I've been following Nobilis since the Pharos Press edition. I liked the
Pharos Press edition very much; I found the author's writing and ideas
evocative and magical.
It was also dense and small, as well as poorly distributed. As a game, I
was left with many questions on how to solve even the most basic of
problems. As reading material, I loved it, however.
I'd never encountered anything as powerful and inspiring, such a catalyst
to my own imagination, as Nobilis. I suffered, though, in comparison with
the author's own brilliance; I read what the game was capable of, and
designed for, and often I floundered at coming up with ways to use the
system in ways as effortlessly brilliant as the author's examples.
That was first edition.
A sidestep here, for those approaching Nobilis for the first time. I
imagine there will be a lot more of those this time; Nobilis is actually
on game store shelves now.
Nobilis is a game about the Powers That Be, and a game about living myths.
The players take on the roles of minor gods, each in control of a specific
estate of reality. Computers. Strife. Loyalty. Obligation. Rodents.
Dreams. Death At Sea. The PCs, called Powers, or Nobilis, serve higher
powers: angels, fallen angels, gods, the forces of Light and Darkness,
other affiliations. The affiliations, of course, oppose each other, but
all of the affiliations are united against the Excrucians, who come from
outside Creation, and wish to destroy it, concept by concept. Nobilis are
created when the higher powers, collectively called Imperators, sink part
of their soul into Earth and put shards of their powers in humans; this
would not be necessary save for the invasion of the Excrucians.
Just as the Nobilis serve the Imperators, they in turn are served by
Anchors, humans whom they love or hate, who serve them absolutely and can
literally manifest the Noble's power and will. The Noble can take over the
Anchor's body, and see through their eyes. For all intents and purposes,
they are the high priests of the god the Noble is. Additionally, the
section of earth that the Imperator sunk his soul into is called a
Chancel; it is a world within a world, utterly subject to the control of
the Nobilis and the Imperator.
In the game itself, the characters run their chancels, and protect their
estates (the concepts of reality they control and guard). More
specifically, they fall in love, they attend parties, they fight armies,
they soothe nature spirits, they intimidate the dead, they leap from
helicopter to helicopter in mid-air firefights, they break laws, they
enforce laws, they go on diplomatic missions, they assassinate
people. They meddle.
In first edition, there was a notable lack of suggestions towards what to
do with these wonderful characters once you created them. One of the major
problems I had with first edition is that it presented a world I
desperately wanted to be part of-- but too often I was stumped on the
details of how to make my visions real. The second edition is filled with
pages and pages of suggestions, enough to spark even my slow mind, as
hinted at above.
The game presents an earth where things aren't quite the same as the real
world. Magic works, even for humans (albeit highly trained humans). Corruption runs rampant. Heaven and Hell exist, along with scores of other worlds, all suspended in the branches of a giant tree. The symbolism of flowers matters. Miracles
happen. That's what players do, after all. Almost every action they take
in the game is a miracle (a technical term), large or small.
Blurbs for Nobilis talk about stark horror and blazing beauty side by
side, and it sounds trite, but it really is true. The author makes it
true, with the extensive use of examples and flavor text. Through the
flavor text that fills the sidebars of the book, the setting of the game
reaches out and embraces you, pulling you into the world of extremes it
represents, where the most horrific events you can imagine share a
page, or even a paragraph, with an evocative description of transcendent
beauty. More than anything, I come away from Nobilis feeling like the
author has done a breathtaking job of creating a world just alien enough
from my own that it might be true. It's easy for me to suspend disbelief;
the flavor text and examples incorporate both the foreign and the deeply
resonant to create a new sense of the real. New legends. New myths. New
worlds. And the game promises the players a share of that.
Does it deliver? That depends on the GM, and the players; the sheer scope
of the game requires more energy and investment from players than your
average adventure game. The diceless system details how
to build characters from four attributes and a special gift system that
can do anything from legend or imagination.
Because it's a game where players have an
enormous range of options in most situations, conflict resolution can be
complicated. There are pools of points related to each attribute
(covering, roughly, You (Aspect), Your Estate (Domain), Your
Chancel(Realm), and Your Magic(Spirit)) that limit what you can do with
that attribute, but the cost of an action (those miracles I mentioned) is
related to where your attribute falls on a scale of dramatic effects.
Somebody who has only a little control over their estate will have to
drain their point pool in order to make a significant example of their
estate appear in the world. Somebody who has enormous control over their
estate may not have to touch their point pool. Personal costs can be
easily memorized, but speaking as a GM, I know that the first few games,
at least, will be a pain in the butt as I juggle the capabilities of
players and NPCs, as well as try to figure out just what the NPCs do. Of
course, this is mostly an issue in combat situations, where seconds matter
and the pressure is on.
The wound system is all new, and innovative; it's hard to hurt gods,
especially in trivial ways. Nobilis approaches that backwards from the
typical manner: you can't get scratched by a cat until you've been worn
out by surviving a building falling on top of you. I haven't used it yet,
but the concept pleases me; it allows for drama in injury rather than
juggling complex systems to determine such things.
Narratively, it is a deep game; few games I've read discuss themes, but
Nobilis has a lot to say about both the themes of the overall game (which
it was designed to support) and the sort of themes a GM might wish to
explore in her campaigns. The laws of the setting can be heavy-handed in
supporting the themes prevalent in the game: love, betrayal, duty,
isolation, morality, society, identity, sacrifice... but they provide a
framework for stories of epic yet personal scope.
At the same time, the author's sense of humor is apparent throughout the
book; from the commentator's remarks on the traditions and pleasures of
being a GM to a streak of rampant good-humored silliness that pokes its
head up the most opportune moments. The author seems aware that the absurd
and comedic is just as important to the scope of the game as the tales of
pain and sacrifice, and the humor is a nice touch of balance in the dramatic world presented.
I could go on. But the question comes to this, in deciding if you're
willing to give the game a try: are you interested in mythology, and
working with a game designed to bring life to the most powerful legends,
myths, folktales and fairy tales we know, while maintaining the sense of
wonder they traditionally invoke? This is really worth taking a look at,
if so. If you're not sure... well, I'd like to suggest everybody take a
look at it, because there's so much about it that is better seen than
described in a brief passage of text. But it's got a lot of text that
should be read, and even with the author's humor, it's not really a light
game and not everybody is as interested as me in the raw beauty of the prose. A novel is, as they say, cheaper. But a novel isn't
Nobilis.
A final note on the production values: it's a big book, white, and square.
It won't fit neatly on an ordinary bookshelf; it's in the style of a
coffee table book. It has a number of extraordinary illustrations, each
listed in a table of contents at the beginning and many drawn by names I
recognize. (A suggestion on the illustrations: look at the picture and
then the title, not the other way around.) The book /smells/ nice. It
feels nice reading it, but it can't be held in one hand, at least not by
me. I heartily approve of the high production values despite some
inconveniences (although the book does lie flat nicely, and come with a
ribbon bookmark) because a.) it fits the content and b.) it seems like an
attempt to widen the target audience of RPGs a little, which I support.
So there you go. I hope this gives you an idea of what's in the book, and whether or not you might enjoy it.
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