From owner-in_nomine-digest@lists.io.com Mon Jun 19 18:02:36 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 SAA10971 for ; Mon, 19 Jun 2000 18:02:36 -0500 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by lists.io.com (8.9.3/8.9.1a) id SAA27977 for in_nomine-digest-outgoing; Mon, 19 Jun 2000 18:01:33 -0500 Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 18:01:33 -0500 Message-Id: <200006192301.SAA27977@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 #1682 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 Monday, June 19 2000 Volume 01 : Number 1682 In this digest: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon IN> Thank you! -- (was: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance) Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon Re: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon (loooong) Re: IN> Yeah, yeah, I know this one's pretty stupid... Re: IN> Yeah, yeah, I know this one's pretty stupid... Re: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon (loooong) Re: IN> Zorostrianism in In Nomine Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon IN> Word of Mouth (Re: GURPS IN Canon (loooong)) Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon IN> Thoughts on Ethereals. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 09:59:16 -0500 From: David Edelstein Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon Omentide wrote: > The various GURPS lines are still GURPS. Non RPG lines are a different > animals as we both know, which is why I wrote RPG products. Doesn't matter. You're claiming IN is "safe" because it's SJG's only other RPG product. SJG doesn't sell RPGs for the sake of selling RPGs. It sells various products, all of which need to earn income, and if one product doesn't sell, it will be discontinued. > Sure IN has failed to become as popular as the likes of AD&D, VtM and > CoC. Did anyone ever think it would become that popular? I certianly did > not. If you apply that sort of crirteria to measure success then just > about every line is a failure. No, IN has failed to become as popular as GURPS, Pendragon, or Ars Magica. I'm not sure if it even beats Blue Planet or Feng Shui. It's not even in the second tier; it might barely be in the third. > Which is pretty much all RPG lines. No, some RPG lines (like the others you named) either have a small but steady and reliable base, or are the company's mainstay. IOW, they don't sell "well," but they sell enough that the company knows fairly reliably how much money they can make off of it, and it's enough to make the line sustainable. In Nomine is a marginal product. - -David ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 11:32:17 -0400 (EDT) From: "Philip J. Moyer" Subject: IN> Thank you! -- (was: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance) To Kris Overstreet, Walter Milliken, Jo Hart, Whistling in the Dark, and David Edelstein, - -Thank you- for your replies to my little query! With that information in hand, we were able to continue.. and eventually, the results of the Elohite's Coffee Cravings will be able to be seen at http://www.jurai.net/~pmoyer/IN2070/Logs.html , once I get said logs converted. Once again, thank you very much, and Enjoy! - --- Philip Philip Moyer----------------Qapla'-------------pmoyer@jurai.net "To boldly go where no one has gone before!"-Capt. J. L. Picard "Roads? Where we're going we don't NEED roads!"-Dr. E. L. Brown "If it can be dreamed, It can be done."- ReRob Mandeville "Someday we'll find it, the Rainbow Connection, The Lovers, - ---------- The Dreamers, and Me."- Kermit The Frog ------------ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 11:59:58 -0400 From: Jason Schneiderman Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon >Omentide wrote: >> The various GURPS lines are still GURPS. True. But there's an attempt to bring them their own "brand identity." GURPS Traveller is being positioned as a subset, as are GURPS Discworld and GURPS Technomancer. [A setting at which I wish more people would bite. :)] It's similar to the way (verging dangerously close to OT) Kindred of the East and Vampire:The Dark Ages are positioned as different brands than Vampire: The Masquerade. David Edelstein writes: >No, some RPG lines (like the others you named) either have a small but >steady and reliable base, or are the company's mainstay. IOW, they don't >sell "well," but they sell enough that the company knows fairly reliably >how much money they can make off of it, and it's enough to make the line >sustainable. In Nomine is a marginal product. Any thoughts, then, on how to get IN to the "small but reliable base" level? I have at least one - *pokes Beth* - but the discussion might be interesting. And Andrew Hackard is out there somewhere listening, yes? Jason * * * * * "I'm addicted to stress that's the way that I get things done if I'm not underpressure then I sleep too long and I hang around like a bum and I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous..." Jason Schneiderman jadasc@ma.ultranet.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 17:19:06 +0100 From: Omentide Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon David > > The various GURPS lines are still GURPS. Non RPG lines are a different > > animals as we both know, which is why I wrote RPG products. > >Doesn't matter. You're claiming IN is "safe" because it's SJG's only >other RPG product. SJG doesn't sell RPGs for the sake of selling RPGs. >It sells various products, all of which need to earn income, and if one >product doesn't sell, it will be discontinued. Never said IN is 'safe'. I hope it is safe, or at least sustainable in some way. > > Sure IN has failed to become as popular as the likes of AD&D, VtM and > > CoC. Did anyone ever think it would become that popular? I certianly did > > not. If you apply that sort of crirteria to measure success then just > > about every line is a failure. > >No, IN has failed to become as popular as GURPS, Pendragon, or Ars >Magica. I'm not sure if it even beats Blue Planet or Feng Shui. It's not >even in the second tier; it might barely be in the third. Yep, probably third tier, but it is a base and like all bases can be built upon. Sometimes putting more money into a line works, sometimes slowly working on getting the base to grow is a successful strategy, and sometimes it is better to cut the losses. Ultimately it is a decision SJ will make. I like to be optimistic, in the circles I move in, and the dozen or so conventions I attend mostly as an MIB IN is popular and well supported, more so at most events than Feng Shui, Pendragon, Ars Magica, and surprisingly GURPS. However I am not in the corporate decision making process, and I would not wish to be. It's not my call. Ashley Ashley and Hilary omentide.omentide@virgin.net http://freespace.virgin.net/omentide.omentide ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 10:54:45 -0600 From: "ben" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon There's a lot of gaming groups in Las Cruces. All of the people I've spoken to have all said, "I've heard about In Nomine, and it seems really cool, but I could never find anyone who wanted to run it." Now I'm running a game for these people, and they can't say enough good things about the game. I've never met anyone who said, "Yeah, I played In Nomine; it sucks." I've heard they exist, but they all seem to be people who want to play it but find something that they don't like and thus drop it. I'm not sure how to cater to these players, other than publishing "In Nomine Dark" and "In Nomine Light" sourcebooks (which would mostly be rewrites of current material, unfortunately). But anyway -- I do have a point -- since the majority of gamers think In Nomine is cool, something fascinating, and fun to play, it might be worthwhile to invest energy into a two-fold attack: tighten In Nomine's theology so it's less cartoony and more *real* feeling, and market it hard. There are people who'd be happy to have the game sold to them if they could just find *other* people who play it, so once it starts snowballing, it'll either melt and make a huge mess or the game will be more successful. Or maybe publish an In Nomine lite (not contrast, substance). Make it cheap (college gamers are poor) and stick a sample adventure in it. Kinda like that game master's shield thingy, but targetted towards people who aren't playing but WOULD play if they could. It's cheap, so they could buy it themselves and run it instead of waiting for their affluent game master pals to cash in. It'd have ready-made angels (or demons) so you could give 'em a character and say, "Go at it." Maybe make it a double-kit. In the first adventure, give 'em humans, suitably adjusted via the Corporeal Player's Guide so they are both fun and useful. Let 'em SEE angels in the adventure, and then in the next part of the kit, let them PLAY the angels. After seeing 'em do a few miracles and going, "oooh, ahhh", and then getting to play the angels, who knows? On the third hand, ready-made adventures sell about as well as see-through ties. Or maybe hype the crap out of a 2nd edition. Or get someone to make an In Nomine computer game. Or something. Ben ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 17:20:00 GMT From: "Erich S. Arendall" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon >On the third hand, ready-made adventures sell about as well as see-through >ties. Oooh! See-through ties! I want one! >Or maybe hype the crap out of a 2nd edition. Or get someone to make an In >Nomine computer game. Or something. Mmmm... IN CRPG ...My mouth is watering uncontrollably. You've got some decent points, Ben. I would also add that putting some more In Nomine games into conventions might have a good impact. I've seen people purchase every Call of Cthulhu book from a vendor after playing their first CoC game at a convention - usually the games that are run well. :) In fact, I would think that conventions as well as on-line games (wasn't there supposed to be an IN MUSH at one point) are the strongest marketing influences in the gaming kingdom. The only draw-back to convention demos is finding a convention (although, with it being summer...) and having a proper convention adventure and GM. - -Erich S. Arendall "Shadow Sprite" Demon of Critical Failures at the Worst Possible Time for Players and the Best Time for GMs, Impudite of The Game - ------------------------- Touched by an Impudite http://www.impudite.com Go Directly to the Blog http://www.impudite.com/abt-blog.asp ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 13:26:40 -0500 From: Earl Wajenberg Subject: Re: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance Jo Hart wrote: > But I thought that was the whole point of the Dark Desire > attunement. You can't go about fulfilling it in a calm and > rational way; it hijacks the lizard portion of your brain, and > you go wild for the object of desire as if it was a personal > sexual fetish ... Of course, no celestial HAS a lizard brain, or any brain at all, except for some packing material in the skulls of their vessels, put there for show in case of autopsy. Earl ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 17:00:58 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon (loooong) At 7:23 PM -0500 6/18/00, Kiara S. Legner wrote: >Even without the new canon, I would have bought GURPS IN anyway. With the exception of the Grig stuff, which we all know is new, _will_ you go through the book and pick out everything that looks like it's "omighodhowcouldyou?!" so-called "new canon"? (Well, you, someone else, whatever.) Then I can lay it out ahead of time what's pure GURPS only (such as divorcing Power Investiture (realm) (aka Forces) from stats, and Gadgeteering for Creationers) and what's coming back into the thing, and what may or may not, depending on factors beyond my ken at the moment... Because I think that there may be a wee little molehill under this mountain... (Oh, and since you're buying it anyway, I hope that you can get some milage from the "convert GURPS stats to IN stats" material in there. I know that when I was doing some Werewolf stuff, back-conversion was something I sorely missed.) >[...] I, apparently incorrectly, >assumed that it was GURPS, not IN, and therefore wasn't necessarily canon. >Sort of like GURPS Traveller is not Traveller canon. Boy, was I wrong! GURPS Trav isn't Traveller canon? I mean, there's this whole long set of who owns what versions of Trav, so I suppose you can say that, but wasn't Loren like the original line developer or something? (You can see how much I know about Traveller...) OTOH, well... Autoduel and GURPS Ogre have to mesh with Car Wars and Ogre -- I would assume that any new material in Autoduel/GURPS Ogre would become canon for Car Wars and Ogre, should there be some need to backwash that new material into the original game. At 6:35 PM -0400 6/18/00, Whistling in the Dark wrote: >At 6:16 PM -0400 6/18/00, Elizabeth McCoy wrote: >> >>Quite frankly, I'm about as unhappy that the Great Grigori Grand >>Appearance [..] >See, I believe that. Believe it or not, Elizabeth, I don't blame you Well, from this side of the screen..... Yeah, I feel guilty, too. I thought something was going to happen, and was operating on that assumption, and, well. *sigh* >>NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HATE THAT MANUSCRIPT MORE THAN I AM. > >Is it all right if I hope to like the manuscript? Oh, certainly. I even like it heaps better than I did when it was sitting on the doorstep like some ungodly white elephant eating the arbor vide. I slither around the house rubbing my hands together and sharpening my mustache, going, "It's gone, it's gone, it's at the publisher's, it can't come back again." (BTW, the Illuminator displayed the hazards of announcing a ship date before the books were in stock -- an Infernal Intervention at the printer's means they're going to be a few days later. 24th, or 26th, or something. IIRC.) >>Now, if you want to take up the various ideas you list -- PDF of >>the game mechanics, whatever -- with the sjgames@io.com (or >>whatever it is) address, feel free. > >I very well may, at that. Because I don't think anyone at SJGames >wants to alienate the hardcore IN wonks. We hardcore IN wonks spend >money, in hardcore wonky ways. Hee. Good. Goferit. Just don't try to make _me_ the spokesthing there. >>(Just, dear gods, don't take it up with SJ himself.) > >Do I look like I want to commit career-suicide? Hmmmmm. Perhaps not. O;> >>They just get mechanics. The book I'm thinking of, oh, it gets >>mechanics all right -- but that'll be the _least_ it gets. > >I can believe that, but the Magic Bullet, the Payoff, the "here's >what you've been waiting for" will be blunted by the mechanics [...] > Premature payoff is an ugly thing. Heh. Well, for non-list-members who don't pick up GURPS books, the Big Payoff will be just fine. O;> (An interesting question. How many people are there who won't pick up GURPS IN, who aren't on the list, and don't have a clue about the hoo-rah?) [...] >[...] And now (after >reverse-engineering) I will, which will diminish my hunger for the >aforementioned much better Grigori resource. We'll see. O:> >Am I blaming you for this? Nope. I believe your frustration about it, >very much. But I can rant about Kronos and his evil ways, and bemoan >what I think were bad scheduling decisions, and... um.... >I seem to have gotten distracted from my thesis. In conclusion, buy >War Bonds. Buy them where you work, or bank. _ ^ To quote some people... o.O --- At 9:19 PM -0500 6/18/00, Michael Neal wrote: >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Elizabeth McCoy" >To: >Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2000 5:16 PM >Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon > > >> Come _on_, people -- it's Murphy's Law in action. > >No it isn't. Not really. In Nomine had the huge delay at initial release. Three revisions, from what I hear. (Frankly, I'm glad of it. Some of the first editions I've seen were... eh.) That's not lack of support -- that's perfectionism at work. (It's also why GIN "first edition" got bounced back to us. What we'd turned in, while being what we _thought_ was requested, wasn't making _anyone_ happy with the mechanics.) >It had a long stretch, at a crucial time, without a Line Editor. Don't get me started. I don't think I _can_ tell all the details in a public forum....... > Now the >Big Payoff is hopelessly delayed. While the Big Payoff is being delayed, >the amount of effort and time you describe is being put into what is, for IN >players, a marginal product. The badly needed 2nd Edition is indefinitely >delayed. Hey, woah, time out on _that_ misconception. 2nd edition didn't get delayed because of GURPS IN. It got delayed because of pre-eclampsia including a blood pressure of something like 180/110 (at 200/110, seizures are VERY likely to happen...) and a premature daughter in the hospital, causing SJ to decide that 2nd ed wasn't going to have anyone to write the thing. That, friends and countrythings, is Murphy's Law. I thought I had two more months before becoming a mommy... O:p Given those two months, I could at _least_ have run a re-org on the blighted thing. (At the moment, my plan is to jump up and down and demand the Quark files from the reprint (which will have errata fixes, to at least some extent) and start working on it as I can so that when stocks of the reprint run low, I can hand over the files with this smug little grin.) GURPS IN was being worked on at the time (mostly on those damned cost calculations, which still ate up time like crazy and I couldn't help with at all, except occasionally for a spot-question, which resulted in me lying around staring at the ceiling a lot waiting for those spot-questions...) -- and while it's a marginal prduct for IN players, it is _not_ a marginal product for the GURPS line. (In Other Words, there are enough GURPS players out there who would buy GURPS Outhouses that they _know_ this will sell -- and that if even 1% of those people start picking up the IN line religiously, there will be incoming money and this cursed schedule can maybe get into high gear .) >No, I don't think it's your fault, Beth, but that does not change the >dismaying trend. With the evidence at hand, I'm guessing that IN is on its >last legs. Last legs, no. Not flying off the shelves enough to make me a happy camper? Hell, yes. Likelyhood of the new-products-per-year dropping to levels which aren't _dead_, but are kinda slower than I'd like? This remains to be seen. The Great Line Editor Interregnum didn't help, that's for sure. Sometimes I feel like I'm digging out of a pit, which makes me blasted cranky. >In all, the denials coming out of Austin that IN is safe are starting to >sound like corporate speak. Allow me to put it this way -- it's gonna live on if I have to find some way to _fund_ the blighter my own personal self. However, I don't have the funds dripping from my fingertips to sustain a production schedule of monthly or every-other-month, such as was the attempt for a while. That is really the crux of the issue -- will the line be profitable enough to get a book every month or every other month or every three/four/X months or "when we have a hole in the schedule"? How many books will be printed? (If they just sit in the warehouse, then fewer will be printed because space is money -- there's more margin, or so I hear, in having a large print run, but not if it takes six years past forever to sell through.) _Which_ books will be printed? At the moment, tell you true, IN isn't selling fast enough to justify every month (duh) and probably not every other month. Considering that there are whole heaps of books I _want_ to see happen (the rest of the Superiors books (duh), the aforementioned Cool Stuff With Grigori book, a historical book, the long-shot pair (and only 1 pair) of Citybook books, a whole _third Cycle_ I'd proposed about 2 years ago which doesn't even have a modern _outline_ anymore... Well, I'd _love_ to see some of these running in parallel for every-month-a-new-book so that I won't be a grandmother by the time they burble to the top. O:> (It is also my own personal nightmare that it would be canceled -- not that this has been bandied about, no, but in the wee dark hours of the night, the Demon of Canceled Lines comes and whispers in my sleep- deprived ear. This makes me twitchy; I want to have it suddenly take off, turn around, climb out of the pit and get rolling, start moving in such a way that SJ and everyone else will say, "Hey, Beth, good job there." It's the _fame_ --! ) OTOH, from what Andrew said a while back about sell-sheets and whatnot, it seems there hasn't been much of _any_ support to date. (I suspect it fell through a SEP hole -- now that Andrew's dragged it out, there might be something interesting going on...) Therefore, if this is all Word of Mouth... think what might happen with a little _publicity._ (Which, as a note, doesn't mean that the line is/was being ignored. It means there's been Line Editor and Managing Editor churn and since I _am_ telecommuting from 2000 miles away... Ya wanna blame someone, blame people who are no longer working there who didn't hand over paperwork.) (Beth pauses, does some figuring, and hmms. Needs to get some other numbers, check her assumptions... Getting back to a higher schedule might be easier than she'd vaguely thought. That would be cheering.) - --Beth, catching up as she can, typing with a baby (iolanthe) in her lap. But now with a computer desk! Vapitalizatoin and spelling still difficult, typing w/ 1 hand (and often a wigglebaby in the other). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 17:26:35 -0400 (EDT) From: "Rev. Pee Kitty" Subject: Re: IN> Yeah, yeah, I know this one's pretty stupid... On Sun, 18 Jun 2000, Maurice Lane wrote: > ...but I _like_ stupid, sometimes. :) There is, however, a big difference between *useless* stupid and *useful* stupid. This was definitely the latter. Even if only for comic relief, this guy would make a fun addition to an adventure.... :) - -- Rev. Pee Kitty, of the order Malkavian-Dobbsian Meow! Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the 2nd god coefficient. A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 20:59:25 GMT From: "Erich S. Arendall" Subject: Re: IN> Yeah, yeah, I know this one's pretty stupid... >There is, however, a big difference between *useless* stupid and *useful* >stupid. This was definitely the latter. Even if only for comic relief, >this guy would make a fun addition to an adventure.... :) Indeed. Wonderful work again, Mr. Lane. Now when are you coming up with the Malakite of Fire who holds the Word of Legos? >:) - -Erich S. Arendall "Shadow Sprite" Demon of Critical Failures at the Worst Possible Time for Players and the Best Time for GMs, Impudite of The Game - ------------------------- Touched by an Impudite http://www.impudite.com Go Directly to the Blog http://www.impudite.com/abt-blog.asp ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 14:04:32 PDT From: "Jo Hart" Subject: Re: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance >From: Earl Wajenberg >Reply-To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com >To: in_nomine-l@lists.io.com >Subject: Re: IN> A question of Elohite Dissonance >Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 13:26:40 -0500 > >Jo Hart wrote: > > > But I thought that was the whole point of the Dark Desire > > attunement. You can't go about fulfilling it in a calm and > > rational way; it hijacks the lizard portion of your brain, and > > you go wild for the object of desire as if it was a personal > > sexual fetish ... > >Of course, no celestial HAS a lizard brain, or any brain at all, >except for some packing material in the skulls of their vessels, >put there for show in case of autopsy. > Technically correct, of course, but I've always felt that one of the scarier things about Lust was that it can tie even angels down to sordid, fleshy, corporeal desires ... to the detriment of their immortal souls, and the erosion of their true sense of purpose. Wanna know what it's _really_ like to be a human, living amongst the filth and futility of the stinking masses, deliberately blinding yourself to anything great or good in the world around you? Take to a demon of Lust, and in a while, you also won't be _able_ to want anything more than that ... jo ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 15:11:32 -0600 From: "ben" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon (loooong) > Word of Mouth... think what might happen with a little _publicity._ How many Word Forces is that worth? :-) Would the celestial hold the Word of Mouth, or the Word of Word of Mouth? Would it be an angel or a demon? (I imagine most unsuccessful people would attibute the word to Hell, although one could picture an Outcast Mercurian of Eli (or that darned Archangel of Revelations who I think is a dork) occasionally pursuing the Word.) Ben (WWM NWO!) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 22:39:40 +0100 From: "Christopher Lee" Subject: Re: IN> Zorostrianism in In Nomine Sorry can't remember who wrote this! >>Perhaps demons started it. Zorastrianism is dualistic, and is thus very >>appealing to demons Charles wrote: >besides never was it stated that Ahrimane could win the war.... >In a way it's kinduv common sense-no one ever chooses to do evil-they just >do what others believe to be evil. The Standard is merely set by the ones >who know and know best. > It occurs to me that actually the common conception of Zoroastrianism is a bit like the first comment, and Charles is right it is not as dualistic as it might seem. In fact it is so optimistic that it comes across on a par with the more hellfire and brimstone sorts of Christianity. By that I mean the devil (or Ahriman in this case) is strong and threatens everyone (just like in IN), but God (or in this case Ahura Mazda) is stronger. For the record it is sacred to Zoroastrians that Ahura Mazda WILL triumph over Ahriman, rather like the Abrahamic religions believe in a day of judgement, Zoroastrians have a concept of Frashegird. On this day the evil (or Druj = 'lie/dishonour/dishonesty) will be wiped away and good will win. What is most significant is that even those trapped in hell will be released. Unlike some Christian visions Zoroastrian hell is not eternal it is a prison which will be opened when good has become strong enough. The basis of the religion is that by following good not only will you escape hell but you will contribute to the power of good and thus directly to the triumph of Ahura Mazda over Ahriman. Crucial to this is free will, you have to choose to serve good (Ashi = truth/honour/honesty), there is no component of compulsion. Zoroastrianism is a voluntary and personal choice. Of course in IN terms this is literally true via essence donations... In this respect Zoroastrianism exactly fits IN, humans have free choice to follow good or evil and Ashi and Druj could be equated with Destiny and FAte. Ashi could be the best you can achieve by following the path of generosity, honour, truth and justice. Druj would be the worst you can fall to having chosen lies, cheating, dishonour, etc. Overall it fitrs in quite well, the powers battling are relatively evenly matched, but for heaven's purposes Zoroastrianism is great because it covers the right ground but is utterly sure that good will triumph. Chris Lee PS: I am putting together some decidely non-canon material on Zoroastrian angels who are hanging on in there despite the fall of the religion. PPS: the destruction of Zoroastrianism could be viewed as evidence that hell was terrified by it and engineered its destruction by fatally weakening the Persian Empire to allow Islam to crush it. Thus heaven could have inadvertantly furthered an infernal plot by providing the impetus and the new faith and zeal to topple the creaking Persian edifice. IN secret history, I have been reading Kenneth Hite too much! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 23:23:41 +0100 From: Omentide Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon >There's a lot of gaming groups in Las Cruces. All of the people I've spoken >to have all said, "I've heard about In Nomine, and it seems really cool, but >I could never find anyone who wanted to run it." Now I'm running a game for >these people, and they can't say enough good things about the game. This too is my experience. Now, for the record and as a MIB, I will continue to support In Nomine. As Cell Leader Ireland I have put a lot of work into doing so, Hilary and I recruited others who can also write for IN. The result is high penetration at conventions, a solid and reliable player base and an interest in potential new product. Equally as an MIB I am not going to say IN has failed. Not here on this list, not in any other public forum. I do not believe anyone should be saying this in public. For as long as SJ supports IN I will do the same. If we start stating here that IN has failed the rumours will spread and this will do further damage. As far as I am concerned IN has a solid player base (in the area I have influence over it is more than simply solid), I will maintain my enthusiasm. Now, Ok mistakes might have been made in the production schedule, in the content of some books, but this can be rectified. Without knocking the writers, editors or anyone else some books are not that hot, and the Revelations cycle was poorly thought out. The Guides and Superiors are better, they focus more on the key elements, introducing new stuff should have been left for a later date rather than throwing minor superiors with poor backgrounds and limited supportive material through Revelations. Equally, and as much as I hate them, published scenarios, especially introductory ones sell and also get new players into a game. IN is not the easiest system to get a grip on so a potential new (or expanded) player base may need this sort of thing. The Austin thing in Revelations 1 is OK, it has some neat ideas but is probably insufficient. As the the rest, they are really not that good. They contain good ideas (even FotM), good concept, but fall apart too easily. I do not believe I am the only person to have made this comment. WW got this sort of thing closer to right with VtM, basic book, expansion on the core material, campaign modules etc, before shifting the focus more to other areas including LARP, Dark Ages, the Sabat etc. Of course VtM (at the core) is a simpler game in many ways although in others similar. IN is more complex, it has two clear sides which is to my mind an advantage, and the concept of brightness and contrast are also a good thing. But these, especially brightness and contrast are not easy for new players to get a handle on. This is made worse by the fact that at times some new players will want to play a demon, and think in terms of real dark. Demons in high contrast games do not in my opinion make for sustainable characters which is one of the reasons I always set game low contrast. >I've never met anyone who said, "Yeah, I played In Nomine; it sucks." I've >heard they exist, but they all seem to be people who want to play it but >find something that they don't like and thus drop it. I'm not sure how to >cater to these players, other than publishing "In Nomine Dark" and "In >Nomine Light" sourcebooks (which would mostly be rewrites of current >material, unfortunately). Probably not a good idea to do new core sourcebooks or simplified versions. Introductory material needs to be more orientated toward making it possible to pick up a couple of books and play a game. The introductory scenario, especially one well referenced to the correct pages in the core book is likely to yield better results. >But anyway -- I do have a point -- since the majority of gamers think In >Nomine is cool, something fascinating, and fun to play, it might be >worthwhile to invest energy into a two-fold attack: tighten In Nomine's >theology so it's less cartoony and more *real* feeling, and market it hard. >There are people who'd be happy to have the game sold to them if they could >just find *other* people who play it, so once it starts snowballing, it'll >either melt and make a huge mess or the game will be more successful. Cannot agree more. The MIB programme should be doing part of this, Hilary and I are pushing IN hard, it works. >Or maybe publish an In Nomine lite (not contrast, substance). Make it cheap >(college gamers are poor) and stick a sample adventure in it. Kinda like >that game master's shield thingy, but targetted towards people who aren't >playing but WOULD play if they could. It's cheap, so they could buy it >themselves and run it instead of waiting for their affluent game master pals >to cash in. It'd have ready-made angels (or demons) so you could give 'em a >character and say, "Go at it." A downlaodable, stripped version, a few characters, the core mechanics, and a simple scenario might be cool. Copies for MIB's to give out after games would also help. Not enough content to make it unnecessary to buy the core book, but just enough to run the sample scenario and ensure the players and GM have fun. >Or maybe hype the crap out of a 2nd edition. Or get someone to make an In >Nomine computer game. Or something. Hype works, but only if the product is right, I happen to think the gaps need plugging first. For a start I believe this means an Ethereal Players Guide with a decent write up of various Ethereals. Then as I have stated there is a possible need for scenarios or campaigns for new players and GM's to pick up and run with. Personally I think IN is a great game, and despite the faults worth investing my time in. I will continue to write IN scenarios and LARPs for conventions because I think IN is worth the effort. I hope that SJ thinks the same. Ashley. Ashley and Hilary omentide.omentide@virgin.net http://freespace.virgin.net/omentide.omentide ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 18:39:40 EDT From: MarkDEddy@aol.com Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon In a message dated 6/19/00 3:18:42 PM, omentide.omentide@Virgin.Net writes: >Equally, and as much as I hate them, published scenarios, especially >introductory ones sell and also get new players into a game. IN is not >the easiest system to get a grip on so a potential new (or expanded) player >base may need this sort of thing. The Austin thing in Revelations 1 is >OK, it has some neat ideas but is probably insufficient. As the the rest, >they are really not that good. They contain good ideas (even FotM), good >concept, but fall apart too easily. I do not believe I am the only person >to have made this comment. _Feast_of_Blades_ (from the GM pack) is hands-down the best of the In Nomine scenarios, IMHO. It had everything I needed as a GM, and was fun when I ran it. Now, if only the GM screen had been more useful... *sigh* I agree with the analysis (posted to this list at about the point that Final Trumpet was released) that the Revelations Cycle's scenarios were better as fiction than as scenario, and while I've seen plot seeds galore, I haven't seen any actual scenarios outside of the GM's pack or Revelations. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 19:06:10 -0400 From: Elizabeth McCoy Subject: IN> Word of Mouth (Re: GURPS IN Canon (loooong)) At 3:11 PM -0600 6/19/00, ben wrote: >> Word of Mouth... think what might happen with a little _publicity._ > >How many Word Forces is that worth? :-) Hmmmm...... Probably a lot! Of course, on the demonic side, Haagenti probably considers that to be _his_ Word (or an aspect of it), and will cheerfully eat anyone holding the Word of Mouth. Meanwhile, Malphas occasionally tries to slip a candidate for same into range of the Lightbringer, and Kobal once did so while handing the luckless Servitor a bucket of chocolate sauce... >Would the celestial hold the Word of Mouth, or the Word of Word of Mouth? >Would it be an angel or a demon? (I imagine most unsuccessful people would >attibute the word to Hell, although one could picture an Outcast Mercurian >of Eli (or that darned Archangel of Revelations who I think is a dork) >occasionally pursuing the Word.) Hmmm... No, I don't think Revelation would have it -- it's more a rumor thing. Sounds more like a Windy sort of Word to me, actually, with implications of grass-roots movements... O:> Here, have a cookie. - --Beth, catching up as she can, typing with a baby (iolanthe) in her lap. But now with a computer desk! Vapitalizatoin and spelling still difficult, typing w/ 1 hand (and often a wigglebaby in the other). ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:03:19 -0700 From: "Patrick O'Duffy" Subject: Re: IN> GURPS IN Canon > _Feast_of_Blades_ (from the GM pack) is hands-down the best of the In Nomine > scenarios, IMHO. It had everything I needed as a GM, and was fun when I ran > it. Now, if only the GM screen had been more useful... *sigh* See, this is how opinions differ. I think FoB is rotten, having recenntly tried to run it. It's contrived, it's clunky, and there's too strong an emphasis on combat. Furthermore, it's not really supported by current canon - sorcerers don't work that way, tethers don't work that way, demons don't act like that... Small wonder that S. John Ross stopped doing IN work; his ideas of what IN's about are pretty much orthogonal to the way the game's developed. (Yeah, I know he doesn't work at all for SJG any more. Can't say it's a huge loss.) I don't have a huge opion of any of the full-blown IN adventures out there, though; I think that 'No Dinero' is probably the best, and it also has big problems. The best In stuff, for me, are some of the various adventure _seeds_, which are clever and have potential. - -- Patrick O'Duffy, Brisbane, Australia It's been a long hard day scaring the shit out of children for the anticlowns of the Tolerable Terror Infant Therapy Institute. - Spider Jerusalem, TRANSMETROPOLITAN #23 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 19:01:41 -0400 From: "EDG" Subject: IN> Thoughts on Ethereals. Part the First. Comments appreciated. Long ago, before the great divide between Heaven and Hell, when humans had just discovered faith and belief without proof, there lived the creatures of myth. Dragons, minotaurs, and bunyip roamed the dreamlands of humanity, occasionally venturing into the land of the waking but for the most part haunting their dreams, giving men cautionary tales in their sleep and producing nightmares the likes of which have never been seen - but also giving men hope and faith, providing the very force which powered Heaven and the dreamlands. Most stayed with one dreamer, providing services of care and warning to only him. Some others had a small following, who called them gods and worshipped them in exchange for guidance and protection. There was one dragon in particular who was very good at inspiring fear in humanity. She did not limit herself to a single group of humans, instead choosing to affect humanity as a whole. When she flew over the Marches, any dreamer upon whose dreamscape her shadow landed was wracked with chills and fear; when she roared, those who heard it resolved to change their lives, so that they would never meet this dread creature in the flesh. The dragon reveled in this, and each night she would swoop over the dreamlands, alternately soaring high above the plain of dreams and flying low, twisting and turning between dreamscapes, roaring terribly, then screaming with the scream of a thousand lost souls. Her name was Beleth, and she was Fear. There lived too a unicorn among the dreamers, one who understood their plight from watching them dream, watching them as they were born, lived, loved, lost, and died. Like the dragon, she chose to wander the Marches instead of settling with a single group. She went among them, giving hope to those who failed, and ambition to those who succeeded. Where her horn touched a dreamscape, that dreamer felt inner peace and conviction; where her footsteps passed through a dream, that human knew that things would turn out for the best. The unicorn walked between dreams each night, below the dragon's form far above, and soothed those who had been devastated. Her name was Blandine, and she was Hope. An angel, after a time, noticed these two creatures, and started paying closer attention to them. He was interested by their actions, and - though he could not get close enough to divine their future - felt that they might still have a place helping Heaven help humans. He saw that although they worked separately, their good works came together as one, and he decided to suggest to the two that they come together and work with Heaven in protecting humanity from itself and guiding men to greater things. His name was Yves, and he was Destiny. ------------------------------ End of in_nomine-digest V1 #1682 ******************************** The material here is (C) 2000 Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. All rights reserved.