgow" Subject: Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Perry Lloyd" To: Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2000 7:59 AM Subject: Re: Cel. Song of Machines (was Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine) > >Just remember to put me up for the Brian award this year.... > > the Brian award? Just from context, I would guess that the Brian award refers to the legendary Brian VanHoose, of the "Knights of the Dinner Table" -- the single best damn rules lawyer that ever lived. (In gamer fiction, that is). - -- Chuckg ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 09:28:04 -0500 From: EDG Subject: IN> MacGuffin (was Re: Cel. Song of Machines) Going a little OT here for the sake of trivia... At 08:44 AM 12/27/00 -0500, you wrote: >I don't remember the origin of the term, but the Macguffin is "That Upon >Which The Plot Depends." It can be completely worthless in all practical >senses, but the Plot demands an object that drives the characters to do >those wacky things they do. It's a term coined by Hitchcock (although it has been compared to Eliot's definition of "meaning" in poetry - something to distract the thinking mind while the poem goes about its business. Hitchcock's explanation issues as such: "It's called the MacGuffin because ... the story goes that two men are in the train. And one sitting across from the other says, 'Excuse me sir, what is that strange-looking package above your head?' " And the other man says, 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin.' And the first one asks, 'What's it for?' 'Well,' the other man says, 'it's for tracking lions in the Scottish Highlands.' And the first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.' And the other man says, 'Well then, that's no MacGuffin!'" (An odd story, and I suspect that - horror of horrors - Hitchcock has told it poorly.) He continues: "The MacGuffin is nothing, really. It's like a painter, worrying whether the apples in the painting are sweet or sour. Who cares? It's his style, his manner of painting." So it is in RPGs: the MacGuffin doesn't actually matter to anyone except the PCs and select NPCs, and almost anyone else who's told about it responds with "But what does it matter?" - -EDG My primary resource here was http://www.dailynews.com/archives/extra/hitch/, especially http://www.dailynews.com/archives/extra/hitch/macguffin.asp, although I have also researched within the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and the website of The Macguffin, the journal of the Alfred Hitchcock Scholars: http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 15:53:53 +0100 From: "Philippe Bolay" Subject: IN> That weird pen-artifact... Im building my first IN campaign and Im using an artifact I heard about on the list. Its a pen that has some powerfull properties. If you use it to change the text in any book, it automatically changes the text in all issues. Is this artifact from an IN expansion, or is it just something that someone on the list made up? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:07:49 -0500 (EST) From: Emily Dresner-Thornber Subject: Re: IN> lilim... > Lilim are created by Lilith, and can redeem. > now as a sick thought can they 'turn' in malakim like angels have/did/do? No. There is an old (and probably very tired) running joke about Lilim "pupating" into Malakim, or being "proto-Malakim", but no where in the actual ruleset is this how it should work in fact. When Lilim redeem, they become _something_, but that something is _not_ Malakim. - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emily K. Dresner-Thornber -- http://www.nodonut.com/zenith ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:28:28 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> lilim... At 2:41 AM +0000 12/27/00, cassandra benner wrote: >Hi all, >In a mail just posted by emcoy i had a sudden thought. Two C's, please. E. McCoy. Thank you. >Lilim are created by Lilith, and can redeem. >now as a sick thought can they 'turn' in malakim like angels have/did/do? Not in canon. Malakim were a One Time Event. (So if you have it start happening again, it should either be something that Just Happens (i.e., you are departing from canon drastically) or the start of it happening again should be a major campaign mystery/element.) OTOH, there is a rumor among Lilim that Lilith can... take away their Lilim nature. (Not published canon yet, but the _rumor_ likely will be eventually. The truth of the rumor is for GMs.) If this is true, presumably a Lilim could be rendered into a demonling or reliever (if Bright already or shortly after). A reliever could then fledge as anything it wanted, presumably. (And an ex-Lilim might find the geas-like weight of oaths... comforting.) - --Beth, typing w/a uncoopertive baby (iolanthe) causing typos. "I'm nursing a TROUT! With legs!" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:26:15 -0500 From: Earl Wajenberg Subject: Re: IN> Unicorns in In Nomine Charles Phipps wrote: > Hey has anyone ever done anything up about Unicorns in In Nomine. I think unicorns are mentioned as one of Uriel's targets in the discussion of the Purity Crusade, in one of the books. Blandine complains about it. I don't think we need conclude that Urial GOT all of them, or that they didn't crop up again later. Earl ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 10:52:54 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Grigori Servitor (Wheeee!!!) At 9:41 PM -0800 12/26/00, Maurice Lane wrote: >Of course, considering what I _did_ with it, that >might not be such a good thing... Looks like a good thing to me... One query -- as a white-collar job, shouldn't his Role be Status/2? - --emccoy@nh.ultranet.com // arcangel@io.com In Nomine Line Editor RPG links; Random name list, Art: http://www.io.com/~arcangel/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 11:31:59 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Clever Game Stunts (Re: GURPS In-Nomine) At 6:41 AM -0500 12/27/00, Perry Lloyd wrote: >> > We just _do_ things like that. Surely we told you about the Dancing >> > Anvil, no? >> >>...eep? > >Corporeal Song of Machines? GURPS Spells, creative use of Teleport Other and Air Golem, and one very dead evil priest who escaped the previous deathtrap he was in... - --Beth, typing w/a uncoopertive baby (iolanthe) causing typos. "I'm nursing a TROUT! With legs!" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 11:32:35 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Angels in hell At 1:06 AM -0600 12/27/00, Tafka J. wrote: >At 10:46 AM -0500 12/25/00, Elizabeth McCoy wrote: >> Remember that, house rules to the contrary, angels cannot lie when they >> are in celestial form. They're either speaking angelic, which CANNOT >> be used to lie, or they're speaking Helltongue, which inflicts dissonnance >> if they lie. > > Does this mean that 'canonically': An angel can speak in Helltongue >without dissonance, so long as they speak only the truth like a Seraph >would? Yes. > (I've seen its use in non-canon applications, but the above makes it >sound like a canon rulling has been made. Or I could just be delerious.) It's in H&H. - --Beth, typing w/a uncoopertive baby (iolanthe) causing typos. "I'm nursing a TROUT! With legs!" ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 11:32:44 -0500 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> GURPS In-Nomine At 6:17 AM -0500 12/27/00, Perry Lloyd wrote: >>Oh, quite! You see, the Discord disad is, IIRC, -5 points/level. So, with >>a -1 reaction for every -5 points of DIscord... > >I thought Walter said something different. But, I think I just may have >just misinterpreted it. :) (eg didn't get it) He corrected me on the level of reaction modifier... >> >Hrm. I'll have to look into the mechanics of it. >> >>Hopefully they're fairly simple. > >Why? GURPS doesn't have to be simple. I mean, it's nice, but reality >building is hardly simple. Take, for instance, creating a human being. :) Hee! Well, true. But _I_ like my GURPS to be relatively intuitive. >>You can always put it back... O:> > >True. And I could always have removed it. True 'nuff. O:> >Uh. I guess, but in a game-world where it is not merely assumed but >outright stated that human souls LIVE ETERNAL, I should hope that death >wouldn't be such a big deal. Now, good folk being dammed to Hell, that's a >different story than "merely passing on." I dunno -- it's a sticky sort of thing. Death and taxes and all... O:> >Here it is: "The angels, them, could enbody themselves in human volunteers. >To not make doubles(?), the Demons enbodied themselves in the bodies of >humans in the process of dying." (INS/MV pg 8) > >(?)- Pour ne pas faire de doublons, -I'm not sure why they wouldn't want to >create doubles, but hey, what do I know about Lucifer's plans. Perhaps it means, "not to totally duplicate" what the angels are doing? >I'd say that the American audience would have *more* problems with the >"rules" used to determine who gets into heaven and who doesn't (of normal >humans): [snip] Hee! Yes, I think that could be a bit weird. Though the "because of PC mistake" could be an interesting stick to poke PCs with. >>Oh, sure -- but we're talking taking from the original here, not taking >>one element from the original and making it map to the current status. [...] >>of chicken and egg which makes my head hurt. > >Well, I was trying to incorporate the "new ideas" of soul damage and >soul-killing without removing the original single body status. Ahhh. Hm. I'm not sure if I, at least, would have _thought_ of the "new ideas" from the old model. (Once you have celestial form on the corporeal plane, it becomes much more obvious a design choice, following naturally from "exposed soul.") >Of course, if you're going to add Soul killing to the original game, you may >as well change the rules for bodies (and basic world mechanics like adding >the Symphony so In Nomine feels more like Mage, discard the Skyscraper model >which no longer works all that well because of the added Forces system and >therefore three parallel/separate realms which feel kinda like the Astral >Plane from GURPS Psionics . . .) I still kinda wished that they hadn't ruled that there was no such thing as an ethereal form. O:p >> >their perception is a 4, or worse, a 2). >> >>At least you can add your Celestial Forces to that... > >??? A detail I seem to have missed, but feels like a "fix" to make up for a >system that doesn't work for mundanes/an entire class of character which is >kinda "stuck" with low stat _potential_, not that the same isn't true in the >French game. p. 53, Perceiving a Celestial Form. It may be a "fix" (probably for demons, actually), but it does flow reasonably well with the "background theory" -- the bigger your "soul," the more easily it's seen. (If you're in cel-form yourself, you add your _own_ CelForces as well! I guess too many playtest celestial combats had the participants wandering around going, "Duh! I can't find him!") >> >Sure, there's the Songs of Nimbus, >> >but Celestial form, the /innate/ ability of angels, COSTS ESSENCE, and 2 >>at >> >that. I mean, for an innate ability, I find that a bit much. >> >>Think of it as an innate Song... O;> > >Oh, and not an Attunement? Point. Innate attunement, then. >> >I may just use those changes in my next game, if not my current one, >>players >> >willing. >> >> Report on how they change the feel of the game, if you do? O:> > >Well, I /did/ run a single INS/MV adventure with an angel of Micheal and [....] >The fact that it was Essenceless to use meant that it was a tool the >players/PCs were willing to use more than their Powers, which cost Power >Points. True. Hmm. >I feel that this reflects the "spread the Good Word" job-point which is one >of the duties of an Angel in Magna Veritas. Let me ponder upon this. O:> [...] >I dunno, I feel trapped by the Choir/Band definitions. Like, I don't like >having two of the same choir/band in the adventure, because everyone of the >same choir/band feels too much alike to me. Hrm. I felt that way at the start, but since then, I've been tweaking on the nuances. For example, check out Zadoc in Superiors 1 (the Judgment Seraph sample character), and then check out Jordan from the Fiat Justitia campaign. I _think_ they're both plausible Judgment Seraphim (though Jordan's been getting a little cracked, poor guy), if the campaign isn't very starkly black and white, but they'd probably clash a lot if stuck together for long... In Ofanim, there's Fiat for an example again -- Liz, the Trade Wheel, and a walk-on from Galalidan, a rather young and intolerant Judgment Ofanite. (Then there's Hush, who isn't really detailed enough to be more than, shudder, Perky.) Likewise, there's Kol and Mazpatiel, a pair of Judgment Elohim. And Faber and Marath for Creationer Malakim. And then there's the Fiat crowd of Lilim... A handful of Brights, a selection of greenies... >"Oh, a Habbalah. I'll guess that her motive is to . . . punish." Ah, but consider the Habbalite Caliah, from Maya's fiction... >Upon relfection, I like the Cherubim, they don't feel too limited. Cherubim were the ones that _I_ had trouble differentiating, actually! (But now I've got one for a character. I think the trick _is_ attuning them to someone and then letting them bounce off that other person.) Truth be told, initially I had trouble figuring out how anything but Lilim or Impudites could be other than a carbon copy of every other member. The GURPS IN book might actually help with the ones that you don't see the expansion potential in -- it basically distills the important part of the personality (the DISADS!) down into the GURPS disad unit, and leaves the rest in broader strokes, just waiting for the rest of the system to be applied. >In play, I've come to disregard most of the "personality" descriptions and >just used the Resonance/Dissonance conditions, I think. I mostly use the personality stuff as guidelines to interpret, twist, and bounce off of, myself. (Sort of what I do with disads...) >>But he brought back reinforcements and saved the day! And gave me the idea >>for Malakanaries! > >"What do we mine?" >"Goodness from men's souls!" >"What do our Malakanaries detect?" >"Evil!" >> >[...]there's never enough essence to go 'round. >> >>_That's_ the truth!! > >Really, you've found that to be true, too? Do you think its intentional? I >mean, I can see it, to encourage players to get their PCs to do Rites which >helps to further their Word in a direct and real way. I think it's supposed to keep the game from turning into All Superpowers, actually. Look at how difficult Songs are to make work. So if you want to Smite someone, you generally have to have a cinematic fight... Not sure. >Incidently, I don't see why Rites aren't being passed out like candy if they >generate Essence both for the celestial and the Word. (IIRC) They make diffuse Essence for the Word, and direct Essence for the celestial -- sort of like a "loan" in the Superior's view... >>No more than in the original IN -- we all know that the various Choir/Band >>Attunements are worth different things, and that Kyriotates of Lightning >>are one of the more munchkinable combos, right? > >Yes, except that in IN, character point equality isn't nearly as strong an >issue at it is in GURPS. IN points mean squat when you've got so little to >buy, unlike in GURPS. Especially when point cost equal items are so >obviously not worth the same number of points. Well, the points for GURPS IN characters are "up front" about how different they are, so a GM can _tell_ what's more likely to be wimpy and what isn't. >>There are actually 3 different suggested methods of character point >>allocation: the canon model, which mirrors initial character creation >>in IN; > >and results, likely, with a wide-range of final point levels Yup. >the fixed points model, which is more typical for GURPS (and >>includes the cost of the celestial "racial" template); > >which I imagine results in former IN players who's IN character has a higher >point value in GURPS to feel the shaft because they have fewer "freebie" >points with which to customize their character relative to the other players Converted characters and created characters are two different kettles of wax. Traditionally, a converted character gets _converted_, and point totals go hang. (There is a note that a converted character is likely to have had some stuff for "free" that a GURPS character would have to buy, and so they should be given some "customization points" for that.) Frankly, if I had converted characters and GURPS-native characters in the same game, I'd be _certain_ to use the canon model of creation for the native-GURPSers. Point balance would be wonky anyway, so why not go for it... If you're all-native, then fixed-points is at least a _known_ method. >and one where >>all the players pick their Choir/Band and Superior, and the GM >>allocates enough points for the most expensive comb[o]. [...] > >NICE. Good idea. I was thinking about something like that. >Actually, I was thinking about starting off with 150 pts to make the "human >seeming" of the celestial, then just giving them the choir/band package plus >45 points or so to purchage Songs and Attunements. Maybe a bit more than >45, we'll see. Try it with 100 for the "human seeming," then see how it tacks on with the boosted stats celestials get. You can always give them the 50 if that turns out not to flow well. >For now, we'll have the task or merely converting their characters and I'll >probably give them some points to customize and take advantage of GURPS >options so they can flesh out their characters. Ah, good, some feedback for how the conversion chapter works.... O:> >>We were trying to avoid the traps of SuperNormal that can afflict >>high-power supernatural games.... > >Is that the idea that SuperNormals, no matter what their pt level, simply >lack the sheer power that SuperPowers grant the non-Normals? No, it's the idea that a SuperNormal who is properly optimized can frequently wipe the floor with Supers, in GURPS, if built on the same number of points. - --Beth, typing w/a uncoopertive baby (iolanthe) causing typos. "I'm nursing a TROUT! With legs!" ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1993 ******************************** The material here is (C) 2000 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.