Also, the In Nomine Collection now resides on our website, and is being updated and maintained by Elizabeth McCoy. Thanks, Beth!
In Anime will feature angel and demon cartoon characters in a wacky and zany world of young adult celestial teachers battling for the moral life of their Mundane high school students.
The Vice-Principal has led a rebellion against the Principal and taken one-third of the Staff with him. Now the players must choose sides and win the hearts and minds of the youngsters in their class.
Watch out, the demonic professor of chemistry has a pipe bomb!
In Anime will be released exactly one year from today.
Peace,
Moriah
In Anime Ly'n Editor
And in other news, Gamer's World just did a nice review of In Nomine. Check it out.
There are two new covers. The "angel" version features the In Nomine logo and a stylized cross in red foil on a white faux leather cover. The "demon" version comes in black ... with the cross inverted.
The In Nomine Hardback will ship in late March to distributors, and will be available in game stores in early April. You can also order it from us through our online catalog.
Whoosh! And just back from the printer is the In Nomine GM Screen – up at SJG, they just received samples the other day, so expect it to ship out to distributors in no more than a couple weeks.
Then there's the In Nomine Hardback. If you haven't heard, SJ Games is taking the overruns of the interiors from the first printing and binding them into hardbacks. There'll be two different types of hardbacks: black faux leather and white faux leather, with infernal and divine cover designs respectively. The hardback should also ship in a few weeks, God willing. Just to tell everyone officially, since there seems to be some speculation on the subject, this is not a second edition, nor have any changes been made to the text.
And I think that's about it right now. If nothing else, I'll let you know when Night Music goes away to the printer, so expect to hear from me here again in no more than a few weeks.
-- Derek Pearcy
-- Kira
-- Kira
Okay, it's not my roleplaying game. It's Croc's, really. I just wrote this version of it. And after living with it for the past three and a half years, it should start to trickle into stores today.
That's probably all the news I'll have for awhile. Feel free to drop me a line – otherwise, I'll catch you on the next go round.
-- Derek Pearcy
Hey, what more is there to say? We're working on supplements, the GM Screen is at the printer, and if you're lucky you'll have your hands on the core book in less than a day.
But just for fun, let me show you a little pattern I've noticed. In Nomine goes to the printer on Saturday, and on Monday it snows. In Nomine proofs are scheduled to come in, and the whole city is shut down by ice. The actual printed In Nomine books come in, and it freezes again. Keep in mind that we're in Texas. Ice is common in water glasses at restaurants, but it's very rare – one might almost say unnatural – to see ice sitting around out in the open, much less covering everything in sight. So even though it's a wonderful 60 degrees in Austin today (that's Farenheit for all you Celcius freaks out there), I wouldn't be surprised if it snowed tomorrow. I'm not saying I'm betting on it, I'm just saying nothing would surprise me at this point.
-- Derek Pearcy
-- Derek Pearcy
-- Derek Pearcy
So yesterday, I got the call. Copies of In Nomine had come in. There were only a few – two, to be exact – but they were in. I've got a copy and SJ Games has a copy. Steve, fully subscribing to the philosophy that selling something is more important than having something to sell, was talking about auctioning off his copy, so check the Daily Illuminator for news about it. People are welcome to make me offers for my copy.
(Later-In-The-Day Update: Okay, okay, so I that was sarcasm about being willing to part with copy #0 of In Nomine, but after I saw that the auction was not only actually taking place, but bringing in some real dough, I've joined Steve's side of this economic problem. If the second-highest bidder wants my copy that bad, he can have it. I've already read the book. – dp)
Now you may think, "Of course the creator will say they're beautiful, of course he'll say he's happy with it," but you don't know me very well. After being forced to manually kern type in school, I've acquired a knack for critically picking apart everything I do until there's little pride and even less satisfaction remaining. In short, I don't generally like things I do.
I like In Nomine. I mean, the cover (and inside cover, which you gotta see) came off great, as well as I could've hoped (and since I designed the cover three years ago this month, I had pretty high hopes for it). The interior's nice, too. I'm looking at it right now. Oh sure, I'm raking myself over the coals for the few apostrophes which are typographically incorrect, and the one page which has some art that should've been moved half-an-inch over to the left, but I can't escape the fact that it's done, and it's beautiful. The last day has been spent hanging out with my close friends, shoving my copy in front of their faces and giggling like Gabriel on Ritalin.
Uh, oh. The first sign of developer strain is making allusions to the game world he's been working on. It's a good thing Mike Sullivan was just hired as the In Nomine line editor. He's going to be shepherding the brain-child of this strange cross between French and American game designers through its initial growth spurts and beyond. You'll still hear from me for time to time, and I'll keep updating this page in the near future, but after three and a half years, I'm thinking it might be good to stop worrying about things on a cosmic scale for awhile and return to living my life.
To In Nomine fans on the mailing list: we had some trouble at Illuminati Online earlier this week which screwed things up for awhile, but everything should be normal now. Wish us luck.
To In Nomine fans with credit cards on the web: you can order In Nomine from our online catalog now.
To everyone else: go buy a Soul Coughing CD.
-- Derek Pearcy
Loud, anguished cursing aside, we expect to have finished books in house any day now. Wish us luck.
In the meantime, enjoy this story of Lucifer, an early piece of In Nomine from Pyramid #8, recently reposted to the web. Later,
-- Derek Pearcy
The first supplement is the In Nomine GM's Screen, a tri-fold with all the handy charts and such you need to speed combat along, calculate your players' damage to the Symphony and keep you from having to reference all the Songs in the book. In the middle of the screen is a very simple chart showing the Choirs and Bands, and their relations to one another – and a hideously complicated chart illustrating the Superiors and their animosities. It's a beautiful thing, like elaborate celtic patterning, and it'll make your job as a GM that much easier. To flesh things out, and to rationalize extracting from you the cost of the damn thing, we've included a 32-page adventure from S. John Ross, plus (if They let us get away with it) rules for taking out the Avatars of Superiors. Want to know how much it would take to wax Archangel Michael's corporeal vessel? You won't be able to do it, but the info's there. This doesn't mean that a powered-up party, aided by a bit of surprise, couldn't take out a lesser Superior (such as the new Archangel and Demon Prince included with the adventure) but it's still risky.
The first real sourcebook for In Nomine will be Night Music. It fleshes out the place of humanity in the Symphony, introducing more detailed character creation rules for Soldiers of God, Soldiers of Hell, Saints, Undead and Sorcerors. Each sourcebook will also further flesh out some of the Superiors from the original book, introducing Arcane Rites, new Attunements, a more detailed back history and roleplaying notes for the GM. Night Music focuses on Laurence, Archangel of the Sword and General of Heaven's Soldiers, and Saminga, Demon Prince of the Dead, enemy of all life and creator of the Undead. As if that isn't enough, there's the Demon Prince of Rock and Roll to contend with. Put some wax in your ears and get-on-to-the-bus.
SJ Games is committed to getting a bunch of supplements out this year. Keep in mind this is nothing official, but here's what we'd like to see. The Marches would be a guidebook to the ethereal realm focusing on Blandine, Archangel of Dreams, and Beleth, Demon Princess of Nightmares. It would also have support for Archangel Gabriel and Prince Belial, who share the Word of Fire – you can guess what happens when their Servitors get together. Then there's Heaven and Hell, containing the history of the In Nomine cosmos and further fleshing out the conflict between Yves, Archangel of Destiny, and Kronos, Demon Prince of Fate. Also featured would be Asmodeus, Prince of the Game, and Dominic, Archangel of Judgment – two of the only Superiors on opposite sides of things who've been known to actively work together. We'd also like to see The Children of the Grigori (for Eli, Novalis, Andrealphus and Haagenti) Reliquary (for Marc, Jean, Nybbas and Vapula) and the ominous-sounding Armageddon (wrapping up the series with a world-shattering campaign covering the machinations of Michael, Baal, Jordi, Malphas, Janus, Valefor – and Kobal!). Again, nothing official; this is just a peek into the creative process of how we get supplements from "hey, that's a good idea" to a game shop near you.
The In Nomine discussion list is being created today. Send a message with the text "subscribe (list name, either in_nomine-l or in_nomine-digest if you'd like the digest version)" to majordomo@lists.io.com. Or at least that's the way I think it's done; I'm a new comer to the internet list circus, but I bow before the excellence of majordomo. I'll be handling the list until SJ Games hires the In Nomine developer. They've already interviewed several extraordinarily talented people from the world of gaming, and I'm sure someone cool will be stepping into my shoes shortly.
And that's it for this update. Later,
-- Derek Pearcy (dpearcy@io.com)
Of course, there'll be copies floating around my house no later than the end of next week. Like my ex-housemate Dustin says, "Woo-hoo!"
Since I've got a little pull with SJ Games, I'm sure of getting a copy, but pre-orders for In Nomine are getting nice and monstrous so you really might want to reserve a copy to make sure you get one. No kidding.
In other news, I no longer work for SJ Games. I'm hitting the freelance road. Until we get the In Nomine mailing list up and running, you're still welcome to e-mail me your questions.
-- Derek Pearcy (dpearcy@io.com)
-- Derek Pearcy
But the snow and the ice and my breath fogging before my eyes only served to remind me that what had happened Saturday had not been a dream. In Nomine had gone to the printer, and shortly thereafter Hell had frozen over.
Not that I compare Austin to Hell, but comparing my life over the past month or two (or, really, the past three and a half years during which I worked on the project) to the great abyss would not be entirely out of line, though you didn't pull this page up to listen to me bitch. What you want to know is, "When will I have a copy in my hot little hands?"
Believe me, I want to know that, too. The book will ship to distributors in January. When in January, I don't know. There'll probably be an offical announcement very soon, and as news becomes available I'll let you know.
-- Derek Pearcy (dpearcy@io.com)
And what better time of year to announce that In Nomine is finally going to the printer. Okay, so this is a little early, but we expect it leave SJ Games before the end of the week. I can't even tell you all how happy I am. Everyone around here is ecstatic and weary, euphoric and tired.
Unfortunately, you won't see copies in stores for weeks yet, but at least it's going out of my hands. In the meantime, here's an early picture of Lynoure, the Demon of Shadow Shapes.
Also, when I wiped the older updates I lost the links to all the neat stuff I'd put online before. Here again is a chunk of the original Bright Dream, and some prototype character sheets (angelic and demonic).
-- Derek Pearcy (dpearcy@io.com)
And for those of you who are just slavering for the tiniest bit of In Nomine, check out the current issue of Mondo 2000, the one with two silver-haired girls on the cover. There's an extremely flattering review (also covering Chris McCubbin's GURPS CthulhuPunk) by Chris Hudak. Don't worry; even though they're very kind to us, they also tell it like it is: "Internal changes of heart at Steve Jackson Games have by turns altered, delayed or stopped entirely so many aspects of the game, with such regularity, they should have their design staff doing space shuttle launches." Hey, it's not rocket-science, it's roleplaying. But . . . point taken.
-- Derek Pearcy (dpearcy@io.com)
The material here is (C) 1996 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All
rights reserved.
