bluegargantua

Hi,

So I’m a really big fan of the Nobilis role-playing game. I like the premise, I like the way it plays, I love the gorgeous books that have come out to support it. It’s one of my “desert island” games. Some of my best gaming has been in Nobilis.

The short form is that in Nobilis, you play the living embodiment of some aspect of reality. You’re the Power of Fear, or the Power of Cars, or the Power of Fiat Currency, or whatever other concept of reality (called an Estate) you can imagine. You defend and protect your Estate from other Powers who might be opposed to you (either because their Estate is your natural opposite, or because the Power in question just hates your guts), or from the Excrucians (beings from outside Creation who want to undo everything).

The author has released a new edition of Nobilis but I, for some reason, didn’t get in on the limited-edition pre-order so I had to download the PDF. I do hope that there will be another print-run in the near future so I can have a hard copy, but I’ve finished reading through the PDF and now I want to talk about it.

This review is mostly aimed at people who’ve played Nobilis in the past so I’m hiding the bulk of the it behind a cut.

The Book Itself:

First off, the 2nd edition book was flat-out amazing, both as a text explaining the setting and rules of the game but also as an object d’art in its own right. It set an amazingly high bar for any future editions. So I tried to dial back my expectations about this (and hey, it’s just a PDF).

It’s still pretty well laid-out. Lots of white space and thick margins, generally pretty clean.

But the artwork.

It’s not bad. But it draws very heavily on a manga style and in particular that chibi style where everyone is cute (and rather child-like). The art-deco and photograph art of the previous edition is completely gone and it’s all Dragonball Z. My bias for Western art? Maybe. I can certainly see the current style being a very good style for a number of powers with innocent or whimsical Estates or outlooks, but --

Lord Entropy should not look like an anime version of a Precious Moments figurine!

I just don’t think this particular style of manga really works as the primary illustration for godlike beings and overall the artwork mostly resembles the slightly-better-than-average output of DeviantArt.

Again, the 2nd edition really set a high bar, and this edition is still quite good compared to a lot of other games out there, but man the art style really clashes with what the game is about.

The Setting:

The setting and background for Nobilis has undergone a few changes. Most of these are minor. We get a bit more detail on the Council of Four who rule the Earth (in particular Surolam gets quite a bit of detail as a healing Imperator). More information on the structure of the Mythic World and such. The Cleave of Botanists gets a minor mention, but a couple other secret societies step in to fill their shoes.

We also get 2 pages on the Zu -- you go to this mystic mountain and become severed from your Estates (or Creation as a whole, both Excrucians and Impreators are there), and then you train hard and become a Shao-lin monk. That’s it. It’s like a half-formed idea floating in the book.

Then we get a few more pages on The Actuals. Everything in Creation is a spirit, The Actuals appear to be the sub-atomic particles of spirits. They’re a sort of ur-creation that all other bits of creation arise from. The catch here is that when they rouse and break through the usual hierarchy and manifest in the world, they become a sort of cancer, turning everything into more of itself. Again, these seem very superfluous to the setting/game as it’s existed up until now. I think they would be interesting if Actuals were immune to Excrucian attack. Now Nobles want to beat back the Actual because it will overwhelm Creation, but they might want to study them to find Excrucian defences. Excrucians are happy that Actuals could overwhelm Creation but are terrified that this Creation Cancer will spread out beyond the Weirding Wall and engulf their nothingness so they want to push it back. All-in-all through, a weak addition.

And though it touches on the rules a bit, the setting has also seriously downplayed the importance of flowers as symbols of reality and magical lynchpins. That was one of my favorite setting/rule bits in the previous editions and it’s sad to see it pushed aside.

A friend of mine who looked over the book said the setting was terribly bleak. I think I can see where he’s coming from -- the book postulates that each successive Age has been worse than the last and since Ananda is the Power of the Fourth Age and Murder, the future doesn’t look too bright. However, other parts of the book suggest that while the Excrucians can tear and rend realtiy on a surface level, the Imperators are making their stand in the Deep Mythic and the Excrucians can’t take them on there -- suggesting that the World Ash is surviving an Excrucian wildfire and will regrow once the flames go out.

Frankly, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. This edition adds some fluff to the game, but it’s all so orthagonal to the base setting, it can be easily ignored or incorporated as you want (including prognostications on the future).

The Rules:

All right, here’s the good stuff. How have the rules changed?

Honestly, I think there’s a lot of good stuff in here. Let’s start with your core attributes.

You used to have:

Aspect -- Letting you do awesome physical stuff
Domain -- Letting you do miracles with your Estate
Realm -- Letting you do miracles in your chancel
Spirit -- Letting you have lots of Anchors, rituals, miracle defense.

Now you get:

Aspect -- same as before.
Domain -- Mostly the same as before, only now miracles focus on the objective parts of your Estate.
Personna -- Letting you do miracles focusing on the subjective parts of your Estate.
Treasure -- Anchors, Organizations, Weapons, Gear, and other fun stuff.

I like these changes. Realm was always a bit of a hassle. If you had a lot of it, you always wanted to be in the Chancel and if you didn’t, you wanted to be somewhere else. Spirit was mostly about how many Anchors you had and the other stuff was always a bit nebulous. Now, the Chancels are downplayed and Treasure covers Anchors and all the other mystical gear you might want to have. Awesome.

But the real win is the splitting of Estate miracles into Domain and Personna. You know how in Nobilis, you’re always angling to stretch the meaning of your Estate as far as you can so that you can cast miracles to affect things that have nothing to do with your Estate? This new breakdown makes all that work better.

Domain is the raw, objective is-ness of your Estate. If your Estate is fire, you make fire, divine the presence of fire, make fires cold or what have you. Personna is the subjective “here’s what it means” of your Estate. Personna miracles of Fire inflame passions, make things red or illuminate them and so on.

During character creation, you get a pool of 7 points to spend on the Properties of your Estate. These are just statements about what your Estate is or means. So “Fire is hot”, “Fire compells action”, “Fire spreads” are potential properties. What all this does is help define your Estate and what you Domain and Personna miracles would look like. Now players have to really think about the core of their Estate up-front and it helps players and the HG decide what kinds of miracles are appropriate.

The Treasure attribute is pretty slick as well. Spend a point, get a mortal Anchor, spend a few more points, get a wizard as an Anchor, spend a bunch of points and get a wizard who’s really a dragon as an Anchor. Or you can buy a magic sword, or power armor or whatever else you want. Along with Gifts, they go a long way toward customizing your character.

So that’s your character. What about Imperator or Chancel creation?

Ah...hrm...yeah.

Pretty minimal. For Imperators, you just pick what type of Imperator it is. That choice gives your Impertator two default traits and then there’s an attached mind map for you to fill out during play. Chancel creation is even easier, just jot down a few properties, figure out exits and barrier strength and you’re done.

So, I can see where Imperator and Chancel creation were an extra step and kind of a pain as the players agonized over how to balance the benefits and flaws and whatnot, but this might be too far in the other direction. My Imperator and Chancel can have all sorts of qualities, but if they don’t have any mechanical effect they don’t have any heft. All angels are essentially Demanding now, but you get no benefit from it and possibly no trouble if the HG forgets about it. Under this new system, all Imperators are pretty cookie-cutter and the Chancels are pretty notational -- although pushing PCs out into the real world instead of holing up in their Chancel might be the real aim.

Oh, that mind-map that hangs off the Imperator? Yeah, the author is pushing mind-maps as a way to drive and track the various stories about you and your Imperator. It’s not a bad system, but she went a little overboard on it. Character Creation now comes with this incredibly elaborate system designed to produce the hub of your mind map and define your character. The only problem is that early choices can straight-jacket later ones and I feel it’s not really necessary for experienced players and a bit confusing for new players.

The mind-maps would be a great way to handle the acquisition of Rituals. Right now, it’s a pretty haphazard affair where if the HG thinks you get it, you have it. I would say you can buy Rituals using Treasure and you can research additional Rituals via the mind-map system. I think that offers a lot of scope for fun.

Let’s see, what else? Oh there’s a system to determine the effectiveness of mundane actions (like a miracle chart), which is nice, but only useful when dealing with mundanes or powers who are out of juice. The problem is that this drags along Cool, Edge, Strike, Shine and Auctoritas, which are all ways of saying “my action is unstoppable” or “my action beats your action”. They can come from different sources, work on different levels, act on different actions/miracles and all they do is give extra “oomph” to whatever you’re doing. You’d never keep track of it and the old system was a lot easier.

Oh, Bonds and Afflictions still exist and still remain one of the best parts of the system. In addition to giving you MPs for getting you into trouble, they can now be used to provide you with automatic actions. You can have the Affliction “My crossbow is always ready” and whenever you have a crossbow, it’s always ready to fire (or it isn’t in which case you get an MP).

So...yeah. Overall I really like the changes they’ve made to the system. I think the mind-map idea has a lot of potential but it’s applied to the wrong things. A number of fiddly modifiers got added which will only be a bookkeeping hassle. The reorganization of the core attributes looks really, reallly, good though and may even be worth the loss of the Chancel-building portion.

Final Thoughts:

This is a book for people who’ve played Nobilis in the past. If you were totally new to this game and had only this book to go by, I feel like it would be a struggle to understand all these bits and pieces and how they come together. The core bits from the old system still shine through but the new layers have been poorly added on and I think they cloud the issue. I feel like there weren’t enough examples compared to the older editions -- especially for the newer parts.

I suppose I sound like a cranky groganard, complaining about how “back in my day” it was better. I hope that’s not true. The revamp of the core attributes and the drive towards using mind-maps are both things I’d love to carry forward into my next game. The fact that the system allows me to ditch the new things I hate and keep the new things I like, stands as a testament to the resiliency of the system and its ability to give me the game I want to have.

So while I think the 2nd edition was probably the high-water mark for the game, there’s a lot to like in the new edition and I hope a print copy comes out soon. The other thing I’ve discovered is that I wouldn’t want to try and run a game using just my iPad.

later
Tom