From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Thu Jul 20 11:31:42 2000 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 LAA03282 for ; Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:31:40 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id LAA29149 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:30:06 -0500 Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:30:06 -0500 Message-Id: <200007201630.LAA29149@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 #1722 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 Thursday, July 20 2000 Volume 01 : Number 1722 In this digest: Re: IN> Dead Superiors Re: IN> Dead Superiors IN> Re: Grigori stuff (was Re: Deeply Heretical) Re: IN> Re: Grigori stuff (was Re: Deeply Heretical) Re: IN> Dead Superiors Re: IN> Characterizing archangels Re: IN> Outcast Kyriotates of Michael. IN> Re: Thirty seconds over the Vale... IN> Lucifer and Falling IN> Re: Grigori stuff IN> Superiors on Amadan IN> Re: Legion IN> Adventures in In Nomine (was Re: Dead Superiors) Re: IN> Adventures in In Nomine (was Re: Dead Superiors) IN> Re: God IN> Re: Thrity Seconds over the Vale Re: IN> GURPS-IN and material for IN Re: IN> Dead Superiors Re: IN> Adventures in In Nomine (was Re: Dead Superiors) Re: IN> Dead Superiors Re: IN> Ranting [was:A fun little thought, with hairy implications] Re: IN> Thirty seconds over the Vale... Re: IN> Dead Superiors Re: IN> Dead Superiors ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 13:54:14 GMT From: "Jo Hart" Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors > >I also think Jo is spot-on with a book of sample adventures. After all, >Hogshead just released a 24 page book with _5_ unique adventures, and it's >already being well received. Pantheon is absolutely fantastic! I was a sad fangirl and even emailed James Wallis to tell him so (and he was really quite gracious about it.) I'll probably bug him more at GenCon UK. The main reason I think we badly need to see some inspirational, fully developed scenarios comes from my perception of who the game is being played by. I think it's appealing to older (ie. over 21) gamers -- people who are very likely to be in fulltime jobs, not have oodles of spare time, etc. If you're in that situation, a scenario that you can read through and run is _exactly_ what you want; maybe not for every game session, but as filler, or something you can easily adapt for those weeks when you just want to run a one-off. Frex, look at the book of one-shots that Atlas produced for Unknown Armies. I don't givea shit about having a balanced gameline. I want stuff out there that people will buy and use! And that means no more libers. (The Canticorum was handy; the others strictly optional.) Swelpmegod. jo ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:17:35 -0400 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors At 9:35 AM -0400 7/20/00, Emily Dresner wrote: > > I agree, which is why I said that all the inprints need to be >> developed for a healthy game line. Of all the different types of >> books (Guides, Superiors, Libers and Cycles) the only one that hasn't >> come out in the last year and a half or more is a Cycle/adventure >> book. Therefore, it's acutely needed. > >The reason that Jo is spot-on is not because it needs to look like a >healthy game line, Not what I said. To *be* a healthy game line, it needs all those things. Not to appear like one. To *be* one. Let me strip out the IN specifics for my 'inprint' theory and rephrase: To be a healthy and strong game line, a game needs the following elements consistently produced: * Core Rules (just once but for revisions, naturally, but *with* revisions) * Rules In Depth * Expanded Rules * Expanded Flavor * Playable Adventures The successful game lines -- the ones that keep a good healthy population coming back and show growth -- have those five elements served up at all times. Look at any given White Wolf Game, represented here by Wampyr. * Vampire: The Masquerade (in multiple editions and revisions) * Player's Guide and Storyteller's Guide * Clanbooks a plenty * Chicago by Night, Montreal by Night, and so on and so forth * Chicago Chronicles et al Those just scratch the surface of the above. Or, let's take something closer to home: * GURPS (now in 3rd Edition) * GURPS Companion I & II * GURPS Space, GURPS Fantasy, GURPS Supers et al. * GURPS Space Atlas, GURPS Worldbooks, licensed GURPS properties, GURPS Technomancer... * GURPS Supers School of Hard Knocks, GURPS Martial Arts Adventures, etc. Or something close to mainstream/traditional (dropping back to the early eighties): * Player's Handbook * Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual * Deities and Demigods, Fiend Folio, Oriental Adventures, Unearthed Arcana * World of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance * Modules modules modules! What these different elements represent are increasing levels of detail, convenience and depth for different types of games. Straight players generally only need the Core Rules, and perhaps don't even need that. Some players, especially if they're into the game pretty heavily, will want Rules in Depth, Expanded Rules and/or Expanded Flavor that pertain directly to their characters. Game Masters need the Core Rules, and perhaps some of the Rules in Depth or Expanded Rules that pertain to the game they want to play. (For instance, someone who wants to run a fantasy game in GURPS can do it with the Basic Rules, but may well want to grab one or both Compendiums and will almost certainly want GURPS Fantasy, and perhaps GURPS Magic.) If they don't want to bother with developing the game world themselves, or want to mine ideas to do it, they'll want Expanded Flavor. If they want to be easily kickstarted into the game, they'll want Playable Adventures. And some poor fools (like me) want the whole kit'n'kaboodle. >For example, very recently on the forums on RPG.net, as in the last >week, there was a thread called "Best Game You'll Never Play." Several >times, In Nomine was brought up in the thread, and the number one reason >for not following the game was "no playable adventures." Number one. >With a bullet. (I believe the key word here is "playable," as I don't >believe the Revelations Cycle qualifies.) I completely agree. It's the element that's lacking, without a doubt. Especially since it's the element that adds simplicity. With a book of adventures, someone could pick up In Nomine's core rules and the "Liber Conflictatio" and run three adventures in a campaign without any additional help or supplies needed. >(Not that I think SJG has a snowball's chance in Hell of getting >Robin Laws to write anything for In Nomine, mind you.) Mm. I'm sorry, but why precisely should I care? Honestly? If Robin Laws doesn't want to write for IN, I guess that's Robin Laws's decision. Either way, I don't really care in the least. > Demonstrating how to run and play the game is a sure fire way >of getting people to join -- even if the bullet is bitten and it's >sold as a pamphlet, or given away as a free .pdf download. Such a >creature, if well put together, does work, does sell, and makes people >happy. Again -- totally agree. - -- Eric Alfred Burns - Habbalite of Belaboring the Point ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:30:24 -0400 From: "Krishnaswami, Neel" Subject: IN> Re: Grigori stuff (was Re: Deeply Heretical) Casca wrote > > On Wed, 19 July 2000, Walter Milliken wrote: > > > The main drawback to this theory is that many (originally thought to > > be all) the Grigori were hunted down and killed by Heaven. Unless > > that was all a sham, that's a fairly high price to pay to plant a > > *very* few agents. But then, maybe that *was* what God intended. > > "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also AFTERWARD > [emphasis mine]..." -- Genesis 6:4. It then goes on to talk about > the Flood, whose purpose was to wipe out the sinful, wicked humans. > > Hunted down, indeed. Drowned is more likely. This was the reason for the Flood in my game -- the offspring of humans and angels were monstrous giants, the nephilim, and they had been destroyed in the Flood. It was also the reason that Dominic would hunt down and obliterate with extreme prejudice any angel who was caught engaging in sex with humans: he had been responsible for passing judgment on all of mankind once before, and he was absolutely not going to do it again, especially since this time it would involve fire rather than water. (Fortunately for Dominic, demon-human matings were sterile.) The possibility that Eli was off producing a new generation of crossbreeds was the reason he was after him so relentlessly. - -- Neel Krishnaswami neelk@cswcasa.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:38:55 -0500 From: Earl Wajenberg Subject: Re: IN> Re: Grigori stuff (was Re: Deeply Heretical) Krishnaswami, Neel wrote: > This was the reason for the Flood in my game -- the offspring of > humans and angels were monstrous giants, the nephilim, and they had > been destroyed in the Flood. This is also a very traditional reason for the Flood. There are old tales about the famine-producing appetites of the nephilim, and the general idea is that they had destroyed or corrupted almost the whole human race, necessitating the Flood. > It was also the reason that Dominic would hunt down and obliterate > with extreme prejudice any angel who was caught engaging in sex > with humans Sex or procreation? > (Fortunately for Dominic, demon-human matings were sterile.) I thought angel-human matings were also sterile, unless the angel was a Grigori or the Song of Fruition was used. > The possibility that Eli was off producing a new generation of > crossbreeds was the reason he was after him so relentlessly. Yeah, and it IS the kind of thing one can picture Eli doing. Earl ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:45:41 -0400 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors At 1:54 PM +0000 7/20/00, Jo Hart wrote: > >I don't givea shit about having a balanced gameline. I want stuff >out there that people will buy and use! One's a requirement for the other. Period. And both, frankly, are a requirement for a *successful* game line. > And that means no more libers. (The Canticorum was handy; the >others strictly optional.) Swelpmegod. I hooked several new players with the Servitorum, and refer to it moderately often. I get drawn back to the Castellorum relatively often when I'm puttering. Frankly, the Canticorum's one of the least that I use -- when I do new characters, I'm almost *always* going to use Main Book songs exclusively. So, that's a *lot* more YMMV than you're implying, so far. Look, take a second and pretend -- just pretend -- that there might be a point to having the different elements I've discussed in the line. Let's look at In Nomine and see where we have sufficient resources and where we don't, all right? * Main Book -- well, no. Not currently and the reprint isn't a revi-- oh, never mind. I don't want to open *that* up again. * Guides -- APG, IPG, CPG, GMG. Four resources, three of which are considered good to excellent by general consensus. * Libers -- Canticorum, Servitorum, Castellorum, Reliquarum and You Are Here. Some excellent, some not, with subjectivity on which is which. Still. Five books. * Superiors -- Three out, one due soon. All considered pretty spiffy to date. * Cycles -- The Revelations Cycle. Generally considered poor. Mapping those to Core, Depth, Expanded Rules, Expanded Flavor and Playable Adventures, we have trouble at the Core being hopefully resolved at least a little, at least three strong Depth books, probably a consensus that three of the Expanded Rules are excellent out of the five, with differences of opinion on which are those three. Three (and soon to be four) Expanded Flavors which are considered worthy. And Adventures that aren't much considered playable all told, leaving us with no Playable Adventures. In other words, you're right. It's the clear need the line has right now. One might say the desperate need. So where precisely are we in conflict? Or is it because this discussion came out of a discussion on a different topic, regardless of whether I agree with your assessment? - -- Eric Alfred Burns - Habbalite of Belaboring the Point ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:48:09 -0400 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: IN> Characterizing archangels At 9:46 AM -0500 7/20/00, Earl Wajenberg wrote: >Charles Phipps wrote: > >> Terrified and shivering and stricken by doubt Laurence broke for >> the first and only time his holy vow as a Malakim to obey his >> superior in all things by allowing them to go in a willful >> violation of his oath by omisson. > >Which means Laurance was dissonant, at least for a bit. As I recall, >Uriel had some very low number of notes of dissonance that he would >tolerate in his servants before destroying them. Maybe it was three. >If it was one, you either toss canon or have Laurence waiting for >execution. You're tossing Canon already. It's explicit in Sup1 that Laurence has *never* had so much as a single note of dissonance. Not that it much matters, but I thought I would mention. - -- Eric Alfred Burns - Habbalite of Belaboring the Point ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:51:03 -0400 From: John Karakash Subject: Re: IN> Outcast Kyriotates of Michael. Elizabeth McCoy wrote: > Basically. I _might_ allow a Kyriotate of Michael to go to Limbo, if > it were inhabiting a host or its vessel _solely_ when it were killed, > since it can have a vessel. Then it could regenerate Essence and use > it for making a vessel normally. (Or maybe give it the choice of Limbo > (and Trauma!) when its vessel s toasted, or pulling out painfully and > "roughing it" in any other hosts it might have...) Heh. > >It talks about generating vessels and creating vessels in the attunement > >description. Does this mean the Kyriotate could -- theoretically -- start > >without a vessel, and buy one when he gets 3 character points? > > With Michael's permission and connivance. (Or some other Superior's.) > > (The "creating vessels" stuff is a holdover from a previous draft which > allowed non-Superiors to create vessels out of Essence/Experience points. > When Essence was equal to experience points. I think.) > > _That's_ canon, far as I know. Karakash will catch me if I've forgotten > something... Yup. The 'generating vessels' stuff is old canon (pre-1st edition!) =) The expanded writeup in Superiors 1 makes it clear. Unfortunately the expanded writeup for David still says 'Kyriotates serving David can create their own vessels...'. Argh! Kyrios of David can have vessels (of stone only) and only granted to them by David. - -- +============================================= + John Karakash - geek, writer, cook + Code mangler for EMC CLARiiON + mib2300 +============================================= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:52:23 -0400 From: "Krishnaswami, Neel" Subject: IN> Re: Thirty seconds over the Vale... Maurice Lane wrote: > > Of course, from _Blandine's_ they've just condemned > her organization to a nasty war to the knife that > would virtually force her to accept help from two > Archangels she personally can't stand, which is one > reason why they haven't kept her up to date. In Blandine's extended writeup in Sup 3, it's noted that Beleth is targeting Blandine's angels directly, in order to force Blandine to take up a more direct battle. Blandine is so far refusing to take the bait and risk damaging the Vale, and suffering heavy casualties as a result. This is exactly the sort of situation that I can see Michael and David feeling obligated to intervene in. Blandine and her angels are getting attacked every night, and they can't just stand by and let it happen. But somebody's got to protect her, too, even if she refuses their aid -- after all, what's the point of being a heroic warrior angel if you can't defend the innocent? Mmm. Moral quandry -- which side will the PCs take? :) - -- Neel Krishnaswami neelk@cswcasa.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:56:27 EDT From: Daedalus3D@aol.com Subject: IN> Lucifer and Falling In a message dated 7/19/00 4:02:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com writes: << > I don't think this has to be the case. Was Lucifer riddled with Discord? > I doubt that. >> Another point to consider is that Lucifer and Co. didn't actually "Fall" in the same sense that modern angels do. They didn't actually become demons until they were kicked out of Heaven. The "War in Heaven" was in Heaven, after all, where the Light of Heaven would have blasted all demons to Celestial ash. If you take John Milton's account of the War as something close to actual truth, the "fallen" became demons as they fell from Heaven to Hell. They just woke up in the Pit with bat-wings and such. It wasn't discord and dissonance so much that made Lucifer and Co. fall. It was simply the Almighty ejecting them from Heaven (of course, in the IN world, they probably got some dissonance before they were kicked out). Daedalus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:00:14 EDT From: Daedalus3D@aol.com Subject: IN> Re: Grigori stuff Couldn't God's Outcasting of the Grigori have a lot to do with him wanting to create Soldiers on Earth? He knew in His divine omniscience that the grigori were just going to keep doing what they had always done, even as an outcast choir, and that few of them would fall (and the ones who did, don't even serve Hell). In return, he gets a bunch of 6-force human servitors who don't disturb the Symphony. Sounds like a strategic move to me. Don't you love the ineffeable? Daedalus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:03:35 EDT From: Daedalus3D@aol.com Subject: IN> Superiors on Amadan In a message dated 7/19/00 4:02:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com writes: << Truth be told on David's site we already have some of the Superiors you may want to talk about >> Yeah, I know. Truth be told, I'd love to see Azrael become canon as the second Grigori Archangel. He is so amazingly creative and well thought out. Now that we've got Grigori rules from GURPS IN, a couple of my players want to do a campaign around the Grigori Archangel of Death. Thanks David. Daedalus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:09:08 EDT From: Daedalus3D@aol.com Subject: IN> Re: Legion In a message dated 7/19/00 4:02:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com writes: << Biblically Legion was the collective name of a bunch of demons who possesed a man in Gallilee before they were driven out-not wanting to go back to the pit-but that might have been because he didn't want to face Saminga >> Yeah, I had always woundered about that. Jesus casts out Legion into a herd of swine in the Bible (somewhere around 15-30 A.D.) Maybe that was when Legion was first experimenting with his powers. Then he just got stronger and stronger until both sides had to take him out around 1000 A.D. Still, for Legion to be sitting around for a thousand years seems to be pretty far fetched. Also, after Legion gets cast into the pigs, they all run and jump off a cliff, meaning that the Shedite would be forced to find another host or go back to Hell (something that's confusing if, as you say, that's just what he wanted to avoid). Then again, Legion could have just taken his name from an earlier demon. Maybe just that whole Biblical line that goes "for we are many" caught his eye. Daedalus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:17:13 EDT From: MarkDEddy@aol.com Subject: IN> Adventures in In Nomine (was Re: Dead Superiors) In a message dated 7/20/00 7:49:31 AM, in-sabre@annotations.com writes: >Mapping those to Core, Depth, Expanded Rules, Expanded Flavor and >Playable Adventures, we have trouble at the Core being hopefully >resolved at least a little, at least three strong Depth books, >probably a consensus that three of the Expanded Rules are excellent >out of the five, with differences of opinion on which are those >three. Three (and soon to be four) Expanded Flavors which are >considered worthy. And Adventures that aren't much considered >playable all told, leaving us with no Playable Adventures. > >In other words, you're right. It's the clear need the line has right >now. One might say the desperate need. And there is a reason for this. What sort of playable adventure can be written for In Nomine? Dungeon crawl works poorly with the setting. Mystery/suspense blows up with the application of appropriate resonances (unless you are very careful-I'm hoping to address this later). In Nomine is practically designed for situational comedy, but who writes sitcom adventures? What other styles are out there? My campaign (now that it's going again) is essentially turning into a soap opera, but that's mostly character-driven. Hmmm.... now that I'm thinking about it, it looks like an In Nomine ready-to-run adventure would almost have to include preprinted PC's. Does anyone have any way around this problem? Would it be appropriate to send a complete adventure to the list for critique? (I have a few ideas, but it's getting kind of complex) On the topic of mysteries, there are only two ways to prevent an angelic group from resonating their way to the end of the adventure. The first is to limit the witnesses. The second is to force them into the legal system, where evidence is necessary. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:28:08 -0500 From: Earl Wajenberg Subject: Re: IN> Adventures in In Nomine (was Re: Dead Superiors) MarkDEddy@aol.com wrote: > In Nomine is practically designed for situational comedy, but > who writes sitcom adventures? What other styles are out there? > My campaign (now that it's going again) is essentially turning > into a soap opera, but that's mostly character-driven. At opposite poles, we have: Superheroics -- I'm not very clued in to this genre, but my impression is that the plot hinges on finding the vulnerability or the motivation of the opponent. Due to the secretive nature of the War, such adventures are best staged in remote locations of the Corporeal Plane (deserts, ocean bottoms, deep space, wilderness... QUIET, Jordi.) or on the Ethereal or Celestial Planes, where they'd be right at home. Soap-opera, by the way, seems quite compatible with this. "Touched by an Angel" / "Highway to Heaven" -- Here, the object is to chivvy\\\\\\ er, guide humans into doing the right thing (or the wrong thing, if you're demonic). This gives emphasis to human characters, so either you need to divide the PCs into human and celestial groups, to play off each other, or the GM has to take one of the groups (probably human). Concerning angels resonnating their way through mysteries -- Would that be bad? The challenge becomes, not to uncover the mystery, but to avoid blowing your cover. "And just HOW, Mr. Holmesiel, did you know the dog did not bark that night?" Earl ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:36:58 EDT From: Daedalus3D@aol.com Subject: IN> Re: God In a message dated 7/20/00 9:51:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time, owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com writes: << > God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid > to laugh. "My goal is to eliminate irony and make a fool out of God." - The Waitresses >> Not bad. But this one tops all of those. "God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising. which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e. everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time." - Neil Gaiman and Tracy Pratchett, Good Omens Actually, in the case of In Nomine, that applies to Lucifer as well. Don't you love the ineffable? Daedalus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:40:24 EDT From: Daedalus3D@aol.com Subject: IN> Re: Thrity Seconds over the Vale In a message dated 7/20/00 9:51:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time, owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com writes: << Oh, and how much time do the PCs have before millions of dreams are shrouded by black wings? It depends. What time is it? >> Morgan, you've outdone yourself this time. I'm gonna have to steal this . . . Daedalus ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:57:34 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> GURPS-IN and material for IN At 1:15 PM -0700 7/19/00, sw@haven.eyrie.org wrote: >But on another subject with changes in GURPS:IN, what about the rules for >Geasae, where 4 Geasae of one level equal one of the next? [...] This is one option, out of the many that exist, which I will probably _propose_ for 2/e. There's been a lot of "I can do 6 1-hour tasks for someone and make him kill someone??" comment in the past. The details of what, if any, changes to the IN _mechanics_ for Geases, are up in te aur. babywiggle! - --Beth, catching up as she can, typing with a baby (iolanthe) in her lap. Vapitalizatoin and spelling still difficult, typing w/ 1 hand (and often a wigglebaby in the other). ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 15:57:15 GMT From: "Jo Hart" Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors >From: Whistling in the Dark >> And that means no more libers. (The Canticorum was handy; the >>others strictly optional.) Swelpmegod. > > >So, that's a *lot* more YMMV than you're implying, so far. So we can disagree on which one is handy -- but they're all optional. It's like having books of magic weapons for D&D, I don't see them as critical, just easy to produce. > >Look, take a second and pretend -- just pretend -- that there might >be a point to having the different elements I've discussed in the >line. This is what I don't see. I think your analysis is a bit divorced from RL, and is all retrospective, based on what has been produced so far. So naturally if you go with that, you will end up concluding that the best thing to do is more of the same. Now I'm going to quickly sweep through some of those other successful games you mentioned earlier. 1. Vampire. Has never had any decent books of scenarios, ever, unless you count the X by Night books. They've really tried to do scenarios -- but they weren't good. On the other hand, it hasn't had many books of resources either that I know of. (Book of Disciplines?) It's been mainly setting. Many splatbooks that appealed to players, as opposed to GMs. 2. D&D. TONS of scenarios. Loads and loads of them. It's one of the main reasons it was so popular -- it was easy for a GM to go off and buy a scenario or a copy of Dungeon and just run something generic. Also had some extraordinarily good setting material, but I think it is better known from the scenarios. Had some books of monsters et al also, but frankly they've got the resources to keep publishing pretty much everything they can think of. They know that scenarios get people into GMing though, so they'll keep doing them ad infinitum. 3. Call of Cthulhu. Practically nothing _except_ city setting sourcebooks and lots of very good scenarios. So I don't see that a successful game must have all those things. jo ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:54:31 -0400 From: Whistling in the Dark Subject: Re: IN> Adventures in In Nomine (was Re: Dead Superiors) At 11:17 AM -0400 7/20/00, MarkDEddy@aol.com wrote: > >And there is a reason for this. What sort of playable adventure can be >written for In Nomine? On the Angelic Side of things: Limit who knows anything and don't *open* with demons. This is cold war, and for all intents and purposes it works like submarine warfare. The Angels and Demons walk among humanity, pursuing their goals while trying to make as little noise as possible. So, a few fast adventure types for angels, all off the top of my head: 1. Mysterious Disturbance just outside of the PCs stomping grounds. Here's a mystery that has no effective witnesses to question to get those Resonances around, but it's also a situation where the PCs (and their Superiors) won't let them just slough it off. They need to figure out what's happened indirectly, slowly zeroing in on what the demons are up to. 2. Kidnapping. The child of an attuned to human is kidnapped, forcing the Cherub to do something before his attuned does something drastic. Again -- no one to question directly that gives them witnesses. 3. Protection Schemes. Demons are trying to lower the property values and overall 'attitude' of a given series of city blocks by going through and threatening to have 'accidents happen' if they don't get money. Make them Calabim for more fun. The angels don't know where the Calabim go to wait things out and they only come out during the day when there's people/witnesses around -- and none of them can ever be proved to be guilty of a thing, since any accidents that *do* happen are resonance related. (It's the scary truth that a Calabite can use his resonance openly, and humanity will assume some kind of explosive and never suspect a demonic power. This can be useful to Hell.) 4. Tether assault. There's a tether to lust that's appeared smack in the middle of the school district. It needs to be eliminated *without* blowing anything up. 5. A madman starts wandering the streets, rambling about visions that invoke the known names of angels and demons as he shouts. No one knows if he's a prophet, a false prophet or some crazy guy who overheard the wrong people talking. The angels need to determine which, while protecting him from the demons who want to capture or kill him, and minimizing the damage to secrecy he represents. >Hmmm.... now that I'm thinking about it, it looks like an In Nomine >ready-to-run adventure would almost have to include preprinted PC's. Does >anyone have any way around this problem? I don't think that would be a huge problem, actually. Simply have System Requirements. Either use the preprinted PCs, or require PCs from a short list of Words for full compatibility. Some adventures would be fine for anyone, of course. >On the topic of mysteries, there are only two ways to prevent an angelic >group from resonating their way to the end of the adventure. The first is to >limit the witnesses. The second is to force them into the legal system, where >evidence is necessary. The latter is a Detective Story instead of a Mystery. The third is to build puzzles in such a way that even Angelic attunements can't peel the answers out. For example, the discovery of an ancient mystery that claims to lead to a storehouse of the Knights Templer. There aren't many Resonances that can neg that mystery out of the box, and if you hint that there's Potent Things in that storehouse, *and* throw some of the other side into the mix, going to get them... well, you have yourself a perfect little adventure, in the style of any number of Western Movies or Racing Movies starring Burt Reynolds. - -- Eric Alfred Burns - Habbalite of Belaboring the Point ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 11:04:23 -0500 From: David Edelstein Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors Jo Hart wrote: > So I don't see that a successful game must have all those things. Y'all should make a distinction between successful _games_ and successful game _lines_. By many standards, Amber Diceless RPG could be considered a highly successful game, since it still has a huge following - -- even though there were only two books ever published, and those years and years ago. - -David ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:15:03 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> Ranting [was:A fun little thought, with hairy implications] At 9:17 PM -0500 7/19/00, Kiara S. Legner wrote: [...] > But that's not the point. The >point is that it's *really* hard to turn your back on the Symphony when you >resonate to it all the time. That being the case, just why *would* an angel >who can hear the Symphony well Jump? Other than being Lucifer, of course, >and we don't know what his dissonance looked like at the time of the Fall... Jumping -- or not -- is really a function of Brightness. For instance, take http://orleans.pave-france.org/~maya/meta/META18.html -- also known as an instance of the Fiat crowd doing "fluff" adventures... in the Heaven of BalProp. (IN Sliders, is the title of this fluff series.) If BalProp Heaven is _closer_ to "reality" in someone's campaign, well, holding your nose and Jumping is clearly the saner thing to do, no? (Anyone not knowing what BalProp Heaven is, send me private email with an age-statement, and I'll give you the URL. Yes, it's that squicky.) - --Beth, catching up as she can, typing with a baby (iolanthe) in her lap. Vapitalizatoin and spelling still difficult, typing w/ 1 hand (and often a wigglebaby in the other). ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:20:29 -0400 From: Douglas Muir Subject: Re: IN> Thirty seconds over the Vale... Maurice, I liked this. Wouldn't work IMC (too many angels... I try to keep the numbers mysterious but in any event _low_), but I like the way it brings the Superiors into conflict, while also providing a neat hook for PCs. (This is one of the most common weakness of Kewl Ideas about games, BTW... no PC hooks, so no way to implement them in a game. Speaking for myself, I always try to drop one or two in... "PCs might meet the Pfluger while en route by plane from Las vegas to...") Doug M. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:30:52 -0400 From: Walter Milliken Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors At 13:54 +0000 7/20/00, Jo Hart wrote: >I don't givea shit about having a balanced gameline. I want stuff out there that people will buy and use! And *that*'s the rub for adventures. SJGames' experience with adventure books has been that they *don't* sell very well. (Compared to, say, rules-oriented or background books.) The only lines I know of that have heavy adventure support are Call of Cthulhu and D&D. CoC seems to be something of an aberration in that respect, and it's not what I'd call a massively-successful line; my recollection is that it's now produced by a part-time publisher. In fact. It's basically a "cult" game -- a small base of very loyal fans. (This may yet turn out to be IN's state, so that's doesn't necessarily make CoC irrelevant to this discussion.) D&D published many adventures, most middling-terrible (at least in the early days, I'm not really familiar with D&D after early 2nd ed.) The thing that most distinguishes D&D is that it is a "first system" -- people new to RPGs buy it first, usually. And pre-packaged adventures are most appealing to novice GMs, I think. My experience has been that experienced GMs tend to avoid (or even sneer at) published adventures -- for one thing, there's too much chance the players will read them, for another, they tend to want to use their own well-developed backgrounds and characters. Out of the 100+ books published for GURPS, which I think has to be considered at least a moderately successful game line, there are, I think, less than a half-dozen adventures. I actually wrote part of one of them, and I *know* that one wasn't a particularly big seller, despite being the first book of adventures (more or less) for the biggest genre segment in GURPS: fantasy. I think the general marketing data on adventures has been that: 1) people say they want them 2) people do, to some extent, measure a game line's support by them 3) people *don't* buy them (at least for "second systems" used mostly by experienced gamers, like GURPS, and probably IN) This makes them into a "loss leader" item, which I believe is actually something that TSR may have done as a policy. But they could afford it. For a while.... It's fairly easy to see why adventures don't tend to sell well -- they're nominally a "GM-only" item. And players typically outnumber GMs substantially. So that lowers the numbers vs. a "player-use" book. Also, a basic adventure (one without additional, re-usable background material) is a "one-use" item. That adds economic disincentives to the GM to buy it, unless it's relatively cheap. (Note that all the early TSR modules were cheap, both in production values and sales price.) > And that means no more libers. (The Canticorum was handy; the others strictly optional.) Swelpmegod. I don't think any more of those are planned anytime soon -- the obvious ones have all been done, I think, and they're not particularly stellar in sales, to the best of my knowledge (mostly from watching what the game store seems to be moving). - ---Walter ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:30:52 -0400 From: Walter Milliken Subject: Re: IN> Dead Superiors At 13:54 +0000 7/20/00, Jo Hart wrote: >I don't givea shit about having a balanced gameline. I want stuff out there that people will buy and use! And *that*'s the rub for adventures. SJGames' experience with adventure books has been that they *don't* sell very well. (Compared to, say, rules-oriented or background books.) The only lines I know of that have heavy adventure support are Call of Cthulhu and D&D. CoC seems to be something of an aberration in that respect, and it's not what I'd call a massively-successful line; my recollection is that it's now produced by a part-time publisher. In fact. It's basically a "cult" game -- a small base of very loyal fans. (This may yet turn out to be IN's state, so that's doesn't necessarily make CoC irrelevant to this discussion.) D&D published many adventures, most middling-terrible (at least in the early days, I'm not really familiar with D&D after early 2nd ed.) The thing that most distinguishes D&D is that it is a "first system" -- people new to RPGs buy it first, usually. And pre-packaged adventures are most appealing to novice GMs, I think. My experience has been that experienced GMs tend to avoid (or even sneer at) published adventures -- for one thing, there's too much chance the players will read them, for another, they tend to want to use their own well-developed backgrounds and characters. Out of the 100+ books published for GURPS, which I think has to be considered at least a moderately successful game line, there are, I think, less than a half-dozen adventures. I actually wrote part of one of them, and I *know* that one wasn't a particularly big seller, despite being the first book of adventures (more or less) for the biggest genre segment in GURPS: fantasy. I think the general marketing data on adventures has been that: 1) people say they want them 2) people do, to some extent, measure a game line's support by them 3) people *don't* buy them (at least for "second systems" used mostly by experienced gamers, like GURPS, and probably IN) This makes them into a "loss leader" item, which I believe is actually something that TSR may have done as a policy. But they could afford it. For a while.... It's fairly easy to see why adventures don't tend to sell well -- they're nominally a "GM-only" item. And players typically outnumber GMs substantially. So that lowers the numbers vs. a "player-use" book. Also, a basic adventure (one without additional, re-usable background material) is a "one-use" item. That adds economic disincentives to the GM to buy it, unless it's relatively cheap. (Note that all the early TSR modules were cheap, both in production values and sales price.) > And that means no more libers. (The Canticorum was handy; the others strictly optional.) Swelpmegod. I don't think any more of those are planned anytime soon -- the obvious ones have all been done, I think, and they're not particularly stellar in sales, to the best of my knowledge (mostly from watching what the game store seems to be moving). - ---Walter ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1722 ******************************** The material here is (C) 2000 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.