From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Sat Oct 9 20:08:51 1999 Return-Path: Received: from lists.io.com (majordom@lists.io.com [199.170.88.15]) by pyramid.sjgames.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id UAA22825 for ; Sat, 9 Oct 1999 20:08:51 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id UAA25428 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Sat, 9 Oct 1999 20:08:13 -0500 Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 20:08:13 -0500 Message-Id: <199910100108.UAA25428@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 #1358 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 Saturday, October 9 1999 Volume 01 : Number 1358 In this digest: Re: IN> URIEL -- Archangel of Purity IN> Playing the Game: Building a cover story IN> AD:Family Reunion T Shirts & More IN> no dinero ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 07:07:02 PDT From: "Jo Hart" Subject: Re: IN> URIEL -- Archangel of Purity >Probably they do need an explicit statement that they don't take dissonance >for using their resonance in this manner. >(And thus Cherubim of Purity would have been regarded as extremely callous >by the rest of their Choir.) Sounds almost identical to Cherubim of Judgment. jo ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 17:53:42 -0400 From: Neel Krishnaswami Subject: IN> Playing the Game: Building a cover story IMO, the Game is one of the most under-utilized pieces of the In Nomine setting. Very often, they are used as brutal thugs who wouldn't know subtlety if it had its own dance numbers, but used properly they can add a degree of wheels-within-wheels paranoia that only Kafka-and- Solhenitsyn-laced amphetamines can match. So I've decided to write a few short articles about the basics of making people scared, paranoid, and willing to help the authorities do evil to the people who trust them. What else is a roleplaying list for, after all? - -*-*-*- The minimal usefully paranoid cover story has three parts: - - The surface story; this is the story told to casual observers and people who are just beginning to investigate. It's not meant up to close scrutiny; instead, it works by deflecting attention away from what the Game is trying to do. You don't have to explain if no one notices. - - The understory: this is the story that is meant for people who aren't fooled by the surface story. It's designed to survive close and extended scrutiny, and is particularly designed to offer a story explaining the motivations behind the actions the Game is taking. - - The real motive: this is what the action is actually trying to accomplish, and should be kept as secret as possible. If it is compromised, it's probably a good idea to either abandon the project or to change goals so that this can be an understory for the new project. Two examples: 1. A Game agent (call her Attai for concreteness) is attempting to infiltrate a group of Renegades to find out if one particualar demon is in the group. Her surface story is simply that she too is a Renegade looking for mutual protection. Probably she will have some resources that the Renegades need in order to facilitate her acceptance. If she is grabbed for being too snoopy to be a real Renegade, then she will "admit" that she is that she's a demon of Theft with half a map to some valuable (a cache of art treasures looted by the Nazis, for example), and that she has heard that the demon with the other half is someone affiliated with the group (say someone recently soul-killed), and she was trying to find out who had the map in order to to make a deal. This offers a false motive that explains her suspicious behavior -- nosiness and curiousity -- but which conceals what she's really after. Her real motive, of course, is to find out if the Renegade she's really after can be reached through this group. 2. Suppose that the Game wants to install some bugs in sensitive area of an Andrealphan brothel (no pun intended). Here's how it might be done. First, officials in the Game would make an announcement to the city that seditious activity in Shal-Mari had reached unacceptable levels, and that they were embarking on yet another terror campaign to intimidate dissidents. Second, over the next few weeks, Game agents would storm various locations all throughout the city, and arrest many of the people they find, and install the bugs while they are there. As part of this campaign, the Game will storm and temporarily occupy the brothel, arresting a lot of the people they find there. All the arrested people will be interrogated while held, and strenuous efforts will be made to recruit them as snitches and spies. A couple (if possible demons of at least moderate importance but without extensive high-level political backing) will be released early while the others are slowly dribbled out in response to political pressure. Any who don't have the pull to get out and who don't turn coat will be Force-stripped and destroyed for sedition. The surface cover story: most would assume that the Game is using the "war on dissent" as an excuse to offer some payback to people they don't like. The understory: if for some reason the Andrealphans get suspicious (why was that /particular/ location chosen?), then the understory lies in the suspicious way the Game treated the arrested suspects. The ones released, particularly those released early, will naturally be suspected of being traitors who've sold out to the Game. "This was all an attempt to plan a mole" is the plausible-but-wrong reason for the Game's behavior, and the witch-hunt to find the plants will work well to distract from the real plan of the Game. The real story: if everything went right the Game has the listening devices in place, and no one even suspects that they are there. A word of caution, though: when I've used NPCs with three-part covers, I've found often they are /too/ effective to keep the players happy. It's very frustrating for a player to face opponents who are too skillful at concealing their true motives from the PCs, because it makes very difficult to respond effectively. - -- Neel Krishnaswami neelk@cswv.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 05:28:12 From: hifiber7@compuserve.com Subject: IN> AD:Family Reunion T Shirts & More Message sent by: Kuppler Graphics, 32 West Main Street, Maple Shade, New Jersey, 08052, 1-800-810-4330. This list will NOT be sold. 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Click reply to email us or call 1-800-810-4330 for more info Bill Kuppler Graphics ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 02:02:13 +0100 From: "Liam" Subject: IN> no dinero i'm finally getting round to running IN again after a bit of a hiatus, and thought it was a good time to finally use the revelations books. i'm probably going to run the no dinero story first, but something occured to me, isn't it a bit light on celestial npcs? surely somewhere the size of NY is buzzing with them. is this deliberate or am i supposed to come up with a bunch of other npcs to turn up? liam ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1358 ******************************** The material here is (C) 1999 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.